< Back to CLL main page

Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis
with Jon Finson
Friday, June 16 (Hybrid)
11:30 a.m.–2:00 p.m. (two 1–hour parts with a 30–minute break)
Cost: Free to Members; $15 Nonmembers
Register for this course

Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (op. 123; 1824) stands as one of the most remarkable works for orchestra and chorus in the repertory of the modern concert hall, and the composer considered it his greatest artistic accomplishment.

This one-day, two-part seminar will explore the biographical background of the composer’s creation of the work, the context of the orchestral-mass genre from which it proceeded, and some of the Missa’s salient features.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be performing this great work June 23–June 25, 2023.

Jon Finson grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago and attended New Trier High School. He received a baccalaureate degree (with honors) in music history from the University of Colorado, College of Music, Boulder, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After a year abroad in Vienna and Berlin for research supported by The Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, he accepted a position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he taught the history of music and American Studies for 35 years.

< Back to CLL main page