Thread: Your favorite mass.

Since the thread keeps being "the most favourite choral work" and since "Requiems" seem to be an easy way out in preference, some of the least known on the two sides of the spectrum:
From the very early ones, you may try the newly released by Hyperion Richafort's Requiem. A work of luxuriant and spectacular choral writing leading to the metaphysic and meditation.
In the same period, Du Caurroy's Requiem: Excess of austerity, but with a large palette of vocal and instrumental beauty.
For the more contemporary (for our Clive):
Try Greif's Requiem (of 1999): a modern masterpiece!
In the same vein, Bussotti's The Rara Requiem (1969): a meditation on the beauty and the fragility, the life and the death through the charm of music, the mystery and the quality of the timbres and the sonorities. All these in the austerity of a writing strictly atonal!

There are some thousands of Requiems only. As for the Masses, forget it. Life is short.

Principe

[QUOTE=principe;361965]For the more contemporary (for our Clive):

Great suggestions, Quack/Principe; thanks ! Don't think I'm quite as sold on contemporary as you may have felt, but have the 'Rara' & enjoy 'some' of it; Sandstrom certainly looks worth investigating.

Rheinberger of course is lovely. Do you know the Ropartz works ? Well worth a 'dip' if not !

Ropartz's Requiem is a very French as for the harmonies and its "colours", subscribing both to the double foundation of Berlioz and Faure. Quite strict, since it never distracts the listener from the sacred text which is the source, the means and the end.
Another great, or at least quite interesting, Requiem is the one of Weinberg (in a recent recording on NEOS).
In a different vein, Bob Chilcott's Requiem (composed in 2010) is a marvel of beautiful, melodic and almost entirely tonal work. It exists on Hyperion.
More to follow, if anyone is interested.

Principe

Currently, I'm head-over-heels in love with Frank Martin's Mass for Double Unaccompanied Choir.

This recording is rather slow, but it's still powerful.