Musica Sacromontana

The present album presents two examples from Schnabel's rich oeuvre- a religious piece and a secular one. Miss in As, written for a mixed choir (with solo parts) plus a string quintet, two clarinets, four horns, and the organ, dates back to Schnabel's first years as orchestra master, and it was composed under interesting circumstances. Ignatius Lucas, Rector chori of the nunnery of the Virgin Mary na Piasku in Wroclaw and Schnabel's companion from the Premonstratensian orchestra, recounts that Schnabel wrote the piece in December 1806 at one of the altars of the church of St. Bartholomew where the composer was hiding from the Napoleonic army occupying the city under the command of Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon. Appositely enough, the composition is known as the Siege Mass. The Quintet in C Major, which appears here opposite the Siege Mass, is stylistically consistent with the classical four-part string quartet, and bears an affinity to the works of Luigi Boccherini.