Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Ave verum Corpus for trombone quartet

Mozart Ave verum Corpus for trombone quartet

The trombone version

This piece is commonly arranged for other instruments and frequently played on musical events. Our published edition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Ave Verum Corpus for trombone quartet (Three tenor trombones and bass trombone) was arranged by Aron Simon.

About the original version

Mozart’s beloved motet, Ave Verum Corpus, was composed in June of 1791, for his friend, Anton Stoll just half a year before the composer’s death and eight years after Mozart had last completed a piece of sacred music. Anton Stoll was a school teacher and choirmaster of the small parish church of St. Stephan in Baden. Baden is a spa-town located near Vienna which was famous for its hot thermal mineral springs. Mozart’s wife, Costanze, was pregnant with their sixth child and was ill, and so she was staying at the Baden spa for treatment. The work was based on a Roman Catholic eucharistic text and was composed almost as a payment to Stoll, who had often helped Mozart by making travel arrangements to and from Baden for Constanze.

Writing very simply, Mozart was perhaps conscious of the limitations of a small-town choir, the manuscript for this work is dated June 17, 1791, and was presumably intended for the feast of Corpus Christi, which fell that year on June 23. Originally scored for SATB chorus, strings and organ and contains just the minimal directions of Adagio and sotto voce. Tempo
indication, dynamics, breathing and other markings are purely editorial. Unlike the dramatic and famously unfinished Requiem in D Minor, K 626, on which Mozart was working at the same time, Ave Verum Corpus is of humble mien and perfectly suited to the small-town choir for which it was intended.

Lyrics

Latin:
Ave verum corpus natum
de Maria Virgine,
Vere passum, immolatum
in cruce pro homine.
Cujus latus perforatum
unda fluxit et sanguine;
Esto nobis praegustatum
In mortis examine.

English translation:
Hail, true Body,
born of the Virgin Mary,
who having truly suffered, was sacrificed
on the cross for mankind,
whose pierced side
flowed (with water) and blood:
May it be for us a foretaste (of the Heavenly banquet)
in the trial of death.