Rautavaara: Missa a cappella

Featuring

Sigvards Kļava
Latvian Radio Choir
Einojuhani Rautavaara

Did you know?

1/7

Compositional Technique

Rautavaara's Missa a cappella is mainly homophonic but highly variable in color and setting, occasionally featuring solo voices and touches of archaic Gregorian chant.

Critical Reception

The Missa a cappella received an exceptionally warm reception at its 2011 premiere in Utrecht, with a standing ovation and an encore of the concluding Agnus Dei.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Rautavaara, the composer, subscribes to theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher's definition of being religious as having an 'affinity for infinity', which he explores in his sacred works.

Performer Biography

The Latvian Radio Choir, a full-time professional chamber choir founded in 1940, focuses on exploring and expanding the capabilities of the human voice.

Composer Biography

Rautavaara's dodecaphonic period in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which included studying with Wladimir Vogel in Switzerland, still often featured a strong Romantic flavor.

Composition History

Rautavaara's Missa a cappella was planned in the early 1970s, but only the Credo movement was completed then; he returned to the project in the early 2010s to complete the full mass.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Einojuhani Rautavaara, the composer, describes composing as an inexplicable, miraculous process, believing a work of art has a metaphysical will to be born.