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

Begehren nicht gewilliget werden.” Soon after, the Council had a change of heart, perhaps
after representations were made for Mozart by members of the Imperial court. It is evident
from other documents that such reversals were a common feature of Council decision-
making, and do not necessarily imply political manoeuvring either for or against Mozart’s
application. Perhaps the councillors were eventually swayed by the advantages of a smooth
transition from one Kapellmeister to another without a competitive and lengthy recruitment
process, and desired also to send a message to their recalcitrant incumbent that his services
were expendable.
On 9 May, the Council drafted a letter of appointment for Mozart, shown in Figure
4.13. 120 Written principally by the Council secretary, Johann Hübner, it contains additions
and corrections in the hand of Johann Adam Geiger, a senior member of the Council, and
one further unidentified hand. 121 The following day, fair copies of this appointment letter
were sent to Mozart, to Hofmann and to Furthmoser, as a note by Hübner reveals. 122
Strangely enough, the only known newspaper report of the appointment appeared in the
Pressburger Zeitung on 21 May, although it is entirely possible that Viennese accounts are
unidentified or lost: “Wien. Der Hofkompositor Mozart hat von dem hiesigen Magistrat die
Erwartung auf die 2000 Gulden eintragende Kapellmeisterstelle bey Sankt Stefan
erhalten.” 123 It would be interesting to know from where the newspaper obtained this
120 The same day, Hübner wrote on Mozart’s application, “Über das an den Hl: Bittsteller ausgefertigte dekret
bei der Registratur aufzubehalten.” A note of the correspondence appears in the Council’s index, A-Wsa, HR B
1/20, f. 57r, 171r. Both these notes are missing from Deutsch, Dokumente and its supplements.
121 The unidentified hand was responsible for the insertion “auf sein bittliches Ansuchen.” The four lower
additions are in the hand of Geiger.
122 Mozart’s copy of the appointment letter was kept with his autograph letter of application, and was formerly
in Floersheim’s collection. Hofmann’s and Furthmoser’s copies are not known to survive.
123 Deutsch, Dokumente, 347; Eibl, Addenda, 66. Mozart’s post was mentioned by Constanze in her petition to
Leopold, and in passing in the Stockholms-Posten of 2 January 1792. Deutsch, Dokumente, 372; Eibl, Addenda,
76.
291