"Several of you commented about the nature of the snow last night," Mr. Mass wrote Sunday morning.
His Mass, written especially for the occasion, was performed at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., in September 1971.
But the Mass, written during the Napoleonic wars in 1796, is a real miracle of compactness, wrapping the standard text in colorful music crammed with incident.
In the second half of the performance, the choir is joined by Limón dancers in José Limón's "Missa Brevis" (1958), set to the abbreviated Mass written by Zoltán Kodály during the siege of Budapest in the Second World War.
When it was all over, a rock band joined a choir in a joyous Gloria in Excelsis from a mass written by the composer of "Hair," and the Episcopal Diocese of New York had a new bishop — the Rt.
The Abyssinian Mass, written to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, showed Marsalis's musical direction at its best, its worst, and all points in between.
A transcendent study of liturgical anatomy, it is a Latin Mass written in the midst of German Lutheranism; its format fits uneasily, if at all, the ritual goings-on of any Christian denomination you can think of.
The papal dedication and the inclusion of the Mass, written in a style more conservative than his usual, were meant to stir interest among Vatican authorities in a position to offer him a job.
A mass written in 1503 in Vienna by the Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac is performed by the Hilliard Ensemble in Antwerp on Aug. 25, and on Aug. 27, the group presents the mass "De Beata Virgine" by the Flemish composer Josquin des Prez.
