mass-music

Updated: June 28, 2025

When he reflects upon the melody secreted thus impromptu, he is aware, as we learn from his own lips, that this work has correspondence with emotion. Beethoven calls one symphony Heroic, another Pastoral; of the opening of another he says, 'Fate knocks at the door. Mozart sets comic words to the mass-music of a friend, in order to mark his sense of its inaptitude for religious sentiment.

John Addington Symonds - Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, First Series