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

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More celebrated than Richter’s text is the accompanying satirical engraving depicting the<br />

performance of a Stabat mater, now available in a number of modern studies. 23 Printed<br />

defences of concerted sacred music are very rare: the only extended justification of which I<br />

am aware is a long response by Patrizius Fast, Chormeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, to an<br />

attack on the genre by the jurist and professor Josef von Weisenegg. 24 Fast was a leading<br />

reactionary against Imperial attempts at religious reform, and his rejoinder compared church<br />

music to an ornate garden filled with flowers and fruit trees in its capacity to awaken a love<br />

of the Creator.<br />

In addition to the individually published items, a number of religious periodicals<br />

were active in the city. Their primary focus was not musical and all were Josephinian in<br />

orientation, but once this is borne in mind they become a useful source for the state of sacred<br />

music in Vienna and beyond. The two leading journals, Marc Anton Wittola’s Wienerische<br />

Kirchenzeitung and Leopold A. Hoffmann’s twice-renamed Wöchentliche Wahrheiten für und<br />

über die Prediger in Wien both carried a mixture of religious news, opinion pieces on<br />

doctrinal questions and, particularly in the latter, a large number of Predigtkritiken. These<br />

anonymous articles were effectively reviews of recent church services, critiquing the content<br />

<strong>1781</strong>), 16-17, Anon., Ueber die Abschaffung der Weinachtsmetten und Veränderung in eine Tagandacht...<br />

(Vienna: n. p., <strong>1781</strong>), 4-13, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, ed., Musikalischer Almanach für Deutschland auf das Jahr<br />

1784 (Leipzig: Schwickert, 1783; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1974), 188-89, Nicolai,<br />

Beschreibung einer Reise Durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre <strong>1781</strong>, iv.544-52, Gustav Gugitz and<br />

Anton Schlossar, eds., Johann Pezzl: Skizze von Wien (Graz: Leykam-Verlag, 1923), 281-82, Anon., “Ueber den<br />

Stand der Musik in Wien,” in Wiener Theater Almanach für das Jahr 1794 (Vienna: Kurzbeck, 1794), 177-79,<br />

Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld, Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag, ed. Otto Biba (Munich: E.<br />

Katzbichler, 1976), 97-8.<br />

23 Among others, Neal Zaslaw, Mozart's Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford:<br />

Clarendon Press, 1989), John A. Rice, “Vienna under Joseph II and Leopold II,” in Man and Music: The<br />

Classical Era, ed. Neal Zaslaw (London: Macmillan, 1989), 126-65, Daniel Heartz, Haydn, Mozart, and the<br />

Viennese School, 1740-1780 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). The caption in the first-cited mistakenly<br />

describes the engraving as Richter’s frontispiece.<br />

24 Josef Maria Weissegger von Weissenegg, Beiträge zur Schilderung Wiens, 2nd ed. (Vienna: Kurzbeck, <strong>1781</strong>),<br />

78-85, Patricius Fast, Katholischer Unterricht und Erörterung aller Zweifel, welche in den Beyträgen zur<br />

Schilderung Wiens aufgeworfen werden (Vienna: Erzbischöfliche Cur, <strong>1781</strong>), ix.31-32, x.3-15. The anonymous<br />

Über die Kirchenmusik in Wien refers to Weissenegg’s book.<br />

62

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