My Top 10 Sacred Pieces (Baroque and Later):

1. Mozart Great Mass in C Minor
2. Bach Matthaus-Passion
3. Puccini Messa di Gloria
4. Rachmaninoff Vespers (All Night Vigil)
5. Pergolesi Stabat Mater
6. Bach Cantata 51 ( Jauchzett Gott in allen Landen)
7. Mozart Vespers (Vesperae Solemnis de Confessore)
9. Mascagni Messa di Gloria
10. Mozart Requiem

In an effort to make the comparison between pieces within the vast category of 'Sacred Music,' I have limited the comparison to music written in a more or less modern notation and system (top 10 pre-baroque sacred pieces coming soon).

Some pieces, such as Mozart's Great Mass, are so innately moving, that even a bumbling conductor and bad singers can still create an adequate performance. However, most of these pieces are amazing as a whole, but can only be fully appreciated with a good performance. I should also note that Poulenc wrote a wealth of beautiful and unique sacred music which has been overlooked by my inexact knowledge and inability to choose which piece to include.

The Recitative and Aria of Bach's Cantata 51 are particularly expressive when performed by Teresa Stich-Randall, since Emma Kirkby's version, with John Elliot Gardner conducting the sterile orchestra, was described by the artist herself as 'too fast for her taste.' If you would like to listen to this beautiful piece of music, I suggest you hunt down Stich-Randall's version before listening to Kirkby's, since I became accustomed to the unreasonably fast tempo of Kirkby's and cannot fully appreciate Stich-Randall's expressiveness (her performance is a bit on the exaggerated slow side). You can hit two birds with one stone with the Accord label recording of Stich-Randall singing the Bach Cantata and Mozart's Exulate Jubilate, a joyous, fun, and beautiful sacred work for soprano and orchestra which would definitely make it to the top 20 list. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000004C9R/103-4996369-9997426?n=5174#moreAboutThisProduct


You MUST listen to a recording of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater performed by two women, rather than a soprano and countertenor as many of the 'period' performance gurus have preferred. Countertenors, while occassionally an interesting modern phenomenon, mostly notable due to their good imitation of mezzos (Brian Asawa comes to mind), are completely rediculous in the context of the Stabat Mater. Firstly, recent scholarship has asserted that the restrictive Catholic church allowed that particular piece to be performed by two women because of the feminine subject-matter. Secondly, even if one was aiming at historical accuracy, a castrato is NOT a countertenor!

For those who may not be aware, a countertenor is a man, a fully-developed man, with all the parts intact, singing in a well-trained falsetto. A castrato, as the name implies, was a male singer who was castrated before puberty, who, according to historical descriptions, had a woman's sound with a man's strength. Given that the practice of castrating musically-gifted boys was widespread, reason would indicate that the sound produced by those singers was different than men simply singing high (or else the horrific and messy procedure would have surely been deemed unnecessary). Therefore, while I am in support of seeking out historically accurate performance for the sake of academia, I think that Countertenors in particular are a bizarre modern imitation of a sound that many period musicians can only imagine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato)

The Rachmaninoff Vespers are moving not only because of Rachmaninoff's mastery as a composer, but also because of the context in which they were written and premiered. Rachmaninoff took the Eastern Orthodox chants and transformed them into a modern masterpiece, on the eve of the Communist revolution. They can be seen as one of the last great sacred pieces of the Russian Choral tradition, as well as the requiem to all that was old Russia. For the most moving recording of this work, you must listen to a Russian chorus, in order to avoid a bad, non-russian-speaking imitation of Star Trek's Pavel Chekov's or Mikhail Gorbachev's accent. For a good recording see: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000001HC5/103-4996369-9997426?v=glance&n=5174

Finally, if you have never really enjoyed the baroque invention for clavier genre, you can learn exactly why Bach is considered such a master with his greatest, most moving Passion- the Passion of St. Matthew. As always, a classic mid-20th century performance puts modern period performances to shame; with Otto Klemperer conducting, and an all-star cast including Fischer-Dieskau, Schwartzkopf, Gedda, and Ludwig (make sure to listen to the heart-wrenching 'Erbarme dich' which features a beautiful contrapuntal duet between Ludwig and the oboe).
http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1658396/a/Bach:+St+Matthew+Passion+/+Klemperer,+Pears,+Ludwig,+et+al.htm