Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Vocal music and related works
Masonic Music
Background and overview
The fraternal secret society known as the Freemasons may well owe its name and origin to a Medieval craftsmen’s guild of master builders, but the organization’s clandestine nature precludes accurate knowledge of its early stages. In the eighteenth century, at least, Freemasonry became associated with the humanitarian ideals of the Enlightenment in Western Europe. Though not antireligious, Masonry was persistently opposed by the Catholic church, and usually regarded with suspicion or worse by reactionary governments – perhaps rightly, for its numbers included many apostles of freer speech and more liberal government. (George Washington and other Founding Fathers of the American republic were Masons.)
In the Austrian Empire, Freemasonry had been banned by Empress Maria Theresa in 1764. During the 1780s, Emperor Joseph II, a more liberal ruler, tolerated the movement, but from 1790 his successor, Emperor Leopold II, returned to suppression. Mozart became a Mason during the calmer years of the 1780s. On December 14, 1784, he was admitted as an Apprentice to the Viennese lodge known as Beneficence (Loge zur Wohlthätigkeit). The city’s most prominent and aristocratic lodge was the True Concord (Loge zur wahren Eintracht), which Mozart frequently visited and where, on January 7, 1785, he was raised to the second degree, that of Journeyman.
That spring, Mozart’s father visited Vienna, and was also admitted as an Apprentice to the Beneficence lodge. Probably because of his age and professional standing, Leopold quickly passed the next degrees, reaching that of Master Mason on April 22, before he returned to Salzburg. Although the surviving records are vague about Wolfgang’s progress, it seems that he did not become a Master Mason until the following year.
At the end of 1785, the emperor decreed that the eight Viennese lodges should be combined into two or three – no doubt to make it easier to keep an eye on this potentially subversive movement. Mozart’s lodge was joined with two others to form the Crowned Hope lodge (Loge zur gekrönten Hoffnung), which opened on January 14, 1786.
The most renowned expression of Mozart’s Freemasonry is, of course, the opera The Magic Flute (1791), which celebrates the Masonic ideals of truth, brotherhood, and love, and incorporates a good deal of Masonic symbolism in its action and stagecraft. Mozart also wrote a number of pieces specifically for the ceremonies of the lodges in the early years of his membership, and again at the end of his life.
D.H.
K. 148 Lobgesang auf die feierliche Johannisloge, “O heiliges Band der Freundschaft treuer Brüder" (K1 Anh 276, K6 125h)
Origin: Salzburg? 1775-76?
Author: Ludwig Friedrich Lenz
Scoring: voice, basso continuo
On the basis of its text and an inscription on the manuscript (“Song of Praise – solemnly, for the St. John Lodge”), this simple song, with only a figured-bass part as accompaniment, has often been ascribed to Mozart’s Masonic period, 1784 or later. However, the evidence of the musical style, the paper, and the hand-writing point to an origin in Salzburg in the 1770s.
D.H.
K. 429 Dir, Seele des Weltalls (K3 420a, K6 468a)
Origin: Vienna, 1785?
Author: L. L. Haschka
Scoring: TTB, tenor solo, flute, 2 oboes, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, strings
Mozart finished two movements of this cantata, and broke off a third movement after seventeen measures – for what reason we do not know. After Mozart’s death his friend the Abbé Maximilian Stadler made two performing versions of the completed movements; his orchestration is the basis of many present-day performances. The key of the opening chorus, E flat (also the principal key of The Magic Flute), was regarded as particularly Masonic – its three flats had special significance in the rituals of the lodges.
D.H.
K. 468 Lied zur Gesellenreise, “Die ihr einem neuen Grade”
Origin: Vienna, March 26, 1785
author: Franz Joseph Ratschky
Scoring: voice, organ or piano
This graceful song celebrates promotion to Geselle (Journeyman), the second degree of Masonry. Since Mozart’s father was elevated to that grade on April 16, at a ceremony in the True Concord lodge, it is likely that it was sung on that occasion. The frequent pairs of tied notes sung to a single syllable are another Masonic musical symbol, representing brotherhood.
D.H.
K. 471 Die Maurerfreude, “Sehen, wie dem starren Forscherauge die Natur”
Origin: Vienna, April 20, 1785
Author: Franz Petran
Scoring: TTB, tenor solo, 2 oboes, clarinet, 2 horns, strings
On April 24, 1785, the True Concord lodge held a celebration in honor of its master, the distinguished naturalist Ignaz von Born, who that day had been made a Knight of the Realm for his discovery of a new and more economical method of smelting. Mozart and his father were both present, and a new cantata by Wolfgang was sung, Die Maurerfreude (The Mason’s Joy), with words by the lodge’s resident poet. The tenor soloist was Johann Valentin Adamberger, who had been the first Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Also in E flat major, this cantata is principally for tenor solo, the chorus entering only near the end to clinch the final message, the praise of the emperor.
D.H.
K. deest Meistermusik, ”Replevit me amaritudinibus”
Origin: Vienna, July 1785
Scoring: unison men’s voices, 2 oboes, clarinet, basset horn, 2 horns, strings
This is the recently reconstructed first version of the work better known as Maurerische Trauermusik (Masonic Funeral Music, K. 477). Mozart composed it for a ceremony at the True Concord lodge on August 12, 1785, on the occasion of the elevation of a visiting brother, Carl von König, to the rank of Master. It differs from the more familiar version by the inclusion of men’s voices that intone, in octaves with the oboes and clarinets, the twenty-bar cantus firmus in the central section.
The cantus firmus is based on the psalm tone for the singing of the Miserere and the Lamentations of Jeremiah during Holy Week. The verses that fit Mozart’s scansion are Lamentations 3, v. 15 and 54:
He filled me with bitter herbs, and made me drunk with wormwood.
Waters flooded over my head; I said, I am lost.
The first of these verses may allude to the Masonic trial by earth, the second to the trial by water. The music is astonishing in its somber intensity, effected through low orchestral timbres, dramatic changes of dynamics, and a sweeping violin descant above the static chant intonation.
W.C.
K. 477 Maurerische Trauermusik (K6 479a)
Origin: Vienna, November 1785
Scoring: 2 oboes, clarinet, basset horn, 2 horns, strings (2 more basset horns, contrabassoon added later)
In November 1785, when Mozart was probably busy composing Figaro, two important Masons died: on the 6th, Georg August, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and on the next day, Count Franz “Quin-quin” Esterházy of Galántha. On the 17th, a memorial service was held at the Crowned Hope lodge, for which Mozart arranged the Masonic Funeral Music from his Meistermusik of a few months earlier (see the preceding entry). On this occasion, Mozart dispensed with voices for the cantus firmus.
A second performance of this arrangement probably took place on December 9. For this occasion Mozart added a part for contrabassoon, and then two more basset horn parts – evidently because two well-known players of the instrument, fellow Masons, were in Vienna (and in somewhat indigent condition, as they were given a benefit concert by one of the lodges).
D.H.
K. 483 Zerfliesset heut’, geliebte Brüder
Origin: Vienna, late 1785
Author: Augustin Veith Edler von Schittlersberg
Scoring: TTB, tenor solo, organ or piano
The songs K. 483 and 484, each with two verses for the soloist and a refrain for the chorus, are evidently related to the consolidation of the Viennese lodges. The words of “Zerfliesset heut’” contain clear references to this event; headed “For the opening of the lodge”, the song presumably served for the inauguration of the Crowned Hope lodge in January 1786.
D.H.
K. 484 Ihr unsre neuen Leiter
Origin: Vienna, late 1785
Author: Augustin Veith Edler von Schittlersberg
Scoring: TTB, tenor solo, organ or piano
Just as K. 483 was intended for the opening of a new lodge, K. 484 was for the closing of an old one, the Benificence lodge.
D.H.
K. 619 Die ihr des unermesslichen Weltalls Schöpfer ehrt
Origin: Vienna, July 1791
Author: Frank Heinrich Ziegenhagen
Scoring: tenor, piano
In the summer of 1791, F. H. Ziegenhagen, a merchant from Hamburg who belonged to a lodge in Regensburg, commissioned this setting, for solo voice and piano, of his own text. The six movements of the “little German cantata” are brief and continuous, mixing arioso and recitative, and passing through a variety of moods. The style both of this work and of K. 623 shares the clarity, directness, and euphony of The Magic Flute.
D.H.
K. 623 Laut verkünde unsre Freude
Origin: Vienna, November 15, 1791
Author: Emanuel Schikaneder
Scoring: 2 tenors, bass, flute, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
The final entry in Mozart’s catalogue of his own works is this “little Masonic Cantata”, finished and dated on November 15, during a brief period of remission in his final illness. Three days later, Mozart was well enough to conduct the new piece at the opening of the new temple of Crowned Hope, but on the 20th he took to his bed again, and died on December 5. The cantata was published the following year, with the title Kleine Freimaurer-Kantate, to raise money for “his distressed widow and orphans”. The opening and closing choruses of this work are identical.
D.H.