Mass.

AND THEN there is Mozard, forever Mozart, who will I am sure survive the indignities of the movie Amadeus. Mozart wrote some 53 or 54 liturgical works. Of these the two that most lived up to the "love of God" of his middle name were the motet "Ave Verum Corpus" and the Great Mass in C Minor. The MasS, like his life never fully completed, is a shimmering statement of faith in the God that moved from Jerusalem to Rome and to the world entire. In it he demonstrates what all those who have truly written for the liturgy knew--that the ritual is inseparable from the score

In the early 1950s, the Haydn Society issued the first complete recording of the Great Mass in C Minor, clear and ringing. Years later, Angel gave us an equally impressive stereo recording. Now Angel-EMI has issued a digitally remastered 1974 recording of the Mass by the New Philharmonia Orchestra and the John Alldis Choir, conducted by Raymond Leppard (AM-34710). Any recording of this Mass is worth having, if only for its achingly beautiful "Et incarnatus est," a soprano solo with flute, oboe, and bassoon obbligato. I know of no piece of music that cuts so deeply as this arioso, and I have played it in times of great sorrow and great joy--times when I have felt the unbuttoning of the flesh and the triumph of the spirit. But this recording gives us more than the "Et incarnatus est" in the soaring affirmation of the "Cum sancto spiritu" and its other resplendencies.

The Mass in C Minor is as close to God as Mozart in his life ever got, and in this recording we can accompany him.