Rautavaara began work on an unaccompanied mass, the ‘Missa a cappella’, in March 2009, its first performance taking place on November 25th 2011 at Jacobikerk, Utrecht, by the Netherlands Radio Choir under Celso Antunes. ‘Our Joyful’st Feast’ came into being only a few years earlier when the Helsinki Chamber Choir and Nils Schweckendiek commissioned a choral work to be performed at the European Broadcasting Union Christmas concert. Rautavaara decided to set texts by two English Renaissance poets: two extracts from Shakespeare and a section from an extensive Christmas poem by George Wither, a contemporary of the Bard.