Our first concert for 2010 is Marvellous Mozart. The choir under the baton of musical director, Tony Hogg, is combining with the Whakatane Community Orchestra to present The Coronation Mass and Mozart Twelfth Mass. The orchestra is also performing the 1st movement of Symphony N40 and the adagio movement from Piano Concerto N21 (as performed in Elvira Madigan).
The Krönungsmesse (German for Coronation Mass) (Mass No. 15 in C major), composed in 1779, is one of the most popular of Mozart's 17 settings of the ordinary mass. This setting, like the majority of Mozart's mass settings, is a missa brevis or short mass (as opposed to the more formal Solemn Masses or High Masses). It includes fanfares, pageantry and the use of trumpets and trombones.This Mass was completed on March 23, 1779 in Saltzburg. Mozart had just returned to Saltzburg after 18 months of fruitless job hunting in Paris and Mannheim, in January 1779. His father, Leopold, promptly got him a job as court organist and composer in the Saltzburg Cathedral, and the organ features prominently in this work. It was almost certainly premiered on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1779 in the Salzburg Cathedral.
Mozart Twelfth Mass has had an interesting history in that later 20th century researchers have found it was not composed by Mozart himself but largely by a Wenzell Muller. Muller was understood to have been a pupil of Mozart. Since that discovery the mass seems to have sunk without a trace from mainstream choral music. There are no recordings of the full mass available although performances of the first part of the Gloria are available on U-Tube. Twelfth Mass, alongside the Requiem, was his most popular sacred work throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century and according to Mozart's biographer, Edward Holmes, "it rivalled Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflote in nineteenth century affections".
The concerts are being performed in The Church of St George and St John on Domain Road, Whakatane on Saturday, 26 June at 7.30pm and Sunday, 27 June.
Bibliography: Wikipedia - Coronation Mass; Mark Everist - "Current Research", Mozart Twelfth Mass.