Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Vocal music and related works
Music for the Catholic Church
Background and overview
As long as Mozart lived in Salzburg, he was involved with music for the Catholic church. As the Prince-Archbishop’s title reveals, the ruler of Salzburg had both temporal and sacred powers, and he was responsible neither to the Austrian emperor nor the Holy Roman Emperor but directly to Rome. The prince-archbishops of Salzburg took their church music seriously. According to the “Report of the Present State of the Musical Establishment at the Court of His Serene Highness the Archbishop of Salzburg in the Year 1757” published by Leopold Mozart when his son was an infant, the prince-archbishop employed ninety-nine musicians to provide daily music in the cathedral, at court, and for a variety of other social and ceremonial occasions.
So from his earliest musical consciousness Mozart was surrounded by composers deeply involved in composing and performing music for the Mass, Vespers, and other liturgical occasions, in both the modern concerted style and the stile antico (old church style). These men included Mozart’s father (some of whose church music was, until recently, attributed to his son), Johann Ernst Eberlin, Giuseppe Francesco Lolli, Anton Cajetan Adlgasser, Franz Ignaz Lipp, and, after his arrival in Salzburg in 1763, Michael Haydn.
Mozart’s most frequent contributions to satisfying the continual demand for new, locally composed church music were settings of the cycle of five “ordinary” texts of the Mass: the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Fifteen complete Mass cycles come down to us from Mozart’s Salzburg years. Writing to his mentor in Bologna, Padre Giovanni Battista Martini, Mozart explained a constraint that the archbishop of Salzburg placed on his court composers in their Masses:
indrag1rad_smaller_1">Our church music is very different from that of Italy, and what is more, a Mass with all its parts – The Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Epistle sonata, the Offertory or motet, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei – must not last longer than three-quarters of an hour. This applies even to the most solemn Mass said by the Archbishop himself.Mozart is describing a Missa brevis. Performances of Mozart’s music for a Missa brevis, an Epistle (or church) sonata, and an Offertory total about thirty minutes of music. Thus in the remaining fifteen minutes the priest leading the service and the choir of monks singing Gregorian chant would have had to make their way through the Introit, Collect, church sonata, Alleluia, Gospel, Preface, Canon, Communion, Post-Communion, and Ite missa est, which would have been just barely possible, assuming a brisk and unrelenting pace.
But some of Mozart’s Masses are headed “Missa longa”, and, as their name suggests, cannot be accommodated to the forty-five-minute ruling. These must have been intended for days of special importance and solemnity during the Church calendar – All Saints’ Day, Christmas, Easter, and the like – or for one of the other ecclesiastical establishments in or near Salzburg for which Mozart worked and which, unlike the cathedral and parish churches, were not under the direct administrative control of the prince-archbishop. These institutions included the University of Salzburg and its Collegiate Church, run by the Benedictines, churches and monasteries run by the Franciscans, a church and convent run by the Ursulines, the pilgrimage church of Maria Plain, and others.
The three other principal categories into which Mozart’s Salzburg church music falls are Vespers (Evensong), Litanies, and motets. Vespers is a sunset service performed daily. The Litanies are a form of liturgical prayer consisting of a series of invocations or supplications with responses, repeated a number of times. Motets are a catch-all category for settings of other liturgical texts useful only at certain times of year and not others. Mozart’s Offertories, for instance, are motets to be sung at the mid-point of the Mass, when the priest receives bread and wine to be consecrated at the altar.
After he left Salzburg in 1781, Mozart had little to do with church music. His greatest works, the C minor Mass and the Requiem, remained torsos. The splendid Kyrie in D minor, K. 341, speculatively redated to c. 1788, is apparently all that was completed from a flurry of church-music activity around 1787-89, when the Viennese theaters were closed down and Mozart was seeking a position at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. And there is the isolated, gemlike motet, “Ave verum corpus”, from Mozart’s last year.
In 1904 Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Mediator Dei, by which he “defrocked” the church music of the classical period, that is, deemed it unsuited for Catholic liturgical use, on the grounds that its character was too worldly (i.e., operatic). But Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and other composers of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries (and the priests and congregations with whom they associated) must have thought their church music sufficiently spiritual and entirely appropriate, or they would not have composed it as they did. In any case, Austrian Catholics were so upset by the Pope’s encyclical that a special dispensation was made for Austria, and even today one may hear Masses by the masters of Viennese classicism performed in the cathedrals in Vienna and Salzburg. The long-standing dispute over the liturgical appropriateness of this repertory became moot, however, when in the early 1960s the Second Vatican Council virtually abandoned Latin as the Church’s language of worship.
N.Z.
Masses, kyries, and requiem
K. 33 Kyrie in F major
Origin: Paris, June 12, 1766 Scoring: SATB, strings
Perhaps Mozart wished to write a mass for Salzburg before his departure from Paris in 1766. In any case, only the Kyrie for four voices and strings in F major, K. 33, is known. Dated in Paris on June 12, 1766, the ten-year-old boy’s composition is not uninfluenced by the impressions of French church music. The manuscript shows the editorial hand of his father.
K.F.
K. 139 Missa solemnis in C minor, “Waisenhaus” (K3 114a, K6 47a)
Origin: Vienna, autumn 1768
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 4 trumpets and timpani, 3 trombones, strings with organ continuo
“... The entire music sung by the Waisenchor [orphanage chorus] for the High Mass, which met with universal approval and admiration, was completely newly composed for this ceremony by Wolfgang Mozart, who is well-known because of his special talents and is the twelve-year-old son of Mr. Leopold Mozart, who serves at the court in Salzburg as kapellmeister; it was performed with the greatest accuracy. In addition, motets were also sung. ...”
So reads a report in a Viennese newspaper about the opening ceremonies for the newly-built Waisenhaus Church in Vienna on December 7, 1768, at which Empress Maria Theresa and her children were present. For years there was a discussion in the studies about Mozart of whether this “music sung by the Waisenchor” referred to the Mass in C minor, K. 139. The highly artistic quality of this broadly dimensioned work appeared to speak against its having been composed by a twelve-year-old, even one named Mozart. On the other hand, the large orchestra required to perform the Mass, which would not have been available in Salzburg, suggests a highly festive occasion in Vienna. The German musicologist Karl Pfannhauser put an end to these discussions for the time being when he showed in 1954, with the help of new evidence, that the traditional appellation of the “Waisenhaus” Mass is in all likelihood justified. Mozart’s father, who added the thoroughbass figures to his son’s autograph, undoubtedly supervised the boy’s work.
A concerted Missa solemnis was bound by conventions which brought it occasionally into conflict with the contents of the Latin Ordinary of the Mass. The Kyrie may serve as an example of this: it is modeled on a French overture with a pompous, slow first section, followed by a joyful Allegro, which does not particularly suit the text, “Lord, have mercy up on us”. In addition, the supplication for peace, the concluding “Dona nobis pacem”, was often composed as a gay final Allegro, a tradition which was naturally not ignored by Mozart. The solo movements of the Gloria and Credo, which are broadly dimensioned and similar to a cantata in form, with the exception of the highly ornamented soprano aria “Quoniam tu solus”, tend to be lyrical and melodious rather than virtuoso operatic music. The Sanctus and Benedictus are composed more succinctly; only the Benedictus incorporates a solo voice, the soprano.
In reference to Mozart’s early C minor Mass, Karl Gustav Fellerer has suggested that the young composer wanted “with childlike naiveté to dedicate everything which his talents could offer to his Lord”. It would be difficult to say this more beautifully.
A.B.
K. 49 Missa brevis in G major (K6 47d)
Origin: Vienna, October or November 1768
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, [3 trombones], strings with organ continuo
Nothing is known about the circumstances which led to the composition of this Missa brevis, except that it seems to have been written in Vienna. The basically straightforward idiom, allied to the traditional ecclesiastical style, suggests that it cannot be associated with any festive occasion. It is interesting to note that Mozart takes a few liberties with the liturgical texts: in the Kyrie, for instance, the phrases “Kyrie eleison” and “Christe eleison” are intermingled.
G.D.
K. 65 Missa brevis in D minor (K6 61a)
Origin: Salzburg, January 14, 1769
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, strings, organ
Mozart was about to tum thirteen when he completed this Missa brevis. It dates from the months in which the Mozart family returned to Salzburg after fifteen months in Vienna, where Wolfgang had composed his opera La finta semplice. It received its first performance in the Collegiate Church in Salzburg on February 5 for the initiation of the Forty Hours Devotion on Quinquagesima Sunday. The ceremony marked the beginning of a particular form of eucharistic devotion in which the consecrated host was exhibited on the altar for a period of forty hours, during which time people prayed before it and special services were held.
The chromatic setting of the Benedictus has been singled out for praise. The manuscript of the Mass reveals two earlier, rejected attempts to set this text, before Mozart penned this third version which he may even have added some years later. The Mass conforms to the standard model of the Missa brevis, in which some phrases of the Credo text are “telescoped”; this means that various sections of the text are superimposed on others in the interest of brevity.
G.D.
K. 66 Missa in C major, “Dominicus”
Origin: Salzburg, October 1769
Scoring: SA TB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 [+ 2] trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], strings with organ continuo
The “Dominicus” Mass can be connected with a specific celebration, the first mass celebrated by Cajetan Hagenauer, a longtime friend of the composer, who assumed the name “Dominicus” on his ordination. After the initial performance in Salzburg, the Mass was heard on subsequent occasions: in August 1773 Leopold Mozart wrote to his wife from Vienna, “A Mass by Wolfgang was performed at the Jesuit church ... on the octave of the feast of St. Ignatius, namely the ‘Dominicus’ Mass; I directed the performance, and the Mass gave remarkable pleasure”.
Even though Mozart designated the work simply as “Missa”, it can certainly be regarded as a Missa solemnis: with its additional wind parts, the scoring is more lavish than that of K. 49 and 65. The broader canvas allows for more contrast, and this brings with it a wider variety of textures; more extended solos and duets provide a foil to the full passages.
G.D.
K. 140 Missa brevis in G major (K3 Anh 235d, K6 Anh C 1.12)
Origin: Salzburg? 1773?
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 violins, basso, organ
Many authorities suggest that the Missa brevis, K. 140, is not the work of Mozart himself, and it is included among the doubtful works in the most recent edition of Ludwig von Köchel’s catalogue. The Mass seems to date from the early 1770s, and the manuscript has clearly been corrected and paginated in Mozart’s own hand. In the preface to K. 140 in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, the editor Walter Senn argues in favor of Mozart’s authorship: he believes that the composer would not have taken such great care to amend and correct the manuscript had it not been his own original composition. Nonetheless, Senn finds no parallels for this piece among Mozart’s other masses, and he is forced to look further afield to the composer’s other works to discern common stylistic traits.
G.D.
K. 167 Missa in C major, “Holy Trinity”
Origin: Salzburg, June 1773 (except the Kyrie, which is older)
Scoring: SATB, 2 oboes, 4 trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
By June 1773, when he wrote the “Missa in honorem SSmae Trinitatis” (Mass in honor of the Holy Trinity), Mozart had returned to Salzburg from his period of travel in Italy. The scoring of the work is unusual, since there are no soloists, and the orchestra includes parts for four trumpets. It could well have been intended for a special occasion such as the feast of the Holy Trinity which fell on Sunday, June 6, in that year. The Mass could have been first performed at the Collegiate Church, or at the church dedicated to the Trinity itself; it seems probable that it was not intended for the Salzburg Cathedral.
In the year prior to its composition, Hieronymus Colloredo had been appointed archbishop of Salzburg, and his liturgical reforms included keeping a tight rein on musical style. The lack of soloists may well be in response to his demands, which Mozart was bound to accept in his capacity as concertmaster to the archiepiscopal court. A few years afterward he complained that he was forced to make the music for an entire celebration of the Mass (including epistle sonata and motet) last no longer than three-quarters of an hour.
G.D.
K. 192 Missa brevis in F major, “Little Credo” (K6 186f)
Origin: Salzburg, June 24, 1774
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ (2 trumpets added later)
Mozart’s Missa brevis in F major, K. 192, is an utterly concentrated work, in which only the Kyrie and Agnus Dei begin with a short instrumental prelude. In spite of its modest scale (the orchestra of the original version consists of strings only, without violas), it impresses us as being a more convincing and heartfelt piece than the preceding Mass, K. 167. It is also more deliberately vocal in spirit, and introduces a quartet of soloists. Its melodic curves are flexible, graceful, and tender, notwithstanding the drastic concision of each motive and the flashing speed of the choral declamation. Concise as this work is, however, Mozart never superimposes different parts of the text. The most remarkable parts of the Mass are in the Credo, in which the famous four-tone motive culminating in the Finale of the Jupiter Symphony, K. 551, appears (it is also to be found in Haydn’s early Symphony No. 13 in D major) to stress the words “Credo, Credo”. At the end, the piece builds up to a masterly fugato on “Amen, Amen”. The grave and moving beauty of the Agnus Dei, in D minor, leads into the merry “Dona nobis pacem”, whose airy lightness recalls the finale of a fine Italian symphony.
H.H.
K. 194 Missa brevis in D major (K6 186h)
Origin: Salzburg, August 8, 1774
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
The Missa brevis in D major, K. 194, was intended for ordinary daily use – this can be seen from the sparse instrumental scoring with a “church trio” (two violins, bass, organ) and trombones doubling the voices. It quickly became one of the most popular settings of the Mass by Mozart, who later had it performed in Munich in 1775.
Not only the conciseness but also the prominent role of counterpoint are traditional features: thus the final portions of the Gloria and Credo are styled as fugues, and the “Et incarnates” is set apart, occupying a musical sphere of its own. The strongly triadic Kyrie undergoes contrapuntal development and, like the following movement, favors a full choral sound, while the Benedictus is reserved in customary manner for solo voices, which this Mass employs only occasionally. The concluding Agnus Dei, on the other hand, has an almost concertante character, featuring tutti passages that occur at intervals in the manner of ritornellos.
W.K.
K. 262 Missa longa in C major (K6 246a)
Origin: Salzburg? June or July 1775?
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, (timpani added later) [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
The Mass in C major, K. 262, is one of the most extensive of Mozart’s liturgical works, as indicated in the manuscript itself by the description “Missa longa”. Recent studies of the manuscript’s watermarks have tentatively dated the work to mid-1775. The archbishop of Salzburg suffered such lengthy masses to be performed only on very special occasions; such an occasion in mid-1775 has yet to come to light.
On November 17, 1776, however, Count Ignaz Joseph Spaur, the coadjutant of the bishopric of Brixen, and a longstanding acquaintance of the Mozart family, was ordained as titular Bishop of Chrysopel at a ceremony in Salzburg Cathedral. In a letter of May 28, 1778, Leopold Mozart mentions a certain mass that his son composed for Count Spaur; this could conceivably refer to a mass for the ordination. On stylistic grounds, K. 262 would seem to be the most likely candidate; but the evidence of the watermarks argues against the hypothesis that Mozart composed it originally for that purpose. (See also the note for the Missa brevis in C major, K. 258, below.)
With its overriding pathos and grand dimensions, K. 262 stands in complete contrast to Mozart’s succinct and intense Missae breves of about the same period. This applies not so much to the role of the soli – which remain episodical and never actually engage in aria-type parts as we know them in Mozart’s later masses – but refers rather to that of the orchestra. Not only does Mozart, in addition to the “church trio”, use oboes, trumpets, and horns, as well as timpani and trombones – he also writes extensive orchestral preludes to the beginning of the Kyrie and by way of an introduction to the “Et in spiritum sanctum”. And finally, in accordance with the representative nature of the work, there is the grandiose style of the great fugues. Even more extensive and complex than the “Cum sancto spiritu” in the Gloria is the final fugue of the Credo, “Et vitam venturi” – more than 120 measures rich in coloratura. However, there is much more to Mozart’s composition than mere ostentatious wallowing in sound and polyphonic complexity; there are (for instance in the drama and grief of the “Qui tollis”, the emotion and peacefulness of the “Benedictus”, the chromaticism and despair of the “Miserere nobis”) moments of deeply subjective intensity of expression which raise this Mass far above most contemporary South German and Austrian church music.
W.K.
K. 220 Missa brevis in C major, “Sparrow” (K6 196b)
Origin: Salzburg? 1775 or early 1776?
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
The Mass in C major, K. 220, is an extreme example of Mozart’s submission to Archbishop Colloredo’s rigorous regulations about the length of the music in Salzburg Cathedral. The popular title “Spatzenmesse” (Sparrow Mass), conferred on the work in Germany in the nineteenth century, is leveled at the stereotyped accompanying figure of the violins in the Sanctus. This may not be one of Mozart’s greatest church compositions, but the sovereignty with which he combines formal conciseness with festive effect remains worthy of admiration.
A.B.
K. 258 Missa brevis in C major, “Piccolomini”
Origin: Salzburg, December 1775
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, [2 oboes added later], 2 trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
K. 258 is the first of three Masses, K. 258, 259, and 257, whose original manuscripts have been preserved as a group. The manuscripts are dated November 1776 (for K. 257) and December 1776 (for K. 258 and 259). Recent analysis of the handwriting has shown that these dates were tampered with and may not be authentic. Analysis of the manuscripts’ watermarks has also helped to establish a new tentative dating for the three Masses as indicated here.
K. 258 is entitled “Missa brevis et solemnis”: that is to say, concise in the form of the movements and short in duration, but with a more extensive orchestration. The character of the Missa brevis is shown particularly in the two inner movements of the Ordinary with their full texts: in the Gloria Mozart manages to do without every traditional insertion, contrapuntal detail, and repetition of text; the “Et incarnates” is included in the Credo as merely a trio. The expressively lyrical Adagio with its opening tenor solo, nevertheless, certainly ranks among the finest moments in Mozart’s liturgical compositions of the Salzburg period. With the Sanctus once again concise and contained, the Benedictus overflowing with rich melody, and the Agnus Dei, with its chromatically intoned plea for peace, woven with restless violin figuration, this is an expressive work of depth, despite its brevity of form.
K. 258 has occasionally been called the “Spaur” Mass because the date written on the manuscript corresponds approximately to the date of the ordination of Bishop Spaur, an occasion for which Mozart may have composed a mass (see the note for the Missa longa in C major, K. 262, above); however, the recent manuscript redating weakens this attribution. The nickname “Piccolomini” is somewhat more obscure; it probably does not refer to the great Sienese family of that name; perhaps it is a bowdlerization of piccolo (little), referring to the brevity of the Mass.
W.K.
K. 259 Missa brevis in C major, “Organ Solo”
Origin: Salzburg, December 1775 or December 1776
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 trumpets and timpani, 2 violins, basso, organ
This work is in the “Colloredo tradition” of the short mass with economic scoring. To distinguish it from its companions, most of which are in the standard church key of C major (standard for solemn masses, that is), K. 259 is known as the “Organ Solo” Mass. The solo occurs in the Benedictus and thus follows a tradition well known in Austria: Haydn’s Missa brevis S. Joannis de Deo, composed about a year earlier, has a similar, though more elaborate, organ solo. The whole of Mozart’s Mass is very Austrian, even to the delightful Agnus Dei, with its songful first violin (later vocal) part and its mischievous pizzicato bass part – as innocently Baroque and worldly as many an altar in southern Germany and Austria.
H.C.R.L.
K. 257 Missa in C major, “Credo”
Origin: Salzburg, late 1776 or early 1777
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
Like K. 258 and 259, this is a short Mass, according to the wishes of Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg. Here Mozart forgoes polyphonic development, and even the traditional closing fugues of the Gloria and Credo are avoided. It later gained the nickname “Credo” Mass because of the frequent repetition of the word Credo, although this, too, is part of the Baroque tradition. The work is remarkable for the songlike, almost popular character of its melodies and a warmth and geniality of expression which had not previously been much in evidence in Mozart’s church composition. The requisite formal conciseness did not exclude an abundance of invention; indeed the great structural intensity achieved seems to illustrate a passage from a letter written by Mozart to Padre Martini earlier that year. In it Mozart refers to the “special study” required, without considering that what is needed is not “study” but genius.
A.B.
K. 275 Missa brevis in B flat major (K6 272b)
Origin: Salzburg, late 1777
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 violins, basso, organ
The Missa brevis in B flat major, K. 275, uses the same sparse instrumental scoring of a “church trio” that one finds in K. 140, 192, and 194. However, its plan is much less tradition-bound: the customary fugues are missing and the contrapuntal treatment of individual sections is eschewed; only the Sanctus is complex in structure, while elsewhere homophonic choral writing predominates. The solo parts are vocally more demanding. Mozart departs most from tradition in the concluding Agnus Dei. Whereas the mood in this section is normally pastoral and festive, the present movement is dramatically tense, almost grimly determined in places.
W.K.
K. 317 Missa in C major, “Coronation”
Origin: Salzburg, March 23, 1779
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, 3 trombones, 2 violins, basso, organ
The Mass in C major, K. 317, has become widely popular. The claim that it was written for the anniversary of the coronation of the miracle-working image of the Virgin in the pilgrimage church of Maria Plain near Salzburg is questioned by recent Mozart scholarship, even though the work bears the title “Coronation” Mass. The extensive scoring assigns the work to the Salzburg Cathedral, where it was probably heard on Easter 1779. In festive verve, in richness of contrasts, in the variety of musical ideas developed within the narrowest confines, and in melodic strength, the “Coronation” Mass surpasses all the other Salzburg masses. Behind the apparent problem-free flow of the work lies very deliberate delicacy of detail. The Credo, for example, is conceived in rondo form, the heart of which is formed by the “Et incarnates”. The concertante juxtaposition of solo quartet and chorus takes various forms, and the soprano solo of the Agnus Dei appears as a precursor of the aria “Dove sono” from Le nozze di Figaro. In the work’s concentration, symphonic traits are discernable, so that it bursts the accepted bounds of the Missa brevis and anticipates the late high masses of Haydn, even though it does not employ the art of fugue taken up again by the older composer.
A.B.
K. 337 Missa solemnis in C major
Origin: Salzburg, March 1780
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
In March 1780 Mozart composed his last mass for Salzburg, the Missa solemnis in C major, K. 337. His only later mass is the magnificent torso constituting the Mass in C minor, K. 427. The designation Missa solemnis refers less to the duration of the work than to its rich scoring – so the work was presumably composed for a festive occasion. The tendency toward homophony that was already incipient some years earlier is encountered here again: the contrast of different vocal and instrumental sonorities takes precedence over contrapuntal artistry. This aspect has caused purists to reproach the work for certain “operatic effects”, which include the sudden switch to a cappella style on the words “Jesu Christe” in the Gloria and the concertante woodwind instruments in the soprano solo of the Agnus Dei. Criticism of this kind is misplaced, however, for it fails to acknowledge the stylistic unity of music in the eighteenth century and attempts to assign church music to an imperfectly understood stile antico. Mozart has abandoned tradition here in other respects as well: the Benedictus, usually a graceful section, is made severely contrapuntal – and adopts the astringent A minor tonality that we know from the piano sonata K. 310. And the “Dona nobis pacem” closes not in a jubilant mood but softly, almost diffidently. With this independent-minded piece Mozart concluded his duties as a composer of church music for the Salzburg court.
W.K.
K. 427 Missa in C minor (K6 417a)
Origin: Vienna, c. July 1782 to May 1783
Scoring: SATB (double chorus), S/S/T/B soli, 2 oboes (one doubling flute), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, 3 trombones, strings with organ continuo
The powerful fragment that is the C minor Mass, K. 427, has an isolated position in Mozart’s output. It throws up a whole series of questions that to this day cannot be resolved with certainty. Mozart, whose departure in May 1781 from the service of the archbishop of Salzburg freed him from any further obligation to write church music, began in the summer of 1782 without any known external motivation to compose a large-scale mass, and this circumstance is not entirely explained in terms of the fulfillment of a much-quoted vow. Mozart wrote to his father on January 4, 1783, saying he had “promised to his heart” that if he succeeded in bringing Constanze to Salzburg as his wife he would perform a new mass there, and he mentioned “as proof that I really made the promise ... the score of half a Mass for which I still have high hopes”. But as these “high hopes” remained only hopes, the vow was obviously not binding. Is it possible that so private a problem as the struggle for Constanze’s hand could have given rise to the composition of a Mass which in its formal arrangement and stylistic diversity stands apart from the rest of Mozart’s church music?
We do not know what made Mozart choose a form which was no longer “modern”, the cantata-like mass of Baroque tradition; the most powerful example was found in J. S. Bach’s B minor Mass (to which Mozart might have been introduced by Baron van Swieten in Vienna). About a decade before K. 427 this form was taken up again by Joseph Haydn in his St. Cecilia Mass, his last use of it before he finally developed, in his late, mature high masses, the classical type of symphonic mass in which each movement is a continuous whole.
A more powerful factor in the composition of Mozart’s Mass than the marriage problem and the vow may have been the crisis that arose when Mozart came into contact with the work of Bach. Other works inspired by Bach also came from these years, including the Fugue in C minor for two pianos (K. 426) which became better known in its later string version. We do not know why Mozart put the unfinished Mass aside. His hurried transcription for an academy (as concerts were then called) in 1785 of the Kyrie and Gloria, with two added arias, into an Italian occasional cantata Davidde penitente (K. 469), fixes the ending of work on the projected Mass at this time at the latest: the creative Bach crisis was over.
For a long time August 25, 1783, was accepted as the date of the first performance. The Austrian conductor Bernhard Paumgartner, however, was able to fix the date as October 23 of that year. It is not known how Mozart set about supplying the missing sections necessary for a liturgical performance in St. Peter’s Church, Salzburg. Attempts to complete the work by using sections of earlier Mozart masses have also been made since then, but modern performances are almost always restricted to the original parts.
Mozart composed the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo as far as the “Et incarnatus”, the Sanctus, and the Benedictus. The missing sections are therefore the second part of the Credo from the “Crucifixus” onwards, and the entire Agnus Dei. In the “Et incarnatus” Mozart wrote out only the vocal part, the three obbligato woodwind parts, and the figured bass, while the “Hosanna” from the Sanctus lacks the second chorus which has to be reconstructed from the orchestral parts. This task was carried out at the tum of the present century by the German musician Alois Schmitt, who was responsible for retrieving the work from the oblivion into which it had sunk. The orchestration follows the Salzburg norm: besides strings there are a pair each of oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, together with timpani. An organ continuo was taken for granted.
Mozart, in his work on this Mass, was little concerned with unity of style, and he has often been criticized for this. Bach’s inspiration would seem particularly apparent in the grandiose double-choruses – the “Qui tollis” in G minor, a Largo of great expressive weight which is indeed the spiritual climax of the work, and the Sanctus together with the “Hosanna”, the latter being a rich and florid double fugue. But the other choral movements also far exceed the expressive range of earlier Mozart masses: the grave, freely contrapuntal Kyrie, a spirited Gloria reminiscent of Handel’s ceremonial manner (both these being in four voices), and especially the “Gratias agimus tibi”, which, with its five-part harmony spiced with suspensions and its emotional tension, is second only to the “Qui tollis” as the most expressive chorus of the work. A brilliant double fugue in alla breve time with two sharply contrasting themes forms the “Cum sancto spiritu” which ends the Gloria.
Nevertheless, not only Bach but also the eighteenth-century Italian tradition went into the composition of this Mass. This is apparent in the solo sections, whose “operatic” character has often been a stumbling block. They include the slightly stiff coloratura aria for mezzo-soprano in the “Laudamus te”, and in particular the “Et incarnatus” which stands completely outside the liturgical framework. This virtuoso coloratura aria for soprano, with obbligato parts for three concertante wind instruments and a long bravura cadenza, reminded one modern English Mozart specialist more of the Mad Scene from Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor than of a religious service. However, one is reminded equally strongly, with musicologist Alfred Einstein, of the naiveté of Italian Christmas music.
More than any other religious work for voices, Mozart’s great C minor Mass sums up the entire eighteenth century. It is indeed a summing-up that bears the stamp of the highest creative power and originality, even if this is gained at the expense of compactness and unity of style.
A.B.
K. 341 Kyrie in D minor (K6 368a)
Origin: Vienna, 1788 to 1791?
Scoring: SATB, 2.flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings with organ continuo
This Kyrie’s very full scoring of double woodwind, four horns, two trumpets, and timpani led German scholar Otto Jahn to assign it to the period of Idomeneo in Munich: November 1780 to March 1781. Mozart specialist Alan Tyson, however, on examining sketches for several Kyries on paper datable around 1788, suggested that Mozart may well have been at work then on a Mass, with a view to obtaining an ecclesiastical position, and that the present Kyrie, which is not datable as the autograph is lost, may have been from this period too. A date just prior to Don Giovanni, with its central key of D minor, is not unthinkable. It is an intense work with a remarkable scoring that includes four horns, and a style arguably belonging to Mozart’s works of the late 1780s.
E.S.
K. 626 Requiem in D minor
Origin: Vienna, late 1791
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 bassett horns, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets and timpani, 3 trombones, strings with organ continuo
On December 14, 1793, Count Franz Walsegg-Stuppach, an Austrian aristocrat and musical dilettante, directed the performance of a Requiem Mass in memory of his wife. The score, written in his own hand, was headed with the legend “composed by Count Walsegg”. The extent of the count’s “composition”, however, was his copying of a score written in the hand of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his pupil and amanuensis Franz Xaver Süssmayr. The music played and sung that day in the Cistercian monastery of Neukloster in the Wiener Neustadt was the work we know as Mozart’s Requiem.
Count Walsegg was a liar, but not a thief: he would commission composers to write music for him, which he would then recopy and pass off as his own. The composers were well paid, his own vanity was satisfied, and if the members of his court knew about the deception they must have reflected that they were probably better off listening to the music of professionals than to that of the amateur Count himself.
It may be that Walsegg had solicited advice about the commission from his wealthy friend Michael Puchberg, a merchant who was also a friend and benefactor of Mozart. At all events, one day in the summer of 1791, a tall, lean, and unsmiling man appeared at Mozart’s lodgings in Vienna. Without disclosing his name, he asked the composer to write a setting of the Requiem Mass. He produced fifty ducats, already a generous fee, promising to pay a further fifty when the work was finished. Mozart, desperate for money, accepted the commission, telling the mysterious stranger that he would have the score ready in four weeks. It seems that Mozart soon became obsessed with the idea that his visitor was an emissary from another world, bidding him write Mozart’s own Requiem.
The grim man was in fact an agent of Count Walsegg, one Franz Anton Leitgeb, owner or manager of a gypsum plant situated near the Walsegg estate. It is little wonder that Mozart, whose health was failing, should have felt bound to accept the commission. Not only were his debts piling up, but he had recently been appointed deputy (unpaid) kapellmeister of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and may have wanted to prove himself with a new piece of church music.
He began work on the Requiem at once, but was soon interrupted by a commission for a new opera to be given at Prague for the coronation of Emperor Leopold II. He left Vienna, accompanied by Süssmayr, on August 25 or 26, and wrote most of La clemenza di Tito in the incredibly short space of about eight weeks.
The Magic Flute had been largely finished in July, but there were final touches yet to be made and the premiere to be prepared. Mozart conducted the premiere himself on September 30. But he continued to work on the Requiem until the middle of October, when Constanze returned from taking the curative waters at Baden, and found him so weak and mentally disturbed that she took the score away from him. It seems from others’ accounts that Mozart was now convinced that he had been poisoned. By November 15 Constanze thought her husband well enough to work, however, and returned the score. His last illness forced him to bed five days later, but he continued composing.
On December 4 Mozart was desperately weak, and a constant stream of friends visited him. In the early afternoon three singers from the theater sang through with him the completed movements of the Requiem, Mozart himself taking the alto line. When they reached the “Lacrimosa”, of which he had finished only the first eight measures, he wept and put the music aside. The same evening his temperature rose alarmingly, and when the doctor arrived he had cold compresses put on Mozart’s head. The shock was so great that the feverish composer lost consciousness. Just before one o’clock the following morning he died. The swollen body was buried in a common grave on December 6 in the churchyard of St. Mark’s, Vienna, together with the corpses of some dozen other unfortunates who had happened to die the same day.
Constanze was determined to have the Requiem completed and a score delivered to the strange client who had commissioned the work. First she went to Joseph Eybler, a young composer who had helped nurse Mozart during his last weeks. But Eybler, overawed by the task, gave up after sketching a few measures. Constanze then went to Süssmayr, and it was his version that was finally handed to Leitgeb.
How much of the finished Requiem is actually Süssmayr’s original work is a matter of some doubt; it was thought until recently that he was entirely responsible for the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei, for the completion of the “Lacrimosa” after Mozart’s first eight measures, and for the instrumentation of the entire Dies Irae and Offertorium. But this theory was challenged in 1962 when a sheet of sketches for the Requiem in Mozart’s hand was found. It is now argued that this sheet is, in all likelihood, but one of several that the composer had made and that Constanze gave to Süssmayr. She often said later that Süssmayr had only done “what anyone could have done”. The implication is that he had only to fill in the details of Mozart’s existing sketches; but it can also be argued that the widow’s loyalty had distorted her memory. Ultimately it does not matter who wrote what. The Requiem, despite occasional inadequacies probably attributable to Süssmayr, is a powerful work of genius.
A.R.
Litanies and vespers settings
K. 109 Litaniae Lauretanae BVM, in B flat major (K6 74e)
Origin: Salzburg, May 1771
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
Litanies were a favorite form of worship in the eighteenth century. The Litaniae Lauretanae (Lorettan Litany, invoking the Virgin Mary) and the Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento (Litany of the sacrament of the venerable altar) were the most important. The text of the Lorettan Litany was established by approbation (by Pope Sixtus V, 1587) while that of the sacramental litany follows local tradition. Litanies were used particularly in monasteries and pilgrimage churches. In Vienna, litanies composed by Johan Fux, Antonio Caldara, and others enjoyed popularity; in Salzburg, those of Leopold Mozart, Michael Haydn, and others found widespread use in parish services. W. A. Mozart wrote altogether four litanies for church festivals in the Salzburg Cathedral or in the chapel of the Mirabell Palace.
Mozart made two settings of the popular Lorettan Litany, which took its name from Loreto, a place of pilgrimage. This, the first of them, has the customary five sections (Kyrie, Sancta Maria, Salus infirmorum, Regina angelorum, Agnus Dei) and employs the usual forces found in Mozart’s Salzburg church music. The extremely concise form matches the requirements of the Salzburg liturgy, which was musically rather restrained; the careful consideration of the words of the text may be attributable to the tuition of Padre Martini in Bologna, who was particularly helpful in this respect. The work’s popular tone and strong vein of sweetness were entirely in keeping with the current taste in church music, while its thematic homogeneity, making the separate sections seem like variants on one main idea, demonstrates Mozart’s feeling for cyclical unity over and above the obligations imposed by the words of the text.
W.K.
K. 125 Litaniae de venerabill altaris sacramento, in B flat major
Origin: Salzburg, March 1772
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, [3 trombones], strings with organ continuo
Unlike the Lorettan litanies, which tend to be sweetly serene, the invocation of the Blessed Sacrament requires a tone of high seriousness. This work is formally arranged on the traditional Salzburg pattern favored by the likes of Anton Adlgasser and Johann Ernst Eberlin, and draws on a litany by Leopold Mozart in a number of details. But tonally and stylistically it incorporates what Mozart had learned of the Neapolitan manner, which was then the height of modernity; South German and Italian characteristics are intermingled. The large forces in themselves indicate the work’s standing. Of the nine movements (Kyrie, Panis vivus, Verbum caro factum, Hostia sancta, Tremendum, Panis omnipotentia, Viaticum, Pignus, Agnus Dei) , the most compelling are the slow movements, conspicuous for their bold, somber harmonies and much more palpably individual in style than the somewhat long-winded fugue of the Pignus – which indeed was later shortened by the composer. The affinity with symphony and opera is equally unmistakable; the Kyrie is not so much the introduction to a piece of church music as an independent symphonic movement with added choir, and the Panis vivus aria, studded with coloratura, might just as well be part of an Italian opera. Yet at a time when in practice the stylistic divisions among church music, opera, and chamber works (including the symphony) were progressively disappearing, this is not so much an aesthetic deficiency as a sign that the composition was up-to-date.
W.K.
K. 195 Litaniae Lauretanae BVM, in D major (K6 186d)
Origin: Salzburg, May 1774
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, [3 trombones], strings with organ continuo
Whereas the Lorettan Litany in B flat, K. 109, stays within the Salzburg tradition, the D major Litany of 1774 shows touches of independence, even though the formal design reflects Eberlin’s model and the relatively narrow limitations of the Salzburg court are observed in the instrumentation. The cycle of five movements (as in K. 109) testifies to the mixture of styles that was normal at the time. The Kyrie takes the shape of a sonata movement with slow introduction, while the Salus infirmorum and Agnus Dei are slow polyphonic choral movements of which the latter, introduced by a strongly expressive soprano solo, is one of the jewels of Mozart’s Salzburg church music. The two intervening movements are evidently influenced by the Italian operatic tradition; here there are extended virtuoso solo sections, which in character and in the technical demands they make on the voice could just as well belong to an opera seria of the period.
W.K.
K. 193 Dixit et Magnificat, in C major (K6 186g)
Origin: Salzburg, July 1774
Scoring: SATB, S/T soli, 2 trumpets and timpani, 3 trombones, 2 violins, basso, organ
These are the opening and closing sections of a vesper setting which usually had six parts; when K. 193 was performed the central sections employed may well have been by other composers or sung in Gregorian chant. Stylistically the two somewhat succinct movements keep to older models, though Mozart expands the tonal spectrum with two trumpets and timpani, which particularly make their presence felt in the closing Magnificat. What raises these pieces above the everyday output of his contemporaries is, on the one hand, the careful declamation of the text and, on the other, the free elaboration of the doxology at the end of each movement.
W.K.
K. 243 Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento, in E flat major
Origin: Salzburg, March 1776
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 3 trombones, strings with organ continuo
This Litany of the Sacrament was performed not only in Salzburg Cathedral but also with great success in Augsburg and other towns, as Mozart’s correspondence with his father attests. Here too, following the principle of contrast within the nine movements, strict polyphonic choral writing (in the Kyrie, Verbum caro factum, Tremendum, and Pignus) alternates with operatic solo configurations (tenor solo in the Panis vivus, soprano in the Dulcissimum convivium and the Agnus Dei). The seventh movement, the Viaticum, demonstrates the bonds of tradition particularly well; here Mozart uses the Gregorian Corpus Christi hymn “Pange lingua” as a cantus firmus in the choral soprano line (the other choral parts have rests), which allows one to guess the circumstances of the work’s performance – probably in the context of a great Corpus Christi procession.
W.K.
K. 321 Vesperae de Dominica, in C major
Origin: Salzburg, 1779
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, [bassoon], 2 trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
This vesper setting is in six movements: Dixit, Confitebor, Beatus vir, Laudate pueri, Laudate Dominum, and Magnificat. Stylistically it already stands close to the composition of the mature masses, even though formally and in its scoring it follows the line of the South German and Austrian tradition. Mozart himself had a very high opinion of this work; as late as 1783 he had it sent to Vienna by his father so as to be able to show it to Baron Gottfried van Swieten. This music lover, who had made Mozart aware of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, would surely have been the first to notice the strict part-writing (the perpetual canon in the Laudate pueri, for instance). Yet Mozart does not persist in rigid counterpoint. He fashions individual movements homophonically (Dixit), or even in an operatic manner, saturated with coloratura (Laudate Dominum), and he obtains a particularly charming effect by always composing a fresh version of the closing Gloria Patri (the doxology) at the end of each of the six psalms.
W.K.
K. 339 Vesperae solennes de confessore, in C major
Origin: Salzburg, 1780
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, [bassoon], 2 trumpets and timpani, [3 trombones], 2 violins, basso, organ
While the Vesperae de Dominica, K. 321, were intended for ordinary Sunday use, the Vesperae solennes de confessore, K. 339, were written for a saint’s day. We do not know which saint is being celebrated as we have no information on the immediate circumstances surrounding the work’s composition. Mozart is concerned here again with the formal conciseness which suited Archbishop Colloredo’s requirements. The five psalms and the Magnificat are not divided up, following the Neapolitan model, verse by verse into separate arias, ensembles, and choruses but composed in each case as continuous movements. A performance scarcely takes longer than the simple Gregorian chant of the vespers. Little scope is given for soloistic display except in the famous “Laudate Dominum”, in which the cantabile soprano line over a choral foundation is one of the most magical passages in all Mozart’s vocal music. In the first three psalms and the final Magnificat, choir and soloists engage in a lively dialogue in the most spirited and festive manner. The fourth psalm, the “Laudate pueri”, an elaborate and methodical fugue in alla breve time, has an archaic flavor; in particular the fugal subject, with a diminished seventh, belongs to the traditional vocabulary of Baroque polyphony (and returns at the end of Mozart’s life in the Kyrie of the Requiem, K. 626). In spite of the concise form, Mozart displays an abundance of musical ideas and great diversity of timbre and compositional technique.
A.B.
Short liturgical settings and motets
K. 20 God Is Our Refuge, in G minor
Origin: London, July 1765
Scoring: SATB
In key and thematic construction, this short anthem shows similarities to a setting of the same psalm by the English composer Jonathan Battishill (1738-1801), composed in 1765. Mozart perhaps became acquainted with this setting in London and was prompted by it to compose his own setting. The ten-year-old Mozart’s composition of twenty-three measures imitates the style of sixteenth-century English polyphony, a style that he must have heard in England.
K.G.F.
K. 34 Scande coeli limina, in C major
Origin: Seeon Monastery, Bavaria? early 1767?
Scoring: SATB, soprano solo, 2 trumpets and timpani, 2 violins, basso, organ
This is a setting of the offertory for the feast of Saint Benedict. Instead of the liturgical offertory text, it uses a rhymed text, which, in its typical Baroque style, was probably composed by a Benedictine poet. According to an unsubstantiated nineteenth-century tradition that goes back to the Altötting chapel organist Max Keller, Mozart wrote this offertory for the Benedictine monastery of Seeon on the return trip from the grand tour to London, Paris, and the Low Countries. The Mozart family visited this cloister on many occasions. Mozart sets the text with cheerful abandon, though with occasional technical mistakes.
K.G.F.
K. 47 Veni Sancte Spiritus, in C major
Origin: Vienna, autumn 1768
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings with organ continuo
While Mozart’s settings of psalms and canticles reflect Baroque sacred ideals and demands, his antiphons are written in the spirit of Empfindsamkeit, the new sentimental trend in music of the time. K. 47 gives the orchestra considerable attention both in the dimensions of the instrumental passages and in the richness of scoring. The setting juxtaposes contrasting themes that reflect Mozart’s attempt to match music with words. The text is suitable for Pentecost (Whitsunday).
K.G.F.
K. 117 Benedictus sit Deus, in C major (K6 66a)
Origin: Salzburg, 1769
Scoring: SATB, soprano solo, 2 flutes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings with organ continuo
This offertory on “Benedictus sit Deus”, with the following psalm verse “Introibo domum tuam”, is divided into three movements, like a symphony: Allegro (chorus) – Andante (solo) – Allegro (chorus). The first chorus follows a sonata form, which Mozart also uses in the Kyrie and Agnus Dei of the Mass K. 139. The middle section, “Introibo”, is a free-form two-part aria with rich coloratura in the solo voice, similar to the “Quoniam” and “Et in spiritum” of the Mass K. 66. The final chorus uses the eighth psalm tone four times in a row, descending stepwise through soprano, tenor, bass, and alto; it is accompanied by instrumental runs in a style typical of the church music of Salzburg and Vienna. The text is one that may be used at any time in the liturgical year.
Despite what has sometimes been asserted, K. 117 is not the same work as the lost offertory, K. 47b, which Mozart composed for the consecration of the Waisenhaus Church in Vienna in December 1768.
K.G.F.
K. 141 Te Deum, in C major (K6 66b)
Origin: Salzburg, end of 1769
Scoring: SA TB, 4 trumpets [and timpani], 2 violins, bass, organ
The authenticity of this Te Deum was long disputed. No autograph has survived, and the striking resemblance, often traceable bar by bar, to a Te Deum, also in C major, composed in 1760 by Michael Haydn in Grosswardein, caused many scholars to assume that this work, too, derived from the younger Haydn. Some years ago, however, performing parts with annotations in Leopold Mozart’s hand were discovered in Salzburg, so that few doubts now remain as to the authenticity of this early work. And it is hardly surprising that, particularly with forms which had to be handled strictly, a young composer (Mozart was thirteen in 1769) finds his way by following models. In many respects this piece manages to be completely convincing, and even the rigorous musicologist Alfred Einstein describes the work as “sure in construction, thrilling in its choral declamation, and having a certain rustic South-German grandeur, even in the closing double fugue: a good finish to Mozart’s activities as a composer of church music before he set out on his Italian journeys”.
W.K.
K. 143 Ergo interest ... Quaere superna, in G major (K6 73a)
Origin: Salzburg, late 1773
Scoring: soprano solo, strings with organ continuo
This brief motet is cast in the form of a recitative and aria – an example of the affinity between church music and operatic music. Certainly Mozart uses some of his favorite dramatic devices in the aria. It is an Andante in triple meter, not without hints of resemblances to other, more familiar works (like the slow movement of the Bassoon Concerto, K. 191, or the ultimately poignant treatment of the opening motif, “Porgi amor”, in Figaro). The aria is in a typical sonata form pattern. At the end the singer has the opportunity to supply a brief cadenza.
S.S.
K. 85 Miserere, in A minor (K6 73s)
Origin: Bologna, July or August 1770
Scoring: ATB, basso continuo
In this setting of Psalm 50 for the office, composed in the strict style of Padre Giovanni Battista Martini albeit with certain technical liberties, Mozart adopted the most externally strict sacred practice. Carrying on the Renaissance polyphonic tradition, Mozart intends an alternatim performance: only the odd verses are composed, since the even verses would have been performed as simple Gregorian chant. The original manuscript (entirely in Leopold Mozart’s hand) contains only verses one, three, five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, and fifteen; verses seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-one were added later, possibly from a composition by Martini, possibly composed by Johann André.
K.C.F.
K. 86 Quaerite primum regnum Dei, in D minor (K6 73v)
Origin: Bologna, October 9, 1770
Scoring: SATB
During their first trip to Italy, Mozart and his father spent the summer of 1770 at Count Pallavicini’s house, near Bologna. Before leaving Bologna Mozart underwent and passed tests for admittance to membership of the ancient and esteemed Accademia Filarmonica; the surviving manuscripts of his test piece, a twenty-two measure antiphon on a cantus firmus (K. 86) with annotations by Padre Martini, and his clean copy of the reworking, suggest that he had help. The work follows the Academy’s strict rules for the stile osservato (style to be observed), that is, the Renaissance style of church music as it survived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
K.G.F.
K. 108 Regina coeli, in C major (K6 74d)
Origin: Salzburg, May 1771
Scoring: SATB, soprano solo, 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings with organ continuo
This is a full-dress, ceremonial piece, set in the key customary for such works. There are four movements. This first is akin to a concerto allegro, with a ritornello; notable here are the rauschenden Violinen (rushing violins) so beloved of Austrian ecclesiastical composers of the eighteenth century. The second movement, Tempo moderato, follows the same formal scheme, although here the vocal contribution is assigned mainly to a solo soprano; the “operatic” manner is evident in the florid passages and the wide leaps. A still slower movement follows: an Adagio un poco andante for solo voice and strings, in A minor; the throbbing string accompaniment and the rising sequences of florid phrases carry the expressive sense. The final “Alleluia” is like a miniature symphony finale; there are two episodes for the solo voice, but the message is chiefly sustained in the choral reiteration of “alleluia”, the vigorous string writing, and the confident brass assertions of the celebratory C major.
S.S.
K. 72 Internatos mulierum, in G major (K6 74f)
Origin: Salzburg? May or June 1771?
Scoring: SATB, 2 violins, basso, organ
In this Offertory Mozart shows more mature powers of textual interpretation than in earlier proper settings. In its unified structure, the Offertory rises above works written before the first visit to Italy. A large instrumental prelude introduces the main choral section, rich in contrasting ideas; earlier works begin with the chorus immediately. The orchestra is subordinate to the voices, although the individual handling of instruments is more developed than in earlier sacred works.
K.G.F.
K. 127 Regina coeli, in B flat major
Origin: Salzburg, May 1772
Scoring: SATB, soprano solo, 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, strings with organ continuo
Like K. 108, this motet in three sections has for its text the Marian antiphon, “Queen of Heaven”, which many composers had set. Both the richness of the instrumental scoring and the prominent role given to the solo soprano illustrate the accomplishments in the operatic style which Mozart had acquired in Italy. The light choral setting, rather sparing in its use of imitation, and the independent instrumental writing demonstrate this, as do the solos, which are laid out like arias. For the soprano part Mozart seems to have had in mind as soloist the wife of his Salzburg colleague Michael Haydn, as we learn from a letter of Leopold’s dated April 12, 1778: “Ceccarelli will sing the ‘Salve’ from the ‘Regina coeli’, which Wolfgang did for Haydn’s wife”. The letter shows that Mozart still thought the work worth performing even in later years.
W.K.
K. 142 Tantum ergo, in B flat major (K3 Anh 186d, K6 Anh C 3.04)
Origin: Salzburg? begun 1772?
Scoring: SATB, soprano solo, 2 trumpets, strings with organ continuo
The two settings of the sacramental motet text “Tantum ergo”, K. 142 and 197, are in a simple folksong style. The authenticity of each is doubtful, though upheld by the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.
K.G.F.
K. 165 Exsultate, jubilate, in F major (K6 158a)
Origin: Milan, January 1773
Scoring: soprano solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings with organ continuo
It was for the famous castrato Venanzio Rauzzini that Mozart wrote “Exsultate, jubilate”, an unbelievably advanced work for a boy not yet seventeen. Rauzzini sang the first performance on January 17, 1773, at the Church of the Theatines in Milan. Rauzzini must have had a voice of great agility to have negotiated the fast runs and wide leaps that Mozart demanded of him. The motet is in three movements, with the addition of a short recitative preceding the central Andante. No “learned” or archaic hints give a special ecclesiastical flavor; the motet is a straightforward operatic anthem of cheerful praise.
There is a substantial introduction before the entry of the voice in the Allegro first movement. The simple but carefully composed recitative is supported by organ alone, while the central Andante is scored for voice with strings and organ; this movement is the longest and most substantial. The second and third movements are linked by a two-measure modulating passage. After a short phrase of introduction, the oboes and horns now rejoining the strings, the first “Alleluia” rings out. The movement continues as a dazzling concerto for voice and orchestra, ending in a paean of joy.
A.R.
K. 197 Tantum ergo, in D major (K3 Anh 186e, K6 Anh C 3.05)
Origin: Salzburg? 1774?
Scoring: SATB, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings with organ continuo
See the note for the Tantum ergo, K. 142, above.
K. 198 Sub tuum presidium, in F major (K3 158b, K6 Anh C 3.08)
Origin: Salzburg? 1774?
Scoring: soprano and tenor soli, strings with organ continuo
The text is an antiphon to the Nunc dimittis in the Marian office, used as an offertory. Mozart’s composition appears to have a stylistic similarity to the Missa brevis, K. 192. It achieves a certain expressivity through its gentle sonority. Its authenticity is widely doubted, though upheld by the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.
K.G.F.
K. 222 Misericordias Domini, in D minor (K6 205a)
Origin: Munich, early 1775
Scoring: SATB, 2 violins, basso, organ
Mozart wrote this offertory in Munich, where he was performing his opera buffa, La finta giardiniera, for Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria, who had expressed a desire “de sentir qualche mia musica in contrapunto” (to hear some contrapuntal music by me), as Mozart later explained in a letter to Padre Martini in Bologna. Mozart, finding himself challenged to demonstrate his skill in polyphony, dealt with the pattern of responses in this liturgical text on the Sacrificial Act not by the traditional division between soloists and choir, but by alternating eleven times between homophony (Misericordias Domini) and polyphony (Cantabo in aeternam) in the choral writing. The work’s avoidance of repetition and its attention to the emotional content of the text make it a masterpiece of counterpoint.
W.K.
K. 260 Venite populi in D major (K6 248a)
Origin: Salzburg, mid-1776
Scoring: SATB (double chorus), 2 violins ad libitum, basso, organ
Mozart composed this “Offertorium de venerabili sacramento” for an Ascension Day service. Here he uses two four-part choirs in chordal antiphony as well as in strict eight-part polyphony. The work has three sections – “Venite populi” (allegro), “O sors cunctis” (adagio), and “Eja ergo epulemur” (allegro) – and, like the earlier “Misericordias Domini”, displays profound contrapuntal development within its narrow confines. This work had a great admirer in Johannes Brahms, who performed it in Vienna in 1872.
W.K.
K. 277 Alma Dei creatoris, in F major (K6 272a)
Origin: Salzburg? 1777?
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T soli, 2 violins, basso, organ
In this “Offertorium de B. V. Maria” Mozart writes an antiphonal sequence of responds, alternating verse by verse between a soprano solo in concertante style and the largely homophonic four-part choir. The brief, relatively simple and unpretentious offertory provides a good idea of the everyday practice of florid liturgical music in the Salzburg of Mozart’s time.
W.K.
K. 273 Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, in F major
Origin: Salzburg, September 9, 1777
Scoring: SATB, strings with organ continuo
Mozart wrote this “Graduale ad festum” to the Virgin for unknown reasons shortly before setting out on his journey to Mannheim; perhaps it may be regarded as a sort of votive offering on his part. This impression is strengthened by the fact that, with its ternary structure derived from sonata form, its singing melodies, and its homophonic vocal lines dominating the orchestra, the motet does not conform to the Salzburg tradition of church music and may perhaps be seen as a precursor of the late “Ave verum corpus”, K. 618.
W.K.
K. 146 Kommet her, ihr frechen Sünder, in B flat major (K6 317b)
Origin: Salzburg? March or April 1779?
Scoring: soprano solo, strings with organ continuo
This three-verse German passion aria shows the development of Mozart’s expressive abilities since composing the early German sacred cantata, Die Schuldigkeit der ersten Gebots. It may have been intended as an insertion aria in a passion oratorio, or as a vernacular motet for a passiontide service.
K.G.F.
K. 276 Regina coeli, in C major (K6 321b)
Origin: Salzburg? 1779?
Scoring: SATB, S/A/T/B soli, 2 oboes, 2 trumpets and timpani, 2 violins, basso with organ continuo
Since no autograph has survived, the affinity between this Marian antiphon and the Vesperae de Dominica, K. 321, has meant that its date has been set at 1779, at the time of Mozart’s return from France; but Mozart’s Salzburg church music is so consistent in style that this estimate is not necessarily correct. The orchestration itself emphasizes the festive character of the work, which could have been composed in connection with Mozart’s promotion to the post of Salzburg court organist.
W.K.
K. 343 Two German Hymns (K6 336c): “O Gottes Lamm” in F major, and “Als aus Ägypten” in C major
Origin: Prague or Vienna, early? 1787
Scoring: soprano solo, basso continuo
These two works, the second of which has a text based on Psalm 114, adhere to the simple hymn style of the day, the best examples of which come from Michael Haydn. At the end of May 1787, Mozart wrote to Gottfried von Jacquin that he was forwarding a hymn. Perhaps the composition of hymns was occasioned by the reforms of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, who in his pastoral letter of June 15, 1782, refers to a new hymnbook with basso continuo accompaniments.
K.G.F.
K. 618 Ave verum corpus, in D major
Origin: Baden, June 17, 1791
Scoring: SATB, strings with organ continuo
The last year of Mozart’s life was fraught with hardship. Out of favor at the court of the new Austrian emperor, Leopold II, he had to live from hand to mouth by teaching a few pupils, earning whatever he could from his compositions, and borrowing from friends. He was seriously in debt, his wife Constanze was in ill health and pregnant for the sixth time, and his surviving son, Karl, had to be educated and cared for.
On June 4, 1791, Constanze went with young Karl to Baden, the spa near Vienna, to take the waters. Wolfgang visited as often as he could, otherwise keeping in touch with affectionate letters full of jokes, gossip, and medical advice. His own problems he thoughtfully hid from her. On the 15th he left Vienna for a short stay in Baden, and a day or two later wrote the “Ave verum corpus”.
It was a gift for Anton Stoll, organist and choirmaster of the Baden parish church. Stoll was both admirer and friend, often performing Mozart’s music with his choir, and keeping an eye out for Constanze on her rather frequent medical visits. His choir and orchestra must have been reasonably proficient; they had performed the “Coronation” Mass, K. 317, the previous year, and in July of 1791 were to give the Missa brevis in B flat, K. 275.
“Ave verum corpus” was the first church music to come from Mozart’s pen since the unfinished C minor Mass, K. 427, written some eight years earlier, excepting perhaps the Kyrie, K. 341. It was, it seems, intended for the celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi on June 23. It is a piece of wonderful simplicity, a pure distillation of heartfelt devotion.
A.R.