Schubert: Mass In A-Flat Major, D678

In his Mass in A flat, Schubert set himself the great task of composing a “Missa solemnis”, as he later entitled the work. As with the Mass he wrote in the last year of his life, he severed the bonds imposed by tradition on the four earlier works of 1814-16. His highest ambition for the effect it might have on the world is linked in the A flat major Mass with a deeply personal confession, the formulation of his own faith, of “true devotion." (Haenssler)