Mozart: Mass in C minor. A tale of what might have been.
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- Опубліковано 25 жов 2021
- How did Mozart come to write his Mass in C minor, and why was it not finished?
Video released on the 238th anniversary of the first performance on 26 October 1783.
NOTE: Designed as a lecture for choir conducting students and thus a bit technical at times.
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Full performance of the Mass, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner:
• Mozart Mass in C minor...
Requiem with only the notes that Mozart wrote:
• W.A. Mozart - Requiem ...
What a wonderful programme. Detailed, clear, and completely interesting. Thank you for this.
Superbly written and delivered. My choir - the Choir of the Earth - is currently learning this here on UA-cam and I shall point everyone to this video. Thanks so much!
Scholarly, educational, deadpan - and so entertaining! Thank you.
Brilliant!! Intelligent and Entertainment for everyone whom listens: to music!!👍🤌🫰👌👏👏
Yours Sincerely, Derek Rocha at Kew Melbourne VIC Australia
Wow such a great video, thank you so much! this piece fascinates me because it happens to be my absolute favorite work by Mozart - particularly the Kyrie, and the short Gratias movement - those harmonies are unbelievable! So great to learn so much about the history of the piece, the composer, and the larger circumstances of this astounding abandoned project.
It really is a wonderful work.
I feel a kind of intuition that since Mozart he knew Bach's work, he always wanted to learn the art of counterpoint and fugue, he really considered him a teacher, in the strictly musical sense.
As he himself put it, "finally something worth learning!" With this mass he makes it clear that he was reaching incredible levels in the art of counterpoint.
We will always have the doubt, if Mozart had not died so early, and if he had gotten the job as choirmaster, which he was applying for the same year of his death, what wonderful sacred works would he have left us?
He would have been, with all rights, the continuator of Bach's work and "sacred music" would not have declined as he did.
Oh damn, how didn't I check your other videos. Your content on Tallis is great.
Simply brilliant and compelling. Bravo!
These are some of my favorite videos on UA-cam. So much good content that they warrant repeated listens.
Excellent.
And, Jaakko, we have sung some of your fabulous Shakespeare choral works. Can you make a documentary about these?
Great video! I personally quite like Levin's completion simply because it makes a good effort to imagine what the full mass might have sounded like, had Mozart finished it. Of course, it's not authentic since we simply cannot know what Mozart would've done, but listening to Levin's version, we can at least have a glimpse of what could've been, and the contrapuntal sketches Levin uses for the Crucifixus and Et Unam Sanctam are great stuff, so it's exciting to have a completion that makes use of them.
We don't need a full completion of K. 427 like we do with the Requiem since most of the existing movements for K. 427 are already complete and 100% by Mozart. For that reason, I tend to agree that Mozart's original is sufficient as it is, as long as the missing parts in the two Credo movements and the Sanctus are filled in. The Credo in unum Deum is my biggest deal-breaker: even if we othewise follow the "standard" version, I'd like Levin's completion to be the new standard for that movement.
I've been thinking about the key centre thing a lot since I'm currently writing a Mozart-style missa solemnis heavily inspired by K. 427 as a passion project. I think it makes sense to say K. 427 is "in C minor" the same way Haydn's "Nelson Mass" is "in D minor" despite most of the music being in D major. What truly makes K. 427 a minor-key mass to me is that in addition to the Kyrie, Mozart also chooses minor keys much more often than he does in any major-key mass. Out of all these movements (Gratias, Domine Deus, Qui tollis, Quoniam and Benedictus), using a minor key was only customary in the Qui tollis. The keys themselves are more closely related to C major (apart from the G minor in Qui tollis), but no surprise there since the Gloria starts and ends in C major anyway (I can't think of any masses with a minor-key Gloria apart from Mozart's K. 65). What makes much less sense to me is the fact that the so-called "Waisenhaus" mass K. 139 is always said to be in C minor although even the main section of the Kyrie is in C major! The only non-standard minor-key section in K. 139 is the short introduction to the Kyrie, so it's really not a minor-key piece any more than the "Dissonance" quartet.
An additional explanation might be the traditional use of key signatures in general: I guess Mozart could've chosen E-flat major for one of the solo movements (like I do for my Et incarnatus est), but other C-minor-related keys (A-flat major, F minor) don't show up much in sacred music of the era.
Loved this. Thank you so much!
Very interesting and entertaining
Fascinating and also very entertaining. I learned so much!
Highly informative and very well done! Thanks a lot for this!
I didn't expect to laugh so much! I even laughed during the credits. Now I want to ask Ben England exactly why he chose Schmitt for us to sing!
Congrats for the great documentary! It's gotta be the most complete one I have ever seen, it even goes to discuss the completions, an area where most simply ignore.
As for the completions, it's a shame you didn't discuss the 2009 Legge completion, as it, like Schimitt, it uses material of past Mozart masses to fill in the missing sections, however, I think he uses much better movements for the missing bits. When it comes to the other completions, I can't really understand Cohrs' extreme snarkiness towards Levin, perhaps there's something personal between them we don't know? His decision to use both sections of the Davidde Penitente "Tra l'oscure" aria for the Crucifixus and Et Ressurexit when the common practice at Mozart's time was to have choral movements for such settings is also weird.
Can't wait to see your next videos!
Thank you, Zion Fortuna, for your kind words about my 2009 edition (published under my other names). My attitude to the "what if?" questions that Jaakko Mantyjarvi poses (and why I chose to complete the mass) were that as regards why the work was left incomplete, I assumed option 5 to be most plausible: Mozart pragmatically chose not to complete the work given the lack of possible opportunities to perform it liturgically between 1783 and his death; this “fits” with the subsequent reuse of the Kyrie and Gloria, refashioned as Davidde penitente. As for the 1783 performance, the most obvious solution that fits with the extant performance parts is that the KV 427 parts were used for Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Benedictus, while other masses in the Salzburg repertoire would likely have filled the gaps of Credo and Agnus, and for me (and Mantyjarvi’s question of personal taste) the most obvious works in the Salzburg repertoire would be from Mozart’s own immediate prior works (so I chose the Missa longa for the Credo, and the Missa solemnis for the Agnus). As a solution I think this holds together rather better than Schmitt, who as it turned out, borrowed a movement that was not actually Mozart’s - if a complete mass is desired, which in the case of non-liturgical, concert masses often turns out to be not the case.
absolutely brilliant !!!
Excelent presentation and video
fantastic
I love the txt/msgs between Mozart and his dad. I can see this happening except for it being letters and taking a few weeks lol :)
The figurations in the bass are not added because it would have been so obvious to Mozart what these would have been - these can be added at a later stage. Anyone who has studied partimento will have a clear idea of what should be there. Nothing amiss here at all.
Yeah, the figures would have been pretty obvious but the question then becomes: should it be played as tasto solo (only the left hand) or not (with added harmonies on the right hand)? Both options work pretty well for that movement.
We need your perfect balance of education and engagement with the other unfinished Sacred marvel - the Requiem.
How abouy telling us about Mozart's Requiem and its 25 modern completions
Edit: spelling error fixed
What? 25 completions??
@@chipensembleyes, I counted
Edit: there's even a Wikipedia article just to talk about them
@@areloTET Which ones do you like?
@@chipensemble My favorite is somewhere between Druce and Levin but I've made a list of my personal favorite revision for each part:
Introit (original)
Kyrie (Levin?)
Dies Iræ (Druce)
Tuba mirum (Levin)
Rex tremendæ (Levin)
Recordare (Druce)
Confutatis (Arman)
Lacrimosa (Tamás)
Amen (Maunder)
Domine Iesu (Druce)
Quam olim Abrahæ (Druce)
Hostias (Druce)
Sancrus (Levin)
Osanna (Levin)
Benedictus (Druce)
Agnus Dei (Cohrs)
Lux Æterna (Druce)
Cum sanctis tuis (Levin)
@@areloTET Cool stuff. We agree on the majority of that, then! Happy to hear some good thoughts about Tama's Lacrimosa. My goal is to make an Electronic/8Bit version of the Requiem and it uses those completions to make a cohesive whole sometime soon.
11:41 - What about Bach's Mass in B minor?
Bach's Mass in B minor was a sort of portfolio. Apparently Bach created it as a 'best-of' compendium not necessarily intended for performance -- it seems it was never performed in its entirety during his lifetime. But even if it had been, it would only have been performed at a church service. It may be difficult to understand from today's perspective, but before the 18th century it really was not a thing to perform church music outside of church services. To quote a cult film, it would have been "inconceivable". And even though the B minor Mass has a run time of nearly 2 hours, enormously long and elaborate church services were by no means unusual, particularly on special occasions (think of the 4 hours or so for a full run of Bach's St Matthew Passion plus sermon, for instance). It was not until the Enlightenment that these excesses began to fall into disfavour or be restricted. Archbishop Colloredo's 45-minute rule was an extreme example of this.
Who called it the Mass in C Minor and why? Did you mention this? Wouldn't it make sense to end in C Minor?
I suppose that defining a work as being in a particular key is a look-and-feel sort of thing, given that in any extensive work multiple tonal centres are established along the way. The best explanation I can offer is that the ostensible key is determined by what is established at the beginning of the piece -- in this case, the Kyrie. There are loads of Romantic symphonies described as being in a minor key that end in a major key, such as Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in D minor, whose longest movement (the finale) is largely in D major.
Do you know if Mozart called it that?
Actually I since noticed it does end in CMinor...oops!
The name is based on the first movement, the Kyrie. After that, the tonal center of the big choruses leads to C major. If we consider the last movement as the Hosanna fugue repeat on the Benedictus, it also ends in C major.
If you look at Mozart’s autograph particella for the additional brass parts, it appears he himself referred to the entire work this way, ‘zu Missa à C moll von 1783’. This was to differentiate it from the other mass setting he composed in this key some years before, KV 139/KV⁶ 47a.
In terms of keys and modes, C minor is somewhat of a misnomer: the most common key signature of the work is C major; whereas the minor mode movements are in a variety of different keys: C (Kyrie), D (Domine), E (Quoniam), G (Qui tollis), A (Gratias, Benedictus), though if Mozart had completed the work a minor key Crucifixus would most likely have followed where the Credo breaks off.
How Mozart might have finished the work is wholly speculative but a C major Dona nobis pacem seems rather more likely than ending in C minor, seeing as the later work is modelled more on the earlier Mass in C minor which finishes in C major; rather than say the Missa brevis in d, KV 65 /61a, which finishes in the minor key.
Lastly, classical era works in many other types of repertoire often end minor key works in the major key, so this is not in any way unusual.