Organ Sonata

CD Organ Sonata Académie Vocale De Suisse Romande

The Missa choralis stands at the forefront of Liszt's substantial output of sacred compositions. The Abbé Liszt had shown his ambition of renewing church music by refreshing the Romantic aesthetic with the polyphony of the Renaissance. Composed in 1865 and published in 1869, the Missa choralis thus represents one of the first manifestations of the Cecilian movement: a return to Palestrina, to simplicity of resources and expression. The very term choralis refers directly to plainchant (known as musica choralis as opposed to musica figuralis, the name given to measured music), which Liszt quotes, albeit briefly, at the opening of the Kyrie and Credo.
However, although Liszt at one time intended to dedicate the work, written for the eighteenth centenary of the foundation of the Holy See, to Pope Pius IX, the latter was never to hear it on account of opposition from the Vatican, and the Cecilianists were to withdraw the Missa choralis from their "catalogue" in 1890. Renaud Bouvier