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

Did Mozart have an association with St. Michael’s? Although the composer never
lived in its parish, he obviously passed by the church frequently on his way to the Burgtheater
or other court institutions, and a number of his friends and acquaintances sang or played
within its walls. An examination of the St. Michael’s account books may provide us with an
answer; see Figure 5.12. An entry for May 1791 reads: “1: 40: p[ro] descriptione motettae
auth[ore] Mozart” – in other words, the church paid 1fl 40kr for the copying of a “motet” by
Mozart. 152 This entry was first published by Karl Schütz without comment in a series of
transcriptions from the St. Michael’s account books, but it has remained virtually unknown
to Mozart scholarship and did not appear in Eisen’s Neue Dokumente. 153 There are a number
of other interesting entries around this time: in August 1791, for example, the church
obtained a copy of Michael Haydn’s Requiem in C minor, usually said to be a formative
influence on the style of Mozart’s setting. One naturally wonders what the circumstances of
the acquisition were, and what the “motet” may have been.
According to an inventory of the church’s music archive made in the mid-nineteenth
century, St. Michael’s once possessed copies of eight masses by Mozart, in addition to the
Requiem, a setting of Vespers in C, Ave verum corpus and Misericordias Domini. 154 Today,
only two of those sources remain: a set of parts for the Mass in F, K. 192, and a further set
for Misericordias Domini; see Figure 5.13. The parts for the mass date from the early
nineetenth century, but the parts for Misericordias may well be the “motet” copied in May
1791. 155 The watermark throughout the original “layer” of the set is Duda GF-3, found in
the autograph of two operas by Süssmayr: Gl’uccelatori SmWV 225 and an untitled Singspiel
152 MiKA, XVI.205.8. The price probably implies 25 Bogen at 4kr or 20 Bogen at 5kr.
153 Schütz, Musikpflege, 152.
154 Ibid., 115-17.
155 One of the Thamos motets may be proposed as a candidate, but the inventory makes no mention of such a
work.
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