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This first movement of a Mass in D minor, complete and richly scored, is one of Mozart's loveliest choral works. But there is disagreement as to when it was composed. The autograph is lost, so it is impossible to assign a certain date to it.
Because of its full scoring, including trumpets and timpani, German scholar Otto Jahn assigned the Kyrie to the period of Idomeneo (K. 366): November 1780 to March 1781. Alfred Einstein follows suit. "Mozart specialist Alan Tyson, however, on examining sketches for several Kyries on paper datable around 1788, suggested that Mozart may well have been at work then on a Mass," notes Erik Smith in The Compleat Mozart. This particular Kyrie may have been from that period too. "A date just prior to Don Giovanni, with its central key of D minor, is not unthinkable."
The work's unusual style may point to a later period, though Einstein explains it as the product of an increasingly rebellious Mozart, eager to burst the bonds imposed by a restrictive existence in Salzburg:
"The mere presence of clarinets and viola precludes the assumption that the work was composed in and intended for Salzburg; it was written for Munich early in 1781, at the time of the production of Idomeneo. ... D minor, the key of the Requiem; Mozart is not yet thinking of death, but with all its high solemnity this requiem breathes fear of the unknown, and at the same time gentleness, confidence in a delivering Providence; chromaticism always yields to the certainty of the cadence, agitation to tranquillity. The mastery of architectonic construction, the differentiation between the vocal and instrumental groups, the sensitiveness in the working out of detail (observe the treatment of any of the pairs of wind instruments) -- they are enough to make one fall to one's knees."
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