March in D Major K. 249 and Serenade No. 7 for Orchestra in D Major "Haffner" K. 250

Mozart was commissioned to write these works to celebrate the wedding on July 22, 1776, of Elisabeth Haffner to Franz Xavier Späth. The bride's father, Sigmund Haffner, was a wealthy banker, merchant and burgomaster of Salzburg. (In 1782 Mozart also composed the Haffner Symphony, K. 385, for the same family.)

Although a serenade was originally a song to be sung in the evening beneath a beloved's window, by the mid-eighteenth century it had become an instrumental composition. In Mozart's time some of these were performed outside Mirabell-Palast, the archbishop's summer home, and then the players would move to what is now Universitätsplatz to celebrate the end of the university school year (Finalmusik). Other celebrations also led to other Mozart serenades. Mozart used this serenade again for one of the university professors in 1779.

Most of Mozart's serenades were forty to sixty minutes in length. By adding minuets to the usual Allegro- Andante-Allegro outline, this requirement could be met. The Salzburg serenades added two or more concertante movements, giving a soloist or small group a more prominent part, in Mozart's serenades, usually a violin.

The importance of the Haffner Serenade in Mozart's works is beautifully put by the French music historian, Saint-Foix, "This Serenade marks for us the climax, not to say the apotheosis of the period we have marked as galante. It is the successor of the serenades of 1773, 1774 and 1775, but with what a difference! Its exceptional length is perhaps due to the solemnity of Elisabeth Haffner's wedding, but it is certain that on the particular day the young master was bent on making a great impression and spreading out before his fellow citizens all the riches his genius was able to produce."

Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia! K. 582 and Vado, ma dove? K. 583

The two arias on our second program were written by Mozart for the soprano, Louise Villeneuve, to be inserted into an opera of Martín y Soler entitled Il burbero di buon core (The Good-Hearted Grouch), probably because Villeneuve thought Mozart could write better arias for her particular voice, a not uncommon practice in those days of singers with high pay and great independence. Soler's opera was performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on November 9, 1789.

Villeneuve sang the role of the heroine, Lucilla, and the texts of each aria are similar: Why was her suitor behaving so strangely? It develops later that the suitor had large debts.

Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia! K. 582

MADAMA LUCILLA Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia L'affanno del mio bene, Se sdegno, gelosia, Timor, sospetto, amor. Voi che sapete, o Dei, I puri affetti miei, Voi questo dubbio amaro Toglietemi dal cor.	MADAMA LUCILLA Who knows, who knows what it may be that torments my beloved, whether anger, jealousy, fear, suspicion or love? O gods, ye who know the purity of my affection, dispel this bitter doubt from my heart.

Vado, ma dove? K. 583

MADAMA LUCILLA Vado, ma dove? o Dei! Se de' tormenti suoi, Se de' sospiri miei Non sente il ciel pietà. Tu che mi parli al core, Guida i miei passi, Amore; Tu quel ritegno or togli Che dubitar mi fa.	MADAMA LUCILLA I go, but whither, ye gods, if heaven feels no pity for his torments and my sighs? Love, you who speak to my heart, guide my steps; dispel the misgivings that cause me to doubt.

Mass No. 15 in C Major "Coronation" K. 317

The Coronation Mass, finished on March 23, 1779, and probably first played on April 4, 1779, during the celebration of Easter on the Salzburg Cathedral, is perhaps Mozart's greatest religious work of his Salzburg years. The work was long believed to have been composed for the Pilgrimage Church of Maria Plain to celebrate the anniversary of the ceremonial crowning of a miraculous image of Mary. However that ceremony was in June and the church, a few miles north of Salzburg, was too small to accommodate the large orchestral and chorus required. It now appears that the title, "Coronation", came from the work being performed, with Salieri conducting, at Leopold II's coronations in Frankfurt (1790) and Prague (1791).

The Pope had issued an encyclical in 1749 prohibiting the use of trumpets, trombones and horns and other worldly or operatic elements in the celebration of the mass. However, the encyclical was not effectively enforced in Austria; nor was a similar ban from the Emperor Joseph II on 1754.

Many writers have noted the similarity of the soprano solo in the Agnus Dei to the Countess's aria "Dove sono" in The Marriage of Figaro.

Sadie sums up the work, "It is written to conform with the Salzburg liturgical requirements for brevity, but is more substantial in its material and better unified than any previous mass or indeed any subsequent one, and is generally acknowledged to be the finest of his complete mass settings."