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

amount of time fulfilling his unpaid duties, whatever they may have been. Despite the loss
and destruction of much documentary evidence, it is in fact possible to gain some sense of
the conditions for sacred music at the Cathedral during the 1780s, and make informed
guesses about Mozart’s association with St. Stephen’s both prior and subsequent to his
appointment.
One motivating factor for the composer in early 1791 may have been a series of
decisions taken at the highest levels of government, as the new Emperor Leopold II began to
relax some of the restrictions introduced by his brother in 1783. In March of that year,
Leopold made a number of modifications to the Gottesdienstordnung, including the provision
of a more relaxed attitude to instrumentally-accompanied sacred music. Although the
majority of Joseph II’s original strictures were retained, Leopold’s concessions marked the
beginning of a gradual recovery in official attitudes towards elaborate church music, and may
have provided Mozart with the encouragement he needed to prepare an application for St.
Stephen’s.
I. THE REFORMS OF LEOPOLD II
During his two decades as Grand Duke of Tuscany (1770-90), Leopold had instituted
religious reforms that mirrored in many ways the more ambitious efforts of his elder brother.
In 1786, a diocesan synod was convened in Pistoia under Leopold’s patronage, issuing a
series of decrees on episcopal power, liturgical “abuses,” services in the vernacular and the
abolition of monastic orders. 4 Among the topics proposed by Leopold for discussion was a
plan to eliminate “la musica tanto vocale, che istrumentale, all’eccezione del canto corale e
4 See Adam Wandruszka, Leopold II., Erzherzog von Österreich, Grossherzog von Toskana, König von Ungarn und
Böhmen, Römischer Kaiser, 2 vols. (Vienna: Herold, 1963-65), ii.111-39.
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