Of War and Reflection choral concert

April 18, 2012 - PRLog -- The Riverside Choral Society presents Of War and Reflection, a performance of Franz Joseph Haydn’s splendid Lord Nelson Mass, combined with the evocative An Elm We Lost by David Gompper—a remembrance of the events of September 11.

Sharla Nafziger, soprano; Kirsten Sollek, alto; Nathan Davis, tenor; John Muriello, bass; and Mark Boyle, tenor. Patrick Gardner, conductor. Gardner is Director of Choral Activities at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, in New Brunswick, N.J.

Haydn was finishing the Mass in d minor in late summer 1798 and could not have known of Nelson’s victory before its completion. The character of the music and the original title Missa in Angustiis (Mass in Time of Trouble)  were probably meant to reflect the anxious state of military and political affairs in Europe at the time.

However by the time the Mass in d minor premiered, news of Nelson’s victory had swept through Austria, creating a patriotic fervor that resulted in the renaming of the mass. It appears as the Nelsonmesse  in Haydn’s own thematic catalogue and has been known by that title in Austria since soon after the premiere.