David Dalle
Thursday April 5th, 2012 with David Dalle
Bruckner's Mass in e minor; music from the Balkans, North and West Africa

I always take advantage of my Thursday show's proximity to Easter and the enormous wealth of music composed for the Christian liturgy. Today we hear Bruckner's Mass in e minor. Unlike his other two full mass settings for soloists, choir and full orchestra, this Mass uses only choir and a wind orchestra. Brucker was influenced by contemporary trends centred in his hometown of Linz where he still worked in 1866 which tried to remove instruments from liturgical music in an effort to emulate the music of Renaissance and earlier. This mass has very restrained writing for winds, though they still help build the music into enormous Brucknerian climaxes.