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

One of the chief documents supporting a 1783 performance of the C minor Mass is
an incomplete set of parts for K. 427 that is said to have been used at the premiere. 137 The
parts are presumed have been part of the collection of sacred performance material once
owned by Leopold Mozart, and sent by Nannerl to Stift Heilig Kreuz in Augsburg soon after
the death of her father. 138 There is little doubt that the set, which consists of an organ part
and three trombone parts, was once more extensive than it appears today, for a score copy of
K. 427 by Pater Matthäus Fischer (1763-1840), the Heilig Kreuz organist from 1784 until
1803, is unlikely to have been based on any other source. 139 Although the copy of K. 427 is
by far the best known of the score copies, Fischer compiled full scores of many Mozart sacred
works based on the parts sent by Nannerl; see Table 2.2. 140 After the secularisation of the
abbey in 1803, Fischer became regens chori at the church formerly attached to the institution,
and the parts donated by Nannerl remained under his control. Unfortunately, the Heilig
Kreuz collection had a chequered history in the nineteenth century. Johann André, forced to
deal with the loss of the autograph Hauptpartitur for the Sanctus and Benedictus, 141
somehow located the Fischer copy of K. 427 and removed it from the church along with
137 D-As, Hl 10. See, for example, NMA I/1/1/v, xii, H. C. Robbins Landon, “Mozart's Mass in C Minor, K.
427,” in Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue, ed. E. K. Wolf and E. H. Roesner
(Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1990), 419-23.
138 MBA, iv.298.
139 On Fischer, see Ernst Fritz Schmid, “Mozart und das Geistliche Augsburg,” in Augsburger Mozartbuch,
Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben (Augsburg: J. A. Schlosser, 1943), 190-95. The Fischer copy of
K. 427 dates no later than 1802; Robert Levin, personal communcation and Levin, “A New Completion,” 239.
140 On the Augsburg holdings, see Josef Mančal, Mozart-Schätze in Augsburg, vol. 3, Beiträge zur Leopold-
Mozart-Forschung (Augsburg: B. Wissner, 1995). Fischer seems to have been particularly interested in fugues: of
K. 337 he scored only the fugal Benedictus, and he initially scored only the Cum sancto and Osanna of K. 427
before deciding, probably after some time, to score the entire work. The original deleted foliation of these
movements can still be made out, and the paper on which they are written differs from the rest of the score.
141 The circumstances of the loss are unknown. Schmid surmised that Mozart left the score behind in Salzburg,
but it is difficult to envisage Mozart doing this either intentionally or accidentally; Schmid, “Bildintentionen,”
4. More likely it was related to the preparations for Davide penitente, during which the Sanctus and Benedictus
likely became separated from the main score. Annotations on the surviving particella for those movements show
that the manuscript had also become separated and was only reunited with the main score by André; see NMA
I/1/1/v, xii.
110