January Mozart, Sublime Mozart Missa solemnis in c minor KV 139 (K6 47a), Waisenhausmesse (The Oprhanage Mass) The entire music sung by the Waisenchor (the chorus of the Orphanage) for the High Mass, which met with universal approval and admiration, was completely and newly composed for this ceremony by Wolfgang Mozart, who is well-known for his special talents and who is the twelve-year old son of Mr, Leopold Mozart, who serves at the court in Salzburg as Kapellmeister...... The above translation is from the musicologist Alfred Beaujean from Philips Classics of a Viennese newspaper account of the ceremony surrounding the December 7, 1768 opening of the not -yet completed Mariae Geburt Waisenhaus church in Vienna. Empress Maria Theresa (Teresia) and her four children were in attendance !. Wow ! The entire music for the High Mass we now know, through the superb sleuthing of Karl Pfannhauser, to be the remarkable Missa longa that the young Wolfgang wrote in October 1768: KV 139, the Waisenhausmesse. (note the quite early K6 re-numbering to KV 47a). I spent most of the day today surrounded by this absolute jewel of a composition. I have had this CD in my collection for years, and never listened it to it until today ! I love discoveries like this, especially if they pertain to WM. It was a great companion to my research on music and the brain for an upcoming lecture; it certainly helped my brain concentrate on the neurology of the music. Mozart wrote 18 masses (a 19th is contested), 15 of them when he was in Salzburg and under the employ of the Archbishops. (The c minor mass KV 427, a Kyrie in d minor KV 341 from an aborted mass, and the Requiem in d minor KV 626 were written in Vienna after 1781). Most of Mozarts Salzburg masses were of the missa brevis form: short (about 30 minutes) and thematically and motivically with Procrustean constrains laid down by the rules of the Prince Archbishops. The Waisehnausmesse is an interesting hybrid: longer - about 42 minutes (still less than three quarters of an hour as Mozart wrote to his mentor Padre Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna), and with fascinating chromatics and contrasts.. It is entitled a Missa solemnis and is more a Missa longa than brevis. The Kyrie begins darkly in Adagio- with eerie diminished sevenths and some dissonances - before exploding into a gloriously joyful continuation of the Kyrie in C major. Uwe Kraemer has called this Kyrie an almost Romantic harmony. There are moments of operatic writing in the soprano and tenor solos. The coloratura in the soprano line of the Laudamus te gives us a foretaste of the sublime one in KV 427 of 15 years later. The Gloria is lyrical. As Kraemer reminds us, the Cum Sancto Spiritu begins with the harmonic and melodic dissonace of a Tritonus interval; see if you can hear it. The Dona Nobis Pacem returns to the joyful consonance of an Allegro in C major. The musicologist Oehlmann summed up the Waisenhaus Mass this way: it is a really religious expression of Sturm und Drang bursting with fantasy and expression. All this, and more, from the 12-year old Mozart. My oh my !!! Wow!!! https://youtube/watch?v=vnxH8M31F3g
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 03:09:51 +0000
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