Riverside Choral Society of New York City

Reviews & Program Notes

Mozart Mass in C minor, K. 427

Program Notes for March 1, 2003
Riverside Choral Society
Alice Tully Hall, New York City

- by John Shepard

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) began composing his Mass in C minor, K. 427, late in the year 1782, at the end of two turbulent years of decision. For most of 1779 and 1780, Mozart had been the poorly compensated court organist and concertmaster assisting his father Leopold, deputy Kapellmeister for the Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymous Colloredo. Leopold Mozart, who was still guiding his son's career, had decided that by accepting the organist/concertmaster post Wolfgang would ensure the Mozart family's security. For his part, the younger Mozart felt exploited and hindered; for most of his two years of service to the archbishop, Mozart composed steadily, producing three symphonies, the "Posthorn" Serenade, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra, a two-piano concerto, chamber music, and several liturgical works, including the "Coronation" Mass in C. Yet, actual performances of his works in Salzburg during this time of prodigious creation were few. Because he was aware as never before of his compositional powers, he felt imprisoned--by his father, who in his sixties cared for little more than a secure position, and by the archbishop, who regarded Mozart as a lackey and frequently subjected him to verbal abuse.

So it was with great joy that Mozart accepted six weeks' leave to go to Munich to supervise the premiere of his opera Idomeneo at the court of Elector Karl Theodor. The experience of working with a fine opera company in a beautiful theater did not prepare Mozart for a return to his post in Salzburg. After the final performance of the first run of Idomeneo in March 1781, the archbishop commanded Mozart to join him in Vienna, where he intended to invite the local nobility to hear performances by the Salzburg court's best musicians. Increasingly heated disputes with Colloredo precipitated Mozart's discharge from the archbishop's service in May. The break with the archbishop was also a break with his father Leopold: Mozart began on that day his autonomous career as a freelance composer. His courtship of the young soprano Constanze Weber further widened the rift, and on 4 August 1782 the couple were married at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, without having received Leopold's blessing.

Despite his need for freedom, Mozart longed to be reconciled with his father. In a letter in early January 1783, he promised to bring Constanze on a visit to Salzburg and alluded to a half-finished mass which he intended to complete for the occasion, as a sign of his filial piety. He kept his promise to visit the following July (a few weeks after Constanze bore their first child), but the Mass in C minor which was performed in St. Peter's Church, Salzburg, on 26 October, with Constanze as one of the soloists, was far from complete--for the performance, Mozart had to interpolate movements from previously composed masses. The mass he composed in 1782-83 lacked a setting of more than half the text of the Credo, the Sanctus and Benedictus were only partially drafted, and the Agnus Dei was lacking altogether. Nevertheless, the music which Mozart wrote was so powerful that no fewer than four editions in the 19th and 20th centuries have striven to complete the movements Mozart began (tonight's performance is based on the reconstruction by Helmut Eder).

As Maynard Solomon has so eloquently demonstrated in his Mozart: A Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), the music Mozart wrote for his C-minor Mass bears a complex of dedicatory intents: to reaffirm his faith, to reach out to Leopold and Maria Anna (Mozart's sister who remained in Salzburg with her father), to affirm his love for his wife Constanze, and to thank God for his marriage and his child. Despite the posture of supplication these dedications imply, Mozart responded with music of unprecedented boldness and variety, from the deadly serious Kyrie, to the joyously virtuosic soprano solo of "Laudamus te," the searing harmonies of the "Qui tollis, "and the masterfully intricate "Hosanna" fugue for double choir. This music refused to conform to the demands the archbishop made in 1780 for the elimination of elaborate music from the church. As Maynard Solomon writes, "clearly, [Mozart] had no intention of compromising his effort to create a dramatically expressive, elevated church music style that transcended the Austrian mass tradition at the same time that it drew freely upon Italian sources as well as on Bach and Handel...." That Mozart and his father were never really reconciled in no way diminishes the significance of his gesture in composing the Mass in C minor. Rather, that fact highlights the poignancy of a score which testifies to the complex intermingling of pain and joy in human relations.

Riverside Choral Society

The Riverside Choral Society, entering its 47^th season, is a vital presence in the cultural life of New York City. Under the baton of director Patrick Gardner, the group has performed major works by Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, Britten, Pärt, Fauré, Orff, Stravinsky, Schnittke, and many others in New York City's most exciting performance venues.