Motet “God is our refuge” (K. 20)
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s motet God is our refuge (K. 20) is a brief English-text chorus for four unaccompanied voices, written in London in July 1765 when he was nine. Often described as a small “museum piece” for the British Museum, it shows the child composer experimenting with sober, older-sounding contrapuntal church style.
Mozart's Life at the Time
In the summer of 1765, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was in London during the family’s Grand Tour, celebrated as a child prodigy and frequently presented in public as a composer as well as a performer. A report relayed by the Mozart & Material Culture project connects K. 20 with a request for an autograph manuscript for the British Museum—specifically “a short chorus for four voices to English words,” supplied in early July 1765.[1] The piece therefore belongs less to a settled liturgical routine than to Mozart’s London encounters with English musical institutions and tastes.
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Musical Character
Despite the title’s frequent appearance as “Motet in G minor,” the surviving sources are not always consistent in how they identify the key; some catalog data and secondary listings circulate a G major attribution, while commonly consulted reference summaries call it G minor.[1][2] What is firmly evident from the musical “page” is its scoring and manner: it is for four unaccompanied voices (a compact SATB-style chorus), set syllabically to the opening of Psalm 46 (“God is our refuge and strength…”), and built from short imitative entries and chordal cadences that suggest Mozart was consciously trying on an English sacred idiom rather than writing in the more theatrical, solo-driven style of later Salzburg church works.[1][3])
[1] Mozart & Material Culture (King’s College London): work entry for “God is our Refuge K20” (autograph for British Museum; four unaccompanied voices; July 1765 context).
[2] Wikipedia: “God is our refuge” (overview; commonly given as a motet/chorus in G minor, July 1765, London).
[3] IMSLP: score PDF for Mozart, KV 20, “God is our Refuge and Strength” (four-voice unaccompanied choral layout and text underlay).