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

disposition of the orchestra meant the Kyrie could only have been written during the visit to
Munich. The lavish orchestration is certainly unprecedented in Mozart’s church music,
particularly the inclusion of clarinets and four horns. Jahn also raised the possibility that
Mozart left the work as a fragment, although one would expect André to have mentioned
that fact in the first edition if it were so, given his care over the editions of the Requiem and
C minor Mass. Mozart does seem to have been interested in displaying his wares to the
Munich Hofkapelle, for he wrote to Leopold on 13 November 1780: “haben Sie doch die
güte und schicken mir die 2 sparten von den Messen die ich mithabe – und die Messe aus
dem B auch. denn graf Seeau wird nächstens dem Churfürsten etwas davon sagen. – ich
möchte daß man mich in diesem styl auch kennen lernte.” 201
The challenge to Jahn’s dating arrived in 1981 with Tyson’s article on the Salzburg
fragments. Tyson considered that there was “little to be said in favor” of a Munich origin for
the Kyrie, and suggested that, with the new knowledge that Mozart was working on sacred
music in the last years of his life, a date between 1788 and 1791 was more likely. Tyson
expressed the same opinion in more moderate form two years later, 202 but did not, as far as I
am aware, ever mount a detailed challenge to Jahn’s case for a Munich origin. As matters
stood, in other words, a Viennese date had emerged as a possibility solely on the knowledge
that Mozart had started several sacred works at that time. Purely on the basis of
contemporaneous activity in sacred music, however, one could mount an equally convincing
case for Munich, with Mozart’s known desire to impress the Elector and the instrumental
characteristics of the Kyrie coming into play. The crucial point is that no detailed case was
ever presented against Jahn’s dating, nor was there an explanation of why a Viennese origin
was more likely. It has been surprising, then, to observe the quick acceptance of Tyson’s
201 MBA, ii.19.
202 Tyson, “The Mozart Fragments,” 342n34, 27. See also Tyson, “Proposed New Dates,” 216.
195