Mozart’s Mass in C minor, the fruit of his profound en-counter with the music of Bach and Handel in the early 1780s, is arguably the greatest church work of the Classical period. He began it in 1782, apparently in thanksgiving for his forthcoming marriage.  By October 1783, when part of it was performed in Salzburg, he had completed the Kyrie, Gloria, part of the Credo, the Sanctus & Benedictus.  He then abandoned it, later reusing most of the material in the cantata Davidde penitente.

The mass is usually performed today as a torso, but Philip Wilby has reconstructed the entire work, using extra numbers Mozart added to Davidde penitente which may originally have been conceived for the uncompleted mass. Thus it is now possible to hear the mass for the first time in a complete form as the composer intended. In this performance we intersperse the movements of the mass with an Epistle sonata, an Offertory motet and a Communion motet, as in Salzburg practice of the period.