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

FOUR
A Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s
244
O, meine Herrn! unter uns Kapellmeistern giebts auch grosse
Politiker, und vielleicht giebts nicht einmal einen grossen Politiker,
der nicht von einer Seite ein grosser Kapellmeister wäre.
Johann Tauber von Taubenfurt (1780) 1
“Now that I am appointed to a situation where I could please myself
in my writings, and feel I could do something worthy, I must die...”
Mozart, as reported by Constanze (1828) 2
Mozart’s appointment as adjunct Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in May 1791
represents the pinnacle of his professional aspirations as a church musician. 3 The composer
had possessed directorial responsibility before – more than a decade earlier, in Salzburg – but
that responsibility was shared between Mozart, his father, Michael Haydn, and other senior
musicians of the Salzburg court. Now, Mozart had the potential to assume sole control of the
music at the most important Cathedral in the empire, and program whatever music,
including his own, that he desired. For a biographical event of such great potential
importance, the Mozart literature has devoted surprisingly little attention to the background,
motivations and timing of the composer’s successful application. Most biographies treat the
position as a “what if,” similar in significance to the plan by Hungarian noblemen to grant
Mozart an annual stipend, and none consider the possibility that Mozart spent a significant
1 Johann Tauber von Taubenfurt, Über meine Violine (Vienna: Kürzbock, 1780), 134.
2 Vincent and Mary Novello, A Mozart Pilgrimage: Being the Travel Diaries of Vincent & Mary Novello in the
Year 1829, ed. Rosemary Hughes and Nerina Medici di Marignano (London: Novello, 1955), 126-28.
3 Portions of this chapter appeared in an earlier form in my paper “Mozart and St. Stephan’s Cathedral: New
Documentary Evidence,” presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Washington
D. C., 29 October 2005.