Salve Regina MH 90

Some forty settings of the four Marian antiphons by Johann Michael Haydn are extant, among them 17 settings of the Salve Regina. The Salve Regina in B flat MH 90, here published for the first time, dates from about 1765, and it survives in a contemporary manuscript copy at Göttweig in Lower Austria. This early composition by Haydn already bears witness to this talent for setting a liturgical text to music. The dialogue between the bass soloist and the choir gives this work a radiance of its own.