Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Vocal music and related works
Cantatas and Oratorios
Background and overview
Operas are plays set to music from beginning to end, and oratorios are operas with sacred subjects – and some other differences. Oratorios were usually not meant to be acted, but performed in concert form. Like eighteenth-century opera, eighteenth-century oratorio has recitatives, arias, and ensembles. Not all opera reserves a major role for the choir, but most oratorio does. The choruses of oratorios are often fugal and there is frequently a (singing) narrator. Oratorio texts are sometimes scriptural, sometimes newly written poetry, and sometimes a mixture of the two. These texts usually contain a great deal more didactic, meditative, and philosophical content than would be workable in the more psychological and action-oriented opera librettos. Oratorios were most often commissioned to be performed during Lent and on other holy days of the church calendar, when theaters and opera houses were closed. They were sometimes performed by church musicians and sometimes by opera musicians, but more often than not in a hall or theater rather than a church. They were almost never a formal part of a church service.
A cantata is a work in the style of an oratorio but much briefer. Cantatas exhibit an extremely wide range of functions, styles, and subject matter, and the genre is therefore difficult to define. There were also cantatas on secular subjects, but Mozart’s secular cantatas are usually called serenatas. Some of his Masonic works could also be considered cantatas, and their poems are quasi-religious.
N.Z.
K. 35 Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, Part 1
Origin: Salzburg, early 1767
Author: Ignaz Anton Weiser
Scoring: 3 sopranos, 2 tenors, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trombone, strings
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the prince-archbishops of Salzburg showed a particular predilection for the theater. Grand operatic spectacles, organized by the personnel of their own court chapel, were presented on festive occasions at court. Of special significance for Salzburg’s musical life was a genre of school drama whose aims were chiefly pedagogic and moral. The librettists, who were principally Benedictine instructors, took the subject matter for their texts from the Bible, from the lives of saints, and from church history. Mythological and historical themes were also a popular choice for these plays. Initially music played only a modest part in school dramas. Relatively brief choruses were soon followed by dance interludes; and, finally, arias and entire music-dramatic complexes found their way into the genre.
Structurally a sacred Singspiel differs little from a school opera. Its subject matter is sacred, and its main accent is placed on allegorical figures. Performances of such works are known to have taken place in Salzburg in St. Peter’s, in the cathedral, in the church or monastery on the Nonnberg, and in the archbishop’s palace.
It was customary in Salzburg for a sacred Singspiel to be divided among a number of composers. There were, accordingly, three local composers entrusted with the task of setting Die Schuldigkeit des ersten und fürnehmsten Gebots (The obligation of the first and most emminent commandment: referring to St. Mark 12:30, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment”). The three composers were Mozart, Michael Haydn, and Anton Adlgasser. The whereabouts of the music to the second and third parts remain unknown.
The text was by Ignaz Anton Weiser, an eminent member of the local middle classes and a textile merchant. The aim and purport of the poem is made clear in the preface to the printed text, a piece written in ornate language typical of the time: “That there is no more perilous spiritual state than lukewarmness in the pursuance of our soul’s salvation is most assuredly confirmed for us by that same divine truth that is expressed in the words of the sacred Revelation of St. John 3:14, 16: ‘I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot I will spue thee out of my mouth.’ ”
Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots is a multilayered work musically, which took the eleven-year-old Mozart 201 pages of musical manuscript to complete. Almost without exception the text of the recitatives was copied into the manuscript by Leopold Mozart, who also took it upon himself to touch up some of the arias and to add dynamic markings in the full score. The records of the Salzburg treasury for March, 18, 1767, record: “To little Mozartl for composing the music of an oratorio a 12 ducat gold medallion ... 60 florins.” In writing Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots Mozart not only enriched the Salzburg sacred Singspiel repertory, he also showed that he could assimilate local traditions and adapt them to suit his own stylistic ends.
R.A.
K. 42 Grabmusik (K6 35a)
Origin: Salzburg, 1767, revised mid-1770s
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, bass, [2 oboes], 2 horns, strings (SATB added later)
The performance in church of a passion oratorio on Good Friday is a custom that survives in southern Germany to this day. The Emperor Leopold II himself, together with his court musicians, composed such sepolcri (passion oratorios) for Vienna. During Holy Week the court staged these sepolcri in front of the sacred tomb in the palace chapel. These scenic performances first took place with music by Italian composers such as Antonio Draghi and Antonio Caldara. The era of the Empfind-samkeit saw a heightened emotional level in the texts of the passion oratorios, which sometimes gave rise to a kind of sentimentalism in the texts and music that offends modern sensibilities.
Mozart composed his “Cantata on Christ’s Grave”, K. 42, for Holy Week 1767, under extraordinary circumstances. The archbishop of Salzburg “not crediting that such masterly compositions were really those of a child, shut him up for a week, during which he was not permitted to see any one, and was left only with music paper, and the words of an oratorio. During this short time he composed a very capital oratorio, which was most highly approved of upon being performed”.
The text given Mozart is a dialogue between a Soul (bass) and an Angel (soprano); it was probably written by a local Salzburg poet. Textually the work has the form of a short cantata for two voices. The work is a notable achievement for the eleven-year-old composer, so firmly is it grounded in fashionable traditionalisms. Mozart had already made considerable strides in formal and expressive developments. The use of G minor which had become the key of grief among the Italians, the sentimental thrust of melody and harmony, and the clarity with which the form reflects the text all place this passion cantata on the level of Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots.
In about 1775 the work was revived. Mozart wrote for it a new, simple choral conclusion, “Jesu wahrer Gottes Sohn”, and a preceding recitative, “O lobens-werter Sinn”.
K.F.
K. 118 La Betulia liberata (K6 74c)
Origin: Italy and Salzburg, March to July 1771
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: SATB, S/S/S/S/T/B soli, 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Whereas opera seria took its subject matter from classical history and mythology, the azione sacra or oratorio drew repeatedly on the Holy Scriptures. The source of La Betulia liberata is the apocryphal Book of Judith, formerly included in the Old Testament.
We have only sketchy information concerning the genesis of La Betulia liberata. Leopold Mozart and his son are known to have left Venice for their first visit to Italy and to have arrived in Padua on March 13, 1771. The same day Mozart received a commission or scrittura to write an oratorio for Padua. On the 14th Leopold wrote from Vicenza to inform his wife that Mozart had been given “work” and that he “had to write an oratorio for Padua, which can be done as and when he likes”. A good four months later, on July 19, 1771, we find Leopold writing from Salzburg to Count Gian Luca Pallavicini in Bologna, revealing that the oratorio had been commissioned by the Padua music lover Don Giuseppe Ximenes de Principi d’Aragona. Ximenes used to hold musical gatherings in his palazzo (as a rule it was oratorios and cantatas that were performed), and he was an important figure in Padua’s musical life. Ximenes would no doubt have preferred it if Mozart had completed the work by Holy Week 1771. But the composer is unlikely to have made any progress on it during his return journey from Padua to Salzburg, which lasted from March 14 to 28, 1771. We can probably conclude from this that La Betulia liberata was written in Salzburg after the Mozarts’ return there in the summer of 1771. We do not know whether Mozart sent the manuscript to Padua. Contemporary sources maintain an equally impenetrable silence on the question of a performance of the work. What is certain is that a Betulia liberata by the local composer Giuseppe Calegari was performed in Padua in 1771, and it may well be that Calegari’s composition replaced Mozart’s, either because the latter’s setting was in some way unacceptable or because it arrived too late.
It was standard practice in Italy until around 1770 to replace operas with oratorios during the period of Lent. By about 1770 the oratorio had become a kind of opera seria without costumes and scenery. Indeed, oratorio had grown so like opera seria that a distinction can be sought only in its subject matter and dramaturgical conception.
Mozart’s La Betulia liberata is written in the style of opera seria, well suited to the heroic subject matter of the piece, which demanded musical forms similar to those of opera seria. In consequence, what we find in Mozart’s score is a tri-partite overture, da capo and bravura arias, and accompanied and unaccompanied recitatives. Particular attention has been devoted to the instrumental writing, and Mozart also involves the chorus in the action, as Christoph Willibald Gluck did, giving its members an independent life and setting them off from the background. The arias are richly scored, with the winds in particular being integrated into the structure. The extravagant coloratura of individual arias points the way to Mozart’s Italian masterpieces. The recitatives also reveal particular care on the composer’s part.
The four-fold melody of the final chorus (No. 16) is not by Mozart, but has been taken over from Michael Haydn’s Latin school-opera Pietas christiana. The melody is derived from a Gregorian psalm tone on the words “In exitu Israel de Aegypto”.
In his La Betulia liberata Mozart pulled out all the stops, so to speak, and painted a lively picture using a highly colorful palette in order to show that he could effortlessly adapt his style to suit oratorio and complete his commissioned work without any difficulty.
R.A.
K. 469 Davidde penitente
Origin: Vienna, early March 1785
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte?
Scoring: SATB, S/S/T soli, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 3 trombones, timpani, strings
In 1783, Mozart petitioned the Viennese Tonkünstler-Sozietät, a musicians’ benevolent organization, for membership. There ensued a lengthy correspondence between the composer and the organization, with Mozart repeatedly inquiring after the status of his application and the Sozietät repeatedly requesting his birth certificate, which he apparently never furnished. Mozart was never granted admission but for several years, probably in an attempt to curry their favor, he allowed the Sozietät to perform his music at benefits.
In January 1785 the Sozietät commissioned Mozart to write a new piece for their Lenten pension fund concert to benefit musicians’ widows. He accepted the assignment but perhaps came to feel that the fee offered did not justify writing an entire original composition. In February Mozart wrote the Sozietät to say that he was unable to complete the psalm setting he had promised them and offered to substitute a previously written psalm which had never been heard in Vienna. This idea was evidently rejected, for by March, Mozart had arrived at a different solution: he fashioned an oratorio by recycling his incomplete Mass in C minor, K. 427, and supplementing it with two freshly composed arias whose manuscripts are dated March 6 and 11.
Mozart must have understood the worth of his unfinished Mass and must have been glad to afford the music another hearing, albeit in disguised form. To create Davidde penitente, he lifted the Kyrie and Gloria wholesale; he did not use the two movements of the Credo. The newly written Italian text, comprising paraphrases of sections of David’s penitential and laudatory psalms, has often been attributed, on circumstantial evidence, to Lorenzo da Ponte, who would soon provide the librettos for Mozart’s three greatest Italian operas.
For all the music’s undiminished splendor, Davidde penitente exhibits infelicities of prosody rarely encountered elsewhere in Mozart's canon. For instance, in the Terzetto, No. 9, a lowly article, “Le”, is sung by all three soloists in their high registers, beginning on a strong beat and lasting a full measure; and in No. 3, the aria for soprano II, the preposition “da” takes off on a cheeky four-measure flight of melisma and high notes, landing on a trill. The overall effect is rather like watching a great dancer leap gracefully about in ill-fitting, second-hand clothes.
The oratorio’s two original numbers were tailor-made for its first soloists, both friends and frequent collaborators of Mozart. For Johann Valentin Adamberger, Mozart supplied “A te, fra tanti affanni” (No. 6), a tenor tour de force beginning with a supplicatory Andante and closing with a hardy, florid Allegro. Mozart obliged Caterina Cavalieri with the soprano aria, “Fra l’oscure ombre funeste” (No. 8); though it opens with an ominous, chromatic Andante, this wastes little time in giving way to an extended, brilliant Allegro with much coloratura and wide intervallic leaps.
In announcing its performances of Davidde penitente, the Tonkünstler-Sozietät gingerly skirted the issue of Mozart’s self-piracy: “A new cantata adapted to this occasion by Sig Amadeo Mozart, for 3 voices with choruses, performed by Sigra Cavallieri [sic], Sigra Distler, and Sig Adamberger.” Davidde penitente served as the second half of a program that began with a new Joseph Haydn symphony. The premiere performance, at Vienna’s Burgtheater on March 13, 1785, boasts the curious distinction of having been perhaps the most poorly attended and financially unsuccessful concert ever given by the Sozietät. It pulled in only a few hundred people, and the receipts were a mere 733 florins, thirteen kroner (of which nearly one-third had been donated by the emperor). A second performance the following week netted about one-fourth that amount. May posterity hold Davidde penitente in higher esteem.
C.E.