Andover Choral Society -- Mozart

	An Afternoon with Mozart
	January 1998

All of the works on this afternoon's program were composed during Mozart's years of service as Konzertmeister at the court of the prince-archbishop in Salzburg. Ironically, though this appointment caused the young composer a great deal of distress, particularly after the accession of Hieronymus Count Colloredo in 1772, it was also responsible for some of his most beautiful vocal music. Among Mozart's duties as Konzertmeister was the composition of music for the weekly church services as well as the festival days of the church year; masses, vespers, litanies, as well as shorter motets were all required of Mozart on a regular basis, and he obliged the court with works which are deeply responsive to the texts at hand, but are also full of a playful inventiveness which we associate with his instrumental and operatic works. Additional interest is found in the fact that the music heard today was written when the composer was between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one. By any normal standards these would be considered the work of a young composer but, given both Mozart9s precocity and his early death, these works really represent the years of his "middle maturity".

The Epistle Sonatas which open each half of the concert are part of a series of seventeen such works which Mozart wrote to be played between the Epistle and the Gospel reading. This was a tradition in the Salzburg cathedral, designed perhaps to give the moment an air of pomp. Each of the sonatas is in a simple binary form and most are scored (again according to custom) for violins and continuo with no violas. Three of the seventeen sonatas are enriched with added wind parts, including K.263, which was only discovered in 1920's by Alfred Einstein.

The two motets, Inter natos mulierum K.72, and Alma Del creatoris, K.277, were most likely intended to serve as music for communion. The first follow the form known as "sonata allegro", wherein two contemporary themes are exposed, developed and brought back at the end of work. The contrast between the themes is very easy to discern in this piece and helps the listener to gain a sense of the structure of the work, as well as providing variety within the scope; the work's seven-minute timing. The boisterous quality of Inter natos balanced by the gentle, hymn-like character of the Marian motet Alma Del creatoris. The writing for the chorus is almost entirely homophonic (all parts singing the same text at the same time), but variety is achieved by the introduction of the themes of the soprano soloist. The piece would have been intended as the gradual or offertory on the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The setting of St. Ambrose's text Te Deum laudamus, K.141, follows closely the symphonic model used by other composers of the time; indeed, it has been suggested that Mozart patterned his work after a setting by Michael Haydn from 1760. It follows a four-movement structure in which the writing is again largely homophonic, the long text being easily heard but also rapidly dispatched, giving Mozart time to develop a double fugue for the closing text, "In te, Domine speravi".

The Dixit et Magnificat, K. 193, represent an incomplete setting of the vespers; normally consisting of five psalms and antiphons with a concluding Magnificat; here 'Mozart supplies only the opening and closing sections, leaving the middle portions to perhaps be sung as chant. The setting of Psalm 110 has a festive character augmented by the use of trumpets and timpani, and is also in a sonata-allegro form, though with much contrapuntal writing lending an air of greater complexity than the simpler motets. Mozart gives thematic unity to the Magnificat through the use of the corresponding chant tone which is heard at the outset in the tenors and is then passed around through the other voices over the course of the work. Each movement concludes with a setting of the Gloria Patri, (particularly inventive in these examples) and a fugal "Amen."

The Litaniae lauretanae, K. 109 was composed for one of the services in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary which were regularly held at the prince-archbishop's summer residence Schloss Mirabel in May of each year. The text is associated with the shrine to the Virgin Mary in Loreto in central Italy, the goal of numerous pilgrimages. Mozart set the text twice, this being the earlier example, much more pious and austere than the' later, more opulently scored and virtuosic K. 195. The work Is filled with many lovely moments, not least the arioso second movement "Sancta Maria", in which the soloists are given the bulk of the thematic material. Great charm is also found in the rather jaunty "Regina angelorum", this given entirely to the soloists. The work ends quietly, in keeping with the pious character of the text.

The weekly Sunday services required a brief and concise setting of the Mass (Missa brevis in C, K. 220), the longer and more developed Missa solemnis being used for feast days. Mozart arrived at a synthesis of these forms during his Salzburg years, a hybrid sometimes referred to as "Missa brevis et solemnis", which retained the concision required by the prince-archbishop's injunction that Sunday Mass should last no longer than three-quarters of an hour, but also reflected something of the festive character of the Missa solemnis. This festive quality is achieved in K.220 by the use of trumpets and timpani as well as by structural devices such as the return of the opening thematic material for the concluding "Dona nobis pacem". it is one of Mozart's. most charming Mass settings, often given the nickname "Sparrow-Mass"' due to the "chirping" violin figure which introduces the "Pleni sunt coeli" and the return of the "Osanna".

- notes by Allen Combs