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

appeared somewhat disingenuous, for Annus qui had advocated far more than a mere ban on
trumpets and timpani, and it had taken Vienna more than four years to respond to
Benedict’s papal bull. Nevertheless, the fact that the reforms to the church calendar were also
introduced in January 1754, after consultation between Maria Theresia and Benedict XIV,
shows that the Empress did consider it important to maintain good relations with Rome in
liturgical matters, and the contemporary reforms to church music should be seen in this
light.
The three proclamations have commonly been interpreted as bans on the presence of
music of any kind involving trumpets and timpani. The import of these reforms was
recognized by not only the affected musicians but also the national pilgrimage church of
Mariazell, and both unsuccessfully petitioned the Empress to reverse her decision. 24 Yet there
is much evidence to suggest that trumpets and timpani did indeed continue to be used
during the thirteen years in which the ban remained in force. One commentator has
suggested that the real intention of the decrees was to prohibit the trumpet fanfares that
commonly preceded and followed the celebration of high Mass and served as interludes
during the Te Deum. 25 Yet the forcefulness of the petitions produced at the instigation of the
ban suggests that some clergy and musicians genuinely believed a total removal was
original of Maria Theresia’s decree is in AVA, A-Cultus 11 Gen. 3/1754. ‘Monarchy’ here refers to the Austrian
crown lands, including present-day Austria and parts of Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and elsewhere.
24 The petitions are preserved in AVA, A-Cultus 11 Gen. 61/1754 and 101/1754, together with Maria
Theresia’s responses. A celebratory service at St. Veit in Krems involving two choirs of trumpets and timpani
earned the church the ‘sharp rebuke’ of the responsible Landesregierung in 1753; see Riedel, “Geschichte Der
Musikpflege,” 327. A study of the sources for Reutter’s trumpet sinfonias suggests that they received no
performances in the Hofkapelle after the early 1750s; see A. Peter Brown, “The Trumpet Overture and Sinfonia
in Vienna (1715-1822): Rise, Decline and Reformulation,” in Music in Eighteenth-Century Austria, ed. David
Wyn Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). However, a baptismal service at the Hofkapelle in
June 1754 included trumpets and timpani, and the Piaristenkirche in Vienna reintroduced those instruments in
1755 with no response from the authorities; see Khevenhüller-Metsch, Aus Der Zeit Maria Theresias, iii.179.
and Otto Biba, Der Piaristenorden in Osterreich. Seine Bedeutung Für Bildende Kunst, Musik Und Theater Im 17.
Und 18. Jahrhundert (Eisenstadt: Institut für österreichische Kulturgeschichte, 1975), 113.
25 Friedrich Wilhelm Riedel, “Liturgie Und Kirchenmusik”, in Joseph Haydn in Seiner Zeit (Eisenstadt:
Burgenländische Landesregierung, 1982), 123.
12