Schubert: Mass in E flat major, D 950

Schubert’s final mass and most ambitious setting was composed during the summer of 1828, only months before his death. It was premiered posthumously, on October 4, 1829, under the direction of his brother, Ferdinand. Much more than his previous efforts in the genre, it is a choral mass, relegating the vocal soloists to three brief episodes to allow for large chorus passages, and provides an extremely active role for the orchestra. Today, the Mass in E Flat is increasingly acknowledged as an individual masterpiece; powerful and disquieting, more monumental than the fifth, but likewise seeking to reconcile liturgical grandeur with Schubert’s own subjective romantic feeling, whilst still influenced by Haydn, Beethoven and Bach. Its concern for splendour is most obvious in the huge set-piece fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo but all the time, liturgical tradition is coloured by an individual and sometimes unsettling chromaticism, possibly evoking the personal pain he was suffering, not only physically but also the anguish of questioning his faith. The result is some of the most violent anguish encountered in a setting of the text.