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

of a sacred piece sitting on Mozart’s desk. Whatever the precise meaning, “church music”
should be taken at its face value in the absence of a better explanation.
Three weeks before Preisler’s visit, Mozart wrote his sister a rather apologetic letter
apologising for his lack of communication and sending her his latest piano pieces. The
composer did however want something from Salzburg as well:
Nun muß ich dich um etwas bitten; – Ich möchte gerne daß mir der Haydn seine 2 Tutti=Messen,
und die Graduali so er geschrieben, in Partitur auf eine zeit lehnte; – ich würde sie mit allem
dank wieder zurück schicken. – es ist nun eben ein Jahr daß ich ihm geschrieben, und ihn zu mir
eingeladen habe. aber er hat mir nicht geantwortet; – im antworten scheint er mir viel gleiches
mit mir zu haben, nicht wahr? – Ich bitte dich also recht sehr mir diese sachen auf diese art
zuwege zu bringen... 117
“Tutti=Messen” apparently means masses scored throughout for full choir with no solo
passages. As it happens, Michael Haydn had written just two masses of this kind by 1788:
the Missa Sancti Joannis Nepomuceni MH 182 from May 1772, and the Missa Amandi (Missa
Lambacensis) MH 229 from September 1776. 118 Mozart, of course, would have had
opportunity to encounter these works in Salzburg, and they may be tentatively identified as
the “2 Tutti=Messen” that the composer requested from Nannerl. The Graduali are more
difficult to identify. Beller-McKenna is probably correct in suggesting that Mozart is
referring to the series of graduals Haydn supposedly wrote at the request of Colloredo from
1783 onwards, but it is impossible to tell whether Mozart had any specific works in mind. 119
That Mozart knew Haydn was writing such works suggests an otherwise unknown Salzburg
connection: perhaps Mozart had learned of Haydn’s project during his 1783 visit to the city,
or Leopold informed him of it in one of the lost letters. There is no evidence that Nannerl
117 MBA, iv.72.
118 MH, 91 incorrectly gives the location of the latter’s autograph as A-Wn, Mus. Hs. 16524. It is actually Mus.
Hs. 16542.
119 Daniel Beller-McKenna, “Mozart's Kyrie Fragments and Late Eighteenth Century Viennese Church Style,”
Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 39 (1991): 83. As Beller-McKenna points out, Mozart’s
request for Partituren suggests he intended the works for study purposes. See also Reinhard G. Pauly, “Michael
Haydn's Latin Proprium Missae Compositions” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1956), 120-22.
168