Great Mass in C Minor - Fragmentary Status

Fragmentary Status

The work is incomplete, missing all of the Credo following the aria "Et incarnatus est" (the orchestration of the Credo is also incomplete) and all of the Agnus Dei. The Sanctus is partially lost and requires editorial reconstruction. There is a good deal of speculation concerning why the work was left unfinished. Given the absolute necessity of a complete text for liturgical use, it is likely that Mozart spliced in movements from his earlier Masses for the premiere. For purposes of modern performances, the editions and completions available are those by H. C. Robbins Landon (Eulenburg), Helmut Eder (Bärenreiter), Richard Maunder (Oxford University Press), Philip Wilby (Novello), Robert Levin (Carus-Verlag) and Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs (Musikproduktion Höflich). Robert Xavier Rodriguez has also completed the Agnus Dei.

Mozart later reused the music from the Kyrie and Gloria, almost without changes except for the text, in the cantata Davidde penitente, K. 469.

Larger version of page 1 and page 2

Read more about this topic:  Great Mass In C Minor

Famous quotes containing the words fragmentary and/or status:

    Why make so much of fragmentary blue
    In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
    Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
    When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    screenwriter
    Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
    David Mamet (b. 1947)