1 CD - SK 68 247 - (p) 1996

VIVARTE - 60 CD Collection Vol. 2 - CD 42





Masses
61' 34"



Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)


Mass in F major, D 105 - for solo voices, mixed chorus, organ & orchestra °
40' 59"
- I - Kyrie (Larghetto)
 5' 56"
1
- II - Gloria (Allegro vivace moderato - Andante con moto - Adagio - Allegro maestoso - Allegro vivace) 11' 01"
2
- III - Credo (Andantino) 6' 55"
3
- IV - Sanctus (Adagio maestoso) 1' 50"
4
- V - Benedictus (Andante con moto) ^
 4' 00"
5
- VI - Agnus Dei (Adagio molto) 2' 49"
6
- VII - Dona nobis pacem (Andante) - First Version 4' 06"
7
- VII - Dona nobis pacem (Allegro moderato) - Second Version D 185
 4' 22"
8
Mass in G major, D 167 "Klosterneuburg Version" with trumpet and timpani parts ad libitum - for solo voices, mixed chorus, organ & orchestra *
19' 46"
- I - Kyrie (Andante con moto) 2' 59"
9
- II - Gloria (Allegro maestoso) 2' 36"
10
- III - Credo (Allegro moderato) 3' 37"
11
- IV - Sanctus (Adagio maestoso - Allegro) 1' 23"
12
- V - Benedictus (Andante grazioso - Allegro) 4' 06"
13
- VI - Agnus Dei (Lento) 5' 05"
14



 
Alexander Nader, soprano (Wiener Sängerknaben) °
 Wiener Sängerknaben / Peter Marschik, chorus master
Thomas Puchegger, soprano I (Wiener Sängerknaben) ^/* Chorus Viennensis / Guido Mancusi, chorus master
Georg Leskovich, alto (Wiener Sängerknaben) °
 Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Jörg Hering, tenor I °/*
 Arno Hartmann, organ
Kurt Azesberger, tenor II °
 Bruno WEIL, conductor
Harry van der Kamp, bass °/*

 





Luogo e data di registrazione
Casino Zögernitz, Vienna (Austria) - 20/27 September 1995

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer / Recording supervisor
Wolf Erichson

Recording Engineer / Mastering
Stephan Schellmann (Tritonus)

Prima Edizione LP
-

Prima Edizione CD
Sony / Vivarte - SK 68 247 - (1 CD) - durata 61' 34" - (p) 1996 - DDD

Cover Art
Mittelalterliche Stadt am Fluß by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) - Courtesy Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin

Note
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Schubert had a thorough training in the masses of the Viennese Classical school - not only Joseph and Michael Haydn, and Mozart, but a host of lesserknown figures, most largely forgotten and, except to specialists, now unknown. Schubert`s qualifications are concisely and professionally stated in an autograph application for the post of Vice-Capellmeister at the court of Emperor Francis I. The document is dated April 7, 1826, and reads, in part, as follows:
“1. The undersigned is a native of Vienna, son of a schoolmaster, and twenty-nine years of age.
2. As a court chorister, he enjoyed the supreme privilege of being for five years a pupil at the ImperialChoir School.
3. He received a complete course in composition from the late First Capellmeister, Anton Salieri, and is thereby qualified to fill any post as Capellmeister.
4. Through his vocal and instrumental compositions, his name is well known not only in Vienna but also in all Germany.
5. He has in readiness, moreover, five masses for either large or small orchestra which have been performed in various churches in Vienna.
6. Finally, he now enjoys no appointment whatsoever, and hopes in the security of this permanent position to be able at last to attain completely the artistic goal which he has set for himself."
Schubert was unlucky, however, and the position was filled by Joseph Weigl, a former protégé of Haydn's and Mozart`s and well known to the Emperor personally. But still, it shows us that Schubert took very seriously the task of composing masses, which he specially mentions in paragraph five.
All his masses of this early period are connected with, and were first performed at, the parish church of Lichtental, a suburb of Vienna where the composer was born. Schubert sang here in the parish choir from 1805 to 1808, and his brother Ferdinand often played the organ. Presumably the Kyrie, belonging to an unfinished Mass in D minor of 1812 (D 31), was the first serious attempt on Franz's part to compose a large-scale orchestral mass. It was, however, the festival for the centenary of the founding of Lichtental Church that finally motivated Schubert to compose his first complete mass setting, in F major (D 105), which he began on May 17 and completed on July 22, 1814. It was first performed there on October 16 and, in the words of a contemporary, attracted “kein kleines Aufsehen” [no little attention]. Schubert conducted, his friend Michael Holzer led the choir, his brother Ferdinand played the organ and Joseph Mayseder, soon to become a famous composer, was leader. The soprano soloist was Therese Grob, with whose family Franz was on intimate terms; he was deeply in love with Therese, of whom a contemporary wrote that she “was the daughter of a middle-class woman still in her prime, who [...] as a widow and owner of her house in Lichtental successfully ran a flourishing silk-weaving business not far from the church [...]. Therese was by no means a beauty, but well developed, of fairly full figure with a fresh, childlike round face.” Another intimate friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, reports Schubert as saying in 1821: “I once loved someone dearly and she loved me too. She was the daughter of a schoolteacher, somewhat younger than me, and sang the solo parts of a mass that I composed with great beauty and real feeling. She wasn't exactly pretty - she had pockmarks on her face; but she was good, good in her heart. I hoped for three years I could marry her, but I could find no position to support us both. She married another as her parents wished, and that hurt me very much. I love her still [...].”
The Mass was scored for the usual four-part choir with soloists, strings, organ and a wind band of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trombones and, in the Gloria, trumpets (the movement being in C major and better suited for the instruments than F major). Although rooted in the local Viennese tradition, this is an extraordinary piece of music - childlike in the Kyrie, with its marvellously innocent soprano solo for Therese Grob, martial in the Gloria, and with a very respectable fugue at the end (“Cum sancto Spiritu”). In the Credo we come to a very curious fact: in all Schubert's masses he deliberately leaves out the words “Credo in unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam et apostolicam”. Did they really omit these words when singing this festive Mass in the Lichtental Church? The autograph contains a great many changes, some shortenings (a breath of later “heavenly length”?), and in the spring of 1815, Schubert wrote an entirely new Dona nobis pacem (D 185), the aggressive fanfares of which recall both Haydn's Missa in tempore belli of 1796 and the contemporary circumstances, too - Napoleon had escaped from Elba, the Viennese Congress had stopped dancing forever, Waterloo was in the offing...
The beautiful and somehow most poignant Mass in G major (D 167) has always been a great favourite among connoisseurs, both for its quiet spiritual message and for the extremely professional economy of its scoring - originally for strings and organ only. It was composed between March 2 and 7, 1815 and was also destined for performance at the Lichtental Church, though no exact record of its première has survived. Later Schubert added parts for trumpets and kettledrums, which are preserved in the great monastery of Augustinian Canons in klosterneuburg ner Vienna, and are included in the present recording.
© 1996 H. C. Robbins Landon