The first performance did not take place in a sacred setting, but at the Philharmonic Society in Saint Petersburg on the initiative of the Russian nobleman and patron Nikolai Golitsyn on 7 April 1824 (March 26 Old Style).

Parts of the mass (Kyrie, Credo, Agnus Dei) were performed on 7 May 1824, under the direction of Kapellmeister Michael Umlauf at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna, together with the overture The Consecration of the House and the premiere of Symphony No.

The writing displays Beethoven's characteristic disregard for the performer, and is in several places both technically and physically exacting, with many sudden changes of dynamic, metre and tempo.

As noted below, the reprise of the Et vitam venturi fugue is particularly taxing, being both subtly different from the previous statements of the theme and counter-theme, and delivered at around twice the speed.

The difficulty of the piece combined with the requirements for a full orchestra, large chorus, and highly trained soloists, both vocal and instrumental, mean that it is not often performed by amateur or semi-professional ensembles.

Quickly shifting textures and themes highlight each portion of the Gloria text, in a beginning to the movement that is almost encyclopedic in its exploration of 34 time.

Most notable about the movement, though, is the closing fugue on "Et vitam venturi saeculi" that includes one of the most difficult passages in the choral repertoire, when the subject returns at doubled tempo for a thrilling conclusion.

But then, after an orchestral preludio, a solo violin enters in its highest range—representing the Holy Spirit descending to earth in a remarkably long extension of the text.

After some fugal development, it is suddenly and dramatically interrupted by martial sounds (a convention in the 18th century, as in Haydn's Missa in tempore belli), but after repeated pleas of "miserere", eventually recovers and brings itself to a close.

The fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo align it with the work of his late period—but his simultaneous interest in the theme and variations form is absent.

[8] Donald Tovey has connected Beethoven to the earlier tradition in a different way: Not even Bach or Handel can show a greater sense of space and of sonority.

There is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord, every position, and every doubled third or discord.