Mass

Igor Stravinsky composed his Mass between 1944 and 1948. This 19-minute setting of the Roman Catholic Mass exhibits the austere, Neoclassic, anti-Romantic aesthetic that characterizes his work from about 1923 to 1951. The Mass also represents one of only a handful of extant pieces by Stravinsky that was not commissioned. Part of the motivation behind its composition has been cited by Robert Craft and others as the product of a spiritual necessity, as Stravinsky intended the work to be used functionally.