Question

Whatever you may believe, Mozart sure knew how to compose a Gloria in Excelsis. Happy Easter to all.

Answer 1

Truly splendorous, ty Tink...finding this 1 AM Easter morning, makes me wish to know more about Mozart as a person, he died so young...

Comments

Yes, he was only 35, and died of what was probably a streptococcal infection that today could have been easily cured with antibiotics.   What a terrible pity. 

The group that does the Gloria above is from a small town in Switzerland, and they perform it markedly better than Leonard Bernstein, who also has it on YT.  Marianne would be proud of them. 

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Do you know if he was devotional? Or, perhaps rather composing this to align with music contemporary to his time? 

Since you like it better than the Bernstein, I am now adding it to my music favourite file. And btw, I am still exploring the splendor of the oktavist/basso profundo folk...their participation in the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil is truly breath-taking, I have already added one of those versions into my collection!

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Mozart was a practicing Catholic, although he had a low opinion of certain priests. He was also a Mason. Masonry was not looked upon with favor by the hierarchy in Austria, but not forbidden either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart_and_the_Catholic_Church

Rachmaninoff was also probably devotional.

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/rachmaninov/guides/rachmaninov-facts/

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Yes, after hearing his All-Night Vigil I would have bet my hat-and-all on Rachmaninoff...maybe you saw? ...in comments, someone told how a conductor (or someone) asked R how he could include all those deep basso parts, when so few could reach them?

...and Rachmaninoff replies, "I know the voices of my countrymen."

I did not realize he lived contemporary through the Russian Revolution, here is from your link open sled from St. Petersburg in December; "In December 1917, he left Petrograd for Helsinki on an open sled with his wife and daughters."

Helsinki likely also very frigid about then...it's a lovely link, brief and wonderful.

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The overland distance is about 245 miles!  In an open sled in December! 

How fast can a sled with good horses go at a steady pace?  Ten mph?

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Well since this is important issue, I did some googling...did you know there is an actual website called horseloversmath.com?

Anyway, this below is not from that site but StephenBrown.com says:

According to Goose Wing Ranch, horses have four “gaits” or types of speed – I’m sure they are all familiar terms: walk, trot, canter, and gallop.

Walking horse avg 4 mph

Trots avg about 8 mph

Canter about 14 mph

Gallop is 28 mph avg.

(*a human’s average walking speed is 3.27 mph.)

In my own running days long ago now, I preferred a jog coz you could cover much ground for very long time...so yup looks like the horses trot around 8 mph! (which they would need to do to keep warm anyway, walking horses might freeze!) So more fancy math here, thirty-one hours in that open December sleigh!