The Missa Salisburgensis is the largest piece of polychoral sacred music ever written. Unfortunately, there is no knowing who actually wrote it. The only copy of the music that survives is in the hand of an anonymous copyist, and no credit is given to the composer. Although most commentators guess that the Missa is by Heinrich Biber because of certain harmonic and melodic formulas, it is just a guess. The work could have been by Biber, by his rival Georg Muffat, by a younger colleague, or even by a committee of composers. While this might seem odd to post-Baroque audiences, the anonymity of the composer wholly suits the work itself. Premiered for the 1682 celebration of the 1,100th anniversary of the founding of Salzburg as a center of Catholicism, the Missa Salisburgensis is the ne plus ultra of Baroque celebratory music. Written in 53 parts and scored for six choruses stationed throughout Salzburg Cathedral with each chorus having its own instrumental group associated with it; plus two sets of distant trumpets, trombones, and tympani; and two (and possibly six) organs, the Missa Salisburgensis must have taken the talents of virtually every musician in Salzburg to perform. As the title states, the work sets the Latin text of the ordinary of the mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. Interspersed between these movements are three instrumental sonatas, one after the Gloria, another after the Credo, and the last after the Agnus Dei. After the third sonata, the work concludes with a motet "Plaudite tympana" (Sound the drums). The melodies are often liturgically based or occasionally drawn from folk songs. Because of the near-constant use of natural trumpets tuned in C throughout the work, most of it is in celebratory C major. And because it was performed in the cavernous acoustics of the Salzburg cathedral, it was relatively structurally simple (any complications would have been lost in the acoustic haze). But for all its relative simplicity, the effect is literally overwhelming.

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