Petite Messe Solennelle

Petite Messe Solennelle (Messa Solenne) for choir SATB and Orchestra. Rossini composed the Petite messe solennelle in 1863, 34 years after writing his last opera, in Passy, where he spent the last decades of his life. Rossini and his wife entertained a circle of friends, holding samedi soirs for which he composed several pieces of chamber music, often vocal, which the composer called his péchés de vieillesse (sins of old age). The mass was possibly commissioned by Count Alexis Pillet-Will for his wife Louise to whom it is dedicated, but the musicologist Nancy P. Fleming points out that Rossini may have had reasons of his own to compose it, and dedicated it in response to staging the first performance.

The mass is structured in several extended movements in the tradition of the missa solemnis, but the composer labeled it petite with a grain of irony. He wrote on the last page of the manuscript:

Dear Lord, here it is finished, this poor little mass. Have I just written sacred music, or rather, sacrilegious music? I was born for opera buffa, as you well know. Not much technique, a little bit of heart, that's all. Blessings to you and grant me Paradise.