MOZART AND THE PRACTICE OF SACRED MUSIC, 1781-91 a ...

that city. This would seem to imply that much of the work was still in draft form when
Mozart left Vienna. With the loss of the main score for the Sanctus, Osanna and Benedictus,
however, it is impossible to tell where the principal work on these movements was
accomplished. 120
It was long thought that the rehearsal and first performance of the mass took place in
August 1783, due apparently to a faulty interpretation of Nannerl’s diary in Nissen’s 1828
biography. With the recovery of the relevant part of the original document in the 1950s, it
became clear that Nannerl’s entries referred to events in October, as Pfannhauser first
noted. 121 The first reads, “den 23 ten ...in CapelHaus bey der prob von der mess meines
bruders. bey welcher meine schwägerin die Solo Singt. nachmittag ein grosses schüssen, mein
Bruder bestgegeben.” 122 There seems no way of verifying that the “mess” was indeed K. 427,
but there is no other reference in the surviving diary to Nannerl attending the numerous
rehearsals conducted at the Kapellhaus by her father and brother in the 1770s, so the music
evidently had some particular significance. Other possible attendees include Michael Haydn,
the boys’ keyboard teacher, Joseph Hafeneder, their violin teacher, and Leopold Mozart. 123 It
is conceivable that this rehearsal was preceded or followed by additional rehearsals for
120 Schmid states in relation to these three movements: “Daß die Sätze wirklich in Salzburg entstanden sein
müssen, erweist das Papier. Mozart benutzt zehnzeiliges Salzburger Papier im Gegensatz zum zwölfzeiligen
Wiener Papier.”; Schmid, “Bildintentionen,” 3. Given the loss of the Hauptpartitur, it is difficult to see how
Schmid could make this statement. He goes on to describe the Sanctus and Benedictus as movements “die
vergleichsweise knapp ausfallen und sicher kürzer sind, als der erste Plan vorgesehen hätte.” (Ibid.) With the
ambitious double-choir texture of the former and the fully-developed sonata structure of the latter, it is again
difficult to see them as constrained by time pressure.
121 Pfannhauser, “Nannerl Mozarts Tagebuchblätter,” 13-15. The surviving sections of the complete diary are
given in facsimile and transcription in Geneviève Geffray, ed., Meine Tag Ordnungen: Nannerl Mozarts
Tagebuchblätter 1775-1783, mit Eintragungen Ihres Bruders Wolfgang und Ihres Vaters Leopold (Bad Honnef: K.
H. Bock, 1998). A schematic presentation of the diary entries for the summer of 1783 is found in Ruth
Halliwell, The Mozart Family: Four Lives in a Social Context (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 408-22. See also
Michael Lorenz, “Franz Jakob Freystädtler (1761-1841): Neue Forschungsergebnisse zu seiner Biographie und
Seinen Spuren im Werk Mozarts,” Acta Mozartiana 44, no. 3/4 (1997): 89n28.
122 MBA, iii.290.
123 On the Kapellhaus, see Heinz Schuler, “Salzburger Kapellhauslehrer zur Mozartzeit: Eine Quellen-Studie,”
Acta mozartiana 35 (1988): 26-33.
106