Kerll: Missa Superba

The Viennese composer Johann Caspar Kerll (1627–93) was well-known for both his sacred and secular music, writing keyboard toccatas and canzonas, instrumental sonatas, operas, sacred concertos, and masses. Trained in the Italian concertato idiom by Carissimi in Rome, his masses especially were held in high esteem. Sixteen of these works survive, the earliest (a Requiem composed in the old style) dating from 1669. The Missa Superba—scored for eight vocal parts with the accompaniment of two violins, four trombones, organ (presented with realized figured bass in the edition), and violone—is first mentioned in an inventory of 1674. It is a good representative of his concertato writing, based on a strong developmental technique. Though the listing of voices in the partbooks does not suggest grouping them into two choirs, the frequent antiphonal writing throughout the mass substantiates such a distribution.