Away from opera Gounod wrote the large-scale "Messe du Sacré-Coeur de Jésus" in 1876 and ten other masses between then and 1893. His greatest popular successes in his later career were religious works, the two large oratorios "La Rédemption" (1882) and "Mors et vita" (1885), both composed for and premiered at the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival in England. The two were enthusiastically taken up by the British public and on the continent, and in their day were widely ranked with the oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn. The Philharmonic Society in London unsuccessfully sought to commission a symphony from the composer in 1885 (the commission eventually went to Saint-Saëns); fragments of a third symphony exist from late in Gounod's career, but are thought to date from a few years later.