From the first millennium of the Common Era to the present day, the Mass have been chanted and sung to music both simple and complex. Most Mass settings are in the original Latin, since that liturgical language, after so many centuries, has the advantage of being very familiar and eminently suitable for singing.

On today’s date in 2010, the Kansas City Chorale gave the premiere of a brand-new “Mass for Double Choir” by the American composer René Clausen.

Now, Clausen is an established and well-regarded composer of choral works, but even so writing a Mass can be a daunting task, and Clausen’s was his first such attempt.

“Let's say it was a new challenge to set a text which has historically been set probably more than any other,” says Clausen. “I tend to be rather text-content driven, nearly always attempting to express the meaning and mood of the words. In the longer movements of the Mass, especially the Credo, it was challenging to express all the text, yet keep the music structurally integrated and proportioned.”

René Clausen’s new “Mass for Double Choir” was well-received at its American premiere, and subsequently recorded by the Kansas City Chorale for the British Chandos label. That recording won three Grammy Awards in 2013, including one for “Best Choral Performance.”