In the four sessions of our spring course, we will explore and discuss how the life and death of first a century rabbi and prophet catalyzed the origin of Christianity, asking questions like these:

What kind of sources are the New Testament gospels?  How are the recent century discoveries of ancient secret gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, transforming what we never knew before?  Why was Jesus killed, and how did his followers transform grief into meaning—and what kinds of meaning? What is the point of the miracle stories—especially “virgin birth,” and “resurrection”? 

This course will explore some of the most compelling religious music of the modern Western era, by engaging with various settings of the Catholic Mass by no less than Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. These will include Mozart’s best-known setting, his Great Mass in C minor, K. 427.  We will follow this with Beethoven’s two masses, the Mass in C, Op. 86, and the Missa Solemnis, Op. 123, a monumental composition of his so-called “late style.”  We will then conclude with Schubert’s last two masses, the second of which was composed a few months before his death in 1828.

The text of the Catholic Mass has been set to music more times than perhaps any other single text, by composers extending from the 14^th to the 21^st centuries.  The movements of the Mass include a plea for mercy (Kyrie), a glorification of the deity (Gloria), a testament of faith (Credo), a paean to holiness and blessedness (Sanctus), and a plea to Christ as the sacrificial lamb of God (Agnus Dei).  Our trio of composers takes the fullest measure of these texts, producing musical settings that range from the sublimely exalted to the deeply intimate.