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

example, sets of parts used in Baden or Vienna – these might well show changes made by the
composer. 193
The most promising place to look for such manuscripts is in the historical music archive of
the Baden Pfarrkirche. The collection briefly gained notoriety in 1929 when the then
choirmaster, Bernhard Nefzger, found a set of parts for the spurious Missa in C K. Anh. C
1.05 with an attribution to Mozart. 194 This “rediscovered” Mozart mass, supposedly dating
from 1790-91, received performances in both Baden and Vienna, and was even covered by
the New York Times. 195 Left in a state of disrepair after World War II and the subsequent
Russian occupation, the collection was purchased in 1966 by the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek and catalogued under the signature Fonds 4 Baden. 196
For our purposes, the most important question is whether any of the surviving
materials from St. Stephen’s could be associated with Mozart and Stoll, particularly works
known to have been performed there in 1790-91 such as K. 275, K. 317 and potentially Ave,
verum corpus. At first glance, the chances would appear to be slim, for a major fire in 1812
supposedly destroyed the entire archive, forcing the then regens chori, Leopold Maglo, to
begin the collection anew. 197 In fact, a number of manuscripts undoubtedly predate the fire,
and several were almost certainly associated with Stoll. The clearest indication of this
relationship is found in three sets of parts marked “Ex Rebus Anton Stoll / R. Chori
193 MVC, 840.
194 Nefzger kept the parts for himself, and it was not until January 2006 that they were donated to the
Stadtarchiv in Baden. See Maurer, Anton Stoll. The speculation in K 6, , 812 that the parts “soll durch
Schullehrer und Regenschori Stoll nach Baden gekommen sein” is almost certainly groundless. The samples of
the parts provided on the church’s website are consistent with a date in the first quarter of the nineteenth
century; “Die Badener Messe”, ,
accessed 1 September 2006.
195 Anon., “Identifies Mozart Mass: Vienna Expert Says Newly Found Work Was Written in 1776,” New York
Times, Nov. 27 1931, 30. The source for this information was Carl August Rosenthal, identified anonymously
in the article as “an expert engaged by The New York Times from the Vienna Seminary of Musical History…”
See also H. C. Robbins Landon, “Mozart Fälschlich Zugeschriebene Messen,” in Mozart-Jahrbuch 1957
(Salzburg: 1958), 88.
196 Joseph Gmeiner, Verzeichnis der Nachlässe, Sammlungen Archive und Leihgaben in der Musiksammlung der
Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 1992), s.v. 'Baden bei Wien'.
197 Willander, “Kirchenmusikarchiv”, ii-iii, 1, 39.
322