O admirabile commercium

Programme

About sixty minutes of music, without an interval. Please do not applaud between the movements of the Mass.

Performers and forces

Cristina Avilés, soprano, sings the Exsultate, jubilate and the soprano part of the quartet in the Mass. Miriam Rey, soprano, sings the Et incarnatus est. The quartet is completed by María José Cantos, contralto; Francisco Márquez, tenor; and Esteban Serrano, bass. Mixed choir and orchestra. The Mass calls for two oboes, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, violins, bass and organ, without violas; the Exsultate, two oboes, two horns and strings.

The Exsultate and the Mass are performed in their original orchestration; the Et incarnatus est in the reconstruction of the Bärenreiter edition. Noche de paz is heard in an arrangement by the conductor, designed so that the audience can sing with the choir.

Conductor’s note

Tonight’s title is an antiphon the Church sings at Vespers on 1 January: O admirabile commercium, ‘O wondrous exchange’. The Creator of the human race takes a body and is born of the Virgin, and in exchange gives us his divinity. I know of no shorter way of saying what is celebrated at Christmas.

The programme turns on that exchange. At its centre is the Et incarnatus est from the Mass in C minor, the article of the Creed in which God becomes man. Mozart wrote it for soprano with flute, oboe and bassoon, with an almost operatic tenderness. The number is finished; what was left incomplete is the Mass, whose Credo breaks off just after it.

Before it comes the Exsultate, jubilate, which he composed at sixteen for the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini, then singing in Milan: an invitation to joy. Afterwards comes the Coronation Mass, whose Credo also pauses at the Et incarnatus and changes tempo and colour there. They are three different ways of saying the same thing.

The nickname of that Mass is not Mozart’s, nor does it come from its first performance, which was in Salzburg at Easter 1779: it stuck because the Mass was played at the coronation festivities in Prague, in 1791, and in Vienna, in 1792. But the word fits tonight. The Letter to the Hebrews applies to Christ a line from Psalm 8: ‘you crowned him with glory and honour’. And the Exsultate calls Mary virginum corona, crown of virgins.

We end with Noche de paz, Silent Night. It was born in 1818 in a village church near Salzburg, for two solo voices, choir and guitar, and today it is sung all over the world. The choir will begin alone and, from the second verse, I invite you to sing with us. The words are in this programme.

We sing in the Almanzor extension, the easternmost part of the prayer hall, built at the end of the tenth century. 19 December is the eve of the fourth Sunday of Advent. The great antiphon of this day, O radix Iesse, ends thus: veni ad liberandum nos, iam noli tardare, ‘come to deliver us, delay no longer’.

With this special concert we close the autumn series each year. We ask you not to applaud between the movements of the Mass. After Noche de paz, please do.

The works

Sung texts

The text sung is printed. For Noche de paz Joseph Mohr’s German original, which is in the public domain, is also published, alongside the Spanish version the choir performs. English translations made for this version from the original texts, following the Spanish translations by Clemente Mata Ruiz.

Layer 3 · Critical study

Academic layer. The statements rest on primary sources, critical editions and published studies, cited in notes (print version) and in the final bibliography. Where the documentation falls short, the text says so.

I. Sources, versions and editions

The four works tonight raise very different source problems. One exists in two versions by its own composer, another is unfinished, another bears a nickname not its own and the last is a song its composer reworked several times. Those problems determine what is heard and what can be stated about each work, and that is why they are set out here before the analysis.

The Exsultate and its two versions

The Milan autograph was presumed lost after the Second World War and resurfaced in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków, where it is kept with other holdings of the former Berlin state library. It transmits the 1773 version. In 1978 Robert Münster made known a copy of Salzburg provenance, in whose preparation Leopold Mozart had a hand, which documents a revision some six years later. In it the text of the first aria changes, the recitative Fulget amica dies is replaced by Tandem advenit hora and flutes take the place of the oboes. Wolfgang Hochstein, who prepared an edition based on both versions, notes that the Salzburg source transmits for the first aria one text intended for Trinity and another for Christmas. Both versions are authentic. What is inadvisable is to mix them without saying so, and that is why this programme reproduces only the Milan text.

The Et incarnatus: an unavoidable reconstruction

According to the preface of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, Mozart composed the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Benedictus of the Mass in C minor in full, though parts of the autograph of the Sanctus and Benedictus are lost. Of the Credo a draft survives that reaches the end of the Et incarnatus est. In those sections Mozart wrote only what was essential for the first stage of work and left staves blank for an orchestration he never made. Every performance therefore depends on an editor. Bärenreiter has published two: that of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, by Monika Holl with Karl-Heinz Köhler (1983), and that of Ulrich Leisinger (2019). There are also other complete reconstructions of the Mass from other publishers.

The Coronation: a name that is not Mozart’s

The autograph is dated Salzburg, 23 March 1779. Monika Holl, editor of the work in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, considers that it was intended for Easter that year, 4 or 5 April. On the nickname there are two pieces of evidence that should not be confused. The first is from Karl Pfannhauser, who in 1963 documented the presence of the Mass among the works performed at the coronation festivities in Prague: those of Leopold II, in 1790 and 1791, or, more probably, those of Francis II, in August 1792; Monika Holl takes up that hypothesis in the preface to the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. The second is from the online Köchel-Verzeichnis, which places the first known appearance of the name in a set of parts from 1806 connected with coronation ceremonies of Francis II. What is certain is that the nickname is not recorded in Mozart’s lifetime. The legend that linked the Mass with the coronation of an image of the Virgin at the shrine of Maria Plain, near Salzburg, has no documentary basis and derives from a conjecture by an archivist of the early twentieth century; Holl finds no link between the Mass of March 1779 and a celebration of that kind.

Noche de paz: the song and its versions

The standard edition of the autograph versions by Gruber and Mohr was published in 1987 in the series Denkmäler der Musik in Salzburg, edited by Ernst Hintermaier. In 1995 the only known autograph by Mohr was identified, datable to around 1820–1825, which confirms the date of the poem (1816) and the authorship of the melody. One of the most recent historical studies is the collective volume edited by Thomas Hochradner in 2020, available in open access. The most widespread Spanish version is attributed to Federico Fliedner; the first printed edition of the text could not be located, and other Spanish versions with different verses circulate.

II. Context: Milan, 1773; Salzburg, 1779; Vienna, 1783; Oberndorf, 1818

Milan, 1773: opera in church

The Exsultate, jubilate is the work of a teenager who was triumphing in Italy. Mozart had premiered Mitridate (1770) and Ascanio in Alba (1771) in Milan, and Lucio Silla (1772) was his third commission for the city. In eighteenth-century Italy the same singers moved from the stage to the altar, and the solo motet was the place where a famous castrato could shine during Mass. The anonymous text is made for that: a night that ends, a storm that passes, a dawn that comes. These are images that call for vocal agility.

Salzburg, 1779: the employee’s Mass

The Mass KV 317 is the first Mozart wrote after returning from the journey to Mannheim and Paris, now as court and cathedral organist in Salzburg. Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, a reformer, wanted short Masses in which the text could be understood. The letter to Padre Martini of 1776 describes it: even the most solemn Mass, with trumpets and timpani, was not to exceed three-quarters of an hour. KV 317 complies with that rule and manages at the same time to be festive. The orchestra without violas and with trombones doubling the lower voices of the choir was the usual one in Salzburg Cathedral.

Vienna, 1783: a Mass no one commissioned

The Mass in C minor is exceptional in Mozart’s output because it answered to no commission and no post. In Vienna church music with orchestra was restricted by the reforms of Joseph II. Mozart wrote it to fulfil a personal promise. On the one hand there are monumental fugues that reflect his study of Bach and Handel at the house of Baron van Swieten; on the other, soprano arias of almost operatic writing. The Et incarnatus is the clearest example of the second strand.

Oberndorf, 1818: village music

Noche de paz belongs to another world: that of the rural church music of post-Napoleonic Salzburg, made by an assistant priest and a schoolmaster with the means they had to hand. It has been supposed that the guitar was used because the Oberndorf organ was not working, but this explanation is a hypothesis of tradition and not a documented fact. Its spread beyond Austria is due largely to the singers from the Ziller valley who took it on their tours.

III. Formal analysis and questions of performance

Exsultate, jubilate

Four numbers: aria in F major (Allegro), secco recitative, aria in A major (Andante) and Alleluja in F major (Molto allegro). The first aria follows the model of the Italian aria of its time, with orchestral ritornello, two statements of the text and coloratura passages culminating in a cadenza for the soloist. The recitative, accompanied only by the continuo, leads from one key to another. Tu virginum corona is a lyrical aria in which the voice moves mainly by step. The Alleluja builds a whole movement on a single word, so that all the attention falls on agility and articulation. The work was written for a castrato soprano; today it is sung by a soprano.

Et incarnatus est

Aria in F major, 6/8 time and Andante tempo, with the rocking rhythm of a siciliana. The voice converses with three obbligato instruments (flute, oboe and bassoon), which function as a small quartet with the soprano, while the strings and organ sustain the harmony. Before the end Mozart writes an extended cadenza in which the voice and the three instruments are left alone. It is more an operatic aria than a liturgical verse: the Incarnation told almost as a lullaby.

For the performer the main question is tempo. The 6/8 must be felt in two so that the siciliana does not stall, and the cadenza requires the soprano and the three wind soloists to breathe together without a conductor, like a chamber group.

Coronation Mass

Six movements, all short. The Kyrie, in C major, alternates the choir with the soprano and tenor soloists. The Gloria and Credo move at a fast tempo and hardly repeat any text, as the Salzburg norm required. In the Credo, Mozart halts the music at the Et incarnatus est, which moves to Adagio with a more intimate texture, and returns to the opening tempo at Et resurrexit. The solemn Sanctus leads into a fast Hosanna. In the Benedictus the soloists sing a light movement interrupted by the choir’s Hosanna. The Agnus Dei gives the soprano a lyrical aria in F major, the one reminiscent of ‘Dove sono’; at the Dona nobis pacem the music of the Kyrie returns and the Mass ends in C major.

That return of the Kyrie at the Dona nobis pacem is the most important formal decision in the work: it closes the Mass on its own beginning and turns a succession of very different liturgical texts into a musical unity.

Noche de paz

Gruber’s melody, in 6/8 time with a rocking rhythm, was conceived for two voices in thirds over a very simple accompaniment. Tonight’s arrangement, for mixed choir and orchestra, keeps the melody in a comfortable register so that the audience can sing it, and that decision determines the key and tempo.

Performance criteria

The Almanzor extension is a hall of columns with double superimposed arches. Its timber roofs were replaced in the eighteenth century by lath-and-plaster vaults. The sound is dispersed through the forest of columns: it helps blending, but can reduce the definition of the soprano’s coloratura and of the choir’s inner voices. There are no published acoustic measurements of the space, so the placing of the orchestra and the tempi of the fast movements are decided at the dress rehearsal.

IV. Theological reading

The antiphon that gives the concert its title sums up the theology of Christmas in one sentence: the Creator takes a body and in exchange gives us his divinity. Tradition called it admirabile commercium, the wondrous exchange. The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up the idea in the words of the Fathers: the Word became flesh to make us sharers in the divine nature. The four works of the programme can be read in the light of that exchange.

Et homo factus est

The article of the Creed heard twice tonight is the heart of the exchange. Eighteenth-century composers usually halted the Credo at this point, lowered the dynamics and changed tempo, as Mozart does in the Mass KV 317. In the Mass in C minor he goes further and makes it a complete aria, with the voice surrounded by three instruments that seem to rock it. The dogma says that eternity enters time; the music tells it with one voice and the rhythm of a cradle.

Crowned with glory and honour

Psalm 8 asks what man is that God should be mindful of him, and answers: gloria et honore coronasti eum, ‘you crowned him with glory and honour’. The Letter to the Hebrews (2:9) applies the line to Christ, ‘crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death’. The nickname of the Mass KV 317 is a historical accident, but it allows the programme to be read through that image: in the exchange of Christmas, the one who humbles himself is crowned, and with him the human nature he has assumed. The Exsultate says it in its own way when it calls Mary virginum corona.

Joy anticipated

The text of the Milan Exsultate, jubilate has nothing of Christmas about it: it is an invitation to joy, built on images of a night that is ending: undique obscura regnabat nox, ‘everywhere dark night reigned’. Placed at the start of the concert, on the eve of the fourth Sunday of Advent, it does the same as the liturgy of these days: it announces a light that has not yet come. The great antiphon of 19 December, O radix Iesse, ends with the same impatience: iam noli tardare, ‘delay no longer’.

Noche de paz

Mohr’s text does no speculative theology. It describes a silent night, a couple keeping watch and a child asleep, and in the second verse it says that in that birth the hour of salvation strikes. It is the same thing the Et incarnatus affirms, said in simple words. That is why at the end the whole assembly sings it.

The place

The concert takes place in the Almanzor extension, built at the end of the tenth century as part of the great mosque of Córdoba and dedicated to Christian worship since 1236.

Music and liturgy

Joseph Ratzinger devoted a chapter of The Spirit of the Liturgy to music and placed it at the centre of the Church’s prayer. A concert is not a liturgy, but tonight it shares the liturgy’s calendar: in Advent, six days before Christmas, it sings the mystery the Church is about to celebrate.

Accessibility

What will happen

The concert lasts about sixty minutes, without an interval. There are no sound effects or sudden changes of lighting.

A choir, an orchestra and five soloists perform. First, a work of about fifteen minutes for soprano and orchestra. Then a slow piece of about eight minutes, also for soprano. Next, a Mass of about twenty-five minutes, in six consecutive parts. Finally, Noche de paz.

The loudest moments, with trumpets and timpani, are in the Gloria and Credo of the Mass. The quietest moment is the second piece, the Et incarnatus est.

In Noche de paz the audience may sing from the second verse. It is not compulsory. The words are in this programme.

There is a low-stimulation area; the front-of-house staff can take you there. Applause comes at the end, after Noche de paz. You may leave at any time.

The concert in easy read

Audio description of the space

Text of the audio track, for those who prefer to read it.

Accessibility statement

This programme has been prepared following the WCAG 2.2 guidelines, level AA, and the standard EN 301 549.

This concert offers: accessible navigation with screen reader and keyboard, audio description of the space, an easy-read version, sung texts with translation in high contrast and enlargeable type, an anticipation guide and a low-stimulation area.

The programme will grow from concert to concert, and each new feature will be announced when it is available and tested.

Sources and bibliography

Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, notes and bibliography system. Only primary sources, critical editions, scholarly reference works, official publications and published studies are cited.