These Mozart Masses (BA 7520-BA 7522) have been arranged for solo voices, chorus and organ from the Urtext of the “New Mozart Edition”, thereby making them accessible in all their beauty to choruses and church choirs with limited financial means at their disposal.
Martin Focke has based the “ concertante ” organ parts on the orchestral writing, doing full justice to the timbre of the original. The solo parts and choruses, of course, leave the Urtext of the “New Mozart Edition” entirely untouched.
Mozart had barely turned twelve when he composed and conducted his Missa solemnis in C minor, K. 139, to inaugurate a new orphanage on Vienna ’s Rennweg in 1768.
This astonishing early work adheres to the form of a Neapolitan cantata mass, in which the separate movements (“Gloria”, “Credo” etc.) are themselves made up of self-contained choruses, ariosos and ensembles.
This frequently heard Mass is characterized by a sharp contrast between its cheerful underlying C major mood and gloomy dramatic passages in the minor mode.