Coronation Mass

A Coronation Mass is a special kind of Mass, in which a rite of Coronation is celebrated.

In the liturgical tradition of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches in communion with it, as well as in the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, rites of Coronation take place within the context of the celebration of the Eucharist.

The term Coronation Mass can refer either to a Eucharistic Celebration involving the Coronation of a Monarch or to a Mass involving the solemn imposition of a regal Crown upon an image of Jesus Christ, or of the Blessed Virgin Mary, since the imposition of a Crown upon those images is also called a Coronation, and is also celebrated with honour by the above-mentioned Christian traditions.

See also

Coronation Mass (Mozart)

The Krönungsmesse (German for Coronation Mass) (Mass No. 15 in C major, K. 317; sometimes Mass No. 16), composed in 1779, is one of the most popular of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 17 extant settings of the Ordinary of the Mass. This setting, like the majority of Mozart's mass settings, is a Missa brevis, or short mass (as opposed to the more formal Solemn Masses or High Masses, known as Missae solemnes).

History

The Mass in C Major was completed on March 23, 1779 in Salzburg. Mozart had just returned to the city after 18 months of fruitless job hunting in Paris and Mannheim, and his father Leopold promptly got him a job as court organist and composer at Salzburg Cathedral. The mass was almost certainly premiered there on Easter Sunday April 4, 1779. Contrary to a popular misconception, it was not intended for the church of Maria Plain near Salzburg.

The KV 317 mass appears to have acquired the nickname "Coronation" at the Imperial court in Vienna in the early nineteenth century, after becoming the preferred music for royal and imperial coronations as well as services of Thanksgiving. Whether it was performed at the coronations of Leopold II in 1790 and Francis II in 1792, as some sources assume, is unlikely.