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

the fragments is now lost, and it is possible that it too dated from the 1780s. 172 The forensic
analysis that led to the redating of this music from the 1770s to the late Viennese period was
not entirely straightforward. Plath analysed the handwriting of the Kyrie in G Fr 1787a in
1977, and concluded that it dated from the “reife Wiener Zeit,” probably post-dating the C
minor Mass. In consequence, Plath said, “wir werden einfach hinnehmen müssen, daß
Mozart sich auch noch in Wien nebenher mit der Messe beschäftigt hat.” 173 Likewise, the
Kyrie in C Fr 1787b was dated to the summer of 1780 at the earliest, although Plath
thought it likely that it was considerably later. 174 The Kyrie in C Fr 1790a and the Gloria in
C Fr 1787c remained however in a group of pieces listed under the traditional date of 1779:
Plath considered most of these works “relativ unproblematisch” and in no need of further
discussion. 175 The Kyrie in D 1787e was already assigned by Einstein to the Salzburg visit of
1783 and so was not considered in Plath’s article.
The next stage in the story was the appearance of Tyson’s magisterial article on the
Salzburg Mozart fragments. Tyson established that four of the mass fragments, and all three
of the Reutter copies were written on paper-type “O” (what became Tyson 95), which was
found almost exclusively in dated autographs from December 1787 to February 1789. 176 The
Kyrie in C 1787b was written on paper-type “U” (later Tyson 91) which was found in
autographs in 1790-91 with the single exception of K. 513 from March 1787. 177 Tyson
speculated that the composition of the masses might have been linked to the 1789 journey to
172 See Konrad, NMA X/30/4, xiii.
173 Wolfgang Plath, “Beiträge zur Mozart-Autographie II: Schriftchronologie 1770-1780,” in Mozart-Schriften:
Ausgewählte Aufsätze, ed. Marianne Danckwardt (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991), 252.
174 Ibid., 255.
175 Ibid., 259.
176 Edge has pointed out that the principal usage is even more restricted, concluding in September 1788; MVC,
596-97.
177 Tyson, “The Mozart Fragments,” 142-46. See also Alan Tyson, “Proposed New Dates for Many Works and
Fragments Written by Mozart from March 1781 to December 1791,” in Mozart Studies, ed. Cliff Eisen
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 216. On Mozart’s usage of this paper, see MVC, 430, 433.
185