Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

K 427 (417a), “Great” Mass in C

Mozart composed the Great Mass in C in 1782 and 1783 as a thanks offering after his marriage to Constanze Weber. A letter written to his father Leopold on 4 January 1783 mentions the score of half a mass lying on his desk bearing witness to the promise. The completed sections of the mass were performed later that year in St Peter’s, Salzburg on 26 October: the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, and Benedictus had been completed, but the Credo was not set in full, and scored in Mozart’s usual draft, and the Agnus Dei not even begun. One of the florid solo soprano parts in the Great Mass was undoubtedly sung by Constanze.

At the time of composition during the reign of the Emperor Joseph II, orchestral masses had fallen out of favour in Austria; Joseph Haydn composed none at all between 1782 and 1796. Rather than completing the mass subsequently, Mozart set it aside until 1785 when he re-used the Kyrie and Gloria, with the addition of two new arias, as an oratorio, Davidde penitente (K 469). Of the remainder of the mass, the Credo was never completed, and the two surviving movements remained incomplete in draft form; the Sanctus and Benedictus, although complete, subsequently became partially lost; and the Agnus Dei had never been contemplated by Mozart beyond some sketches he made for the Dona nobis pacem, probably committed to paper after the performance.

The Music

[1] Kyrie	Scorch	Sibelius	(32 KB)
[2] Gloria in excelsis Deo	Scorch	Sibelius	(24 KB)
[3] Laudamus te	Scorch	Sibelius	(28 KB)
[4] Gratias	Scorch	Sibelius	(16 KB)
[5] Domine Deus	Scorch	Sibelius	(22 KB)
[6] Qui tollis	Scorch	Sibelius	(30 KB)
[7] Quoniam	Scorch	Sibelius	(30 KB)
[8] Jesu Christe – Cum sancto spiritu	Scorch	Sibelius	(45 KB)
[9] Credo in unum Deum
[10] Et incarnatus est
[K262 Crucifixus – Et resurrexit ]
[11] Sanctus – Osanna	Scorch	Sibelius	(44 KB)
[12] Benedictus – Osanna
[K337 Agnus Dei – Dona nobis pacem ]

The work is a solemn mass written on the grandest scale, with the Gloria and Credo treated like a cantata in being divided into a succession of individual movements. Mozart’s interest in the works of Handel is reflected in the baroque textures of several of the choral movements, which are unlike anything in his previous sacred music written for Salzburg, and echoed in parts of the Requiem nearly a decade later .

The orchestral forces are the largest Mozart employed in sacred music, apart from the Kyrie in D minor (K 341 (368a)) with its double wind including clarinets. No time is wasted in the Kyrie of the Mass, where excluding the solo flute, the full forces of the orchestra are heard, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, trombone, and strings. The Kyrie also presents two aspects of the work as a whole, in the severe and solemn writing for choir which is immediately contrasted by a breathtaking soprano solo. Curiously, although much of the mass in written in C, or in minor keys, the Kyrie is the only movement of the mass actually in the key of C minor.

The disposition of the seven movements of the Gloria show an interesting structure, with powerful outer movements written in C major for undivided SATB choir; the inner movements use a variety of keys, predominantly minor, and the vocal forces are gradually increased: from one to two to three soloists, and from four-part to five-part choir, and then double chorus in eight parts.

The Gloria in excelsis Deo explodes rhythmically in its first section and is then contrasted immediately by words expressing peace on earth, sung sotto voce. The rhythmic figure bursts in again over the hushed sound of the choir, and the movement repeats, ending with the quieter music for choir and a dying refrain on oboes. Laudamus te, an expressive solo for the second soprano soloist then follows, which is more operatically playful in mood. The exhilaration is immediately checked by the grave, dissonance-laden Gratias where suspensions in the choir and wind are pitted against double-dotted arpeggio figures in the strings. In Domine Deus a duet for the sopranos ensues, but the virtuosic vocal display is tempered by the minor key. The full double chorus is unleashed in Qui tollis, with almost unrelieved tension from the G minor opening onward. Mozart manipulates the eight-part writing with complete contrapuntal mastery, piling up dissonances and driving the music through several different keys without ever settling for long. After the third restatement of the main theme the long-sought G major is finally won, and a stylish trio, Quoniam, follows, introducing the solo tenor in addition to the soprano soloists, in music which keeps turning between E minor and the relative G major. At the words Jesu Christe, a huge cadence on the dominant of C major with full orchestra and choir introduces a masterly fugue on the words “Cum sancto spiritu”. After many episodes and returns to the fugue, the subject reaches its apotheosis as it is inverted in canon over a long tonic pedal, accompanied by the countersubject and exuberant scale passages in the strings.

This edition

[... is unfinished as yet, but is mostly complete despite the absence of the movements from the Credo, and the Benedictus onwards. — Philip Legge]

These scores follow the score from the old Mozart complete works, edited by Spitta and published in 1882 by Breitkopf and Härtel. This edition closely follows the original publication of the “Great” Mass in C by J.A. André in 1840. Thus both editions include the notation in the Credo in unum Deum and Et incarnatus est of the blank staves in Mozart’s particella (the term given to describe an incomplete draft score), showing those two movements unfinished, as Mozart left them. Amongst other certain features common to both editions is the addition to the Kyrie of a soprano trombone part, which appears to be a misunderstanding of the custom in Austria to double the Alto, Tenor, and Bass chorus parts with similarly voiced trombones. This part has been dispensed with.

In the Gloria, the Breitkopf and Härtel score likewise omits trombones from the Gloria in excelsis Deo and Gratias, when it would have been assumed that without an independent part to play, the trombones should simply double the corresponding chorus parts. The trombones have thus been furnished with appropriate parts in these movements.

The surviving parts of the 1783 performance lack a Credo and Agnus Dei, so it is unlikely although not impossible that Mozart may have substituted movements from one of his older masses for the incomplete Credo and the unwritten Agnus Dei. Mozart often arranged for scores and parts of his old masses to be sent to him for performance, so it would have been relatively easy for the players to play several movements from the new K 427 parts and then swap to a different score for Credo and Agnus Dei. Such a change would barely take half a minute, and it is hard to imagine Mozart moving from the end of the Cum sancto immediately into a setting of Credo in unum Deum without any form of pause whatsoever.

While there are strong arguments for only including the movements known to be complete and authentic, in a performing edition it is permissible stylistically to attempt a completion by drawing on the incomplete and slightly less authentic, as well as to draw on other of Mozart’s completed masses to shape the unfinished work into something more resembling what the finished mass may have been like.

Thus the first problem in attempting a completion of the mass is the Credo, of which Mozart composed two movements in draft, with the musical substance complete enough for him to be able to fill in the parts from memory; the editor is faced with the task of composing the missing parts in Mozart’s style. In the Credo in unum Deum only the chorus and Bassi continuo parts are complete, and the remaining parts are in various stages of completion; there are explicit parts for oboes, bassoons, horns, violins and violas. It is furthermore assumed that in keeping with both the festal nature of the mass and the quasi-Handelian scoring of the movement, Mozart would probably have specified trombones mostly doubling the alto, tenor, and bass chorus parts, and written these parts in addition to those for trumpets and timpani, in a separate particella, so all these parts have also been composed by the editor.

In the Et incarnatus est only the solo soprano part and Basso continuo are assumed to be complete as they stand; there are incomplete parts for solo flute, oboe, and bassoon, violins and violas. Mozart also allowed two blank staves in the particella which may have been intended for horns.

The remainder of the Credo after the Et incarnaturs est is taken from one of his sixteen earlier completed masses, the Missa longa in C (K 262) which features a cantata-style Credo. The Crucifixus is a superb miniature in C minor, followed by a lithe Et resurrexit in G major. The antiphonal cries of “non... non erit finis” have been divided between the two choirs. The Agnus Dei and Dona nobis pacem are taken from the Missa aulica in C (K 337) which features a fine soprano solo in the Agnus Dei accompanied by an organ obbligato.

The second problem in completing the mass is that Mozart’s autograph of the Sanctus and Benedictus is mostly missing. Although these movements were once complete, the only surviving authentic material consists of Mozart’s separate particella for the wind and timpani parts of the Sanctus; the Benedictus is wholly missing. Of the original instrumental parts used in the Salzburg performance, only the trombone and organ parts survive. These parts are not in Mozart’s hand. Fortunately a copy of the mass was made by P.M. Fischer from the instrumental parts, before they became lost. In the absence of Mozart’s score, this was the source used by André for the latter movements. Unfortunately Fischer did not have enough staves on the pages of his score to include all eight voices of the double chorus in the Qui tollis, and H.C. Robbins Landon demonstrated that the Sanctus and Benedictus suffered from the same problem; it is evident from the amount of fugal material in the Osanna that almost half of the chorus parts are missing from these movements.

In the Sanctus and Osanna the chorus parts are written in Fischer’s score in four or sometimes five parts, with two soprano parts which are occasionally marked as 1^o and 2^o. In the section Dominus Deus... pleni... the text is laid out antiphonally between the soprano parts, with different combinations of alto, tenor, and bass accompanying each soprano, which suggest one four-part choir answering the other. Following this assumption, it turns out there are mostly one or two voices missing from each choir, usually an alto, tenor, or bass, which can be supplied by reference to the accompanying harmony. In the Osanna fugue there is a good deal of extra fugal material in the instrumental parts to supply music for the missing second choir, except perhaps for the Bass II; thus it doubles the existing choral bass most of the time. The final perorations of osanna in excelsis at bar 57 ff. can clearly be overlapped to provide a portion of the missing choir parts. The choral contribution to the Benedictus consists of a direct repetition of the latter part of the Osanna fugue in the Sanctus, from bar 47 onward.

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