Wiener KammerOrchester / Wiener Singakademie / de Vriend

The church was so full that he would have been crushed had he not been lucky enough to get a ticket for the choir. Joseph Richter, alias Eipeldauer, wrote about a visit to the Piarist Church in Vienna on 26 December 1796, where the »Missa in tempori belli«, which Joseph Haydn had composed on the occasion of the first mass of a Piarist, was performed. It was later known as the »Timpani Mass« because of the timpani beats in the Agnus Dei. The background to the work was the military conflicts during Napoleon Bonaparte's campaigns.

Mass for the Piarist Church in Vienna and Eisenstadt
In September 1797, the mass was performed for the name day of Princess Maria Josepha Hermengilde Esterházy in Eisenstadt, for whom Haydn had already composed the Nelson Mass and the Theresienmesse, among others. I have hardly ever heard such »beautiful music in any theatre »," summed up the Eipeldauer after the premiere in the Piarist Church.