Although Franz Schubert died at the age of 32, he wrote nearly 1,000 works in his short lifetime. Today, his many secular art songs define his compositional output, but he also wrote beautiful sacred music and symphonies. He penned Das grosse Halleluja in 1816, while he was only 19 years old. By Schubert's time, people considered the semi-improvised keyboard art of basso continuo to be old-fashioned. Yet, the running staccato eighth notes in the piano left hand and triadic harmonies in the right clearly evoke this earlier style. Therefore, the festive, joyful spirit in the text might be best realized with a sprightly Baroque tempo of ?=120-130.