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

esponsible priests. 60 Joseph himself took the opportunity in May to ban “excessive, and at
any rate inappropriate finery, decoration or lighting” in churches, chapels, and even private
houses. 61 Yet the administration of such an ambitious and complex project required the
services of a specially constituted body, and on 22 July the Emperor fulfilled this need with
the establishment of the Geistliches Hofkommission. 62 Chaired by the Staatsrat Baron Kressel,
the Commission was populated with Imperial administrators and reform-minded religious
figures, including Heinke, Hofrat Matthias von Hann, and Franz von Rautenstrauch, abbot
of Braunau. 63
One of the primary tasks of the Commission in its first incarnation was the
formulation of a centralized Gottesdienstordnung for Vienna, which could later be extended to
wider areas of the Monarchy. Previously, the responsibility for the conduct of services had
been in the hands of the church authorities alone, but now the Commission was entrusted
with the task of devising an entirely new liturgical observance for the city, based on Joseph’s
detailed instructions. In September 1782, the Emperor prepared a directive for Baron Kressel
on the nature of the new service order, including the first explicit reference to the place of
church music in his design:
Sind die Hochämter durchgehends auf Sonn- und gebotene Feyertage allein einzuschränken, an
allen übrigen Werktagen aber ganz aufzuheben, und dadurch die Musik sammt andern
Beköstigungen des Personalis und der Assistenten zum Besten des Religions Fundi gröstentheils
in Ersparung zu bringen…Die Fundationen, welche auf Hochämter, gesungene Messen und
60 RGZJ, 117.
61 “aller übermäßiger, dem Geiste der Kirche ohnehin nicht angemessener Aufputz, Prunk oder Beleuchtung in
den Kirchen und Kapellen”; Generale of 14 May 82, quoted in Ibid., 97.
62 Ibid., 98-99.
63 According to Joseph, the Komission was responsible for “all jenes, was auf das zeitliche wohl, gute ordnung
und ruhe des staats einen einfluss hat, mithin auch der äußerliche disciplin, mit einem worte alles, was nicht die
glaubenslehre, administration der sakramenten und die disciplinam internam angeht,” quoted in F. Walter, Die
österreichische Zentralverwaltung. II Abteilung: Von der Vereinigung der österreichischen und böhmischen
Hofkanzlei bis zur Errichtung der Minsterialverfassung (1749-1848) (Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1950), iv.76.
Baron Kressel was privately troubled by extent of the reforms he was to implement, and by May 1783 remained
in the post “no longer with the hope of doing good, but merely of diminishing evil”; Beales, Monasteries, 201-
02.
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