PREVIOUS: GLORIA
Credo in unum Deum – C major
Allegro maestoso (“fast, majestic”)
Five-part chorus
Soprano 1 section—highest note high A
Soprano 2 section—highest note high A
Longest, Girolami (4:08); shortest, Langreé (2:53)
This movement and the next were incompletely scored by Mozart and have invited much tinkering by editors. The major task is re-imagining the second violin and viola parts, which are mostly blank in the autograph. Schmitt (1901) fills in the strings and adds flutes and clarinets. Fifty years later, Landon’s version (1956), which has become the standard, adds tasteful, vigorous string parts, eliminates Schmitt’s flutes and clarinets, and does not add any new instruments. Twenty-one of my 43 recordings are either Landon’s edition or, where the liner notes do not specify, almost certainly so, based on the sound.
The music is a joyful, bright, exultant, driving five-voice Type I chorus, again requiring a high A from both soprano sections. In the orchestral introduction, a galloping sound in the strings is followed by a phrase in the oboes, bassoons, and horns that sounds to me like a barnyard full of happy cackling chickens, similar to the vocal melismas of the same description in the previous movement. This woodwind phrase recurs three more times while the chorus are singing. While most conductors (including Gardiner in my examples) relegate it to the background, I particularly like the sound when the singers and the chickens gallop together.
The structure of the movement is an expanded A-B-A. Each A section starts with the same strong, joyous choral theme and each has a different second half, so call it A-A’-B-A’’-coda. Nothing fancy there.
But imitative voices abound, and these get quite fancy. At times they come so close together, all we are really aware of is a repeated echo sound between voice groups, which must be quite impressive in a live performance. In the B section alone, which is entirely imitative, there are 28 echoing voice entries in about 40 seconds of music, or one every 1.4 seconds. The ear can’t hear them all, but listening to the individual snippets several times in a row can help sort them out.
The orchestral introduction presents the galloping theme in strings and woodwinds.
A
- The chorus sing their main theme and join the ride, followed by 5 imitative voice entries, 1 for each voice, at “Et invisibilium“:
- S1-S2-T-B-A
A’ The words of the Latin mass have lots of similar endings, but the phrases do not rhyme with each other as such (though Mozart and many other composers often create nice moments for the internal half-rhyme, “In nomine Domini”, in “Benedictus”). Here in the main theme of the A’ section, Mozart uses the rhythm of the choral theme to make what has to be the most creative rhyme I have heard in any mass setting.
He sets the line, “Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum“ (“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God”) as if there is no comma after “Christum”. The rhythm comes out with strong beats at the end of each line, as if the words were written expressly for this music:
His childhood friend Cajetan Hagenauer was still at St. Peter’s monastery (and indeed would become its abbot in 1786) and must have attended the performance. I wonder if this blatant, wonderful rhyme was a teasing reminder that Cajetan sometimes used to put accents on the wrong syllables (see “K66” and “K262”).
- There follow 7 imitative voice entries at “Ante omnia saecula“:
- (S1-S2-A-S1-S2-A-S1)
B
- There are 8 imitative voice entrances at “Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine“:
- T/B-S1/S2/A—T/B-S1/S2/A—T/B-S1/S2/A—T/B-S1/S2/A
- There are 2 imitative entrances at “Deum verum de Deo vero”:
- S1/S2/A-T/B
- There are 8 imitative voice entrances at “Genitum, non factum“:
- S1/S2/A-T/B—S1/S2/A-T/B—S1/S2/A-T/B—S1/S2/A-T/B
- There are 4 imitative voice entrances at “Consubstantialem Patri”:
- B-T-S1-S2
- There are 6 imitative voice entries at “Per quem omnia facta sunt”:
- S1-T-B-S1-T-B
A” The choral theme returns once more, leading to a coda on “Descendit de caelis“, which goes down, then up (another “ghost” theme), then decidedly down.
Maunder’s edition (1988) expands the woodwind and horn parts well past their brief appearances in Mozart’s autograph, but also presents a radical departure from Landon which you can identify instantly. He writes that he cannot believe that this movement, as joyous and festive as “Gloria in excelsis Deo”, should not similarly have trumpets, trombones, and timpani, so he boldly throws them in, starting in the second measure at the same time as the chickens, which then become hopelessly lost.
The first recording of Maunder’s completion is by Hogwood, whom I previously excoriated for his fast and flippant sound in “Qui tollis”. He also races through “Credo in unum Deum” with the second fastest time of all 43 recordings at 3:06, but this movement, especially with the additional instruments, works well fast. His “Credo” is electrifying. Credit where it’s due.
The Levin, Langreé, and Wolf editions also add trumpets, trombones, and timpani (one recording each). You can tell the difference from Maunder easily, as they start right at the beginning, opposite the chickens. Here is Rilling’s 2005 recording using Levin’s edition. Alas, none of the three conductors using these editions notices that chickens are available to be heard opposite the brass and drums when the chorus are singing, which would have created a terrific antiphonal effect.
What a difference in sound the brass and drums make! I won’t say that once you hear them you’ll never go back to Landon, but the addition makes wonderful sense and I can’t help but feel that Mozart would love it, whether he intended it or not. Suffice it to say that “Credo” sounds just great with or without trumpets, trombones, and timpani, even if the chickens get drowned out by the chorus.
I’ll bet Herbert Kegel, who conducts 13 of the 16 Salzburg masses in the Philips set, could have found a way to make us hear the chorus, the brass and drums, and the woodwinds simultaneously. Alas, if Kegel ever recorded this mass—and he must have—nobody knows about it anymore.
Et incarnatus est – F major
[Andante ma sostenuto] (“walking speed, but sustained”)
Solo soprano—highest notes high B flat and high C
Longest, Welser-Möst (9:56); shortest, Christie (6:40)
Mozart did not indicate a tempo marking for this glorious soprano showpiece. Editors have adopted the tempo of the aria “Se il padre perdei” from Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo”, K366, which has a similar sound emphasizing voice and a trio of solo woodwinds: flute, oboe, and bassoon. The opportunistic Ilia, whose father has just been killed, having lost the Trojan War, says she will now happily embrace Crete as her home and its king, Idomeneo, as her father, and has completely forgotten the pain of her loss—a sentiment not worthy of the music.
I much prefer the comparisons to the “Laudate Dominum” of Mozart’s “Vespers” K339, which bears the slightly different marking “Andante ma un poco sostenuto” (“walking speed, but a little sustained”). Though without the woodwinds, this gentle, swaying song is in the same key and time signature as “Et incarnatus est”, and the words and music are in perfect open and unaffected synchrony: “Praise the Lord, all nations, praise Him, all people”.
And open and unaffected is how this movement should sound. Once again, I think Mozart is suggesting something personal. This soprano solo of incomparable tenderness, perhaps the most beautiful song ever written, represents the third side of Constanze—wife, friend, companion, soulmate.
It is pure pillow talk, a duet between Wolfie and Stanze snuggling chastely under the covers, whispering about their hopes and dreams for the future. The voice is Constanze; the woodwinds, particularly the oboe, are Wolfgang.
Like “Credo in unum Deum”, what we have of this movement was only partially scored by Mozart. He wrote out completely the bass accompaniment and the parts for voice, flute, oboe, and bassoon. The violin and viola parts end with the entrance of the singer and resume only at the end after she stops singing. The string additions from editors are uniformly tasteful and unobtrusive. Some add horns, but the difference in sound is negligible.
I would call the structure a rhapsodic A-B-A-B’-cadenza structure, but it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is to listen and be absorbed into the sound.
The main theme of the A section appears at the end of a leisurely orchestral introduction. The vocal phrases are interspersed with comments from the woodwind trio.
The B section involves dreamy melismas, some of it echoed by the oboe. Buy the versions of Jochum, Paumgartner, or Girolami at your peril, as they take Schmitt’s deletions of the melismas here and in the B’ section, which absolutely ruin the flow and any sense of conversation.
The A theme returns. The B’ section begins with two big jumps, followed by the same vocal runs.
The mesmerizing cadenza, accompanied only by the solo oboe, flute, and bassoon, runs nearly two minutes, but seems to suspend time forever. I have tried to cut the snippet down to a representative portion, but I just can’t. It represents a perfect moment suspended in time and can’t be divided.
One individual touch that must be acknowledged is in Shaw’s recording, where the soprano and the woodwinds do the trill at the end of the cadenza as two slow alternating notes in complete rhythmic synchrony. Now that’s a goodnight kiss!
This movement is easier to defend as church music than the previous two solos, because the intimacy also suggests prayerfulness.
NEXT: SANCTUS
