Mozart composed the Divertimento, K. 136, during down-time in Salzburg in the winter of 1772, following two extended periods in Italy. During those visits, his dramatic works had found particular success, and he spent most of his time in Salzburg working on a new opera for Milan for the 1773 carnival season. The work, Lucio Silla, was the 16-year-old Mozart's most ambitious Italian-language serious opera to date, and the Divertimento, K. 136 (one of three such works Mozart composed during the winter of 1772), was probably a nice way to blow off some steam, musical yoga for a stressed-out composer.

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Mozart’s Solemn Vespers from 1780 sound simply divine, on a sheer musical level.

Six movements of wonderful, religious music, culminating in, surely, one of Mozart’s finest tunes in the Laudate Dominum.
Mozart himself, however, felt restricted in these works. They were written for performance in Salzburg where his employer, the Archbishop Colleredo, insisted on a very conservative style in comparison with, say, the Italian manner of the day. No matter for Mozart, though: soon enough, he left the Salzburg court, enabling him to seek his fortune in Vienna.

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The Missa in angustiis (Mass for troubled times), commonly known as the Nelson Mass is a Mass setting by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn. It is one of the six masses written near the end of his life that are seen as a culmination of Haydn's composition of liturgical music.

Haydn's chief biographer, H. C. Robbins Landon, has written that this mass "is arguably Haydn's greatest single composition". Written in 1798, it is one of the six late masses by Haydn for the Esterhazy family composed after taking a short hiatus.

The late sacred works of Haydn are regarded as masterworks, influenced by the experience of his London symphonies. They highlight the soloists and chorus while allowing the orchestra to play a prominent role.