Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus

Ave verum corpus is a short Eucharistic hymn dating from the 14th century and attributed to Pope Innocent VI (d. 1362), which has been set to music by various composers. During the Middle Ages it was sung at the elevation of the host during the consecration. It was also used frequently during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

The hymn's title means "Hail, true body", and is based on a poem deriving from a 14th-century manuscript from the Abbey of Reichenau, Lake Constance. The poem is a meditation on the Catholic belief in Jesus’s Real Presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and ties it to Catholic ideas on the redemptive meaning of suffering in the life of all believers.

Ave verum corpus (Hail, true Body)
natum de Maria Virgine,(Born of the Virgin Mary)
vere passum, immolatum (Truly suffered, immolated)
in cruce pro homine (On the Cross for man)
cuius latus perforatum (Whose pierced side)
unda fluxit et sanguine, (Flowed with water and blood,)
esto nobis praegustatum (Let it be for us a foretaste [of heaven])
in mortis examine. (In the trial of death.)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s setting of Ave verum corpus was written for Anton Stoll (a friend of his and Haydn’s) who was musical co-ordinator in the parish of Baden, near Vienna. It was composed to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi.

Mozart composed this piece while in the middle of writing his opera Die Zauberflote, and while visiting his wife Constanze, who was pregnant with their sixth child and staying in a spa near Baden. Mozart died less than six months later.