Mass in C minor, K. 427
Soloists: Soprano I, soprano II, tenor, bass
Choruses in 4, 5, and 8 voices: SATB, SSATB, and SATB/SATB
Orchestra: 1 flute (in "Et incarnatus est"), 2 oboes, 2 bassoons,
2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings, organ
Kyrie
Gloria
Gloria in excelsis
Laudamus te
Gratias agimus tibi
Domine Deus
Qui tollis
Quoniam
Jesu Christe/Cum sancto spiritu
Credo
Credo in unum Deum
Et incarnatus est
Sanctus
Benedictus
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
In the last decade of his life, after he left the service of the archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart did not complete any church music, except for the miniature, 46-measure-long Ave verum corpus. The two greatest monuments of his religious music, the Mass in C minor and the Requiem, were both left as magnificent but incomplete torsos. Had the mass been completed, it could well have run to more than an hour and a half in length, giving it something like the extraordinary proportions of Bach's Mass in B minor.
Mozart began work on his Great Mass in the summer of 1782, around the time of his marriage to Constanze Weber. It was a work that he vowed to perform in honor of their wedding. Leopold Mozart did not approve of his son's plans to marry, which he feared may have been forced by the scheming of the Weber family; but Wolfgang wrote him letters singing Constanze's praises -- although they are not entirely convincing: "She is not ugly, but at the same time far from beautiful. Her whole beauty consists in two little black eyes and a pretty figure. She has no wit, but she has enough common sense to enable her to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother. . . and has the kindest heart in the world. I love her and she loves me with all her heart. Tell me whether I could wish myself a better wife?" Constanze, he tells his father, has influenced him to be more religious and to go to church regularly. But Leopold must not have been entirely convinced. His responses to his son's letters were later destroyed by Constanze.
The couple was married in August of 1782, but the mass which Mozart had promised remained incomplete for reasons that we will probably never know. When it was eventually published nearly fifty years after his death, the edition presented an incomplete work, as it appeared in the manuscript. Only the Kyrie and Gloria were fully finished. The Credo had only two of its movements, both of which needed some parts of their orchestration to be filled in, and the Sanctus and Benedictus needed the music of the second chorus to be filled in, where the chorus divides. Those missing details have been convincingly filled in ever since the early twentieth century, so that we are able to perform the work today, but the end of the Credo and the entire Agnus Dei are completely missing. Thus the work as it is normally heard, despite its considerable length, is a torso. The mass was performed in Salzburg in October of 1782, although exactly what was performed is a matter of speculation. Were the missing sections of the mass -- which were needed for the liturgy -- filled in with music from Mozart's earlier masses? If so, there would have been considerable differences in style.
Mozart had previously written fifteen masses, but this one was different in its structure and far more profound in its content. Like Bach's great mass, this was to be on a larger scale than what was normally performed in church services, and, like Bach, Mozart wrote some choruses for five and even eight voice parts, incorporating fugues and other learned counterpoint. It was a product of his recent encounters with the music of J. S. Bach. Not only was it a new direction for his church music, but he also knew that it would please Constanze. In the early 1780's, Mozart had begun studying and writing pieces modeled on the works of Bach and Handel, and only several months before his marriage, he wrote to his sister that Constanze loved this kind of music: "Baron von Swieten, to whom I go every Sunday, gave me all the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach to take home with me. . . When Constanze heard the fugues, she absolutely fell in love with them. Now she will listen to nothing but fugues, and particularly the works of Handel and Bach."
But Constanze would no doubt also have loved other, more modern styles of music in this mass, including some music that is reminiscent of Italian opera. Trained as a singer, she herself sang the demanding first soprano part at the premiere, including the famous, difficult and ethereal "Et incarnatus est".
Boston Baroque Performances
Mass in C minor, K. 427
May 3 & 4, 2002
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloists:
Juliana Rambaldi, soprano
Patricia Risley, mezzo-soprano
Stanford Olsen, tenor
Kevin Deas, bass-baritone