Franz Schubert’s Mass in G major is one of the most popular settings of the mass ordinary: the charming song-like melodic writing, especially in the Kyrie and the Credo, forms a magical counterpoint to more concertante passages in the Gloria and the Sanctus. For a long time it was thought that Schubert’s final version was scored for purely string orchestra, whilst a version with wind, brass, and timpani was thought to be an expanded orchestration by his brother Ferdinand Schubert. However, since the mid-1990s it has been known that the parts for trumpets and timpani were additionally composed by Franz Schubert himself for use "ad libitum". The present edition offers this "Klosterneuburg Version”" – with trumpets and timpani ad libitum, but without Ferdinand’s wind parts – in an Urtext edition reflecting Schubert’s own intended orchestration.
Also available in a version for choir & organ (Carus 40.675/45).
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Composer
Franz Schubert
| 1797-1828Throughout most of his life Franz Schubert was concerned with church music. When he was eleven he was chosen as treble soloist at his local church in the Vienna suburb of Lichtenthal and soon afterwards he was admitted to the choir of the Imperial Court Chapel, directed by Antonio Salieri. Soon he also began to compose; his earliest surviving sacred pieces date from 1812. During his lifetime his church music achieved a comparatively wide degree of acceptance but after his death, most notably, his smaller works were unjustly forgotten. The Carus programme encompasses Schubert’s complete sacred compositions and it is intended to emphasize the wide range of his works in this area. Many of the smaller liturgical compositions are published here for the first time in separate editions. What is to be discovered is a fascinating œuvre, rooted in the ‘stile antico’ of Antonio Salieri and in the compositions of the Viennese classical masters, but whose exquisite lyricism and harmonic subtlety reveal a typically Schubertian world of expression: works with great power of conviction and exceptional musical beauty. Personal details