Spotlight on Sunday’s Music: Works by Schubert and Mozart

For Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2025
Mass in G by Schubert
Laudate Dominum by Mozart

By David Jolliffe

            June 15, 2025, Trinity Sunday, will be a banner day for music at St. Paul’s and for our neighboring congregations in Fayetteville as well. During the 11 a.m. Holy Eucharist, the St. Paul’s choir will sing the celebrated Mass in G by the nineteenth-century Viennese composer Franz Schubert as part of the service, enriched further by Mozart’s famous Laudate Dominum as the anthem, and that afternoon at 5 p.m. at Central United Methodist Church the St. Paul’s choir will be joined by the ensembles from Central, the First United Presbyterian Church, and Grace Episcopal Church in Siloam Springs in a special ecumenical concert Titled We Believe – A Nicene Celebration, commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, a foundational expression of Christian faith.

            Schubert wrote the Mass in G over a six-week period in1815, a piece designed to be sung at his home church where his brother was organist and choirmaster.  Schubert was only 18 years old when he composed the mass; it was the 167th piece he had written by that time.  The Mass in G remains one of the most popular settings of the mass ordinary: the charming song-like melodic writing, especially in the “Kyrie” and the “Credo,” forms a magical counterpoint to more concertante passages in the “Gloria” and the “Sanctus.”

                  Mozart’s Laudate Dominum is the final movement in a service titled the Verperae solennes de confessore, composed for a vespers service in Salzburg Cathedral in 1780.  Legend has it that a senior cardinal in the Vatican asked Mozart to write a special vespers service, and in true Mozartian fashion Wolfgang Amadeus write two services in response to the invitation.

The Laudate Dominum  begins and ends with the same two passages, here presented in
English:

“Praise the Lord, all ye nations,
praise him, all ye peoples.
For his loving kindness
has been bestowed upon us,
and the truth of the Lord endures for eternity.”

                  The lyric quality of the Laudate has led to its holding a special place in the repertoire of outstanding choirs and vocal ensembles over the centuries.