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Messa (Puccini)

Giacomo Puccini's Messa a quattro voci, or Mass for 4 Voices, was written in 1880 and is a complete setting of the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei) scored for four-part choir (with tenor and baritone soloists) and orchestra. It was not published, however, until 1951, in New York, when it was incorrectly titled Messa di Gloria, a truncated type of Mass setting.

History

Puccini composed the Mass as his graduation exercise from the Istituto Musicale Pacini. It had its first performance in Lucca on July 12, 1880. However, the Credo had already been written and performed in 1878 and was initially conceived by Puccini as a self-contained work. Puccini never published the full manuscript of the Messa, and although well received at the time, it was not performed again until 1952 (first in Chicago and then in Naples). However, he re-used some of its themes in other works, such as the Agnus Dei in his opera Manon Lescaut and the Kyrie in Edgar.

At the end of World War II, Fr. Dante Del Fiorentino purchased an old copy of the manuscript of the Messa from the Vandini family in Lucca, imagining it was the original score. However, the autograph, in the possession of the Puccini family, was given by his daughter-in-law to Ricordi, Puccini's publishing firm. The ensuing legal battle was finally resolved by dividing the rights to the work between Ricordi and Mills Music (the publishers of Fiorentino's manuscript).

Structure

Recordings

Score

References

Further sources