J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

enewed application to this task. Whilst ambivalent about musical life in Salzburg as a
whole, the letter Mozart wrote to Padre Martini on 4 September 1776 expresses
pleasure in the fact that, as the son of the Kapellmeister, he has ‘an opportunity of
writing as much church music as I like’, and regards the particular limitations of the
forty-five minute Salzburg service as a challenge to be met as much as a burden to be
borne. 59
Leaving aside the doubtful question of how much a composer’s attitude toward
their works should determine our own, there is also the ambiguity of Mozart’s own
faith. Few have questioned Joseph Haydn’s patent devotion, and the sincerity of its
expression in his music. Mozart, too, when it suited him, sought to give a devout
impression to his father; but not even his strongest protestations (which may, perhaps,
have been quite sincere) can entirely allay the suspicion that his church music is a kind
of impeccably professional equivocation. Thus Tovey: ‘Under mundane conditions,
art may attain three heavens: one, the highest, which is above all conflicts; the second,
where an artist enjoys accommodating himself to his world and is above consciousness
of his irony; and the lowest; but still a heaven, in which he writes with his tongue in
his cheek. Below this lies hell, into which Mozart did not descend even in his church
music.’ 60 The question of how far Mozart’s tongue was in his cheek remains open; but
there is still much pleasure and interest to be found in the masses he wrote before he
came to Vienna.
Curiously, most of his earliest church music appears to have originated outside
Salzburg: a Kyrie, K.33 (Paris, 1766), a lost Stabat Mater (between Paris and Salzburg,
1766), an Offertorium ‘Scande coeli limina’, K.34 (Seeon, 1767), and the first two
masses, K.49/47d and 139/47a (Vienna, 1768). K.49/47d is probably Mozart’s first
complete mass, and contrasts strongly with Haydn’s Hob.XXII:1. If Haydn followed
59 Anderson, Mozart letters, vol. I, pp.385-88.
60 Analysis CCXXVIII: Mozart, Symphony in D major (Paris Symphony) K.297, Essays in musical
analysis, 6 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), vol. VI, p.20.
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