Mass in C Minor

Mozart’s final decade in Vienna is bookended by a pair of magnificent unfinished choral works, the Mass in C minor and the Requiem. The Mass was begun in 1782, shortly after he had been dismissed from Salzburg service and relocated to the Imperial capital. His letters speak of it being composed in fulfilment of a vow, possibly in connection with his marriage, although we only have one side of the correspondence and so must guess at what he had promised. The completed music was performed the following year during his only return to Salzburg, with his wife, Constanze, singing some of the soprano solos. Why Mozart failed to finish the work is another mystery: the “Kyrie”, the eight-movement “Gloria” and the “Sanctus” and “Benedictus” were fully written but he left only incomplete drafts of the martial “Credo” and rapt pastoral “Incarnatus”. What music we have, though, shows that this was a Mass on the grandest scale, lasting almost an hour even in its fragmentary form. Mozart displays his recent encounter with the music of Handel and Bach in much of the Mass in C minor, not only in movements consciously composed in a monumental Baroque style, such as the “Gratias” and “Qui tollis”, but also in the vocal fireworks of the “Laudamus te”, in the intertwining solo lines of the “Domine” and “Quoniam”, and in the awesome counterpoint that flavours so much of this breathtaking work.