Beauty, Charity, and Reason

Presented by the Bard Music Festival

The 2026 Bard Music Festival examines the life and times of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, the most celebrated and recognized name in classical music.

Mozart was similarly close to Haydn’s less well-remembered younger brother Michael Haydn, then a successful composer whose Requiem, partly inspired by the death of his infant daughter, would influence Mozart’s own. After opening with Mozart’s somber Masonic Funeral Music in C minor, Program Seven, “Beauty, Charity, and Reason,” complements Michael Haydn’s Mass with two of Mozart’s own religious choral works, both of which draw on his devotion to Freemasonry. Scored for male voices and orchestra, the cantata Laut verkünde unsre Freude was written for the dedication of a Masonic temple and represents Mozart’s last completed work. The program concludes with an all-too-rare live account of his Davide penitente, a cantata combining a specially created cadenza and two new arias with original text settings of his personally selected highlights from the unfinished Great Mass in C minor.