The Carolina Catholic Chorale (based in Charlotte, NC) just sang K. 258 w/ orchestra for a Solemn High Latin Mass for the Feast of the Ascension on 05/25/17. We paired it with his Jubilate Deo from Benedictus sit Deus (K. 117). Simply glorious music that is at its best in the liturgy.
BE SURE that you go and study the English translation of ALL of these movements. especially the Credo; speak the English translations as each stanza is sung. The experience WILL BE one you want to perform as a stress relief strategy.
DeAuntre Alex What’s really cool about music like this is that, if you speak a Romance Language (I speak Spanish), the words are still easily understood. It’s very cool to get the meaning of the text within the context of the music at the same time - you can plainly see how the music was designed to convey the meaning of the words.
Some would take umbrage at the fact that this Missa Brevis in C-major lacks ‘middle voices of divided violas’ - which during Nativity masses were forbidden in many churches in Austrian as ‘being too sensual’ - which cause ‘a big hole in the middle’ of the orchestration - but M. was able quite deftly to get around these obnoxious restrictions by having the second violin and organ continue & oboes to help fill in the gap in harmony (which must have irked him no end) - as well as the fact that Prince Archbishop Colloredo kept shortening the length of sung masses in Salzburg (‘My work has been cut again ! Before long that fatuous Arch Booby’s sung masses will have been trimmed down to barely five minutes - that is, if he has his way !’) M. wrote to the famous contrapuntalist Padre Martini of Bologna in 1776 with an example (K. 222) of his latest contrapuntal efforts - still in progress-to get some competent feedback from the great master himself - It had been written a year before in March 1775 at the behest of the Elector of Mannheim who after La Finta Giardiniera (K. 196) wanted to hear an example of the young boy’s contrapuntal skills… The letter to Bologna was revealing for the kind of irksome restrictions placed on Salzburg composers - - (‘We here in Salzburg are unfortunately suffering greatly at the moment for lack of established local professional singers which naturally (unlike you fortunate Italians !) hamper the production of operas here - and as for the sung Mass, our Archbishop demands that no Mass may ever last longer than 45-minutes from start to finish - even the most solemn ones - which willy-nilly forces composers here to set the sacred words of the established Latin text in an unnaturally truncated fashion which is not the way sung Masses should be composed - and is never the case in Italy !’) This charming Mass dating from December 1776 is just such an example of a ‘Missa Brevis’ where M. was ‘forced by orders-from-headquarters’ to spit out in such an unnaturally truncated fashion - but the music shines through despite all these unnecessary restrictions on his ever-flowing melodic genius …
DeAuntre Alex These 3 C Major missa brevis settings (K. 257, 258, and 259) are all wonderful. My favorite of the three is K. 257...sorry to be THAT guy :P
Another beautiful Mozart Mass - but not well enunciated by the chorus; and as most often they do, Germanic speaking choruses and soloists incorrectly use the Classical Latin pronunciation instead of the correct Ecclesiastical Latin as intended by St. Gregory the Great. Signor Harnoncourt knows better and should have corrected them immediately.
