The ''Misa Sine Nomine'' (''Mass Without Name'') is a 1977 musical work for narrator, mixed choirs with up to 36 voices, organ, and percussion by

Leon Schidlowsky Jorge León Schidlowsky Gaete (; 21 July 1931 – 10 October 2022) was a Chilean-Israeli composer and painter. He wrote music for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and instruments including the piano, violin, cello, flute, mandolin, guitar, ha ...

. It was composed in memory of Chilean folk singer and human rights activist Víctor Jara. The work is a setting of parts of the

mass ordinary The ordinary, in Roman Catholic and other Western Christian liturgies, refers to the part of the Mass or of the canonical hours that is reasonably constant without regard to the date on which the service is performed. It is contrasted to the '' ...

juxtaposed with Biblical passages in Hebrew, and texts in other languages by various contemporary authors, including by the composer himself. The composition is in eleven movements and utilizes different groupings of performers in each. The score uses graphic notation. The movements, which can be performed separately, are meant to be accompanied by visual projections. It was first performed in Hamburg in 1980.

History

Leon Schidlowsky composed ''Misa Sine Nomine'' in 1977 in memory of Víctor Jara. Jara was a Chilean folk singer who was one of the leaders of the " Nueva canción chilena" movement, as well as a poet, and human rights activist; he was arrested on 12 September 1973, the day after the coup d'état against Salvador Allende. He was held at the Estadio Chile, where he was tortured and murdered by the Chilean military. For texts, Schidlowsky juxtaposed parts of the

(Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Benedictus and Dona nobis pacem) with texts by

George Grosz George Grosz (; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objec ...

, himself, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, beginning and ending with texts from the Bible in Hebrew. The score uses graphic notation. The movements can be performed separately, and are meant to be accompanied by visual projections. The first performance was given in 1980 while the composer spent a sabbatical year in Hamburg, played at the Musikhochschule Hamburg by the Bramfelder Kantorei conducted by Klaus Vetter. The work was published by the Israel Music Institute.

Structure

''Misa Sine Nomine'' is in eleven movements for different scoring: a speaker, mixed choirs with up to 36 voices, organ and percussion, including gongs and suspended cymbals: # ''Bereschít bará elohím et haschamáim weét haáretz'', text from the Bible, for two mixed choruses and percussion # Kyrie, for large mixed chorus # ''Lied'', text by George Grosz, for speaker and organ # Gloria, for large mixed chorus and four gongs (1 player) # ''Chile'', text by the composer, for 20 mixed voices # Credo, for speaker, large mixed chorus, organ and four bass drums (1 player) # Benedictus, for 36 mixed voices and four suspended cymbals (1 player) # ''Ich komme'', text by Vladimir Mayakovsky, for 36 mixed voices # Dona nobis pacem, for large mixed chorus # ''Babel'', text from the Bible, for 6 sopranos, 6 altos, 4 tenors, 4 basses # ''Epilog'', text from the Bible, for speaker, small mixed chorus, large mixed chorus, organ, 4 percussion The duration is given as 45 minutes. The first movement is a setting of the beginning of the Hebrew Bible.

Recording

The mass was recorded in 1998 by forces from the in Berlin: the extended Ölberg-Chor, speaker Karl-Heinz Barthelmeus, organist Reinhard Hoffmann, and percussionists Nicole Hartig, Sebastian Trimolt, Thomas Rönnefarth and Jan Seeliger, conducted by . It was released in 2002. For a focus on the juxtaposition of mass liturgy and other texts, several tracks combine two movements.

Notes

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