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

Reutter composed at least four requiem masses. 51 Only one of these, Hofer No. 1, was extant
at the Cathedral during the compilation of Hofer’s catalogue, and the parts were among
those destroyed in 1945. 52 All four, however, are extant in the Hofkapelle collection. 53
A diarist of a different and rather more opinionated kind was Charles Burney, who
spent two weeks in Vienna in September 1772. The Cathedral itself was not at all to
Burney’s liking: “The church is a dark, dirty, and dismal old Gothic building, though richly
ornamented; in it are hung all the trophies of war, taken from the Turks and other enemies
of the house of Austria, for more than a century past, which gives it very much the
appearance of an old wardrobe.” 54 Burney’s impression of the music at St. Stephen’s was also
decidedly mixed: on one occasion, he reserved high praise for the masses and symphonies he
heard, but was strongly critical of the choir organ, which was dreadfully out of tune. 55 At a
service of vespers, he found the music admirable, but “not very well performed...as to singing
or accompaniment; the former was feeble, and the latter, I mean the violins, were
despicable.” 56 Burney was particularly critical of Reutter’s music, which he described as
“without taste or invention.” 57
51 The lack of Viennese sources for Hofer’s No. 2 and No. 3 and the small number of sources in general leaves
their authorship in doubt.
52 Hofer, “Die Beiden Reutter”, ii.45. The parts bore no performance dates.
53 A-Wn, HK 790-793. A score of Hofer No. 6 is in A-Wn, Mus. Hs. 16665. A similar service was held for
Joseph II in 1790. On the first anniversary of Maria Theresia’s death in 1781, the St. Stephen’s Kapellmeister
Leopold Hofmann was paid 102fl 24xr on behalf of the ensemble for the “3. tägigen gehaltenen Exequien mit
3maligen Musikalischen Solennen Requiem und 3.maligen libera...” A-Wda, s.s., f. 91r. Special payments to
the Hofkapelle for their services at the death of Maria Theresia are recorded in Vienna, Hofkammerarchiv, HZB
176, f. 38-9.
54 Percy Scholes (ed.) An Eighteenth-Century Musical Tour in Central Europe and the Netherlands (London:
Oxford University Press, 1959), 84.
55 Ibid, 110-111. A description of 1779 reports that the choir organ was “täglich zum Gottesdienste gebrauchet,
und wegen ihres reinen, und lauten Klanges angerühmet.” [Joseph Ogesser], Beschreibung der
Metropolitankirche zu St. Stephan in Wien (Vienna: Ghelen, 1779), 84.
56 Burney, An Eighteenth-Century Musical Tour, 84. Nicolai, visiting in 1781, was equally unimpressed:
“...in der St. Stephanskirche fand ich die Musik nicht so gut, als ich sie mir unter der Anführung eines
Leopold Hoffmanns vorgestellet hatte. Vermuthlich liegt die Schuld nicht an diesem berühmten Manne.
Die singenden Stimmen in allen Kirchen waren nicht vorzüglich; die besten nur mittelmäßig.” Friedrich
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