Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist of the Romantic era. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time. He was also a writer, philanthropist, Hungarian nationalist, and Franciscan tertiary. He gained renown in Europe during the early nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composers of his time, including Frédéric Chopin, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Regina Watson, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull, Joachim Raff, Mikhail Glinka, and Alexander Borodin.

A prolific composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School (German: Neudeutsche Schule). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work which influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. Among Liszt's musical contributions were the symphonic poem, developing thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and radical innovations in harmony. Many musicians consider Liszt to be the greatest pianist who ever lived. The critic Peter G. Davis has opined: "Perhaps [Liszt] was not the most transcendent virtuoso who ever lived, but his audiences thought he was."

Liszt was a prolific composer. He is best known for his piano music, but he also wrote for orchestra and for other ensembles, virtually always including keyboard. His piano works are often marked by their difficulty. Some of his works are programmatic, based on extra-musical inspirations such as poetry or art. Liszt is credited with the creation of the symphonic poem. The largest and best-known portion of Liszt's music is his original piano work. His thoroughly revised masterwork, "Années de pèlerinage" ("Years of Pilgrimage") includes arguably his most provocative and stirring pieces. This set of three suites ranges from the virtuosity of the Suisse Orage (Storm) to the subtle and imaginative visualisations of artworks by Michelangelo and Raphael in the second set. "Années" contains some pieces which are loose transcriptions of Liszt's own earlier compositions; the first "year" recreates his early pieces of "Album d'un voyageur", while the second book includes a resetting of his own song transcriptions once separately published as "Tre sonetti di Petrarca" ("Three sonnets of Petrarch"). The relative obscurity of the vast majority of his works may be explained by the immense number of pieces he composed, and the level of technical difficulty which was present in much of his composition.

Liszt's piano works are usually divided into two categories. On the one hand, there are "original works", and on the other hand "transcriptions", "paraphrases" or "fantasies" on works by other composers. Examples for the first category are works such as the piece Harmonies poétiques et religieuses of May 1833 and the Piano Sonata in B minor (1853). Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert songs, his fantasies on operatic melodies and his piano arrangements of symphonies by Berlioz and Beethoven are examples from the second category. As special case, Liszt also made piano arrangements of his own instrumental and vocal works. Examples of this kind are the arrangement of the second movement "Gretchen" of his Faust Symphony and the first "Mephisto Waltz" as well as the "Liebesträume No. 3" and the two volumes of his "Buch der Lieder".

The organ-accompanied mixed choir of Missa choralis Liszt Ferenc, written in 1865. The date and location of the world premiere of the work is uncertain, and its hungarian premiere was in Pest in 1872. The mass's partition was published in 1869 by kahnt publishing house. Art Registry No S.10. The Missa choralis choir mass, the organ, according to Liszt's intentions, only gives support to the choir, and the role of soloists is rather subdued. In his musical realization, the composer used archaic and modern harmonies and solutions side by side as an example of the Liszt church music style. His first three theorems are based on Gregorian themes. Its editing mode is rooted in the style of Palestrina and Lassus, but it is not only archaic, but also modern according to its own age. Puritanical music that is effective through its simplicity, but is also an outstandingly inspired and mature work of art.

Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Liszt)

Although originally written for Chorus (SATB) and Organ, I created this arrangement of the "Missa Choralis" in D Minor (S.10) for Winds (Flute, Oboe, English Horn & Bassoon) & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).