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

however, to assume that these various motivations were mutually exclsuive, and given the
relatively extended period for the mass’s composition, it is likely that Mozart’s motivations
for writing the piece evolved as work proceeded. Just as the mass offers a compendium of the
styles available to a late eighteenth-century composer of sacred music, so the work may have
come to embody Mozart’s sense of thanksgiving and collective hopes for the future –
aspirations that were not necessarily well-defined or consistent.
It may be that the performance at St. Peter’s provided the necessary catharsis for the
composer, making any further work on the unfinished mass redundant or at least considered
of lower priority. In the later 1780s, when Mozart showed increasing signs of interest in
sacred music, it is perhaps significant that he chose to begin several new masses rather than
return to work on the unfinished C minor mass. It has been suggested that the death of
Mozart’s two-month-son Raimund Leopold in August 1783 was a factor in the composer’s
failure to complete the mass: supposedly the words “et homo factus est” hit too close to
home, and Mozart abandoned the work out of grief. 188 This seems to be an over-simplistic
take on the relationship between Mozart’s life and Mozart’s music. There are indeed times
where external pressures do seem to have taken their toll on Mozart’s productivity: in 1790,
for example, when the composer’s fortunes were literally at their lowest ebb, he seems to have
written very little. But there are also instances of Mozart coping with the greatest of
bereavements – the death of his mother, or the death of three further children – and
maintaining his usual remarkable productivity. This is not to suggest that such events were
any less traumatic in an age where high infant mortality was the norm, but rather that the
relationship between Mozart’s environment and his creativity was complex and not easily
188 A psycho-analytical take on K. 427 is Daniel Cadieux, “Linzer Schmerzensmann. De La Grande Messe En
Ut Mineur K. 427 Au Fatasme 'Ein Kind Wird Geschlagen',” in Mozart-Jahrbuch 2002 (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
2003), 37-86.
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