In these "Three Sacred Pieces" composed in 1830 Mendelssohn experimented with various sorts of choral textures and with the to the nineteenth-century mind ancient musical forms he had been investigating. The first of these pieces, "Aus tiefer Noth," is a chorale motet. Mendelssohn here is faithful to the form as it had been practiced all the way back to the Renaissance: he does not alter the chorale theme, which is used as a cantus firmus. However, he allows the accompanimental counterpoint to change with every strophe. It is a worthy piece, though the one strophe where Mendelssohn retains the Phrygian mode of the chorale is more interesting than the others, in which he uses a standard minor key.

The second piece, "Mitten wir im Leben sind," is for eight-voice chorus and is by a wide margin the best of the set. It has a strong and stern Protestant character, and a sense of real power. In texture it is antiphonal, with male chorus and female chorus answering each other. The two groups begin to merge in some finely written imitative music.

The final piece, also for eight-part chorus, is a pretty Ave Maria written in responsorial texture. (This differs from antiphonal texture in that the chorus answers one or two vocal soloists.) Much of the piece is overly sweetened in a familiarly pietistic Romantic way. However, Mendelssohn achieves a grand effect at the ending, when the chorus divides into its male and female components in antiphony, then ends in full polyphony.



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