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

and delivery of the sermon and offering opinion on anything else the writer wished to note,
including music. 25 The political orientation of the journals meant that the contributors were
particularly attuned to what they termed Misbräuche – in other words, any departure from
the Gottesdienstordnung – and the reviews therefore provide valuable evidence of the extent to
which the musical restrictions were obeyed or disobeyed in practice. The typical style and
sense of indignation is well-captured in a 1787 review from the parish church of Barzdorf in
Silesia:
“Was kümmern wir uns um die neue Gottesdienstordnung – wir sind nicht gleich den Wienern
von der neuen Lehre” – so sagte man uns, als wir unsere Verwunderung darüber bezeugten: daß
in der Pfarrkirche dieses Ortes trotz dem k. k. Verbothe zwei – auch drei Messen zugleich gelesen
werden; – daß öfters anstatt des vorgeschriebenen Meßliedes die lauretanische Litanei gesungen
wird; von jenem aber, wenn wir es auch zuweilen anstimmen hörten, nie mehr als einige
Strophen und zwar ohne Begleitung des Volkes, das unterdessen im Kochemischen
Himmelsschlüssel 26 bethet, gesungen werden; – daß an Sonntagen das Hochamt mit
Instrumentalmusik gehalten wird. 27
In the following chapters we shall encounter much evidence from the religious journals to
suggest that the restrictions of the Gottesdienstordnung were often ignored in Vienna.
The most fundamental measure of the viability of church music in the 1780s is, of
course, the number of newly written sacred works, for it is difficult to imagine why a
composer would undertake such tasks without at least the possibility of performance. It is
commonplace in the literature to cite Haydn’s apparent silence in the genre from 1782 to
1796 and Mozart’s from 1783 to 1791 as evidence for the negative impact of Joseph’s
reforms, but the argument is not really valid. Firstly, it is unwise to take the experience of
just two composers as indicative of a wider phenomenon – especially two composers whose
25 On the Wochentliche Wahrheiten, see Bernhard M. Hoppe, Predigtkritik im Josephinismus: die "Wöchentlichen
Wahrheiten für und über die Prediger in Wien" (1782-1784), vol. 2, Studien zur Theologie und Geschichte (St.
Ottilien: EOS, 1989).
26 The reference is to Der goldene Himmelsschlüssel, a popular prayerbook of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries compiled by P. Martin von Cochem (1634-1712).
27 KBZ, ii.272-73. “Barzdorf” may be Bernartice u Javorníka, a town in the Czech Republic on the Polish
border. According to the 1786 Gottesdienstordnung, instrumental masses were not permitted in small
communities such as Barzdorf.
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