Mailied: "Willkommen, lieber schöner Mai“

The surviving songs mostly date from Mozart’s years in Vienna and were composed for his circle of friends. According to his sister, Mozart wrote only a few songs during his years in Salzburg. A typical song is a short setting of a strophic poem with piano accompaniment, using the same music for each stanza of text. Mozart also composed several through-composed songs, which at the time were usually referred to as *German arias* rather than *songs*. The most famous of these is Das Veilchen, K. 476, set to a text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The songs used in Masonic celebrations lie somewhere between solo songs and part songs, as the final lines of the text are sung or repeated by a male chorus.