Ave verum corpus

Over the years so many superlatives have been used in reference to Mozart’s brief work for chorus, strings, and organ, Ave verum corpus. Yet even today the sheer sonic beauty and deft melodic writing leave one pleasantly speechless. I, too, find myself falling back on tired clichés as I try to capture in words what Mozart so brilliantly captured in sound. So pure is the composer’s vision of the text, so simple and concise the tonal structure upon which he builds this pearl. Of course, one can analyze the piece step-by-step, even chord-by-chord, paying particular attention to the focal points of dissonance and chromaticism. Such points earn their expressive intensification by virtue of the text, such as “cujus latus perforatum unda fluxit et sanguine” (“whose pierced side overflowed with water and blood”). But to undertake such analysis is to seek the skeleton when what one really treasures is the flesh and blood, the sensuous corpus upon which Mozart—and perhaps a Creator still more divine—has breathed life. The work shows the enlightened Mozart (a Freemason) at his most devout, writing, as one critic has commented, “without the slightest skepticism.”
Ave verum corpus was written in June 1791 for Anton Stoll, a minor choirmaster in the town of Baden who apparently helped Frau Mozart during her periodic vacations to the baths. That detail is not trivial, but it may be more significant to note that the commission for a grand Requiem mass for the dead came to Mozart during the same weeks in the summer of 1791. The Requiem would never be completed by the composer, but the short Ave verum corpus—a kind of trial run for his renewed faith in sacred music—survives in utter completion, an ideal blend of devotional outbursts and classical restraint.

(c) Jason Stell