Our 50th Anniversary Season concludes with our summer concert featuring Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Mozart’s Solemn Vespers and Divertimento in D major.
The concert, on Saturday 28 June 7.30 pm in St Mary’s Parish Church, Woburn, will be conducted by Ian Smith and accompanied by the Alina Orchestra.
The Nelson Mass (Missa in Angustiis), arguably Haydn’s greatest single composition, is one of the six late masses that he had written for the Esterhazy family. It was composed in the summer of 1798 at the time when Napoleon and his French armies occupied much of Austria. Precisely how Haydn’s Nelson Mass became so-called will probably never be known. What is clear is that within a month of the Battle of the Nile (1 August 1798), when the British fleet commanded by Admiral Nelson defeated Napoleon‘s French fleet, Haydn had completed his latest Mass. Two years later Haydn performed this work before Nelson during his visit to the Esterházy palace at Eisenstadt. It gradually became referred to as the Nelson Mass. In the years following it became increasingly famous and to this day it is certainly one of his best-known and most popular choral works.
Mozart wrote Solemn Vespers (Vesperae Solennes de Confessore) in 1780 for liturgical use in Salzburg Cathedral, his final choral work composed for the cathedral. Six movements of wonderful, religious music, culminating in, surely, one of Mozart’s finest tunes in the Laudate Dominum.
Mozart composed Divertimento for strings in D major during the winter of 1772 when he was sixteen. It is a delightful, youthful work, with exuberant energy, a lyrical slow movement, and even some Haydnesque humour.