Ludwig van Beethoven
Missa Solemnis in D Major
Opus 123
Friday, May 11, 8pm
Saturday, May 12, 8pm
Belk Theater
Blumenthal Performing Arts Center
Christopher Warren-Green, conducting
Tamara Wilson, soprano
Nancy Maultsby, mezzo-soprano
Yeghishe Manucharyan, tenor
Richard Zeller, baritone
Missa Solemnis is presented in part through a generous gift from Joyce and Larry Bennett.
Missa Solemnis is generally considered to be one of the composer's supreme achievements, on par with his more famous Symphony No. 9. Beethoven composed the work 1819-1823. It was first performed on April 7, 1824 in St. Petersburg.
Like most masses, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is in five movements: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.
Sir Donald Francis Tovey, musicologist and author of Essays in Musical Analysis wrote this about Missa Solemnis:
"Not even Bach or Handel can show a greater sense of space and of sonority. There is no earlier choral writing that comes so near to recovering some of the lost secrets of the style of Palestrina. There is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord, every position, and every doubled third or discord."
