Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is the one work the composer admired above all his compositions. It was written for his great patron Archduke Rudolf of Austria at the same time that he embarked on his Ninth Symphony and as the writer Donald Tovey noted, 'there is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord.'
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is the one work the composer admired above all his compositions. It was written for his great patron Archduke Rudolf of Austria at the same time that he embarked on his Ninth Symphony and as the writer Donald Tovey noted, 'there is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord.'
