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

leading up to the Exequien for Mozart in December 1791, and attempt to place the service
within the context of Viennese liturgical and musical practice.
I. REQUIEM SETTINGS FOR VIENNESE MUSICIANS
Depending on the status of the deceased, the style and quantity of music heard at eighteenth-
century funerals and memorials could vary considerably. 8 Funerals for musicians were usually
quite simple, since many in the profession died destitute and their relatives could not afford
the expense of an elaborate aural and visual background to the liturgy. 9 Mourners in the
1780s faced official attempts, only partially successful, to rein in the Viennese predilection
for elaborate ceremony and public expressions of grief, and the abolition of the brotherhoods
by Joseph II removed some of the major sources of institutional support for such services. It
was only occasionally, then, that a musician received a funeral or other kind of memorial
service featuring a full choral and instrumental ensemble.
When Gluck died in November 1787, he received a first class funeral costing 30fl
24xr, including three priests and a hearse drawn by four horses. There seems however to have
been no music, as the record notes that the composer “Ist in der Stille Eingesegnet
worden.” 10 Gluck does seem to have given thought to a more lasting memorial, and the
resulting service provides an interesting parallel to the service held for Mozart four years later.
Controversy: An Examination of Six Completions of Mozart's Final Work” (DMA diss., University of
Cincinnati, 2002).
8 For an illustration of the “Sacrum chorale pro defunctis” in a Viennese organ book of 1780, used at less
elaborate services, see Erich Benedikt, “Die Alten Notenarchive der Schubertkirche Lichtental und der
Klosterkirche der Barmherzigen Brüder in Wien,” in 'Musik Muss Man Machen': Eine Festgabe für Josef Mertin
zum Neunzigsten Geburtstag Am 21. März 1994, ed. Michael Nagy (Vienna: Vom Pasqualatihaus, 1994), 80,
97.
9 Joseph Heyda (c. 1740-1806), organist at St. Michael’s from 1793, was entirely penniless at the time of his
death and relied on charity; A-Wsa, Mag. ZG 2-2431/1806.
10 Vienna, Pfarrarchiv St. Stephan, Bahrleiherbuch 1787, f. 408v. The entry was located and transcribed by
Michael Lorenz, to whom I am grateful.
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