Mass (Stravinsky)

Igor Stravinsky composed his Mass between 1944 and 1948. This 19-minute setting of the Roman Catholic Mass exhibits the austere, Neoclassic, anti-Romantic aesthetic that characterizes his work from about 1923 to 1951. The Mass also represents one of only a handful of extant pieces by Stravinsky that was not commissioned. As such, part of the motivation behind its composition has been cited by Robert Craft and others as the product of a spiritual necessity.

My Mass was partly provoked by some Masses of Mozart that I found at a secondhand store in Los Angeles in 1942 or 1943. As I played through these rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin, I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.

Stravinsky completed the Gloria on December 20, 1944 and finished the Kyrie at about the same time. His work on the Mass was then interrupted for several years in which his wrote his Symphony, Ebony Concerto, Concerto in D, and the ballet Orpheus. He resumed work on it in the fall of 1947 and completed it March 15, 1948.

On February 26, 1947, Irving Fine conducted the Kyrie and Gloria, accompanied by two pianos. The first complete performance occurred on October 27, 1948 in Milan. Ernest Ansermet conducted members of the chorus and orchestra of La Scala.

The work is scored for mixed chorus and an ensemble of wind instruments comprising two oboes, English horn (Cor anglais), two bassoons, two trumpets, and three trombones. There is also some minor solo material (often sung by members of the choir) in the second and fourth (Gloria and Sanctus) movements. Stravinsky specifies in the score that "children's voices should be employed" for both the soprano and alto parts, but, as with Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, concert performances of the Mass usually employ adult singers.

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