There are some pieces which always sit at the top of my list when I’m thinking about putting together the next Sydney Chamber Choir. Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir is one of them.
This transcendent piece has something of a cult following among singers as a work of extraordinary quality. But to the wider choral and music world, it isn’t heard very often. And this probably is not far away from what the Swiss composer wanted.
Frank Martin wrote his Mass at the age of 32, adding the final movement (Agnus Dei) and the second half of the Credo in 1926. And when he put his pen down, Mass for Double Choir went into a drawer. The composer couldn’t think of a choral conductor who might be interested in performing it, but rather than despairing that his work of genius would not be heard, he accepted it as his secret with God. “I absolutely did not want it to be performed,” he said, “for fear that it would be judged from an entirely aesthetic point of view.”
I always struck me as a very powerful statement and imbued the work with something special.
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