Mass in C minor, K.427

A few days after his marriage to Constanze Weber in Vienna in 1782 Mozart told his father that he and his bride had long “attended mass and gone to confession and taken communion together; and I found that I never prayed so fervently or confessed so devoutly as by her side; and she felt the same. In short, we are made for each other; and God who orders all things and has consequently ordained this also, will not forsake us.” It was in this spirit that he started work on the Mass in C minor, which he was to take with him to Salzburg a year later on a visit intended to reconcile his father and sister to a match they didn’t much like.

Although they still didn’t approve of Constanze when they met her, they can only have been impressed by her performance of the first soprano role in the new Mass which, though incomplete, was performed in Salzburg towards the end of their stay. If Mozart had not been totally confident of her ability to cope with, for example, the soprano solos in the Gloria and the Credo he wouldn’t have scored them as extravagantly as he did. Laudamus te, the first solo item in the work, is a radiantly joyfully aria with a virtuoso middle section, featuring a run rising through two octaves at one point, and a no less brilliant reprise of the opening section now further elaborated with a particularly striking series of prolonged trills.

Kyrie

Gloria: Gloria in excelsis; Laudamus te;

Gratias agimus tibi; Domine deus;

Qui tollis; Quoniam tu solus; Jesu Christe -

Cum sancto spiritu

Credo: Credo in unum Deum; Et incarnatus est

Sanctus

Benedictus

When Mozart wrote his Mass in C minor he was lacking in devotion neither to God nor to his wife Constanze. As he wrote to his father on 17 August 1782, two weeks after his marriage, “For a considerable time before we were married we had always attended mass and gone to confession and taken communion together: and I found that I never prayed so fervently or confessed and took communion so devoutly as by her side; and she felt the same. In short, we are made for each other; and the God who orders all things and consequently has ordained this also, will not forsake us.” That is the inspiration of the Mass in C minor, conceived in a spirit of thanksgiving for Constanze and intended for performance in Salzburg on the first occasion that he could take her there and introduce her to his family.

Even though the visit to Salzburg was long delayed (by the birth of their first child among other things) the Mass was still not complete when they set out from Vienna in July 1783. It was actually performed in St Peter’s Church some weeks later, however, with Constanze herself singing the soprano solos. Although opinions differ as to whether it was performed incomplete on that occasion or with borrowings from other settings of the Mass, it is generally recognised that justice is best done to it these days if it is performed as Mozart apparently left it - which is to say with most of the Credo and the whole of the Agnus Dei and Dona nobis pacem missing. Tonight’s performance is based on a scholarly edition by Richard Maunder, who has supplied the missing orchestral parts for the two sections of the Credo that Mozart started but left unfinished and who has reconstructed the Sanctus and Benedictus sections which Mozart did complete but which have since been lost.

The reason for Mozart’s failure to complete the Mass in C minor is probably to be found in the music itself. Because of the conventions and restrictions applied to Church music at that time, there is a continuous struggle between baroque and classical styles - a struggle made all the more intense by the composer’s love for Constanze’s soprano voice and his admiration for her operatic technique.

Kyrie

The Kyrie is a striking example of the conflict or, as we hear it, the valuable contrast between the two styles. According to Church music precepts, the Kyrie is a supplication, a humble prayer. So Mozart sets it in a serious baroque style with an orchestral ostinato and a contra­puntal vocal texture. But then, in the Christe middle section, he changes key E flat major and inserts a wonderfully decorative soprano solo.

Gloria

A similar contrast arises not long after the beginning of the Gloria, which is divided in this large-scale setting into no fewer than seven separate movements. First, on the one hand, there is the brilliant Handelian chorus in C major on Gloria in excelsis Deo merging into the chromatic harmonies of Et in terra pax. Then, on the other hand, there is the Laudamus te in F major. This too was written for Constanze and, though it is by no means as showy as its sister soprano arias in Die Entführung (completed in 1782), it is quite definitely operatic in style.

In the rest of the Gloria, Mozart solves his stylistic problems with complete mastery. The Gratias, a five-part chorus in A minor, contrasts not in the least incongruously with the Domine Deus, a contrapuntal duet in D minor for the two sopranos. The Qui tollis is a monumental double chorus in G minor, modulating most convincingly between the public statement and the personal prayers of Miserere and Suscipe. It also finds its ideal counterpart in the following solo ensemble. The Quoniam (in E minor) is more developed than the Domine Deus and more complex in its polyphonic texture - with a tenor added to the two sopranos and with wind as well as string accompaniment. The ecclesiastical severity of its style is softened by Mozart’s operatic instinct in a noble compromise.

According to Church tradition, the Gloria must end with a fugue. The Jesu Christe is a short prelude to the Cum sancto spiritu, re-establishing the key of C major in which the fugue begins and ends its impressive trajectory. Conventional devices such as thematic inversion and stretto are used here with the dramatic instinct of the born opera composer.

Credo

In spite of his mastery over the stylistic problems in the Gloria, it could have been at some point in his work on the Credo that Mozart began to doubt the validity of what he was doing. Certainly, this section stops short before even half the text is set to music. The reason is not difficult to find. It is the same stylistic conflict as before, but now in a particularly acute form. On the one hand, there is the opening chorus, radiant and confident in C major, with homophonic and polyphonic textures in interesting alternation. On the other hand, there is the Et incarnatus est, a ravishing soprano solo in F major with obbligato woodwind. But is this the time and place, Mozart could have asked himself, to be so sensually ravished?

Sanctus & Benedictus

The Sanctus and Benedictus could well have been written before the Credo was started. In determining their relationship to each other, Mozart followed and expanded the scheme he had adopted in the middle movements of the Gloria. Beside an imposing choral movement, he sets a solo ensemble of corresponding scale and complexity. The Sanctus consists of a ceremonial introduction in C major and a double fugue on Osanna in excelsis. In common with other scholars, Richard Maunder has concluded, on convincing musicological grounds, that these two sections were intended by Mozart for double chorus (eight parts), although the earliest source available to them shows only a five-part chorus for the Sanctus and four-part chorus for the Osanna. Intelligently reconstructed, this is the most brilliant part of the whole Mass and is appropriately followed by the only four-part solo ensemble, the Benedictus, which is another stylistic compromise between ecclesiastical severity and operatic indulgence.

It was providential for the survival of an incomplete work that Mozart was inspired to repeat the Osanna after the Benedictus. It makes a very satisfactory ending - in the right key and with the most exciting choral sound in all Mozart’s Church music.

Gerald Larner©