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

the Fronleichnamsfest, Joseph II and the court processed from the Hofburg to St. Stephen’s,
including the Hofmusik. 228 Processions also continued to take place on special occasions, such
as the centennial anniversary of the Turkish defeat at the gates of Vienna on 14 September
1783. 229
No previous reference to the Corpus Christi procession or Maria Treu itself appears
in Mozart’s letters, and from this letter alone it is not obvious why Mozart would travel from
the family’s residence in the centre of town to attend a suburban event. 230 Perhaps the
composer had attended in previous years, or had some engagement that is unknown to us. 231
The visit may have been connected with Mozart’s attempts to have his son Carl accepted
into the Löwenburgisches Konvikt, the school operated by the Piarists. More than three
months after the procession, Mozart wrote to Constanze: “um 10 uhr gehe ich zu den
Pieristen ins amt, weil mir Leitgeb gesagt hat, daß ich dann mit dem Director Sprechen kann.
– bleibe auch beym Speisen da.” 232 The following week in his last surviving letter, Mozart
complained about the low standards at his son’s current school in Perchtoldsdorf, to which
Carl would need to be returned, and added, “unterdessen kann die Geschichte wegen den
Piaristen zu Stande kommen, woran wirklich gearbeitet wird.” 233 The commentary to MBA
itself (Ibid., Beilage). Although in theory Vienna was affected by this order (Ibid., 152, 478), the city’s churches
very likely continued to follow the local order from 1783 in cases where the two documents differed, as the
present example demonstrates. Leopold’s Generale of 1791 modified the previous order only to grant bishops
the power to allow additional Rogation processions; RGZJ, 559.
228 See, for example, the account of the 1786 procession in A-Whh, Zeremonialakten, Protokoll 37, f. 19.
229 The event was noted by Count Zinzendorf in his diary on that date: “Procession pour la centiême
anniversaire de la levée du Siege de Vienne.”; quoted in Link, The National Court Theatre, 210.
230 For a sample list of processions associated with Corpus Christi prior to the reforms of Joseph II, see Janet K.
Page, “Music and the Royal Procession in Maria Theresia's Vienna,” Early Music 27 (1999): 98. The
commentary in MBA (vi.416) includes the strange comment, “Mozart nahm, obwohl er Freimaurer war, daran
teil.”
231 Biba states that this procession was not permitted under Joseph II, and only took place again after Leopold
relaxed the restrictions, but see above; Otto Biba, “Volkmar Braunbehrens: Mozart in Wien [Review],” in
Mozart-Jahrbuch 1986 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1987), 213.
232 MBA, iv.160-61.
233 MBA, iv.162.
333