Bruckner composed the Missa solemnis in 1854 for the installation of Friedrich Mayer as abbot of St. Florian Abbey. The Missa solemnis was performed during the installation of Friedrich Mayer on 14 September 1854. After Robert Führer saw the score, he suggested Bruckner study with Simon Sechter, and after seeing the mass, Sechter accepted Bruckner as a pupil. With the possible exception of Psalm 146, the Missa solemnis was the last major work Bruckner wrote before concluding his studies with Sechter, who did not allow his students to compose freely while studying with him. A second performance of the Missa solemnis occurred two years after Bruckner's death, on 4 May 1898, in the St. Florian Abbey under the baton of Regens chori Berhard Deubler. On 29 March 1921, the Missa solemnis was performed again by August Göllerich during the seventh concert of the Linzer Bruckner-Stiftung.
Setting
Bruckner composed the Missa solemnis, WAB 29, as a setting of the mass ordinary for vocal soloists, mixed choir, orchestra and organ. According to Catholic practice – as in Bruckner's previous Messe für den Gründonnerstag and his later Mass No. 1 and Mass No. 2 – the first verse of the Gloria and the Credo is intoned by the priest in Gregorian mode before the choir continues. Unlike Bruckner's earlier Choral-Messen, the Gloria and the Credo of the Missa solemnis contain the larger text usually associated with these sections of the Mass. The setting is divided into six main parts:
Total duration: about 31 minutes. "Bruckner's Missa Solemnis is a musical summa of the first thirty years of his life." Stylistically the mass, in the line of Beethoven's orchestral masses, displays Bruckner's confrontation with tradition. In spite of many beautiful details, multiple influences afford the work some heterogeneity in which J. S. Bach's technique of the fugue is "amalgamated" with elements of the Viennese Classical and Preclassical periods, and of the early Romantic. The "Quoniam" quotes from Joseph Haydn's Missa sancti Bernardi von Offida. As in Bruckner's later great masses, the setting of the words "Et resurrexit" is preceded by the "old-fashioned rhetorical gesture" of a "rising chromatic figure in stile agitato representing the trembling of the earth." This rising chromatic figure is repeated before the "Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum". Several passages of the Missa solemnis, particularly the "Qui tollis" of the Gloria and the central part of the Credo, prefigure Bruckner's next Mass No. 1 in D minor. Both the Gloria and the Credo conclude with a fugue. Robert Simpson finds "nothing mediocre or tentative about this strong and clear work... the music is often of excellent quality... the work, though not perfect, is admirable."
Editions
The edition by Robert Haas for the Gesamtausgabe was based on the copy given to Mayer. During the 1930s Ferdinand Habel changed the text of bars 28–38 of the Kyrie and bars 57–58 of the Gloria to make the work more usable for Eucharist celebration. Leopold Nowak rejected these changes in his edition, which also introduced phrasing marks in some violin parts that had not been available to Haas. On 25 June 2017 a new edition of the score by Cohrs, prepared for the Anton Bruckner Urtext Gesamtausgabe, was premiered by Łukasz Borowicz with the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.
Discography
There are five commercial recordings of the work. The three earlier recordings follow the Haas edition with Habel's text adaptations. Rickenbacker follows the Nowak edition. According to Hans Roelofs, Jürgens' and Rickenbacker's performances are better achieved than the two earlier recordings. Jürgens performs it with religiosity, as a mass, Rickenbacker more strenuously as a concert work.
Hubert Gunther, Bruckner - Missa Solemnis in B, Rheinische Singgemeinschaft and BRT-Radio Symfonieorkest – LP: Garnet G 40 170,
Elmar Hausmann, Anton Bruckner – Missa solemnis in B, Motetten, Chorgemeinschaft and Orchester an der Basilika St. Aposteln Köln – CD: Aulos AUL 66122, 1983
