Two German church songs for voice and basso

Mozart’s surviving songs mainly date from his Vienna years and were written for private use within his circle friends. According to records of his sister, Maria Anna, Mozart composed only few songs during his Salzburg years. The typical song is a short setting of a strophic poem with keyboard accompaniment, using the same music for every stanza of the text. Mozart also wrote several through-composed songs, which were then usually called German arias rather than songs. The most famous of these is Das Veilchen, KV 476, based on a text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The songs used at meetings of the Freemasons (see work group 31) stand between the solo song and the part-song because the last lines of the text are sung or repeated by a male chorus.