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

II. MUSIC AT ST. STEPHEN’S CATHEDRAL
Es ist der Einzige wahre altväterliche Großpapa-Thurm, der sich in seinem alten Schlendriane
erhalten hat! Fest und unerschüttert, trotzt er den Erdbeben der Aufklärung; er allein lachet der
tollkühnen Wuth seiner Feinde, er allein achtet nicht die Befehle und Verordnungen; er allein
setzt seine Mißbräuche fort! 15
Joachim Perinet’s mock-heroic characterisation of St. Stephen’s Cathedral may be grounded
in a fundamental pessimism for the future of Enlightenment thought in Vienna, but his
picture of an institution defiantly ignoring external attempts to reform it was undoubtedly
accurate. From the celebration of “banned” feastdays and liturgies, to the retention of
tapestries, candles and statues, to the stacking of its clergy with anti-reform figures, St.
Stephen’s was the leading centre of conservative liturgical practice in the city. Evidence for
the Cathedral’s conservatism comes primarily from the Josephinian religious journals, which
conducted a sustained campaign throughout the 1780s documenting every Misbrauch they
encountered at St. Stephen’s in indignant detail. 16 The Cathedral’s clergy were equally
contemptuous of their critics, as Über Gottesdienst und Religionsordnung reported in 1784:
Einige vornehme geistliche Herren bei St. Stephan finden es schon seit lange ihrer Würde gemäß,
uns in öffentlichen Häusern, und wo überhaupt die Rede von uns ist, Ochsen, Esel, Idioten,
Dümmkopfe, hungrige Schmierer &c. zu nennen. 17
The journals’ criticisms became so pronounced that in January 1788, Joseph II took the
unusual step of issuing a decree specifically targeting St. Stephen’s and ordering the
Cathedral to follow the Gottesdienstordnung and the Emperor’s other Verordnungen to the
letter. 18 As the Metropolitan church of the city, St. Stephen’s possessed a degree of
15 Joachim Perinet, Annehmlichkeiten in Wien (Vienna: n.p., 1787-8), ii.69-70. See Leslie Bodi, Tauwetter in
Wien: Zur Prosa der Österreichischen Aufklärung, 1781-1795 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1995), 385-86.
16 ÜGR, i.179, 205, 250, 396, iv.243, 306, 374, 407, 409, 434, v.39, 72, 101, 148, 183, 265, 269, 327, 432;
KB, i.273, 281, ii.50, iv.191, v.159, 270, vi.12, 129, 205, 268, 382, vii.49, 92, 186.
17 ÜGR, i.286-7.
18 Quoted in KB, vi.97-102 and WK, 1788:235-40.
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