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

handwriting in the two psalm settings was characteristic of the 1780s, and a Viennese date
was confirmed by Tyson in 1981. 126 The watermark in all three copies is Tyson 95,
suggesting a date between late 1787 and 1791, most likely closer to the earlier date. 127
How did Mozart gain access to these pieces? As Pfannhauser and Holl noted, copies
of all three works are extant in the Hofkapelle collection. 128 A report from 1825 by Salieri’s
student Anselm Hüttenbrenner lends support to the general idea that Mozart studied the
court’s musical sources:
Von Mozart sprach er [Salieri] stets mit ausnehmender Hochachtung. Er [Mozart], der
Unübertreffliche, kam oft zu Salieri mit den Worten: Lieber Papa, geben sie mir einige alte
Partituren aus der Hofbibliothek; ich will sie bey Ihnen durchblättern; wobey er manchmal das
Mittagsbrot versäumte. 129
During Mozart’s time, however, the Reutter sources were not in the Hofbibliothek
but in the Hofkapelle’s music library, and all three pieces are transmitted entirely in parts, not
scores. De profundis and Memento domine survive in a set of parts dated 1757, and
performance dates on the wrapper show that the two psalms were performed at vespers on
Christmas Day and St. Stephen’s Day from 1757 to 1761. There is no indication that the
parts were employed after 1761, although one cannot of course exclude the possibility. 130 A
comparison between the readings in the parts and those of Mozart’s copy leaves doubts as to
whether the Hofkapelle source served as Mozart’s exemplar. In the De profundis, the
Hofkapelle parts are notated with two flats in the key signature, Mozart’s score with three,
126 Alan Tyson, “The Mozart Fragments in the Mozarteum, Salzburg: A Preliminary Study of Their
Chronology and Their Significance,” in Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1987), 142, Wolfgang Plath, “Der Gegenwärtige Stand der Mozart-Forschung,” in Mozart-
Schriften: Ausgewählte Aufsätze, ed. Marianne Danckwardt (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991), 83.
127 MVC, 433. See also Alan Tyson, “Redating Mozart: Some Stylistic and Biographical Implications,” in
Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1987), 27.
Mozart’s use of the paper seems to be concentrated around 1788.
128 Pfannhauser, “Mozart Hat Kopiert!,” 24-5, Holl, “Nochmals: "Mozart Hat Kopiert!"”: 33, 35-6.
129 Eisen, Neue Dokumente, 89.
130 A-Wn, HK 968. See also Pfannhauser, “Mozarts Kirchenmusikalische Studien,” 14.
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