Mostly Mozart

The Camden Choir completes its adventurous 2016/17 season by returning to St Mary’s Church, Primrose Hill, with a programme of 18th century music by Mozart (1756–91) and his contemporaries: Johann Christian Bach (1735–82) and Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87).
     The programme opens with J C Bach’s Magnificat in C. The composer was one of Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach’s 13 children. This lively piece was written in Milan in 1718. There is an interesting local connection with Camden; J C Bach moved to London in 1763 to take up the directorship of the Kings Theatre, but after a while his music fell out of favour, his housekeeper ran off with his money, and he was sadly buried in a pauper’s grave at the old St Pancras Church in London NW1.
     Gluck wrote his De Profundis (a setting of Psalm 130) in 1787, the year of his death, and Salieri, who was one of his star pupils, conducted it at his memorial service the following year.
     Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote over 50 Masses including this ‘short’ one (KV194), completed in August 1772 when he was 18. It was the first of his works to be published. Commissioned by Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg, it has six movements which add up to a performance time of about 15 minutes, extended on this occasion by the inclusion of two church sonatas by Mozart for organ solo.
     The original score of Mozart’s standalone Kyrie in D minor (KV341) was apparently found among his papers after his untimely death, and subsequently lost. It was probably a late work. Ave Verum Corpus (KV618) was written shortly before his death in 1791 while he was on a visit to Baden to see his wife, while God is our Refuge (KV20) was written when he was just 9 years old in London with his parents  it is dedicated to the Trustees of the British Museum.