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

for fourteen masses by the composer and a large quantity of other material, would have
naturally formed the principal witnesses for the reconstruction of musical life at St. Stephen’s
in the 1780s. 61 Examination of the surviving Reutter manuscripts from St. Stephen’s has so
far failed to uncover evidence that they were used under Hofmann, although it is possible
that some of them were, given Reutter’s popularity. 62 In the absence of musical sources, we
must rely on documentary evidence to gain a sense of the institution that Mozart joined in
1791.
Due to its status as the Metropolitan church of the city, St. Stephen’s was directly
answerable to the Vienna City Council, or Magistrat, and the Wiener Stadt- und
Landesarchiv preserves a large number of documents concerned with the daily administration
of the Cathedral and other churches. 63 During his last ten years, Hofmann made a number
of applications and complaints to the council that provide a telling example of the frosty
relationship between the Kapellmeister and his superiors. The most complex of these
disputes occurred in 1783-4 as a result of the council’s decision to close one of the
Cathedral’s musical institutions. Until this time there were actually two separate Kapelle at
St. Stephen’s: the Essential, or principal ensemble, and another dedicated to the Gnadenbild,
the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary (Maria Pötsch) brought from Hungary in 1697. 64 In
practice, Hofmann and most of the Cathedral musicians were on the payroll of both,
although they continued to be listed and paid separately. In response to the new
61 The masses are listed in the “Catalog sämtlicher Musicalien,” 9-11.
62 Hofmann’s autograph scores are mostly lost, and his musical hand is not well understood. An autograph
Alleluia survives in A-Wgm A 460. An alleged mass autograph in D-B Mus. Ms. Autogr. Leop. Hoffmann 1
seems not to be in Hofmann’s hand; Allan Badley, personal communication.
63 In 1783, Joseph ordered a reorganisation of the Magistrat, and much of its correspondence prior to this year
is now lost. Those documents concerned with music include A-Wsa, HR A 17/1 (22, 38, 42, 48, 49/1784); A
17/2 (36/1785); A 17/3 (4/1786); A 17/4 (8/1787, 5/1788, 1/1789, 4/1789, 4-5/1790 and 3/1791).
64 On this ensemble, see Thomas Hochradner and Géza Michael Vörösmarty, “Zur Musikpflege Am Altar
Mária Pócs (Maria Pötsch) in St. Stephan in Wien,” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 41
(2000): 133-75.
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