Draeseke, Felix

Felix Draeseke

Great Mass in F-sharp minor, Op. 60

(b. Coburg, 7 October 1835 — d. Dresden, 26 February 1913)

for choir, solo vocal quartet, and orchestra (1890-91)

I Kyrie. Andantino con moto (p. 1) – Christe eleison (p. 11) – Kyrie eleison (p. 14) – Un poco più animato (p. 16)
II Gloria. Allegro maestoso (p. 29) – Et in terra pax (p. 32) – Laudamus te! (p. 39) – Gratias (p. 42) – Domine Deus (p. 48) – Domini fili (p. 53) – Qui tollis (p. 57) – Qui sedes (p. 65) – Quoniam (p. 69) – Cum sancto spiritu. Allegro con brio (p. 74)
III Credo. Allegro maestoso (p. 99) – Deum de Deo. Andante con moto (p. 115) – Qui propter nos homines (p. 122) –
Et incarnatus est (p. 124) – Crucifixus (p. 128) – Et resurrexit (p. 139) – Et iterum venturus est. Molto più vivo (p. 144) – Judicare (p. 147) – Cujus regni. Allegro con brio (p. 149) – Et in spiritum sanctum. Tempo primo (p. 157) –
Et unam sanctam catholicam. Allegro risoluto, non troppo (p. 169) – Confiteor. Più largo (p. 179) –
Et expecto resurrectionem. Allegro risoluto (p. 183) – Et vitam venturi (p. 187)
IV Sanctus. Andante maestoso (p. 196) – Osanna. Allegro con brio (p. 202) – Benedictus. Andante tranquillo (p. 217)
V Agnus Dei. Andante (p. 230) – Dona nobis pacem. Più mosso (p. 245) – Tranquillamente (p. 255)

Preface
Felix Draeseke was one of the most formidable German composers of his age, yet lasting success constantly eluded him. Some regarded him simply as a man dogged by ill-fortune (he began to lose his hearing at an early age), others as a figure tragically unrecognised. He suffered as many artists do whose creativity fails to conform to the fashions of their era. In his tempestuous youth he was a radical revolutionary of the ‘New German School’ propagated by Franz Liszt. Sensing that his wings were about to be clipped, he emigrated into provincial exile in francophone Switzerland. There, from 1862 to 1876, he underwent a ‘purification’. From then on his former admirers viewed him as a ‘tamed lion’ while antiquarian conservatives declined to receive him with open arms as a reformed sinner. In 1876 he returned to Dresden, which he made his base of operations. By then he had become a peerless contrapuntalist and passed his knowledge on to young composers, of whom Eugen d’Albert (1864-1932) was the most famous and the great symphonist Paul Büttner (1870-1943) was ultimately the most significant. In the ideological squabbles between Wagner-Liszt-Bruckner on the one hand and Brahms-Reinecke-Bruch on the other, he was even more dismissive of the Brahmsians than of the ‘musical futurists’, whose shallowness and self-importance left him increasingly out of sympathy. For personal reasons he spurned the man closest to him in purely musical terms: Wagner. With the sharp deterioration of his hearing he became even more of an outsider. Then, from 1888 to 1892, lasting and widespread recognition …

Read full preface > HERE