The Sanctus and Benedictus are short, fine contrapuntal movements, the Benedictus especially simple and full of grace. The Agnus Dei is freer in form. Three solo voices make the appeal, which the chorus answers with "miserere nobis." The harmonic successions, and the beautiful violin passage in the accompaniment, give a peculiarly affecting {CHURCH MUSIC.} (260) character to this movement, which suggests a comparison with the Requiem. The Dona is fine and pure, but the effort to give it a cheerful and agreeable tone has robbed it of depth and significance. Even the accompaniment of this mass has an importance of its own, and there is more art and beauty contained in the two violin parts than in many a fuller score. Not content with giving an independent course to the voices, Mozart allows the accompaniment also to go its own way, usually with a subject proper to it, treated freely, often in counterpoint, and always with visible partiality. Inventive genius, technical scholarship, and deep, clear comprehension, are more evidently displayed by Mozart in this mass than ever before; the subjects have an intensity, a charm of beauty which had scarcely yet been suggested. Here, for the first time, we become aware of that wonderful beauty, Mozart's most special endowment, which we may designate sweetness, if we mean by that the perfect harmony of a naturally developed artistic organism. The maiden freshness of its manifestation here only increases the charm, and points to future expansion. The Mass in D major (194 K.), composed on August 8, 1774, has been rightly placed next to the one we have been considering.[27] The whole plan, the strict form, the flowing treatment, contrapuntal throughout, the mature beauty, offer many points of resemblance, but the effort after gracefulness is more apparent in the later mass, and is achieved at the sacrifice of gravity and ideality. The Kyrie displays a very similar conception. With the opening words of the soprano--[See Page Image] the foundation is laid on which the whole structure of the movement is built. In part in imitative combinations, in part extended into a longer subject, and in part connected with opposing subjects for the voices and the violins, this {MASS IN D. MAJOR, 1774.} (261)