MOZART AND THE PRACTICE OF SACRED MUSIC, 1781-91 a ...

often accompanied her (Madame Mozart) when she used to sing it to him, and contained a little
cadenza at the end in his own handwriting and which he had written on purpose for his wife and
at her request. 95
In the 1790s, Constanze appeared in several public concerts as a soloist in excerpts from Lo
sposo deluso and La clemenza di Tito, 96 and at an undetermined point she acquired a
manuscript collection of Canzonette diverse, now preserved in Salzburg. 97 Schönfeld’s
Jahrbuch notes that “Madame Mozart... spielt Klavier, und singt ganz artig.” 98 Clearly,
Constanze was capable of singing some of her husband’s more challenging vocal works to his
satisfaction, and Mozart’s apparent dedications to her of K. 393 and K. 440 speaks to his
confidence in her abilities. 99
When did Mozart start work on K. 427, and how well does the forensic evidence
square with the biographical contexts established above? The general scholarly consensus
dates the commencement of the project to the second half of 1782, placing it with the
“Haffner” Symphony K. 385, the Rondo in A K. 386, the first of the “Haydn” Quartets K.
387 and, rather less certainly, the Piano Concerto in A K. 414. The mass was evidently
underway by January 1783, when Mozart mentioned it in the letter to Leopold quoted
above. This letter, however, provides at most a terminus ad quem for the beginning of work
on K. 427, together with an indication that composition had proceeded to a significant
degree. We shall never know, however, precisely what lay behind Mozart’s reference to the
“half” of a mass already in existence, either in terms of its overall conception or in the state of
the individual movements at that time. 100
95 Ibid., 217-18. See MVC, 2076.
96 Deutsch, Dokumente, 416-21.
97 Cliff Eisen, “The Mozarts' Salzburg Music Library,” in Mozart Studies 2, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997), 119-21.
98 Schönfeld, Jahrbuch der Tonkunst, 43.
99 The sketchleaf Skb 1782b, which contains a number of sketches related to the C minor Mass, was headed by
Mozart “Vom Pimberl und vom Stanzerl.” “Pimberl” is presumably a reference the Mozarts’ pet dog.
100 Schmid’s inference that Mozart must have been at work on the Credo by this point cannot be confirmed by
the available evidence; Manfred Hermann Schmid, “Bildintentionen in Mozarts C-Moll-Messe,” Acta
mozartiana 42 (1995): 2.
96