Classical Music | Organ Music

Recorded on 02/10/1999, uploaded on 07/04/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Mozart joined the Masonic lodge "Zur Wohltätigkeit" ("Beneficence") in Vienna on December 14, 1784. Within a year, he passed from apprentice to master Mason. During the remaining seven years of his life, Mozart composed a small number of pieces for Masonic gatherings. Among these is the Maurerische Trauermusik ("Masonic Funeral Music") composed for the service on November 17, 1785 in memory of two of Mozart's Masonic brothers, Duke Georg August of Mecklenberg-Stretlitz and Count Franz von Esterházy von Galántha, both members of the Viennese aristocracy. It received a public performance the next month on December 9.

Mauererische Trauermusik is dark, foreshadowing the tone of his later Requiem. Scored for a rather unusual ensemble of strings, three basset horns, two oboes, two horns, a clarinet and contrabassoon, there is, obviously, a heavy dependence on the wind instruments. Furthermore, the selection of instruments, most particularly the contrabassoon, further adds to the dark tone of the music. The piece opens with semitone "sighs" uttered by the poignant tones of the oboes followed by the whole of the wind section. Throughout, the winds carry the brunt of the melodic material with the strings being relegated mostly to the role of countermelody and harmonic support. Quasi-fanfares are heard multiple times in the horns and a melancholy tune in the oboes frames the central section of the piece. The highlight of the piece, and its central section, is the use of Tonus peregrinus ("The wandering tone"), a Gregorian chant used in association with Lamentations of Good Friday. Switching from the tonic key of C minor to a consoling E-flat major, the chant is given by the oboes and clarinet in unison while the strings provide counterpoints. The chant melody gives way to the darker tones of the tonic key and it is only in the final measures that a soft, but brilliant, C major is reached, suggesting transcendence for the deceased.    Joseph DuBose