This recording features a new edition of the Mass that aims to make the fragment performable by completing instrumentation without adding new compositional material.
Recording & Production
This album includes a bonus track of the "Credo" based on Mozart's incomplete autograph, without completed instrumental parts, for comparison with the new edition.
Composer Biography
Constanze Mozart, the composer's wife, sang one of the demanding soprano parts in the Mass's only performance during Mozart's lifetime in Salzburg.
Composition History
Mozart later reused eight movements from the Kyrie and Gloria of the C Minor Mass in his oratorio "Davide penitente" (Penitent David), KV 469.
Composition History
A popular story suggests Mozart abandoned the Mass after the death of his infant son, Raimund Leopold, as he was composing the "Et incarnatus est" movement, which deals with birth.
Composition History
Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, KV 427, is a fragment; he stopped composing it at the "Et incarnatus est" movement, and the Agnus Dei and Dona nobis pacem are entirely missing.
Historical Context
The C Minor Mass's grand scale was unusual for its time and may have conflicted with the prevailing Reform Catholicism, which could explain why Mozart did not complete it.
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