Here, as in his earlier "Little Credo Mass" K. 192, Mozart takes up a church music practice that has been documented in southern Germany and Austria since the beginning of the 18th century. The multiple repetition of the opening words of the "Credo" presupposed that the setting of the intonation "Credo in unum Deum" was tolerated at all in the liturgy; if the intonation otherwise performed by the celebrant alone could be included in the polyphonic composition, then it was only a small and syntactically logical step to repeat the "Credo" before the individual articles of faith and thus affirm the testimony of faith.
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