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

withholding on the curious grounds that this material was of merely practical, not scholarly
interest. 22 It was not until the year 2000 that this final part of the collection was acquired and
catalogued by the library, thus making it generally accessible to scholars for the first time. 23
The Hofkapelle collection is vast, and no adequate catalogue of it exists. 24 Through a
systematic examination of dates on the parts, it would be possible to reconstruct a detailed
performance calendar for much of the eighteenth century. In the absence of such a study,
Table 3.1 presents a provisional list of works known to have been performed in 1781-91,
with the exact dates for that decade given where known. In addition to personal observation,
the table makes use of data gathered from earlier research on various parts of the collection,
particularly Alfred Schienerl’s work on the performance of Bonno’s liturgical propers. 25 The
ÖNB’s catalogue cards for Bonno manuscripts often provide a single date, and these have
been incorporated into the table. On inspection of selected sources, it seems however that the
cataloguer merely recorded the earliest, but not necessarily only date on the parts, and this
should be taken into account when evaluating the dates for Bonno’s masses. 26 It is also
important to note that performances were not always documented on the parts, and the first
known performance could occur long after the parts were actually copied.
22 See Günter Brosche, ed., Musica Imperialis: 500 Jahre Hofmusikkapelle in Wien, 1498-1998 (Tutzing:
Schneider, 1998), 330.
23 Günter Brosche, “Besondere Neuerwerbungen der Musiksammlung der Österreichischen
Nationalbibliothek,” Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 48 (2002): 489-91.
24 As of this writing, the portion of the collection transferred in 2000 (HK 1984-3086) is catalogued in RISM,
still under its original A-Whk siglum and without the signatures assigned by the ÖNB.
25 Alfred Schienerl, “Die Kirchlichen Kompositionen des Giuseppe Bonno” (PhD diss., Universität Wien,
1925), 52-3, Gabriela Krombach, Die Vertonungen Liturgischer Sonntagsoffertorien am Wiener Hof: Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte der Katholischen Kirchenmusik im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 7, Studien zur Landes- und
Sozialgeschichte der Musik (Munich: E. Katzbichler, 1986), 290-93, James Armstrong, “'Litaniae Lauretanae':
Sacred Music at the Viennese Imperial Court, Ca. 1700-1783” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison,
1993), 304-30.
26 The sources in score, Mus. Hs. 15864, 15879, 15886 and 15891 record only a single date, which seems to be
the date of copying. Mus. Hs. 15886 and 15981 are large score convolutes of graduals and offertories by
Bonno; although only a few are dated, the watermarks of the others also suggest various dates in the 1780s.
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