Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“From The Heart, May It Go To The Heart”: Liturgy And Embodiment In Beethoven’S Missa Solemnis, Brigid J. Coleridge

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since its 1824 premiere in St. Petersburg, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Op. 123 has only ever been performed in secular concert settings. This performance history is reflected in critical trends in Missa solemnis scholarship. Following Adorno’s 1959 essay that characterized the Missa as “alienated,” critical perspectives on Beethoven’s last Mass have largely responded to the work as "absolute" music, indifferent to or disregarding the Mass text. Despite its exclusively secular performance history, however, the Missa solemnis was written for use in the Mass liturgy (at the installation of the Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olmütz). Moreover, the Missa was composed …

A Conductor's Guide To Amass By Jocelyn Hagen, Matthew J. Myers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary American composer Jocelyn Hagen grew up in Valley City, North Dakota, where she found an early love for singing, playing instruments, and composing. After completing degrees at St. Olaf College and the University of Minnesota, Hagen began a career as a full-time composer. Her appointment as Composer-in-Residence for The Singers led to her first major multimovement work, amass (2011).

Though Hagen planned to write a traditional setting of the Catholic Mass, she struggled to accept the text of the “Credo” as the only path to salvation. Thus, she substituted spiritual poems from a variety of faith traditions to create …