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

violas and woodwind. The most distinctive element here is the organ obbligato and its
almost frenetic procession of grace notes and syncopation. 185 Organ obbligati are present in a
number of works from the Hofkapelle, including Hofmann’s Missa S. Aloisii, Reutter’s Missa
SS. Petri et Pauli (Hofer Messen 46), Bonno’s gradual De manu insidiantium and the
offertory Deum athletae by the later Hoforganist Georg Summer. 186 Mozart may have
intended the part in the Kyrie for himself to play, but Albrechtsberger and the Hofkapelle’s
first organist Ferdinand Arbesser are other possibilities.
Based on their shared key, instrumentation, and possibly paper-type, one might be
tempted to associate the Kyrie Fr 1790a and the Gloria Fr 1787c. 187 In the face of Plath’s
handwriting analysis and the confusion over Tyson 95/96, however, they will have to be
regarded as separate movements until more compelling evidence emerges. The immediate
question is why Mozart, contrary to his usual practice, did not begin a new mass with the
Kyrie but proceeded directly to the Gloria. The phenomenon of a stand-alone Gloria is
scarcely credible in this context, and it is possible that the lost Kyrie – Nissen’s “I A a 1” –
was the companion to Fr 1787c. Despite the Gloria’s festive instrumentation, the expression
in many of its 26 bars is more characteristic of the G major and D major Kyries than its
fellow fragments in C. In particular, the setting of et in terra pax (b. 6-13), with its chains of
thirds leading to vertical sonorities of the seventh and ninth resembles the opening of Fr
1787a, and is also strongly reminiscent of b. 30-37 in Ave verum corpus. The “monumental
185 On the organ obbligato tradition, see Friedrich Wilhelm Riedel, Kirchenmusik mit Obligater Orgel:
Untersuchungen zum Süddeutsch-Österreichischen Repertoire im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 4,
Kirchenmusikalische Studien (Sinzig: Studio, 1999).
186 A-Wn, HK 474, 764+1022, 115, 517.
187 Mozart did not indicate the instrumentation in Fr 1787c, but from the clefs it is clear that it is very similar
to Fr 1790a. The only question concerns the presumed bassoon parts: in Fr 1790a two bassoons are written on
a single stave with a “double” bass clef, while Fr 1787c has a single bass clef. This may suggest that Mozart
intended Fr 1787c to have only one bassoon part.
188