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

players at great expense, but it is difficult to see why the composer would have scored a
Viennese sacred work for such impractical forces in the first place. It is equally remotely
possible that Mozart did not intend the K. 341 for liturgical use at all, but instead for
concerts of the Tonkünstlersocietät where its scoring would be less of an issue. But to
speculate in this way is to create solutions where there is no real problem. The Munich
orchestra was capable of playing the Kyrie, and the stylistic affinities with Idomeneo are
certainly worth considering. Given the impossibility of a Salzburg performance, and the great
difficulty of a Vienna performance, there seems little reason to alter the traditional view that
the Kyrie was a product of 1779 or 1780.
IV. THE ‘CORONATION’ MASSES
The question of when Mozart’s music entered the repertoire of the Hofkapelle is closely
connected in the literature with the long series of coronation services held in central Europe
from 1790-92. Due to the complex political constitution of the Empire, a monarch had
several coronations, underlining his various claims to authority. Both Leopold II and his son
Franz II underwent three such events: coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in Frankfurt,
coronation as King of Bohemia in Prague, and coronation as King of Hungary in Budapest
or Pressburg. In its function as capital of the Erblande, Vienna too had services marking the
arrival of the future Emperor and celebrating his later accessions elsewhere. In addition to the
coronation proper at each occasion, there was a service crowning the monarch’s consort,
separate oath of allegiance services preceding the coronations in Bohemia and Hungary and,
in 1791, the installation of Leopold’s 21-year-old daughter Maria Anna (1770-1809) as
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