Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus

Claassical Music / Sacred Music: Mozart

 

Ave verum corpus (Hail, true body), (K. 618), is a motet in D major composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791. It is a setting of the Latin hymn Ave verum corpus. Mozart wrote it for Anton Stoll, a friend who was the church musician of St. Stephan in Baden bei Wien. The motet was composed for the feast Corpus Christi; the autograph is dated 17 June 1791. It is scored for SATB choir, string instruments and organ.

Motet
Motet is one of the significant genres of sacred Renaissance music. It can be defined as an unaccompanied choral composition based on a sacred Latin text. In general, motets used religious texts not in the Mass, as the latter already had standardized music.

Melody:
 

Listen to the beautiful rendition of  Mozart's Ave verum corpus by the King's College Choir, Cambridge.  Uploaded by drwestbury. Accessed August 5, 2007. Another performance Mozart's Ave verum corpus is conducted by Leonard Bernstein with Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Uploaded by Shostakk, accessed July 13, 2008. A third one I also love listening to is this performance by James O'Donnell, Westminster Cathedral Choir - here. uploaded by Snezhinka9, accessed July 13, 2011.)  

History: 

Mozart composed the motet in 1791 in the middle of writing his opera Die Zauberflöte. He wrote it while visiting his wife Constanze, who was pregnant with their sixth child and staying in the spa Baden bei Wien. Mozart set the 14th century Eucharistic hymn in Latin "Ave verum corpus". He wrote the motet for Anton Stoll, a friend of his and of Joseph Haydn. Stoll was the musical director of the parish St. Stephan, Baden. The setting was composed to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi; the autograph is dated 17 June 1791. It is only forty-six bars long and is scored for SATB choir, string instruments, and organ. Mozart's manuscript contains minimal directions, with only a single sotto voce marking at the beginning.

The motet was composed less than six months before Mozart's death. It foreshadows "aspects of the Requiem such as declamatory gesture, textures, and integration of forward- and backward-looking stylistic elements". While the Requiem is a dramatic composition, the motet expresses the Eucharistic thoughts with simple means, suited for the church choir in a small town.

Franz Liszt quotes Mozart's motet in the piano piece Evocation à la Chapelle Sixtine. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky incorporates an orchestration of Liszt's transcription in his fourth orchestral suite, Mozartiana, Op. 61.

Trivia: 

Along with Mozart's Requiem, film composer Hans Zimmer also used Wolfgang Mozart's Ave verum corpus motet in the movie, The Lion King. (Accessed from Youtube, August 8, 2011).

Interesting article: Inside the Mind (and Studio) of Hollywood's Music Maestro. Buzzfeed. Accessed August 5, 2014.  "There are loads of art books and a small library of classical composers. There's a framed copy of Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus," which Zimmer calls "the perfect piece of music." The room is basically engineered for creativity." 


 
Resource:

Ave verum corpus by Wolfgang A Mozart. en.wikipedia.org.  Accessed August 5, 2007.


(c) July 2007. Updated August 5, 2011. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.