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

e pursued in detail here, and the earliest sources have yet to be systematically examined. 274
Contrafacta of three Thamos choruses appear in the Andre-Gleissner catalogues of Mozart’s
Nachlass, 275 but as Edge has demonstrated, a number of items in that collection do not stem
from the “estate” as it stood in 1791 but are later additions by Constanze. 276 In any case, the
scores from the “estate” do not appear to survive. The earliest source I have seen for any of
the contrafacta is a score copy of K. Anh. 21 deriving from the archive of Breitkopf & Härtel
and signed at the end “Eseguito nel Mese d’ Ottobre 1794”; see Figure 3.29. 277 Part of
Thamos was performed in Leipzig as early as 1788, 278 and Breitkopf brought out an edition
of the contrafactum in 1803, so this manuscript will be of particular interest to future
research. 279 There is however no direct evidence at this stage that the contrafacta were
performed at any of the coronations, and neither the Hofkapelle archive nor the St. Vitus
archive contain early copies of the motets. Niemetschek’s “einige Motetten” may just as
likely refer to “original” works like Misericordias domini.
Given that K. 317, the mass we now call the Krönungsmesse, was not performed by
the Hofkapelle until later in the 1790s, how did it acquire its name? Table 3.5 shows a
number of significant early copies of K. 317 and K. 337, most of which were unknown to
the NMA. The Hofkapelle first made reference to a Krönungsmesse by Mozart in January
274 Jochen Reutter argues on internal grounds for the primacy of the Latin contrafacta over the German, but
does not investigate the early history of the sources; Jochen Reutter, “Die Lateinischen Kontrafakta der Drei
Chöre aus Mozarts Schauspielmusik zu Thamos, König in Ägypten: Aspekte Eines Parodieverfahrens,” in Studien
zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift Fur Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1995), 328-33.
275 See, for example, D-F, Mus. Hs. 778/2, 23.
276 MVC, Chapter 8 passim, especially 1289-90.
277 A-Wn, Mus. Hs. 5047. The manuscript’s provenance is given on the ÖNB’s card as “Archiv Breitkopf.”
278 Harald Strebel, “Mozart und sein Leipziger Freund und 'Ächte Bruder' Carl Immanuel Engel,” Mitteilungen
der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 40 (1992): 98.
279 A score copy of K. Anh. 22 in D-B, Mus. ms. 15144/10 derives from Nietmetschek himself: the title page
reads “Del Sig. W.A. Mozart / Chor aus dem [deleted: Oper] Schauspiele/König Thamos von Aegypten,” but
the original text was not entered. The Latin text was however entered in pencil, opening with “Deus rex
tremendae” instead of the usual “Jesu rex tremendae.” Traeg advertised K. Anh. 21 in 1798 with the text
“Gottheit über alles”; MVC, 859.
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