Mozart · Great Mass in C minor
"It is quite true about my moral obligation... I made the promise and hope to be able to keep it," Wolfgang Mozart wrote to his father on January 4, 1783. "When I made it," the letter continues, "my wife was still single; yet as I was determined to marry her soon after her recovery [the fragile Constanze, it might be noted, outlived her husband by 46 years] it was easy for me to make it - but as you yourself are aware, time and other circumstances made our journey impossible. The score of half a mass which is still lying here waiting to be finished, is the best proof that I really made the promise..."
The 'journey' referred to is almost certainly one from Vienna, where Wolfgang had moved in 1781, to his native Salzburg. The 'promise' was to write a major work for Salzburg, the 'half a mass', then, being the present gigantic torso. It is likely that the trip to Salzburg, which turned into a three-month-long sojourn, was also made for the purpose of introducing Constanze - whom he had married in August of 1782 - to his father, who had been displeased that his son had chosen a bride without his approval.
The letter contains the only reference Mozart himself ever made to K. 427, which was probably begun in July of 1782, after the finishing touches had been put to The Abduction from the Seraglio (the making of Mozart's reputation in Vienna as a composer for the stage) and sporadically worked on it the summer of '83. In the latter year he also produced the 'Haffner' Symphony, K. 385, and a trio of piano concertos (K. 413, 414, and 415), and the first two of his string quartets dedicated to Haydn. Sophisticated, sparkling wit, unbounded joie de vivre - all that worldly, happy stuff - characterize these compositions. And in their midst, towering above them, is this often dark, otherworldly giant.
The Mass was performed in its 'entirety', which is to say that Mozart must have borrowed from other works to make it complete and suitable for liturgical performance, on October 23, 1783, in the composer's presence - he may have presided at the organ. The venue was St. Peter's Church in Salzburg, where its annual performance as part of the Salzburg Festival remains a tradition to this day. It is likely that Constanze sang the high-lying first soprano part.
The Mass in C minor works, even if not as a work for the sacred service, as the composer left it. Why he left it, however, remains a matter of conjecture. Time for its completion seems to have been available in 1782, but perhaps not enough to satisfy the gigantic demands made to match what had already been written. Later, other projects simply took precedence - added to the fact that Mozart's gifts as a composer of choral music were decreasingly in demand as the Vienna years progressed.
But there is yet another seeming mystery regarding the Mass in C minor, only partially explained by the letter quoted above and the conclusions to be drawn from it: Why he wrote the Mass in the first place; why, freed from the tyranny of his employment at the Salzburg court and relocated to Vienna, where church music was not in demand (at least not of him), should Mozart have set himself such a task? He could readily have written something with greater practical application as an act of thanksgiving for Constanze's "recovery." The most logical explanation - supported to a considerable extent by the score itself - is the great discovery that Mozart made just before he started on this work: the music of the late-Baroque, most importantly that of Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel, which had until then been generally regarded as hopelessly dated. It was a discovery that forced Mozart to re-examine his values as a composer, to question - and this, again, is conjectural - whether moving backward, to embrace major stylistic ingredients of the age of Bach and Handel, didn't in fact indicate a sort of progress.
The notion of the music of the past feeding the present and future was by no means a common one at the time. Constant novelty was demanded by audiences then, with Vienna's being the most fickle audience of all. The only music heard in the city's fashionable salons was contemporary music. A living composer, especially one who, like Mozart, was a celebrated performer as well (in his case on the piano) could conceivably revive one of his hits of preceding seasons on occasion. But as for a repertoire to draw on, as we have and demand today, forget it.
If indeed Mozart suffered a Baroque-induced crisis, he cured himself of its depressive effects with a series of compositions - the solo piano Fantasia and Fugue, K. 394, the two-piano Fugue, K. 426, transcriptions for string trio from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and, most tellingly, portions of this Mass, with the Bach influence climaxing in the overwhelming double chorus of 'Qui tollis' and the double fugue of 'Cum Sancto Spiritu'.
To sum up, what Mozart did write for the C-minor Mass was the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo (through Et incarnatus est), Sanctus, and Benedictus. For Et incarnatus est, Mozart notated the vocal lines, the obbligatos for flute, oboe, and bassoon, and the bass, with the string parts having to be filled in by later editors. The Osanna lacks the customary second chorus, so that has had to be completed via clues provided by the orchestra parts.
read full text by Herbert Glass on laphil.com
Beethoven · Symphony No. 5
Struggle and Optimism
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was created during one of the most productive periods of his career. The very first sketches date back to 1803, but it wasn't until 1807 that he picked up the thread again—meanwhile, he completed his Violin Concerto and Fourth Symphony. One year later, he finished the Fifth Symphony along with the Sixth, and premiered them together on December 22, 1808, at the Theater an der Wien, during a marathon concert that he organized himself. The entire concert lasted more than four hours, featuring only his own repertoire: the debut of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, a fragment from his Choral Fantasy, parts of his Mass in C major, his complete Fourth Piano Concerto, an aria from Fidelio, and finally, a piano improvisation.
In the meantime, the opening motif of the Fifth Symphony has become ingrained in everyone's memory. Not surprisingly, it exudes enormous power. It recurs throughout the entire symphony: as the building block of the first movement, where it appears in almost every measure, but also in all the other movements. Beethoven transforms and places it in different contexts each time, like a character undergoing a development. This rhythmic motif propels the entire symphony forward. Two years after the premiere, the famous critic E.T.A. Hoffmann described this energy and coherence aptly:
"Thus Beethoven's instrumental music opens up for us the realm of the monstrous and the immeasurable. Glowing rays shoot through the deep night of this realm, and we become aware of giant shadows that wave up and down, close us in more and more narrowly, and annihilate everything in us except for the pain of infinite yearning, in which every pleasure ... sinks down and founders, and only in this pain, which, consuming within itself, but not destroying, love, hope, and joy, wants to burst open our breast with a full-voiced harmony of all passions, do we live on, enchanted spirit-seers."
Beethoven himself did not give his Fifth Symphony a subtitle; his biographer Anton Schindler did so by linking the theme of the first movement to Beethoven’s remark: “This is how fate knocks at the door.” It is far from certain that the composer referred to the first movement of the symphony with these words, but due to Schindler’s influence, the 'Fate Symphony' is often read as an autobiographical depiction of Beethoven’s resignation to fate—his increasing deafness. More likely, the work reflects Beethoven's resistance against that fate. The combative nature of the opening motif runs through the entire symphony and is reinforced towards the end by the transition from the key of C minor to the triumphant C major—a deliberate move by the composer.
