becoming

the trail of a family becoming

Great Mass in C Minor

On April 02 2006, the Trinity Choir performed Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor. Unlike any other performance before — even at the time of Mozart, this one is performed with the "completed" score!

By "completed" of course I mean it is now reconstructed and "completed" by someone else other than Mozart. The Great Mass in C Minor was originally left in fragments in 1783. Mozart never finished it on time before his own wedding. Later in his life, he used some of the materials and put them in his cantata K469, Davidde penitente, but scholars agreed that the scope and form of the later can hardly represent the final thoughts on the music of the Mass which he originally set out.

This performance is based on the edition completed by Robert D. Levin. His discussion on the reconstruction can be found in the program notes.

The whole concert is online. Can you see and listen to it here.

"It has been rightly said that [the Grand Mass] is the only work that stands between the B Minor Mass of Bach and the D Major Mass of Beethoven."
— Alfred Einstein, author of Mozart, His Character, His Work.