Messe Solennelle

Peter Benoit completed his Messe solennelle on 22 April 1860 in Paris, where he resided with a stipend as laureate of the Prix de Rome. In Paris he attempted in vain to have an opera performed, while concurrently trying to gain visibility as a composer of religious music back home. As a beginning composer he had composed a series of motets and during his study trip as laureate of the Prix de Rome he completed in Berlin in the summer of 1858 an Ave Maria for double choir and a Cantate de Noël.

He planned the Christmas cantata as the first part of a religious musical work consisting of four parts, the Quadrilogie religieuse, the second part of which became the Messe solennelle, followed by the Te Deum (1862) and the Requiem (1863). Benoit conceived this tetralogy as a ‘drame religieux’, as he put it, consisting of the birth of Christ (Christmas cantata), suffering and struggle of Christ (Mass), the reign of Christ (Te Deum) and the poem of death and of future life (Requiem).