Coronation Mass (Mozart)

Missa brevis in C major
"Coronation"
Mass by W. A. Mozart
Salzburg Cathedral, where the mass was first performed, probably on Easter Sunday
Other name	Krönungsmesse
Catalogue	K. 317
Occasion	Easter
Composed	1779 (1779): Salzburg
Movements	6
Vocal	SATB choir and soloists
Instrumental	orchestra continuo

The Krönungsmesse (German for Coronation Mass) (Mass No. 15 in C major, K. 317; sometimes Mass No. 16), composed in 1779, is one of the most popular of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 17 extant settings of the Ordinary of the Mass. This setting, like the majority of Mozart's mass settings, is a Missa brevis, or short mass (as opposed to the more formal Solemn Masses or High Mass, known as Missa solemnis).

The mass in C major was completed on March 23, 1779 in Salzburg. Mozart had just returned to the city after 18 months of fruitless job hunting in Paris and Mannheim, and his father Leopold promptly got him a job as court organist and composer at Salzburg Cathedral. The mass was almost certainly premiered there on Easter Sunday, 4 April 1779. Contrary to a popular misconception, it was not intended for the church of Maria Plain near Salzburg.

The mass K. 317 mass appears to have acquired the nickname "Coronation" at the Imperial court in Vienna in the early nineteenth century, after becoming the preferred music for royal and imperial coronations as well as services of Thanksgiving. Whether it was performed at the coronations of Leopold II in 1790 and Francis II in 1792, as some sources assume, is unlikely.

Musical allusions to this mass appear in the slow movement of the Symphony No. 98 and the Harmoniemesse of Mozart's contemporary, Joseph Haydn.