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

flirtatious nature of the material. There seems no reason not to extend the suggested dating
into the first half of 1782, up to the point of Mozart and Constanze’s marriage.
It would be of great interest to know the circumstances under which Mozart wrote
this note, for there is no other hint of devotional books in the composer’s household. 103 The
exhortation to “not be too devout” may imply that Constanze had recently finished
performing or attending some kind of service, or at the least that the book lay open and
Mozart assumed as much when he visited Frau Weber’s apartment. Indeed, it is tempting to
connect the note to the services that Mozart claimed he and Constanze attended together,
but the lack of testimony from Constanze herself on the matter leaves us with a rather one-
sided view of the couple’s religious life. Ultimately, Constanze’s prayerbook stands as an
isolated example of what may have been a larger phenomenon, offering a rare glimpse into an
otherwise poorly documented facet of the couple’s relationship.
If Mozart and Constanze did indeed attend church on a regular basis, they would
have inevitably come into contact with reforms introduced by Joseph II, resulting in them
singing more hymns, lighting fewer candles, worshipping at plain altars and much else
besides. Yet only one reference can be found to the church reforms in all Mozart’s surviving
correspondence. It has its origins in a letter written by Leopold on 20 September 1782, now
lost, which described inter alia the Archbishop of Salzburg’s famous pastoral letter. 104 This
letter, one of the central documents of Reform Catholicism, proposed a series of liturgical
and musical reforms even more stringent than Joseph’s, provoking the natural reaction that
Colloredo was simply kowtowing to gain Imperial approval. Mozart, in his response to
Leopold’s report, evidently thought so too:
103 Mozart did apparently leave a short note to Constanze on another occasion, although the text is known only
from Nissen’s biography (Undated note; MBA, iii.246). Mozart at his death did possess a 1679 Vulgate Bible
from Cologne, but the origins of its acquisition are unknown.
104 Reprinted in Hersche, Aufgeklärte Reformkatholizismus.
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