1798 was a year of disasters and existential danger for the state of Austria. It had fought battles with Napoleon the previous year, and had lost four of them. Napoleon already crossed the Alps and was threatening Vienna itself. So when his patron said he didn’t have the financial means to pay for a woodwind section to his latest mass, Haydn grudgingly accepted. He called the reduced mass the Missa in angustiis, translated to Mass for troubled times.
By pure circumstance, when it premiered on September 1st of that year, Nelson won a major victory over Napoleon’s forces in Egypt. The audience started to call this new work the Nelson Mass, and it stuck. When the British admiral visited the royal palace in 1800, he might have heard it himself.
While writing this, I’m listening to the streamed version on Qobuz. Willcocks’ version is still seen as one of the best, and is available there in restored studio quality version. Almost as good as the original, my audiophile self would say.
For a game I’m using AI to create images. This is what comes out of this text.
