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 68 248 - (1 CD) - durata 53' 34" - (p) 1996 - DDD
	Cover Art		Gotischer Dom am Wasser by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) - Courtesy: Galerie der Romantik, Berlin, SMPK, Nationalgalerie
	Note		-

All Schubert's early masses have some kind of direct connection with the Parish Church of Lichtental, the Viennese suburb where the composer was born and where he sang in the choir as a youth. His brother Ferdinand often played the organ there and the family was on friendly terms with the Lichtental Regens chori Michael Holzer, to whom Schubert dedicated the C major Mass here recorded. The first of the two works on this CD is the Mass in B flat major for four vocal soloists, choir and orchestra, begun - as the autograph score, now in the British Library, London, informs us - on November 11, 1815. A record of the first performance at the Lichtental Parish Church has, however, not come down to us. There is no douht that, steeped as he was in Haydn's late masses, which he had sung in the choir of the Parish Church at Lichtental, Schubert was profoundly influenced by Haydn's last Mass, the Harmoniemesse [Wind Band Mass] of 1802, the spirit of which - and sometimes even the letter - hover over this fine B flat Mass. The slow tempo for the Kyrie, Adagio con moto, was also an unusual feature of Haydn`s solemn work, and even the dotted rhythm of Haydn's choral entry is exactly mirrored in Schubert's Kyrie. And the opening of the Gloria in the Lichtental work, too, owes its melodic shape and rhythm to Haydn's Mass. But talented composers like young Beethoven and Schubert naturally took their point of departure from their illustrious precursors: that was fit and natural, especially in a city like Vienna where tradition has always counted for a great deal. There is a very pretty story connected with the Mass in B flat, which Schubert's brother Ferdinand wrote in a letter to Franz of October 6, 1822, in which he relates his travels inter alia to Preßburg [Bratislava in Slovakia]. “In Hamburg”, he writes - the old market town where Haydn had studied music with his cousin - “I had bed and board with the charming Herr Stadtpfarrer [town parish priest] Reinberger. This delightful and really good man was very concerned to amuse me. On the first day he took us [...] to the Castle on the hill and into the Castle garden, etc., on the second day to Preßburg, on the third day [...] we had occasion to meet the Regens chori here and his son, who is a schoolmaster. That's a rare pair of people. The former invited me to a mass on the following Sunday, the 4th day of my stay here; and when I asked him what mass they were going to play, he answered: "A very beautiful one, by an admired and well-known composer - I just can't remember the name at the moment." And what was the mass, in fact? If only you had been there with me; I know you would have been very pleased, too; for it was the B flat Mass by - you! You can easily imagine my feelings and also what clear and special people they must have been, who managed to reach my spirit in such a dear and surprising way. By the way, that Mass was performed with a great deal of spirit and really well. The Regens chori conducted and gave the correct tempi, it couldn't have been better; his son, who is a professional violin player, and the Herr Pfarrer [the parish priest] were the leaders of the first violins, and the colonel of the local Mineur-Corps, whose band supplied the wind instruments,was at the head of the second violins; as usual, I played the organ. The vocal choir was also quite good too; only the tenor was rather timid and weak in the voice.” The stirring C major Mass (No. 4 chronologically of the complete settings) was composed between June and July 1816 and presumably first performed - again, no details have come down to us - at the Lichtental Parish Church that summer. Apart from the autograph itself, there is also a copy of the full score in Ferdinand Schubert's hand, where it is clearly indicated that the parts for oboes trumpets (“clarini“) and kettledrums are ad líbitum - they are, of course, included in this recording. C major was the principal key of festive masses, and there are many by Joseph and Michael Haydn, Mozart, even by Beethoven, in this key of princes and coronations. (Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, composed for the coronation festivities of Emperor Leopold II in Prague in 1791, was basically in C, and much esteemed by connoisseurs at the time Schubert wrote his C major Mass in 1816.) It was a rich and living tradition. We have drawn attention elsewhere to Schubert's curious habit of leaving out parts of the text when composing his masses, i. e.,“Credo in unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam et apostolicam.” In this work - again in the Credo - he omitted the words "ex Maria virgine" between "et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto" and "et homo factus est". Let us hope, from the liturgical standpoint, that it was an error! In 1825, the well-known Viennese publishers Anton Diabelli & Comp. published this work as the first of Schubert's masses. The scoring specified “2 Oboen oder Klarinetten” but the trumpets and timpani were also included. It was noted, too, that "Die Stimmen zur beliebigen Verdoppelung werden auch einzeln gegeben", in other words, you could also purchase single parts separately for doubling (e. g., strings). As might have been predicted after the sour reviews written of Haydn and Mozart - and sometimes even Beethoven - from Berlin, this Mass received short shrift from the Berlin Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of December 21, 1825: “The young composer Schubert continues unabatedly to write lieder; his first products, notably Der Erlkönig, found a public, which, however, seems to be slowly receding. Diabelli also published a mass from his pen. The ballades are more successful.“ It was unusual for Schubert to return to a work years later, but in October 1828, shortly before his death, he wrote a second Benedictus for the Mass in C major catalogued by O. E. Deutsch as D 961. It was published by Diabelli the next year, who indicated that it was composed for performances in which there was no good soprano solo (featured in the original version). This attractive A minor Benedictus in moderato cut time is also recorded here. Schubert was by no means finished with the mass form: in his later years, with his Masses in A flat major, D 678 (1819-22/1825) and in E flat major, D 950 (1828), he turned twice to the form (and with yet a third work remaining as a fragment in A minor composed in May 1822 for his brother Ferdinand). Both masses are included on our complete recording of Schubert's masses. © 1996 H. C. Robbins Landon