Die MISSA (1984–87) von Dieter Schnebel

At the beginning of the 1950s, the composer and theologian Dieter Schnebel belonged to a circle of European composers who decisively renounced the musical past. Contrary to the maxim of music far removed from tradition, which characterized the spirit of the Darmstadt School, Schnebel increasingly gave in to his love of European music history in the 1970s. In the course of the work cycle Tradition (1975-2011), he created a large number of compositions which, due to their construction as avant-garde traditional pieces, reveal fascinatingly ambivalent content. His ecumenically oriented Latin mass, MISSA for soloists, choir and orchestra (1984-1987), reflects the attempt to make new music transparent "in the direction of tradition". Its dialectical program combines avant-garde progressive logic and a theological return to tradition. Her musical-serial concept combines a variety of historical compositional techniques and reveals echoes of the entire tradition of sacred music, from Guillaume de Machaut's masses to Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. This publication is the first monograph on the MISSA and serves as an introduction to central aspects of its musical and theological content.

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