Symphonie Classique 2 2025/2026

With Kettledrums and Trumpets
The church was so crowded that he would have been crushed had he not fortunately managed to secure a ticket for the choir. Thus wrote Joseph Richter, alias Eipeldauer, about a visit to Vienna’s Piarist Church on 26 December 1796. On that occasion, the Missa in tempore belli was performed, which Joseph Haydn had composed for the ordination of a Piarist priest. Because of the kettledrum strokes in the Agnus Dei, it later became known as the Paukenmesse (Mass in Time of War). The work was set against the backdrop of the military conflicts arising from the campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Mass for the Vienna Piarist Church and Eisenstadt
In September 1797, the Mass was performed in Eisenstadt on the name day of Princess Maria Josepha Hermengilde Esterházy, for whom Haydn had already composed, among other works, the Nelson Mass and the Theresienmesse. “Such beautiful music I have hardly ever heard in any theatre,” Eipeldauer concluded after the first performance at the Piarist Church.