** 2025 Stock. Original 1982 Copies that may show some signs of long storage wear. ** Composed in 1982 and dedicated in memoriam to fellow Hungarian composer Rudolf Maros, Ite, Missa Est occupies a pivotal place in the work of Tamás Ungváry, conductor and computer‑music pioneer who relocated from Hungary to Sweden and became a central figure at Stockholm’s EMS studio. The title quotes the traditional Latin formula that ends the Catholic mass - “Go, the mass is over” - but Ungváry treats it less as liturgical closure than as a hinge between worlds, a reminder that every ceremony is also a rehearsal for an eventual, irreversible dismissal. In his own commentary, he links the phrase explicitly to “the future when our life‑mass shall likewise one day pass,” framing the piece as both farewell and projection.

Technically, Ite, Missa Est extends a lifelong fascination with glissando in the digital domain. Since his first computer work Seul (1972), Ungváry had repeatedly returned to sliding, continuously shifting sounds as a way of breaking free from the stepped logic of tempered pitch; here, he builds almost the entire twelve‑minute structure from gliding sonorities that rise, fall, cross and fuse in complex patterns. Rather than melodic lines, the listener encounters bands, clusters and spectral “surfaces” that seem to bend under invisible gravitational forces. These computer‑generated trajectories are not purely synthetic abstractions: Ungváry developed his own compositional software (notably the CHOR system) precisely to allow for a measure of intuitive shaping, so that algorithmic processes and ear‑guided decisions interlock rather than cancel each other out.

At the same time, Ite, Missa Est is rooted in Ungváry’s broader interest in the dialogue between electronic sound and traditional instruments. On the LP that carries its name, the piece appears alongside works such as Melos No. 3 and Interaction No. 2, which pair violin, organ or other acoustic forces with tape; the organ presence is especially resonant here, given both the liturgical reference and Ungváry’s taste for material that can blur into the electronic texture. Attacks, overtones and residual noise from the pipes are folded into the digital continuum, until it becomes difficult to say where “instrument” ends and “computer” begins. The music’s affect oscillates accordingly: at times contemplative, almost chorale‑like in its slow harmonic breathing; at others aggressively compact, with dense swarms of sound pressing forward like a digital choir pushed past the limits of human articulation.

What makes Ite, Missa Est still bracing to hear is its refusal of easy symbolism. The religious reference is never underlined by obvious organ chords or quotations; instead, Ungváry works with the emotional and philosophical charge of the phrase, using the computer studio to explore ideas of departure, dissolution and transformation at the level of pure sound. The opening can feel like a distant, shifting cloud of partials, the mid‑section like a series of tightening vortices, the ending like a slow vanishing into the noisefloor - but these are impressions rather than programmatic labels, and the piece resists being reduced to illustration. In the broader landscape of 1980s computer music, Ite, Missa Est stands out as a synthesis of technical rigour and existential weight: a work where glissandi, spectra and custom code are not just demonstrations of possibility but vehicles for a very old human question, asked in a language that did not exist before the late twentieth century.