Spring 2026 Concert: Schubert and Mendelssohn

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Tickets for May 16 performance in Manchester

Tickets for May 17 performance in Durham

PROGRAM NOTES –  May 2026

Schubert: Mass in E-flat

Franz Schubert may be the most prolific and accomplished songwriter of all time – move over Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Paul McCartney! Austrian 19th c. composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) composed over 600 songs with piano and over 1,000 total works in his short lifetime: nine symphonies (including the Unfinished #8, The Great in C Major #9), operas, a large body of piano and chamber music (the well-known Trout Quintet), song cycles Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise ) and the beloved Ave Maria. He is credited with the birth of the idiomatic German art song genre “Lieder” which benefited from the emergence of the piano as a major instrument. Suffering from manic depression and syphilis, Schubert died at age 31 years.  He is now regarded as one of the greatest and most original composers of the 19th c. Romantic era in music. However, his reputation didn’t emerge until after his death when his music was championed by Schumann and then embraced by Mendelssohn, Liszt and Brahms. 

Vienna was the hub for the Classical style (1750-1820) at the turn of the 19th century and the home for Salieri, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Schubert was the only native Viennese. At age seven, he met Salieri, then court music director and Vienna’s leading composer, and sang in the chapel with lessons in violin, singing, organ and composition. Shortly thereafter he began to write songs, string quartets and piano pieces. At age sixteen he entered the Imperial Royal Seminary and learned works of both the Viennese masters and their Baroque predecessors.    Mozart was a favorite, but Beethoven, with his harmonic audacity and juxtapositions of keys, also had an important influence. Schubert learned the “lingua Franca” of the Classical composers: clarity, regular phrase structure, and form. But as an early Romantic, he broke these boundaries and cultivated a deeply personal sense of expression. His became a style of overarching lyricism – melody combined with daring harmonic structures, so apparent in his final Mass in E-Flat.

Mass in E-Flat (#6) was penned in 1828 less than six months before his death. Of the six masses Schubert wrote, this one, a  Missa Solemnis (solemn mass), is a setting of the Latin liturgy in a grand and celebratory style utilizing a large choir and orchestra and five soloists!    Ambitious and symphonic in scope, it is considered the “swansong” of Schubert’s career – an experience of beauty and intensity. The first performance of the mass occurred in 1829 at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Alsergrund, Austria, and was conducted by his brother Ferdinand.     There is no known commission or specific liturgical function. 

The opening Kyrie follows the classic ABA form, though no soloists are employed in the Christe Eleison section. We are introduced to the composer’s signature modulation to remotely related keys (in this case,  the III/VI chords in the home key of E-Flat Major). The Gloria movement continues with harmonic contrasts and culminates with a large “Cum Sancto Spiritu” fugue based on J.S. Bach’s E Major Fugue Book 2 from 48 Preludes and Fugues. There are several omissions of text in the Credo. Speculation remains that, while Schubert was deeply religious, he was unable to align with the prevailing Catholic doctrine of the day. Thus, he freely “edited” the mass text and omitted several parts of the Credo  text in all six of his mass settings. There was musical convenience too: while the Kyrie text had four words and Gloria had eighty-four,  Credo had 162 words! The Credo finishes with a grand fugue “Et vitam venturi” in the style of Haydn. Romantic chord progressions and modulations continue in the Sanctus leading us into the Benedictus, an unusual interchange between solo and choral textures. We return to another old style fugue in the Agnus Dei movement. The final sublime Dona Nobis Pacem closes the mass with a longed-for simplicity and serenity.   

PSF

Mendelssohn: Psalm 42

Few musicians have worn as many hats—and worn them so brilliantly—as Felix Mendelssohn: composer, conductor, pianist, scholar. Born into a prominent intellectual family, he was the grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, a leading voice for Jewish integration into German society. When Felix was still a child, his family converted to Lutheranism and adopted the name Bartholdy, signaling both a religious and cultural shift that would shape his life and work.

While Mendelssohn is widely celebrated for large-scale masterpieces, his smaller sacred works remain something of a hidden treasure. Drawing inspiration from Johann Sebastian Bach—whose St. Matthew Passion Mendelssohn famously revived at just 20 years old—as well as from the chorales of Martin Luther, these works blend deep historical reverence with unmistakable Romantic expressiveness. Over his lifetime, Mendelssohn returned again and again to the Psalms, setting nineteen of them to music—perhaps drawn by their emotional immediacy and their origins as texts meant to be sung.

Psalm 42 emerged in the spring of 1837 under unusually joyful circumstances: Mendelssohn composed it while on honeymoon with his new wife, Cécile, near Freiburg. Yet despite this setting, the music explores profound longing and spiritual thirst. Mendelssohn himself—normally his own harshest critic—held this work in especially high regard, repeatedly calling it his “very best sacred composition,” even in the shadow of his recent triumph with St. Paul.

The psalm’s famous image of the hart (a deer) yearning for flowing water becomes, in Mendelssohn’s hands, a powerful metaphor for absence: the absence of God, of comfort, of peace. Water appears everywhere in the text—but not as refreshment. Instead, it takes the form of tears, surging waves, and overwhelming floods.

Musically, the opening movement is a marvel of invention. What begins as a seemingly simple melodic idea unfolds into a rich web of overlapping vocal lines, eventually gathering into a unified choral declaration. Two contrasting soprano arias follow: first, a lyrical, almost intimate meditation accompanied by a plaintive oboe; then a more urgent, declamatory outpouring, energized by the support of a women’s chorus.

The full choir returns in a striking fourth movement—“Why so sorrowful, my soul?”—its bold, almost orchestral character and insistent cry of “Harre auf Gott!” (“Wait for the Lord!”) foreshadowing the grandeur of Mendelssohn’s later Lobgesang Symphony (which MCS performed in May 2022). At the heart of the work lies the Quintet, both musically and emotionally. Here, the soprano soloist embodies anguish—her wide leaps and restless lines expressing a soul in turmoil—while the male quartet offers calm reassurance in steady, closely knit harmonies. This tension between despair and faith gives the movement its dramatic power.

Mendelssohn himself recognized its importance, remarking, “If the Quintet doesn’t succeed, then the whole will not succeed.”

The final movement brings the work to a brilliant close, drawing on the kind of exuberant, Handel-inspired counterpoint that had recently captivated audiences in St. Paul. It is a fitting conclusion to a piece that moves from longing to affirmation—an intimate spiritual journey rendered with extraordinary clarity, beauty, and emotional depth.

— Dan Perkins