Haydn’s “Little Organ Mass”: St John’s Cambridge 1978 (George Guest)

This recording of the "Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo" (also known as the “Little Organ Mass”) come from a commercial LP released on the Argo label. The recording was made in the chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1978 by the chapel choir, by George Guest, and with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Jennifer Smith (soprano) and John Scott (organ).

[@petercrosland5502]

Impressive - this is the first time I have heard it but I will be back!

[@LuisAlberto-eu5xb]

Wonderful music and wonderful composer Franz Joseph Hadyn.

[@PavloLashkevych2009]

Thanks for high quality audio

[@pjdonagh]

Wonderful music ....wonderful performance....so sad to think that both Guest and Scott are no longer with us.......

[@ТетянаКушко-ы8я]

BRAVO!!!

[@sopranodelphinemegret]

Thank you for this recording, always so moved to hear the great Jennifer Smith!

[@hudsonbailey674]

Muses sing with St. John's College, Cambridge as they inspired Haydn to praise God. The sublimity of this work is deeply moving.

[@danielprice3847]

Gloria 2:59
Credo 3:57
Sanctus 7:02
Benedictus 8:19
Agnus Dei 15:40

[@aartblokhuis9879]

Exquisite, as most of Papa Haydn's compositions.

[@elaineblackhurst1509]

It’s by Joseph Haydn.

[@kluma07]

very good !!!

[@deborabatista9383]

Pure beauty.

[@johnm.teague8125]

The Gloria is cheating! :)

[@elaineblackhurst1509]

John M. Teague
Haydn’s brother Michael untangled the telescoped text of the Gloria and Credo for performances in Salzburg by extending these two movements and making the text intelligible; the Gloria for example, instead if being 31 bars in Joseph’s original is stretched to 118 bars in Michael’s untangled revision.*
There is no ‘new’ music in Michael Haydn’s alterations.
It is simply a very professional and ‘authentic’ attempt by a highly-skilled composer of sacred music to make the words intelligible by stretching-out the movement.
Michael Haydn solved a ‘problem’ that whilst being a relatively common thing in mid-eighteenth century Austria, was not appreciated everywhere, and that included Salzburg.
This mass is highly effective in church, not only Catholic churches, but elsewhere as well, where it works especially well for example with the Anglican Book of Common Prayer service too, but in the stretched version, making it one of the few examples of a work where a second composer’s revision is preferable to the actual composer’s original.
* In Joseph’s original, the SATB parts all sang different words simultaneously:
S sang the first line,
A the second,
T the third,
B the fourth,
Et cetera throughout, thus the whole thing could be condensed in 31 bars.