Mozart, "Ave Verum Corpus" motet

Mozart wrote his first motet when he was twelve years old. He would compose his last one in Vienna in the spring of 1791, six months before his death. Written simultaneously with the famous unfinished Requiem, the sacred piece Ave verum corpus can be considered Mozart's last entirely finished religious work. A good part of his most celebrated works would come from his pen that year. To this handful of magnificent works, Mozart will add a sublime exercise in the brief sacred form originating in the Middle Ages, the motet, to thank a friend for the care lavished on his beloved Constanze.

In Baden
Constanze, whose health was somewhat fragile, used to spend several seasons "taking the waters" in Baden, a spa twenty-odd kilometers from Vienna. In June 1791 she was there, enjoying the waters with her seven-year-old son Carl, and seven months pregnant with Franz Xavier, her sixth and last child (of the six, only two survived infancy). Mozart visited them on a regular basis, making sure that his family was perfectly accommodated there. For this, he relied on the goodwill of his friend Anton Stoll, a resident of Baden, teacher and music director of the local parish.

A donation to the parish
In the last year of his life, Mozart was extremely busy. In addition to the Requiem, during those months he was simultaneously working on the Clarinet Concerto, the opera La Clemenza di Tito, and the greatest success of his life, The Magic Flute. The visit to his family in Baden served to slow him down somewhat. The 46 simple measures of the motet Ave verum corpus were then added to the repertoire of the diligent Professor Stoll's chapel choir. Completed in Baden on June 18, the little masterpiece had its premiere for the celebration of Corpus Christi on the 23rd of that month in the parish church of Baden.

Motet Ave verum corpus in D major, K. 618
It is composed on a Eucharistic hymn of the Catholic faith that begins with those words, ave verum corpus, something like "Hail, true body". The hymn dates from the 14th century and is generally attributed to Pope Innocent VI. Written for choirs, string orchestra and organ, the work contains a single dynamic indication but a masterful one: the maestro only noted that it should be performed sottovoce.

Its sublime 46 bars are barely more than four minutes long.

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, with Matthew Martin at the organ, under the baton of Daniel Hyde.