MOZART’S SACRED MUSIC FOR SALZBURG CATHEDRAL

THE MOZARTS IN THE 1770S

When Mozart composed the three works on this recording, he and his father were in the employ of Count Hieronymous von Colloredo, the Prince-
Archbishop of Salzburg since 1771. An Enlightenment reformer in the mould of Emperor Joseph II, Colloredo was a fervent economizer, and his spartan
approach to court life, along with his rather grim personality, won him few friends in the Cathedral music. From the beginning he and the Mozarts got on
poorly, with Leopold and Wolfgang making no secret of their increasing impatience with the provincial nature of Salzburg’s musical life, and applying
constantly for leaves of absence to try Wolfgang’s fortunes elsewhere. Finally, in 1777, when the Mozarts again requested to be granted leave to travel to
Mannheim and Paris, Colloredo dismissed them both, forcing Leopold to remain behind to try to patch things up while Wolfgang’s mother took his place
as chaperone.

It was a disastrous trip for mother and son. Maria Anna died of typhus while confined to airless rooms in Paris, while Wolfgang secured no court
appointment, ran out of money, and endured both his mother’s death and the failure of his plans to marry Aloysia Weber. Meanwhile his father had
managed to appease Colloredo enough to secure not just a reinstatement, but a promotion for Wolfgang, from Court Concertmaster to Court and
Cathedral Organist and keyboard teacher at the Kapellhaus – and all while Leopold himself suffered the indignity of being passed over for promotion to
Kapellmeister, even as the position remained vacant and he had toiled for years as Vice-Kapellmeister. To Mozart, however, the job represented neither a
triumph nor even a rescue, but an intolerable step backward. He returned to Salzburg with utter disdain for the city, declaring that he ‘could not bear it or
its inhabitants’, and he complained that the orchestra ‘has always been rich in what is useless and superfluous, but very poor in what is necessary, and
absolutely destitute of what is indispensable’. In 1781, he finally left the Archbishop’s service – with that infamous ‘kick’ delivered by Count Arco – and
made his pivotal move to Vienna.

However much he felt he had outgrown its claustrophobic confines, Wolfgang produced some of his most beautiful sacred music in his Salzburg years.
These include the Coronation Mass (K317, 1779), the Missa Solemnis in C major (K337, 1780), and the Vesperae solennes de Confessore (K339, 1780), with its
beloved Laudate Dominum, as well as the works on the present recording. In these, we find Mozart synthesizing the contrapuntal techniques of his
Salzburg forebears with an increasingly sophisticated Classical style influenced by the vocabulary of opera.

SALZBURG CATHEDRAL MUSIC UNDER ARCHBISHOP COLLOREDO

The dual role of the Prince-Archbishop as religious leader and secular head of state meant that the Court and Cathedral music personnel often overlapped.
This makes it difficult to determine the performing forces for any given piece of church music, for it was only on very special occasions that the names of
specific performers would be recorded. However, several documents – including a report on the Court music written in 1757 by Leopold, and the
annual Court calendars – give us a good idea of the general performing forces and their typical disposition in the Cathedral.

As one might expect, the size of the musical ensemble was determined by the eminence of the presiding celebrant and the nature of the service. Daily
worship would have been sung only by the congregation. The regular Sunday service would be accompanied by a reduced ensemble of five strings, organ
continuo, and trombones supporting the singers, which would have consisted of only one singer per part. For special services celebrated by a provost or
dean, the complete Hofmusikkapelle would have accompanied, but without trumpets and timpani, these used only on high feast days when the
Archbishop himself presided. The presence of trumpets and timpani in the Vespers K321 thus suggests that the service it accompanied was presided over
by Archbishop Colloredo.

The solo singers, organ continuo, strings and winds occupied two galleries in the Cathedral crossing, on the east side, where they were conducted by the
Kapellmeister (in the north-east gallery). When trumpets and timpani were added, these musicians would be set apart in additional galleries on the west
side of the crossing. Down below, on the gallery floor just in front of the altar, would be placed the choir with its own organ continuo. Besides the eight
‘Choralisten’, who sang plainchant in the service (four of whom doubled as violinists), the choir consisted of 21 ‘Chorherren’ or Gentlemen of the Choir,
of whom 3 were altos, 9 tenors, and 9 basses; and 15 ‘Kapellknaben’ or choirboys, of whom 10 were sopranos and 5 altos, making a total of 36. As
Leopold’s 1757 report makes clear, two to three boy sopranos and two to three boy altos received additional training so as to be able to sing occasional
solos.

The chief vocal soloists, however, were the Hofsänger or court singers. Women’s voices were forbidden in Salzburg Cathedral, so soprano solos would
be taken either by one of the boy sopranos or by one of roughly five castrati in the Court music. In the 1770s, the principal castrato was Francesco
Ceccarelli (1752-1814), who was most likely the soloist in K321. He sang the solo in Mozart’s Mass in B-flat major (K275, 1777), and in his Litaniae de
venerabili altaris sacramento (K243, 1778); and in addition to being an admired performer, he was also a good friend of the Mozart family, and frequently
visited their home for informal musical salons. As for tenor soloists – such as featured in the Regina angelorum of this recording’s K195 – Mozart had
plenty to choose from in the 1770s. The Court singers typically included two to three tenors and two to three basses, but in the 1770s there was a
‘bumper crop’ of five tenors, including Franz Anton Spitzeder (1735-1796), who was another close family friend of the Mozarts and for whom Wolfgang
wrote several operatic roles, including the role of the Christian Spirit in his first oratorio, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots (K35, 1767).

LITANIAE LAURETANAE K195 (1774)

The Litany of Loreto, or Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, consists of a series of glorifications of and petitions to the Virgin Mary. As a Catholic rite it
dates back to the sixteenth century, and it was often celebrated at Salzburg Cathedral during Holy Week and the ‘Marian’ month of May, and also year-
round on Saturdays at Salzburg’s Wallfahrtskirche (Pilgrimage Church) of Maria Plain in nearby Bergheim. K195 is the second of two Litaniae Lauretanae
composed by Mozart in the early 1770s, and it is divided into five movements, according to the traditional break points for musical settings. The Kyrie
opens with a gentle Adagio, followed by an exuberant Allegro, with the soloists and choir alternating in passages of predominantly homophonic or lightly
imitative texture. Sequencing of phrases predominates, while the whole is structured according to sonata-form principles, as with many multi-movement
sacred works in this period.

The next movement, a lilting Sancta Maria, opens with the soprano solo in an extended cantabile statement of nine lines of the litany. In keeping with
standard practice for litany settings, several of the ‘ora pro nobis’ (pray for us) passages are omitted in the setting. This helps avoid excessive repetition,
while allowing Mozart to employ the occasional ‘ora pro nobis’ as a textual cadence to a larger section of the movement. The relatively modest vocal line
is doubled by the upper strings, suggesting that Mozart’s original soloist in this litany might have been a choirboy rather than a castrato. After a duet for
the solo alto and tenor, the chorus responds with several iterations of ‘ora pro nobis’. Mozart gives this plea a special poignancy: just before the choir’s
final cadence, they sing ‘ora’ to a fully diminished seventh chord, forte, followed by two crotchets of silence before, in a piano dynamic, repeating ‘ora’ on
a half-diminished seventh chord. These dynamic and harmonic contrasts shade the former ‘ora’ as insistent, the second as more coaxing or hesitant.
Mozart returns to this gesture in the development section of the movement, putting it through several harmonic permutations to dramatic effect.

When one reads the text of the Salus infirmorum, one understands why it was common to set it as a separate movement, focusing as it does on the sick,
the sinner and the afflicted. Appropriately, Mozart sets this movement in the brittle key of B minor. The choir takes the first two lines of this portion of
the litany, with the soloists taking the response, as though attempting themselves to provide comfort even as they seek it in the Virgin Mary. When the
choir joins the soloists in the ‘ora pro nobis’, however, their motive is a pair of descending tritones in imitation, creating harsh dissonances that are further
intensified with a series of false relations and clashing suspensions. Mozart even indulges in parallel tritones – one can think of few better musical analogues
to disease and sin in eighteenth-century sacred music. The brief movement just barely manages to establish a major mode before trailing off, with the
‘distracted’ first violins meandering inconclusively toward a new key.

The violins’ destination is the D major of the Regina angelorum, a triple-metre Allegro con spirito that features the tenor soloist evoking the image of
Mary as Queen in two passages of extended operatic fireworks. It is a triumphant antidote to the gloom of the previous movement, as though performing
the very healing that the supplicant seeks in Mary. With octave leaps, extended coloratura and two ascents to a high A (as well as a descent to a low B),
this movement is a real showpiece for the tenor.

The litany closes with a slowly pulsing Agnus Dei, introduced by the oboes and horns in a wind chorale texture while the strings play con sordino (with
mutes). The movement is in ‘church aria’ style, with the soprano singing the invocations to responses from the tutti choir. The soprano line recalls the
tenor octave leaps from the prevous movement, but now in the context of a gentle Adagio. The final cadence, in which the tutti sopranos descend
chromatically down to their low D and the choir further shades its dynamic from a piano onto the hushed tonic chord, is sublime in its restraint.

CHURCH SONATA IN C K329 (1779)

Church sonatas were short instrumental works composed for performance during the Mass, between the Epistle and the Gospel. They were generally
scored for organ, most likely on the Coppel register (a ‘stopped’ rank with a flute-like quality) and a small ensemble of strings (first and second violins,
cello and bass). Of the seventeen church sonatas composed by Mozart between 1771 and 1780, K329 features the largest ensemble, with two oboes, two
horns, two trumpets and timpani added to the organ and strings (omitting viola); furthermore, it is one of only five church sonatas to include a solo part
for the organ. This expansion of the traditional orchestration suggests that K329 may have been composed for a special occasion, or at the very least, to
make a strong impression – it is, after all, the first church sonata Mozart composed following his appointment as Court Organist.

Like its fellow church sonatas, K329 is a brief but fully worked-out sonata-form movement. An opening fanfare topic announced by the ensemble in
unison gives way to an ebullient first-section theme led by the violins and oboes. These two parts split in the more lyrical second section, engaging in a
call-and-response pattern in G major, and it is here, with a thinner texture, that the organ makes its first appearance as a solo part. Toward the close of the
exposition, the oboes have a cantabile phrase in parallel sixths, with a sighing appoggiatura figure that is reinforced by the organ. When this closing section
returns in the recapitulation, Mozart reverses the roles, giving the cantabile phrase in sixths to the solo organ and the appoggiatura punctuation to the
oboes. It’s a pleasing bit of symmetry to lead into the final bars of the work, in which a restatement of the opening fanfare rounds things off with a flourish.

VESPERAE DE DOMINICA K321 (1779)

Mozart’s autograph of K321 does not indicate what type of Vespers service he had in mind. The title it later acquired, ‘Vesperae de Dominica’ (Sunday
Vespers), is a bit of a misnomer, since the choice of psalms (109, 110, 111, 112, 116) matches that of the ‘Vesperae de Confessore’ rather than a Sunday
Vespers (as one can see from a comparison with K339, identified correctly as a ‘Vesperae de Confessore’). These particular psalms belong also to the first
Vespers of Pentecost and Trinity (both Sundays of course), and it is possible that K321 may have been originally performed at Pentecost on 23 May, 1779,
as this is one of only two Vespers services recorded by Mozart’s sister Nannerl (a devoted churchgoer) in her diary. The inclusion of trumpets and timpani
clearly denotes a special feast-day presided over by the Archbishop himself. The psalm settings may later have been reused on an ordinary Sunday, from
which it subsequently derived its title ‘de Dominica’.

Within the context of the service, the Dixit Dominus and the four other psalm settings would be sung together before the reading; the Magnificat
followed the reading, responsory and hymn. K321’s Dixit is, appropriately, exuberant and grand, but the choir also introduces a motif that Mozart will
use in several subsequent movements: a meandering descending melodic passage, often initiated in the sopranos, rich with chromaticism, used as a hinge-
point to another key area. An episode of alternating soli and tutti passages follows, with expressive word-painting at passages such as ‘die irae suae’ (day of
his wrath).

The next movement, Confitebor tibi, changes tone significantly, moving from the brilliant, martial C major of the preceding movement to a subdued E-
minor minuet. The opening texture is very light, with the soprano solo accompanied only by the violins and cello, and the organ playing tasto, i.e. with
only the left hand. Sighing figures make for a tender counterpoint to the soprano line, in keeping with the private expression of faith of the first line of the
psalm. When the tutti choir enters on ‘Magna opera Domini’ (The works of the Lord are great), the four-bar crescendo from piano to forte makes a
dramatic impact. The meandering descending chromatic motif returns several times in the tutti in this movement, as does word-painting on ‘fidelia’ and
‘terribile’, and the movement ends with the same quiet intensity as it began.

Mozart is adept at catching the different moods of each psalm, and his Beatus vir is as expansive and assured as his Confitebor was moody and questioning.
This movement also contains the work’s only instance of a polytextual setting, where more than one text is enunciated at once. It was a time-saving device
commonly resorted to by Salzburg composers at the time – as Leopold observes in several letters, Archbishop Colloredo ordered that mass settings
should take no more than 45 minutes, and other service music had to be equally short. At one point, the bass, soprano and alto solo sing simultaneously
three different lines of text. Given how little real time this actually saves, however, the motivation probably had more to do with a display of Mozart’s
compositional dexterity than watching the clock. The last line of the psalm, with its prophesies about the ungodly ‘gnashing their teeth’ and wasting away,
gives Mozart ample opportunity for evocative word-painting.

Laudate pueri is in many ways the most startling movement of the entire work. It is scored only for tutti chorus, with the orchestra essentially doubling
the voices. It begins in strict fugal counterpoint (in fact with a canon 4 in 1), evoking the church style of ages past. But this is no archaism or retro curio.
Instead, Mozart begins to introduce galant-style melodies, chromaticisms and modulations, beginning at the point in the text that describes God
‘humbling himself to behold the things that are in heaven and earth’. The strings then start adding ornaments and flourishes, and when the chorus arrives
at the words ‘populi sui’ (his people), an enharmonic respelling of F-sharp to G-flat underscores a remarkable harmonic swerve from C minor to B-flat
major. It’s the kind of modulation that is so distant, and dissonant, as to practically dare a traditionalist (or an Archbishop) to take offence. We are
witnessing, in real time, the infiltration of the stile moderno into the stile antico.

After this look backward, the next movement, Laudate Dominum, embraces the present. An operatic ‘church aria’, it features the soprano soloist
accompanied by strings, continuo and a fully scored, obbligato organ part. One can almost hear Ceccarelli and Mozart reading this movement out
together at one of their informal salons in the Mozart family home. Ceccarelli must have had a masterful instrument, as evidenced by the florid coloratura
passages, which often end with an ornamental turn that is then echoed by the organ, in a delicate bit of play. There is even a fermata, appropriately enough,
on ‘aeternum’ – one wonders how long Ceccarelli might have dared to hold the note, and whether the mischievous Mozart may have intended it as a
private joke.

Dynamic contrasts prevail in the closing Magnificat, in which the trumpets and timpani return to join the ensemble. The soli alternate with the tutti in a
high Baroque church style. But after the chorus intones the final verse of the text, a unison fanfare figure in the strings heralds a change of character for the
‘Gloria Patri’. The first violins perform a sprightly descending arpeggio figure in staccato quavers, with a fortepiano on the last beat of each bar. It’s a
motif that would not be out of place in a comic opera, and its buffo quality seems incongruous, until at the ‘saecula saeculorum’ it returns as the
countersubject to the choir’s imitative entrances. This reinforces the reconciliation between stile antico and stile moderno first broached in the Laudate pueri.
Mozart was already indulging in his gift for blending old and new, a feature of much of his music all the way through to Die Zauberflöte (K620, 1791) and
the Requiem (K626, 1791).

© Adeline Mueller, 2013.

References:
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1957).
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(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1959).
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557.
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