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

composer’s maturity. The C minor Mass and the Requiem are indeed exceptional in terms of
their artistic achievement and the circumstances of their composition, but an awareness of
the sacred music written alongside Mozart’s will help to confirm the viability of the genre at
this time and dispel the mystique surrounding the Requiem in particular.
Many of the works listed in the table and the basis for their dating will be discussed
in future chapters, but it is sufficient to begin here with the remarkable productivity of
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, regens chori at the former Carmelite church in Leopoldstadt. 31
Far from serving as a hindrance, the new Gottesdienstordnung seems to have inspired
Albrechtsberger to begin an ambitious series of offertories and graduals for various feasts of
the church year. The survival of a large number of autographs and the composer’s habit of
meticulously dating many of his scores allows us to chart Albrechtsberger’s progress in some
detail. Beginning with Fac nos innocuam, a gradual in honour of the church’s new patron
saint St. Joseph, Albrechtsberger completed over 30 mass propers between 1783 and 1785
before scaling back production; see Figure 2.3. 32 In addition, Albrechtsberger wrote at least
six masses between 1783 and 1788, beginning with two brevis settings in 1783-84,
continuing with three masses for Marian feasts and finishing with a large-scale Missa
solemnis. In addition to his duties at St. Joseph, Albrechtsberger served as second organist in
the Hofkapelle from 1772, but there is scant evidence that his sacred music was heard in the
court chapel until he advanced to the position of first organist in 1791. 33
31 On Albrechtsberger’s biography, see Dorothea Schröder, Die Geistlichen Vokalkompositionen Johann Georg
Albrechtsbergers, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Verlag der Musikalienhandlung K.D. Wagner, 1987), i.1-52.
32 It is not clear why Albrechtsberger changed the designation of the piece from gradual to offertory in the
autograph.
33 The earliest sources from the Hofkapelle for Albrechtsberger’s music are sets of parts for the Magnificat in D
E.I.2 and the Missa Desponsationis A.I.25 in A-Wn, HK 6 (c. 1780) and HK 1 (c. 1790) respectively. Many
further works by Albrechtsberger entered the repertoire of the Hofkapelle in the 1790s.
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