Sacred Music in the Opera House: Mayr’s Mass and Mozart Motets
Guild GMCD 7231 (DDD, 65:48)
Johann Simon Mayr (1763–1845) composed some sixty operas. That biographical fact haunts every bar of his Mass in C minor—for better and worse, but mostly worse.
The Kyrie begins promisingly enough. Sober, tuneful, with quartet singing of genuine loveliness from Marian Ulewicz, Christa Mayer, Thomas Cooley, and Thomas Gropper. Franz Hauk, whose organ recordings I’ve followed with interest, draws committed work from the Georgian Chamber Orchestra and Vokalensemble Ingolstadt. The opening melody, though perhaps overexposed and bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to Beethoven’s C minor Piano Trio from Op. 1, doesn’t offend. Not yet.
Then comes the Gloria.
What follows is music so thoroughly inappropriate to its liturgical function that one wonders whether Mayr confused his manuscripts. The catchy, silly tune—sung in unison, repeated ad nauseam—belongs in a comic opera buffa, not in the house of God. Yes, Italian style infiltrated sacred music throughout this period. Yes, Rossini did similar things. That doesn’t make it right, and it certainly doesn’t make it good. Haydn managed to infuse his fourteen masses with joy without once suggesting we’re about to have a booze-up. Mayr crosses that line repeatedly.
The “Gratias agimus” offers respite—genuinely gorgeous quartet singing, serious music that isn’t dull. But these moments of beauty only highlight the composition’s fundamental incoherence. The Credo opens with the same monotonous unison motif that began the Gloria. More gorgeous passages follow, then… well, how does one describe the “Et Resurrexit”? It sounds like a Victorian street urchin whistling, or a child on one of those ridiculous space hoppers from the 1980s, bouncing about shrieking “giddy-up!” I’m not being facetious. That’s genuinely what Mayr’s setting evokes.
This raises the perennial critical problem: how to assess a work that’s good in parts, where the good bits are really good and the poor bits are really poor? Some sections achieve magnificence. Others are simply awful. The music stops and starts with manic changeability—one moment we’re suspended in reverie with solo violin, the next swamped by a tidal wave of sound that vanishes in a blink, then suddenly we’re in fugue. The Agnus Dei, curiously jolly, bears no relationship whatsoever to its text.
The four Mozart pieces—Salve regina and three shorter motets of questionable attribution—remind us what sacred music sounds like when composed by someone who understood the proper balance between style and reverence. Class shows. But these performances, while competent, don’t particularly persuade. The Salve Regina has an interesting textual history that Hauk doesn’t fully illuminate through his interpretation.
I’m aware this assessment is deeply personal. Many listeners will find Mayr’s Mass delightful, even moving. The performances are technically distinguished—those four soloists deserve particular praise for their ensemble work. The sound quality is first-rate. But I cannot recommend music that treats the liturgy as an opportunity for party tricks, no matter how well sung.
The irritating bits are really irritating. Life’s too short.
David Wright’s original review, reprinted with permission from MusicWeb International
