LE3 .A278 2014

2014

Callon, Gordon

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

Music

Music

Scholarship has long suggested a need to examine Haydn’s six late Masses within the context of the Enlightenment. By arguing for a paired reading of the Agnus Dei movements of Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War) and Missa in angustiis (Mass in Difficult Circumstances), this thesis seeks to begin such a discussion. Haydn’s musical interpretation of the identical text of the two Agnus Dei movements seem to call for bipartite peace. Missa in tempore belli focuses on physical peace from warfare, while Missa in angustiis focuses on metaphysical peace from warring ideas. This call for peace is especially pertinent within the context of Haydn’s changing world and socio-historical culture. In response to the Age of the Enlightenment, Catholicism in the Holy Roman Empire was in a period of transition from external to internalized acts of piety. At the same time, the Enlightenment diffused ideas of humanism which were not entirely inconsistent with Catholic spirituality. Haydn seems to have reconciled in his life what he sought to reconcile in music: the secular and the sacred, which is musically apparent in Haydn’s conflation of symphonic, operatic, and sacred music conventions. It is further apparent in where and how Haydn uses those conventions in the musical realization of the Agnus Dei. Ultimately, the two movements come together to form a holistic call for peace and reconciliation in Haydn’s time.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1162