*****************************************************

 

*****************************************************

Two performances of Haydn’s  “Schöpfungsmesse” (Creation Mass) are posted here.

I humbly ask you: How could critic Anthony Tommasini (“The Greatest,” The New York Times, January 21, 2011) leave Haydn off his list of the ten greatest composers?

This mass — one of six masses of unsurpassable beauty and profundity composed by Handel (a very devout man) near the end of his life — requires no comment, but the flawless composition in a work that is the antithesis of “cold” or impersonal (Mozart achieves this too in his religious works; and Beethoven in his Mass in C major) makes it a supreme achievement.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   updated March 2021