Petite messe solennelle

Emmanuel Trenque

“Dear God … here it is, that poor little mass. Is it really a sacred score that I’ve just written or rather a hell of a score? As you well know, I was born for opera buffa! Not much art, just a little heart and that should do it. So, praise to you, Lord, and please grant me paradise.”
— Gioachino Rossini

If Bach signed his religious works with a devout and earnest ‘Soli Deo gloria’, the ever-ironic Rossini could not resist the somewhat flippant addition ‘petite’ to his last, ninety-minute missa solemnis. And yet this is one of the most ambitious works Rossini composed in the last years of his life, after he had settled back in Paris. The opera composer, who by his own admission was born for the merry buffo genre, dropped the public façade and wrote a keenly sensitive mass that steers clear of the sentimentality and lavishness of many liturgical works of the time. Characterized by harmonic boldness, an elegant style and an inventive use of the voice, the score features melodies that are as beautiful as ever.   

Rossini would later orchestrate the work, but the intensity of this Petite messe solennelle comes out most brightly in the version with piano and harmonium accompaniment performed by the La Monnaie Chorus and its artistic director Emmanuel Trenque in the apt setting of the Dominican Church in Brussels.