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

on Jews. Church music was, so far, unaffected by the reforms, but it was soon to become a
central concern in the Emperor’s attempts to reform religious life in the Imperial capital. The
practice of music in churches, monasteries and convents consumed a large proportion of the
financial, temporal and artistic resources available to those institutions, and Joseph was to
make clear that those resources were better directed towards more “useful” ends.
Two weeks before Mozart’s marriage, on 22 July 1782, the Emperor had ordered the
establishment of a Religious Commission (Geistliches Hofkommision) whose responsibility it
was to deal with the day-to-day implementation of the Emperor’s plans, and to act as an
advisory body. Nine months later, on Easter Sunday 1783, the Archdiocese of Vienna, acting
under the Commission’s orders introduced a new order of services (Gottesdienstordnung) for
the city, which redefined fundamentally the religious experience of clergy and laity alike.
Where there had been fewer than ten large parishes serving the needs of Vienna’s 209,000
inhabitants, there were now twenty-eight. 8 Where some churches had been offering mass
every hour or even half-hour, there was now an officially sanctioned procession of masses
distributed throughout the city. Where the congregation had formerly expected to remain all
but silent during the service, there were now prescribed hymns in the vernacular. Most
importantly, for those whose livelihood was supported by music-making, the performance of
instrumentally-accompanied masses was now only permitted on Sundays and holy days, with
instrumental vespers forbidden entirely. As dramatic as these reforms were, they represented
the culmination of several decades of state intervention in the character of religious services
and their music, and Joseph II was in many respects following the lead of his mother in
seeking to moderate liturgical opulence.
8 RGZJ, 138. See the listing of new parishes in Anon., Neue Pfarreintheilung in der k. k. Haupt- und
Residenzstadt Wien und allen Vorstädten inner den Linien (Vienna: Johann Thomas von Trattner, 1783).
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