Messe solennelle (Berlioz)

Messe solennelle
Mass by Hector Berlioz
Title page of the autograph score
Text	Mass and other liturgical texts
Language	Latin
Performed	10 July 1825 (1825-07-10)
Movements	13
Scoring	3 soloists chorus orchestra

Messe solennelle is a setting of the Catholic missa solemnis by the French composer Hector Berlioz. It was written in 1824, when the composer was twenty, and first performed at the Saint-Roch, Paris, on 10 July 1825, and again at the Saint-Eustache in 1827. After this, Berlioz claimed to have destroyed the entire score, except for the Resurrexit, but in 1991 a Belgian schoolteacher, Frans Moors, came across a copy of the work in an organ gallery in Antwerp, and it has since been revived.

Elements of Berlioz's Requiem and Symphonie fantastique appear in the Messe solennelle in somewhat altered versions. Themes from the Messe solennelle occur in the first half of his opera Benvenuto Cellini.