1 CD - 9031-72304-2 - (p) 1992

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)





Missa C major, KV 257 "Credo"
24' 54"
- Kyrie 2' 13"
1
- Gloria 3' 15"
2
- Credo 8' 08"
3
- Sanctus 1' 19"
4
- Benedictus 4' 31"
5
- agnus Dei - Dona nobis 5' 28"
6
Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento, KV 243
35' 58"
- Kyrie 3' 05"
7
- Panis vivus 4' 57"
8
- Verbum caro factum 1' 21"
9
- Hostia sancta 4' 27"
10
- Tremendum 3' 21"
11
- Dulcissimum convivium 4' 26"
12
- Viaticum 2' 07"
13
- Pignus 5' 49"
14
- Agnus Dei - Miserere 6' 25"
15



 
"Missa Credo" "Litaniae"

Angela Maria Blasi, Sopran Angela Maria Blasi, Sopran
Elisabeth von Magnus, Alt Elisabeth von Magnus, Alt
Deon van der Walt, Tenor Deon van der Walt, Tenor
Alastair Miles, Baß Alastair Miles, Baß

Arnold Schönberg Chor / Erwin Ortner, Einstudierung Arnold Schönberg Chor / Erwin Ortner, Einstudierung

CONCENTUS MUSICUS WIEN (mit Originalinstrumenten)
 CONCENTUS MUSICUS WIEN (mit Originalinstrumenten)
- Erich Höbarth, Violine
 - Erich Höbarth, Violine
- Alice Harnoncourt, Violine - Alice Harnoncourt, Violine
- Anita Mitterer, Violine - Anita Mitterer, Violine
- Andrea Bischof, Violine - Andrea Bischof, Violine
- Peter Schoberwalter, Violine - Peter Schoberwalter, Violine
- Helmut Mitter, Violine - Karl Höffinger, Violine
- Karl Höffinger, Violine - Helmut Mitter, Violine
- Walter Pfeiffer, Violine - Walter Pfeiffer, Violine
- Silvia Walch, Violine - Silvia Walch, Violine
- Maighread McCrann, Violine - Maighread McCrann, Violine
- Annemarie Ortner, Violine - Annemarie Ortner, Violine
- Mary Utiger, Violine - Mary Utiger, Violine
- Edith Fetz, Violine - Edith Fetz, Violine
- Gerold Klaus, Violine - Gerold Klaus, Violine
- Christian Tachezi, Violine - Christian Tachezi, Violine
- Peter Schoberwalter junior, Violine - Peter Schoberwalter junior, Violine
- Herwig Tachezi, Violoncello - Kurt Theiner, Viola
- Dorothea Guschlbauer, Violoncello - Johannes Flieder, Viola
- Eduard Hruza, Violone - Lynn Pascher, Viola
- Andrew Ackerman, Violone - Charlotte Geselbracht, Viola
- Hans Peter Westermann, Oboe - Herwig Tachezi, Violoncello
- Marie Wolf, Oboe - Dorothea Guschlbauer, Violoncello
- Trudy van der Wulp, Fagott - Eduard Hruza, Violone
- Christian Beuse, Fagott - Andrew Ackerman, Violone
- Friedemann Immer, Naturtrompete - Robert Wolf, Traverflöte
- Andreas Lackner, Naturtrompete - Sylvie Sumereder, Traverflöte
- Martin Kerschbaum, Pauken - Hans Peter Westermann, Oboe
- Ernst Hoffmann, Posaune - Marie Wolf, Oboe
- Josef Ritt, Posaune - Trudy van der Wulp, Fagott
- Horst Küblböck, Posaune - Christian Beuse, Fagott
- Herbert Tachezi, Orgel - Hector McDonald, Naturhorn

- Alois Schlor, Naturhorn

- Ernst Hoffmann, Posaune

- Josef Ritt, Posaune

- Horst Küblböck, Posaune

- Herbert Tachezi, Orgel

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Leitung

 
Luogo e data di registrazione
Pfarrkirche, Stainz (Austria) - luglio 1991
Registrazione live / studio
studio
Producer / Engineer
Renate Kupfer / Wolfgang Mohr / Helmut Mühler / Michael Brammann
Prima Edizione CD
Teldec "Das Alte Werk" - 9031-72304-2 - (1 cd) - 61' 28" - (p) 1992 - DDD
Prima Edizione LP
-

Notes
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart paid a visit to the Leipzig Thomaskirche in l789. During his visit there he had occasion to speak with the Cantor of St. Thomas, Johann Sebastian Bach’s pupil Friedrich Doles, an encounter we know of from Doles. (Friedrich Rochlitz, Authentische Anekdoten aus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart's Leben; AMZ 1800/1801, p. 494) Speaking as a Roman Catholic, Mozart voiced his concern about Doles' Protestant perception of the Mass: “You do not sense at all the sentiment of Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem and passages of the like... but as for me, initiated from earliest childhood in the mystic holiness of our religion, when I knew not where to turn with my shrouded yet ardent impulse to believe - without so much as a clue as to why that feeling was there - when I found myself in anxious and heartfelt anticipation of worshipping in church and then parted the service uplifted and relieved in spirit, yet not knowing what I had just partaken of, when I knew those who knelt down to the moving sound of the Agnus Dei for Holy Communion to be joyful, and upon receiving Communion heard how the music expressed their heartfelt ioy with the words Benedictus qui venit etc.; to me then there is a difference." Mozart himself admitted to having lost a fair amount of this childlike happiness and trust in God by virtue of worldly experiences. What remained was Mozart's thankfully received experience of God ”as the key to our true contentment." (Letter of April 4, 1787 to his father)
It is of course not imperative that a consideration of Mozart’s sacred compositions also take his personal faith into account. His sacred settings are in their own right primarily works of art with inherent dictates of their own. Even so, any attempt to shed light on the question of Mozart's religious nature will also add valuable insight to one’s understanding of his Masses, Litanies and other church compositions. Mozart’s childhood had after all been spent in the sovereign diocese of Salzburg which maintained close ties with the archiepiscopal court. Attending church was an understood everyday rite in any young person’s life. The abundance of sacred music played and sung within the sumptuous confines of Salzburg Cathedral was to be a mainstay in forming his musical taste. Mozart was able to take the bravissimo contrapunctista Cajetan Adlgasser, Michael Haydn and not least of all his own father and rnenton Leopold Mozart, as models in the development of his church style. The further experience Mozart was able to gain by hearing glorious sacred settings during three trips to Italy, the musical ”Promised Land," also left deep impressions on him.
The majority of Mozart’s liturgical compositions stem from his duties as Concertmaster at Salzburg's archiepiscopal court starting in November of 1769. Even if it is true that Hieronyrnus Graf von Colloredo-Waldsee, installed as Archbishop of Salzburg in 177l, felt that service music needed to serve the rational and functional ideas of the Age of Reason - a view far different from that held by his predecessor Archbishop Sigismund Graf von Schrattenbach who was enamored of pomp and splendour in service music - Masses were nevertheless scored "with all instruments, with trumpets and timpani.” Mozart reports to Padre Martini on September 4, 1776 that a mass was not to exceed three quarters of an hour in length. Mozart greeted this imposed limitation with scorn but rose to the occasion as well, composing six Masses from March 1775 to September l777.
Among the six was the C Major Mass, K. 257, known as the Great Credo Mass, as oppossed to the Small Credo Mass, K. 192. The title refers to the extended Credo movement which forms a culminating juncture within the Mass: Christ becomes Man and His Crucifixion. The motif given to the word “Credo” consists of four tones which become what H. Abert calls a “liturgical motto,” emphatically recurring eighteen times.
Mozart research does well to mark a turning point in his settings of the Ordinary with the Credo Mass, K. 257. There appears to be no extant work which served as a model for this composition. Mozart blithely transgresses formal boundaries, combining aspects known to him from the symphonic, operatic and concerto form while not forgetting the prototype ot the traditional Salzburg Mass. The art of counterpoint plays a lesser role while at the same time taking on "new meaning” (A. Einstein). Mozart also seeks new avenues when shaping the melodic line, crafting simple and profoundly expressive personal statements. Ho also assigns three trombones to the instrumental complement for the first time. As it was, this practice had been generally understood - an unwritten law, so to speak - in Salzburg for quite some time. The brevity called for by Colloredo required other formal solutions: this would be the explanation for the almost total lack of repeat signs and, with the exception of the Agnus Dei, the reason why all movements are through-composed. The Mass, first performed in Salzburg in November of 1776, exists in autograph, “copied with utmost care and beauty" (W. Plath).
On Palm Sunday of the same year the Litaniae de veneiabili altaris sacramento, K. 243, could be heard in the Salzburg Cathedral. It has been the practice since early Christian times to sing a sacramental litany during the Eucharist. Southern German and Austrian areas displayed a predilection for songs of praise or prayers of supplication with recurring acclamations of ”rniserere nobis” ("Have mercy on us"). Mozart relied on the multiple movement cantata form he had become acquainted with while in Italy to formalize his setting of the Ordinary for divine-service. And once again he was faced with considerable formal problems for which he devised ingenious solutions - the antiphonal exchange between the choir and solo voices, the highly dramatic, virtuoso coloratura arias, Panis vivus and Pignus (Movements 2 and 8), and notably the thematic coupling of the opening Kyrie and the closing Agnus Dei. The amount of thematic material assigned to the instruments is also worthy of note. Numerous instruments are given concertizing parts on equal footing with the vocal parts. The symphonist in Mozart makes itself evident not only in the contrasting thematic material and finely differentiated dynamic shadings, but also in the orchestral timbre and cunning harmonic modulations.
Even if the conversation between Mozart and Doles never did take place at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, both settings of the Ordinary, K. 243 and K. 257, make clear how deeply moving these "words heard a thousand times over” were to Mozart.
Ingeborg Allihn
Translation: Matthew Harris

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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