11 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass

and Mozart’s Mass in C minor: Viennese

traditions of the B-minor Mass
ulrich leisinger

Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass

From the early 1800s Bach’s B-minor Mass was easily accessible to con-
noisseurs in Vienna. A copy of the Mass is listed in Johann Traeg’s sales
catalogue of 1804. The entry on page 58 of the ‘First’ and, as it were, last
‘supplement to the catalogue of manuscript and printed music which are to
be had at the purveyors of art and music Johann Traeg and Son in Vienna’
reads:
[No.] 151 Bach, J. S. Missa a 5 Voci 2 Viol. 2 Fl. 2 Ob. 3 Trombe Tymp A e B.1
In the same catalogue Bach’s Magnificat, a ‘Missa a 4 Voci con Stromenti’,
the six parts of the Christmas Oratorio, six chorale cantatas (BWV 101, 125,
133, 94, 69a [?], 14),2 the cantata Phoebus and Pan (BWV 201) and an

The paper on which this text is based was first read under the title ‘Haydn’s Copy of the B minor
Mass and Mozart’s C minor Mass’ at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society in
Quebec in November 2007. A German version of this paper was presented at a symposium during
the eighty-third Bachfest der Neuen Bachgesellschaft in Salzburg in October 2008 and published as
‘Haydns Exemplar von Bachs h-Moll-Messe und die Messe in c-Moll von Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart’, in T. Hochradner and U. Leisinger (eds.), BACH – Beiträge zur Rezeptionsgeschichte,
Interpretationsgeschichte und Pädagogik: Drei Symposien im Rahmen des 83. Bachfestes der Neuen
Bachgesellschaft in Salzburg 2008, Klang-Reden Schriften zur Musikalischen Rezeptions- und
Interpretationsgeschichte Herausgegeben vom Institut für Musikalische Rezeptions- und
Interpretationsgeschichte der Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, 5 (Freiburg: Rombach 2010),
pp. 73–87. Since the initial presentation of the paper several articles have appeared discussing this
hitherto unknown source, proving the significance of the topic. For the present version, the section
on Mozart’s Mass in C minor and Viennese traditions was added, inspired by but independent of
Michael Maul, who refers to some of the same sources in his article ‘Die große catholische Messe:
Bach, Graf Questenberg und die “Musicalische Congregation” in Wien’, BJ, 95 (2009), 153–76. I am
grateful to Yo Tomita (Belfast) and Kristen Kopp (Salzburg) for their assistance in preparing the
final English version of this text and to James C. Webster (Ithaca, NY) for numerous suggestions.
My former colleagues at the Bach-Archiv, Leipzig, Uwe Wolf and Christine Blanken, generously
shared information on copyists and sources.
1
See A. Weinmann, Johann Traeg: Die Musikalienverzeichnisse von 1799 and 1804 (Vienna:
Universal-Edition, 1973), p. 58. ‘A e B’ is probably to be read as ‘A[lto viola] e B[asso]’ and does
not refer to the two parts of the Mass.
2
It may be worth noting that Traeg refers to these cantatas as ‘Motetto’. 217

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 218 ulrich leisinger

‘Aria’ for two choirs and instruments (probably the final chorus of the
St Matthew Passion) were also listed. The scoring ‘a 5 Voci’ obviously refers
to the B-minor Mass, whereas the setting ‘a 4 Voci’ cannot yet be securely
identified. Around the same time, the B-minor Mass shows up as No. 193 in
‘J. Haydn’s Verzeichniss musicalischer Werke theils eigner, theils fremder
Comp[o]sition’:

Joh: Sebastian Bach. Missa. à 5 Voci, erster und zweyter Theil in der
Partitur.3

The whereabouts of either manuscript copy formerly remained unknown.

Until recently, a manuscript score copied after 1800, which later was given
or sold to the avid Bach collector Georg Poelchau and finally ended up in his
collection in the Königliche Bibliothek in Berlin (now the Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; shelfmark Mus. ms. Bach P 11–12),
was regarded as the earliest evidence of the B-minor Mass in Vienna. It went
unnoticed that a twin of this copy was preserved in the same library (shelf-
mark Mus. ms. Bach P 182). Like P 11–12, P 182 contains the vocal parts of
the movement ‘Et in unum Deum’ as an ossia, whereas most manuscripts
containing both versions give them one after the other. This remarkable
notation is found in only one further copy of the Mass, preserved in the
Benedictine abbey of Göttweig (shelfmark Mus. Pr. 59) and probably stem-
ming from P 182 after 1833.4
Strangely Friedrich Smend, the editor of the Mass for the NBA, did not
recognise the similarity of the notation, and classified P 182 only as a
manuscript written in the 1820s. This erroneous assessment was based on
the inscription ‘herauszuschreiben angefangen den 25 Sept [1]822’, that is,
‘started to write [this] out on 25 September 1822’, which had been entered,
however, not in the copyist’s hand but in a later one. Although neither the
handwriting nor the paper type sheds light on the origins of the manu-
scripts, paper studies suggest that the twin copies P 11–12 and P 182 date
from the first decade of the nineteenth century. Since the copyist of P 11–12,
referred to among scholars as Silverstolpe A, and that of P 182, Johann
Georg Anton Mederitisch, are known to have worked for Johann Traeg, it
seems entirely possible that both copies are offsprings of a now lost master

3
H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. V: Haydn: The Late Years 1801–1809
(Bloomington and London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), pp. 299–325, at p. 313. The exact date of
the catalogue (c.1804–5) is unknown.
4
Cf. C. Blanken, Die Bach-Quellen in Wien und Alt-Österreich: Katalog, Leipziger Beiträge zur
Bachforschung, 10 (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 2011), vol. I, pp. 40–1.

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 219

copy once in Traeg’s possession. No trace of the B-minor Mass in Vienna

before 1800 has been detected thus far.
It appears that the copy of the B-minor Mass documented in the 1805
catalogue of Joseph Haydn’s music library, and four years later in the cata-
logue of his musical estate, played a seminal role in Viennese Bach reception.
Haydn’s estate was acquired in its entirety by the princes Esterházy and was
integrated into their musical library in 1810. Nevertheless, the fate of the
manuscript in the twentieth century remained unclear. Unlike the works by
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or George Frideric Handel once in Haydn’s
possession, the copy of the B-minor Mass was not among those items that
finally ended up in the Széchenyi Library, the national library of Hungary. The
most authoritative reference in modern Bach scholarship is found in the
critical commentary to Friedrich Smend’s edition of the B-minor Mass
(NBA II/1). There, Smend reported that the musicologist Ernst Fritz Schmid
had seen the copy in the 1930s in Eisenstadt, Austria, but that all attempts to
locate the copy after World War II had failed. Requests at the Esterházysche
Güterverwaltung in Eisenstadt initially did not lead to any results. A note
published by H. C. Robbins Landon in 1961 did not arouse the curiosity of
Bach scholars, although it was repeated later in his monumental Haydn
biography. In the preface to his Bärenreiter edition of Haydn’s Missa In
tempore belli, Robbins Landon stated that, during the war, the autograph of
Haydn’s Mass was hidden in a chimney in the Esterházy castle in Eisenstadt
for safe-keeping, as was the manuscript of the B-minor Mass.5 On the basis of
this report the manuscript could indeed be traced to the music collection in
Eisenstadt in 2000. The Eisenstadt collection was catalogued in 1958 by
Leopold Nowak, who later became head of the music department of the
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek; the Mass was not included, however, at
this point. The old number ‘193’ from Haydn’s music library can still be seen
in the lower left corner of the title page. As Marko Motnik reported in 2008,
the collection had been reorganised in the mean time; the manuscript has
been assigned the new shelfmark KIR 1449, the entire manuscript has been
digitised, and several pages from it have been reproduced.6

5
See Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. V, p. 404 (comment to item No. 546 in
‘Catalog der hinterbliebenen Joseph Haydnischen Kunstsachen welche lizitando verkauft
werden’).
6
See M. Motnik, ‘Bach-Werke in der Fürstlich-Esterházyschen Musikaliensammlung’, in
Hochradner and Leisinger (eds.), BACH – Beiträge zur Rezeptionsgeschichte, pp. 51–72. For a
fuller source description, see Blanken, Die Bach-Quellen in Wien und Alt-Österreich, pp. 3–4.
Presumably, the source referred to by Warren Kirkendale as A-Ee MS 272/27 in Fugue and Fugato
in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), p. 139, n. 21,
is the same source with a previous shelfmark.

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 220 ulrich leisinger

It may come as a surprise that this copy is among the earliest sources of
the Mass. The unbound manuscript of the Mass is in two parts. Part I
contains the Kyrie and Gloria, and part II the movements from the
Symbolum Nicenum to the end. The title page reads:

Missa | a | 5 Voci | 2 Soprani. | Alto. | Tenore. | Basso. | 3 Trombe. | Tamburi. | 2

Traversi. | 2 Oboi | 2 Violini. | 1 Viola | e | Continuo | von | Johann Sebastigan [sic]
Bach. | erster Theil.

The manuscript is not, as one might surmise, a copy from the period around
1800 but was written entirely by the Berlin copyist Anon. 403, who was
active in the circle of Johann Philipp Kirnberger and Princess Amalia of
Prussia. The Berlin origin of the manuscript is further corroborated by the
watermark ‘COFS’, commonly found in Berlin manuscripts around 1770.
The manuscript thus forms an exact counterpart to a copy by the same
scribe now in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (Am. B. 1–2), which was copied for
the personal library of Princess Anna Amalia (Amalienbibliothek) some
time before 1783. Both manuscripts were copied independently of each
other after the Berlin manuscript Am. B. 3, which was copied by Anon. 402
and was formerly in Kirnberger’s private collection.7 The Eisenstadt manu-
script was thus expressly prepared in order to be given away. In short, the
manuscript originated in Berlin and can be dated to the period around 1770
and is closely related to the copies in the Amalienbibliothek and therefore to
an early and authorised transmission (via C. P. E. Bach and Kirnberger). It
seems unlikely that Haydn was the first owner of the manuscript. Rather, the
manuscript may have originally belonged to the Austrian ambassador to the
Prussian court, Gottfried van Swieten, before it came into Haydn’s hands,
possibly not until van Swieten’s death in 1803.
Certainly there were several connoisseurs in Vienna who showed a lively
interest in the music of the Bach family: Joseph Philipp Baron Dubaine (Du
Beyne) de Malechamp (1717–1813), Got(t)fried Rudolf Baron von Dittmar
(1716–1795), Franz Joseph Reichsritter von Heß (1739–1804), Fanny
von Arnstein, Emperor Franz II (1768–1835) and his wife Marie Thérèse
(1772–1807), Archduke Rudolph (1788–1831) and Raphael Kiesewetter
(1773–1850). However, the Mass neither appears in the extensive catalogue
of the emperor’s collection nor in the archduke’s collection, nor is it listed in
Baron Dubaine’s estate.8 As far as we know, Baron von Dittmar and
7
See Chapter 9 above, pp. 177–8, for further details.
8
For the holdings of these collections, see H. Krones, ‘Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach im Wien des 18.
Jahrhunderts’, in H. J. Marx (ed.), Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und die europäische Musikkultur
des mittleren 18. Jahrhunderts: Bericht über das Internationale Symposium der Joachim

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 221

Reichsritter von Heß were primarily interested in instrumental music.

Kiesewetter was not born until 1773, so he cannot possibly have been the
first owner of the manuscript; furthermore his library was bequeathed to the
Hofbibliothek in Vienna and has survived there fairly intact. This leaves us
with two names closely associated with the Berlin Bach tradition, Fanny von
Arnstein and Gottfried van Swieten.
Fanny von Arnstein, née Itzig, was born in Berlin in 1758. At the age of
eighteen, she married Nathan Adam von Arnstein and moved to Vienna.
A few keyboard works by members of the Bach family from her personal
library have been preserved; her name also appears as a subscriber to a
number of musical publications, predominantly keyboard music, whereas
her husband preferred chamber music with keyboard. The only larger vocal
piece that can be traced in their collection was C. P. E. Bach’s Klopstocks
Morgengesang am Schöpfungsfeste Wq. 239.9 Overall, it is quite unlikely that
this young Jewish family should have brought the manuscript of a Mass to
Vienna.
Van Swieten, on the other hand, is known for his eclectic musical library.
He certainly owned a copy of at least one major work by J. S. Bach, namely
the Magnificat BWV 243a, if we can rely on the inscription ‘Copie fuer
Baron van Swieten’ on manuscript Mus. ms. Bach P 40 of the Berlin
Königliche Bibliothek, a copy in the hand of Johann Heinrich Michel, the
main copyist of C. P. E. Bach in Hamburg.10 Van Swieten served from 1771
to 1777 as the Habsburg ambassador to the Prussian court in Berlin and
participated in the musical life of the city. The most likely scenario is that he
acquired the aforementioned copy of the B-minor Mass directly from
Johann Philipp Kirnberger for his personal collection.

Early Viennese performances of the Mass?

Two sets of manuscript entries in the Eisenstadt manuscript show that the
copy was not just sitting on the shelves of a private library. One set of entries

Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Hamburg 29. September – 2. Oktober 1988 (Göttingen:

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), pp. 529–46.
9
See P. Wollny, ‘Sara Levy and the Making of Musical Taste in Berlin’, Musical Quarterly, 77
(1993), 651–88, and more recently, P. Wollny, ‘Ein förmlicher Sebastian und Philipp Emanuel
Bach-Kultus’: Sara Levy und ihr musikalisches Wirken (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2010),
p. 23.
10
Christine Blanken was able to locate a copy of the motet Fürchte dich nicht in the Lobkowitz
archives at Nelahozeves castle near Prague (shelfmark X Ae 31). This MS is also in the hand of
Anon. 403, thus strengthening the hypothesis of the provenance of the copy of the Mass. See
Motnik, ‘Bach-Werke in der Fürstlich-Esterházyschen Musikaliensammlung’, p. 67.

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 222 ulrich leisinger

is in pencil. These entries are apparently in the same hand that counted
the fascicles of the manuscripts. A number of obvious mistakes were marked
in pencil and corrected. Evidently the score was studied to check the
correctness of the contrapuntal writing. Parallel fifths and octaves, hardly
avoidable in a five-part setting, were indicated with small crosses.
Unfortunately, there is little if any chance to determine who undertook
this study and when. These marks may even have not been added until the
nineteenth century.
There are, however, a few entries in light ink, which can be clearly
distinguished from the readings of the original copy. The majority of
these entries are corrections to the underlay of the Latin text. More than
once Anon. 403 misspelled or left out syllables in a way which could easily
be remedied by any literate person in the Habsburg lands. Sometimes the
corrections extend to the music. This indicates that the entries were not
added by a scholar-editor, but by a (Viennese) musician. In bar 62 of ‘Et in
unum’, for example, the soprano part was assimilated into the alto part by
adding an augmentation dot. Given the small number of entries and their
brevity, it is not yet possible to find out who marked up the score. It is very
unlikely that they are in Haydn’s hand. The mark-ups – whoever undertook
them – show that the score of the B-minor Mass was not only known in
Vienna, but also diligently studied there.11 Motnik suggests that several
entries such as the added part names ‘Alto’ and ‘Tenor’ on folio 5 and
several clefs could be in van Swieten’s hand. Certainly, any pedantic school-
master could have corrected the text underlay, but for what purpose? These
minor mistakes did not hinder a study of the music; a correct text underlay
was necessary only if a performance was intended, be it in a public or a
private venue.
It is a good scholarly tradition to request proof for any claim of a
performance; ideally a contemporary report or announcement or at least a
contemporary set of parts should be documented. Sometimes, however, this
request cannot be answered owing to an inadequate source situation. Let us
take a brief look at a simple and closely related example, the assumed
premiere performance of the Credo of the B-minor Mass. It is well known
that C. P. E. Bach chose to perform the Credo at a benefit concert for the
Medizinisches Armeninstitut (medical institute for the poor) in Hamburg
on 9 April 1786. Both a programme sheet and several newspaper reports are
extant; furthermore a set of parts in the hand of C. P. E. Bach’s main copyist
has been preserved, and the autograph of the B-minor Mass contains entries

11
Ibid.

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 223

by C. P. E. Bach that are apparently related to this performance. A close look

at the son’s entries reveals, however, that not all of the bass figures were
added in 1786. By this time, the handwriting of C. P. E. Bach is characterised
by a heavy tremor, which the septuagenarian could no longer control. The
bass figures that C. P. E. Bach added to the score of the Credo are, however,
in a steady handwriting and are likely to stem from around 1775, a period
when he is known to have performed several compositions by his ancestors
in the main churches of Hamburg. Figured bass was not needed for studying
a score, but only for performance. Although we have no documentary proof
of any performance of the Symbolum Nicenum before 1786, C. P. E. Bach
must at least have intended to have it performed one decade earlier.
The inscription on one of the later copies quoted above raises questions of
a performance, though it refers to a much later date: What does ‘heraus-
zuschreiben angefangen den 25 Sept [1]822’ on P 182 actually mean? The
typical German term for a mere copy is not ‘herausschreiben’ but
‘abschreiben’ or just ‘schreiben’. In a letter of 21 July 1769 C. P. E. Bach
informed Kirnberger that he had copied several sheets of the B-minor Mass
but that they were too faulty to be sent to Berlin: ‘I had a few pages of the
Mass copied, but they were full of mistakes.’12 On the other hand, when
Mozart sent a short score with newly composed parts for timpani and
trumpets to be used in a performance of a violin concerto by Giovanni
Battista Viotti he asked the organiser, ‘Have the trumpets and timpani
copied right away.’13 This usage of ‘herausschreiben’ as ‘copying perform-
ance parts’ seems to have been fairly consistent in German-speaking lands
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Friedrich Smend thus
erred when he read the date September 1822 as the copying date of the score.
Rather, someone apparently started to write a set of performance parts for
the Mass in Vienna in 1822, a few years after the first rehearsals of the work
at the Berlin Singakademie, but still many years before the first public
performances of individual movements, which occurred between 1827
and 1831 under August Wilhelm Bach and Gaspare Spontini in Berlin
and under Johann Nikolaus Schelble in Frankfurt. We do not know whether
the scribe – perhaps Josef Fischhof, who owned the score before 1857 – ever
finished his task and, even if he did so, whether or not a performance was

12
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to Johann Philipp Kirnberger, 21 July 1769, BDok III/754, p. 203
(commentary): ‘Ich hatte ein Paar Bogen von der Messe abschreiben lassen, aber sie waren voller
Fehler.’
13
See the facsimile of Mozart’s MS in M. H. Schmid, ‘Ein Violinkonzert von Viotti als
Herausforderung für Mozart und Haydn’, Mozart Studien, 5 (Tutzing: Schneider, 1995),
pp. 149–71, at pp. 151–2: ‘Lassen Sie gleich die trompeten und Paucken herausschreiben.’

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 224 ulrich leisinger

actually realised. What we can say, however, is that the B-minor Mass
aroused so much curiosity in Vienna that performances of the work were
seriously considered at a time when Nägeli’s announcement to publish
the ‘. . . größten musikalischen Kunstwerks aller Zeiten und Völker’
(‘Greatest Musical Work of Art of All Times and Nations’) remained
virtually unheard. In this context, a manuscript set of performance parts
located in the music archive of the Piaristenkirche in Vienna (shelfmark
Messe 23), first mentioned by Otto Biba,14 awaits further study. According
to the commentary in the revised NBA, the parts were not really suited for a
performance because shorthand notations such as colla-parte indications
have not been written out.15 It remains to be determined whether this set of
parts can be related to the 1822 efforts documented in P 11–12.
In this light, the manuscript annotations and improvements to the
Eisenstadt score may indicate that a performance of the B-minor Mass
was intended already in late eighteenth-century Vienna. It is commonly
known that van Swieten, who settled in Vienna in 1777, introduced Mozart
to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Mozart tells us that van Swieten
owned ‘a highly valuable, but with respect to numbers very small, trove of
good music’.16 In a letter to his sister Mozart stated that ‘Baron von Swieten,
whom I visit every Sunday, gave me all the works of Handel and Sebastian
Bach, after I had played them for him, to take home with me.’17 This letter
has generally been interpreted as a reference to Handel’s and Bach’s key-
board works, but there is no reason to assume that Baron van Swieten
should have hidden the scores of large-scale vocal works from the members
of his musical circle, particularly if his music library was rather small. A few
years later he must have loaned the scores of Handel’s oratorios to Mozart,
who arranged three of them on the baron’s behalf. It seems unlikely that he
prevented his copy of the B-minor Mass being studied.
Mozart not only played fugues for van Swieten, but participated in private
performances of vocal music within his circle. On 12 March 1783, he wrote
to his father with the request that manuscript copies of church music be sent

14
O. Biba, ‘Von der Bach-Tradition in Österreich’, in I. Fuchs (ed.), Johann Sebastian Bach:
Beiträge zur Wirkungsgeschichte (Vienna: Verband der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften
Österreichs, 1992), pp. 25–6.
15
NBArev I, p. 297.
16
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to his sister, 20 April 1782. See Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum
(ed.), Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Gesamtausgabe, 8 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1962–2005), vol. III (1963), p. 203: ‘am Werthe einen sehr grossen – an der zahl aber freylich sehr
kleinen schatz von guter Musick’.
17
Ibid., vol. III, p. 202: ‘Baron van suiten zu dem ich alle Sonntage gehe, hat mir alle Werke des
händls und Sebastian Bach |: nachdem ich sie ihm durchgespiellt :| nach hause gegeben.’

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 225

to him from Salzburg with the explanation that ‘This is only because baron
van suiten [sic] should hear it. – he sings soprano, I sing alto (and accom-
pany as well) Starzer sings tenor – the young Teyber from Italy sings bass.’18
These were clearly not concert performances, but rather study sessions
where the participants studied works that were also new to them. A vivid
picture of these gatherings is provided in the autobiography of Joseph Weigl
(1766–1846):

At the time, the dean of studies was Baron van Swieten, who was also a great music
connoisseur and he had learned composition from the famous Kirnberger himself.
Every Sunday at noon there was music at his home. Only compositions of Bach,
Handel and Graun and those of the oldest and most famous masters were per-
formed. Mozart accompanied at the fortepiano. Salieri, Starzer, Teyber and the
baron sang. Such a treat can scarcely be imagined.19

Weigl, himself an accomplished accompanist and entrusted already in his

early twenties with the direction of operas at the Hofburgtheater, admired
Mozart’s multi-versatility: ‘He who has not seen how Mozart played Handel
scores with sixteen and more parts while singing at the same time as well as
correcting the mistakes of the others does not know Mozart well. He was as
grand in this respect as in his own compositions. One always heard an entire
orchestra.’20 By coincidence this description closely matches Johann
Matthias Gesner’s famous comparison of J. S. Bach to Orpheus and Arion.21
As we learn from these quotations, a performance did not necessarily require a
full orchestra. Thus the earliest ‘performance’ of the B-minor Mass may have
taken place with a handful singers in van Swieten’s home under the direction
of Mozart at the pianoforte.22

18
Mozart to his father, 12 March 1783, ibid., vol. III, p. 259: ‘daß ist alles nur, um es dem B: van
suiten hören zu lassen. – er singt den Discant, ich den alt |: und spielle zugleich :| Starzer den
Tenor – der Junge Teyber aus italien den Baß’.
19
O. E. Deutsch (ed.), Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1961), p. 446:
‘Damahls war Studien Präses Bar[on] van Swieten, der zugleich ein grosser Musikkenner war,
u[nd] selbst die Composition von dem berühmten Kirnberger erlernt hatte. Alle Sonntage um, 12
Uhr Mittags war bei ihm Musik. Nur Bachische, Haendlische, u[nd] Graunische Compositionen
u[nd] jene der ältesten und berühmtesten Meister wurden gemacht. Mozart accompagnirte auf
dem Fortepiano. Salieri, Starzer, Teiber u[nd] der Baron sangen. Diesen Genuß kann sich
niemand vorstellen.’
20
Ibid., p. 447: ‘Wer Mozart nicht 16 und mehrzeilige Händelsche Partituren mit unübertrefflicher
Fertigkeit spielen, selbst dazu singen und zugleich die Fehler der andern Sänger verbessern
sah, der kennt Mozart nicht ganz, denn er war darin eben so groß, als in seinen Compositionen.
Man hörte stets ein ganzes Orchester.’
21
NBR/328, pp. 328–9.
22
Besides Mozart, there is also another candidate who may have been acquainted with the Mass
through van Swieten, Ludwig van Beethoven, although in a letter to Breitkopf dated 15 October

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 226 ulrich leisinger

Similarities between the B-minor Mass

and the Mass in C minor

From this discussion, we may conclude that Mozart was able to study Bach’s
Mass, a work of unprecedented scope and complexity, in detail shortly
before he began working on his own Mass in C minor K. 427. There are
obvious similarities between the two works, starting with the five-part
‘chorus’ with two sopranos for the Kyrie and an eight-part double chorus
for the ‘Osanna’ – settings that are not commonly found in Mass compo-
sitions of the period. A small section from the ‘Gloria’ (bars 20–1 and
repeated as bars 42–3) seems to allude to Handel’s Messiah, a work that
was definitely known to Mozart (see Example 11.1).23

Example 11.1 W. A. Mozart, Mass in C minor, ‘Gloria’, bars 20–1 (vocal parts and
instrumental bass only): allusion to G. F. Handel, Messiah, ‘Halleluja’?

1810, he requested from the publisher and music dealer a Mass by Bach with a ‘crucifixus with a
basso ostinato’, quoting the Mass in B minor from memory. See BDok VI/B 99, pp. 373–4. (The
wrong key signature in his musical incipit – E major, instead of E minor – gives rise to the
possibility that he was referring to Kirnberger’s Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik, vol. II/2
(Berlin and Königsberg: G. J. Decker and G. L. Hartung, 1777), p. 172, which makes the same
error; repr. in BDok III/767, p. 231.) In 1810, however, the score which had once been in van
Swieten’s possession was no longer accessible, since it had been transferred with Haydn’s estate
to the Esterházy music collections. Beethoven apparently knew the music: again van Swieten’s
musical salon would have been the most likely venue for an encounter with the work.
23
Ulrich Konrad notes that Mozart became acquainted with Handel’s Messiah no later than 1777,
when he attended a performance in Mannheim. The reference to the ‘Alleluja’ is already apparent
in Mozart’s Regina coeli laetare K. 276, bars 133–4. See U. Konrad, ‘Unter den ältern
Komponisten schäzte er am allerhöchsten aber Händeln’, in H. J. Marx and W. Sandberger
(eds.), Wolfgang Amadé Mozart und Georg Friedrich Händel: Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, 12
(2008), pp. 5–31, at p. 14.

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 227

Example 11.2 W. A. Mozart, Mass in C minor, ‘Domine Deus’, bars 1–13 (string parts
only): melodic invention

Bachian and Handelian traits can also be observed in Mozart’s duet

‘Domine Deus’ with its Baroque melodic invention (see Example 11.2).24
After a few bars, the melody and its harmonisation return to the musical
language of the Classical era; it remains a matter of opinion whether this
sudden shift to a different musical style is a successful effort to amalgamate
Baroque and Classical idioms, or a sign that Mozart was not yet entirely
familiar with the music of the past.
The opening of the ‘Credo’, where two instrumental ‘choirs’ are juxta-
posed in fast triple metre, also recalls Baroque models (see Example 11.3).
Furthermore, the ‘Jesu Christe’ chorus with the subsequent ‘Cum Sancto
Spiritu’ fugue does not fit into the musical language of the 1780s. However,
two of the Masses in four parts by J. S. Bach, those in A major BWV 234 and
in G major BWV 236, use the same device to introduce an extended ‘Cum
Sancto Spiritu’ fugue – and at least one of them was known in Vienna
around 1800 according to the Traeg catalogue mentioned above.
The most striking example is arguably Mozart’s ‘Qui tollis’, which seems
to have been derived from Bach’s ‘Crucifixus’. In both instances, we encoun-
ter a basso ostinato on a passus duriusculus which has troubled generations
of Mozart scholars. Stefan Kunze has analysed the structure of the ‘Qui
tollis’ in some detail before summarising that ‘The “Qui tollis” is reminis-
cent of the “Crucifixus” from Bach’s B-minor Mass, which Mozart cannot

24
Ulrich Konrad names as a potential model the duet ‘Thou in thy mercy’ from Handel’s Israel in
Egypt, which shares the same key, metre and instrumental forces, though neither the same
soloists nor the same tempo.

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 228 ulrich leisinger

Example 11.3 W. A. Mozart, Mass in C minor, ‘Credo’, bars 1–5: use of double chorus

possibly have known, however.’25 The same caveat has since been repeated
by more than one Bach and Mozart scholar, a judgement which is now,
arguably, unfounded.

The Mass in C minor and the Viennese tradition

When we consider the anomalies of the Mass in C minor the question arises
whether some, if not all, of these peculiarities can sufficiently be explained
by models of works from other Viennese composers or whether there
remain features which may best be understood by Mozart’s acquaintance
with Bach’s Mass.
Only Masses of the ‘solemn’ type, that is, those with extended Gloria and
Credo movements as opposed to the ‘brevis’ type, can have served as models
for Mozart’s Mass in C minor. As Bruce MacIntyre has demonstrated, the
composition of large-scale masses was never completely abandoned in
Vienna in the second half of the eighteenth century.26 It is difficult to talk
25
S. Kunze, ‘Bach und Mozart: Von zwei Kulturen der Kirchenmusik’, in A. Koch (ed.), Mozart
1991: Die Kirchenmusik von W. A. Mozart in Luzern (Lucerne: Mozartgesellschaft Luzern, 1992),
pp. 41–51, at p. 50: ‘Das “Qui tollis” gemahnt an das Cruzifixus aus Bach h-Moll-Messe, die
Mozart aber nicht gekannt haben kann.’
26
B. MacIntyre, ‘The Viennese Concerted Mass of the Early Classic Period’, Ph.D. diss., City
University of New York (1984). In the present study, the Viennese masses are identified by their
numbers.

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 229

about a tradition, however, since these masses form only a small fraction of a
vast repertoire, and little is known about the circumstances under which the
performance of grand masses was deemed adequate. A significant percent-
age of these grand masses are referred to as ‘Missae St. Caeciliae’ in the
sources. St Cecilia was not only regarded as the patron of music in a
general sense, but received particular veneration by the ‘Musicalische
Congregation’ or Cecilian Brotherhood, founded in 1725 and dissolved
as a result of the Josephinian reforms in 1783, at a time when Mozart was
still working on his Mass in C minor. The activities of this brotherhood
have long been regarded as a potential stimulus for the Mass in C minor as
well as for the B-minor Mass.27 The by-laws of the congregation yield little
insight into the festivities around 22 November, the feast of St Cecilia; they
largely deal with the duties of its members and financial matters.28
Regarding music to be performed at this occasion, only a small amount
of information is offered:

Annually, in the octave of St Cecilia [i.e. within eight days after 22 November] or in
case of obstacles on one of the subsequent days, but as early as possible afterwards,
the feast of the saint will heartily be observed by means of a sung high service, and
musical vespers at a gathering of all members of this congregation in the church
specifically announced for this purpose.29

Leopold Mozart apparently attended performances by the congregation

during his brief tour to Vienna in 1762; unfortunately his report to his
Salzburg landlord was not written down, but delivered only orally.30 The
performance of a concerted mass, which in all likelihood was composed by a
member of the congregation, was an integral part of the service as appa-
rently was a laudatory speech in German (‘Ehren-Rede’) in honour of the
patron saint. No records have yet surfaced to show which of the masses
entitled Missa St. Caeciliae and written by members or associates of the
congregation were actually composed for and performed at this occasion.
27
See Chapter 5 above.
28
Articulen/ und Puncten/ Oder so genannte STATUTA, Der Musicalischen Congregation, Welche
Unter glorreichen Schutz Der Röm. Kaiserl. und Königl. Spanisch. Catholischen Majestät
CAROLI Des Sechsten (Vienna: J. P. von Ghelen, 1725); copy in A-Wgm; excerpts in E. Hanslick,
Geschichte des Koncertwesens in Wien (Vienna: Braumüller, 1869), pp. 28–9.
29
Articulen und Puncten, p. 2 (‘Erste Rubric, Das dritte Capitel’): ‘Jährlichen wird in der Octav St.
Cæciliæ/ oder bey vorfallender Hinderung ehister Tagen darnach/ so bald die Möglichkeit seyn
wird/ das Fest dieser Heiligen mit einem gesungenen Hoh-Amt/ und Musicalischen Vesper/ In
Versamlung aller Mit=Glieder dieser Congregation, herzlich begangen werden in der jenigen
Kirche/alwo die Verabredung geschehen wird/ . . . ’
30
See Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum (ed.), Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen , vol. I (1962),
p. 62.

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 230 ulrich leisinger

Besides the B-minor Mass and the Mass in C minor, the following grand
masses (each totalling at least 900 bars) by Viennese composers and/or
preserved in eighteenth-century copies of Viennese provenance have been
taken into consideration; still, the selection may at best be regarded as
representative, and is by no means exhaustive.
– Matthias Georg Monn, Missa in C major, M. 38, 1741 (A-Wn, Mus. Hs.
17314)
– Matthias Georg Monn, Missa in B-flat major, M. 39, before 1750 (A-Wn,
Mus. Hs. 17315)
– Johann Adolph Hasse, Missa in D minor, M. 24 (omposed for the
consecration of the Hofkirche at Dresden, 1751 (A-Wn, Mus. Hs. 17321)
– Joseph Haydn, Missa Cellensis/Missa St. Caeciliae, Hob. XXII:5, 1766
(Credo to Agnus Dei apparently not added until c.1773; Joseph Haydn
Werke edition)
– Georg Reutter, Missa St. Caeciliae in C major, before 1768 (A-Wn, Mus.
Hs. 16661; Kyrie and Gloria only)
– Florian Leopold Gassmann, Missa St. Caeciliae in C major, M. 19 before
1771 (A-Wn, H.K. 30)
– Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Missa solemnis in C major, Krebs 326, M. 15,
before 1771 (Carus edition 2003)
A first indicator of a potential relationship to other masses might be the
division of the text in these movements; owing to the fragmentary state of
the Credo in Mozart’s Mass in C minor, the comparison is restricted to the
Gloria. Reflecting the religious nature of the text, the Gloria is usually
subdivided into at least three sections starting with the verses ‘Gloria in
excelsis Deo’, ‘Qui tollis’ and ‘Quoniam’ respectively. More often than not,
the final section, ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei patris, Amen’, is set apart
musically as well. MacIntyre has shown that there is great variety of further
subdivisions; his table lists those sections where entire ‘movements’ are
separated from one another as indicated by the use of double barlines.
His tables provide no details within movements, although changes of
metre, key and/or tempo are not uncommon; a stark contrast within a
movement may be achieved without even altering any of these external
parameters. For the B-minor Mass, MacIntyre distinguishes eight sections –
rather than the nine sections applied here – distributed in five ‘movements’.
As is apparent, Mozart does not follow the model of J. S. Bach in the
distribution of the text of the Gloria (see Table 11.1). Even if one ignores
the unique treatment of the words ‘Jesu Christe’ before the ‘Cum Sancto
Spiritu’ fugue there is no obvious predecessor in the Viennese repertoire for

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 Table 11.1 Disposition of the Gloria in Bach’s B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor

Bach Mozart

Text incipit Form Key Metre Bars Text incipit, tempo indication Form Key Metre Bars

Gloria in excelsis Deo Chorus D 3/8 101 Gloria in excelsis Deo Allegro Chorus C 4/4 60
Et in terra pax Chorus D 4/4 76
Laudamus te S + vn solo A 4/4 62 Laudamus te Allegro aperto S solo F 4/4 143
Gratias Chorus (fugue) D 4/2 46 Gratias Adagio Chorus A6–a 4/4 12
Domine Deus Duet S + T + fl solo G 4/4 95 Domine Deus Allegro moderato Duet S, S D 3/4 99
Qui tollis Chorus B 3/4 50 Qui tollis Largo Chorus G 4/4 56
Qui sedes A + ob d’amore B 6/8 86
Quoniam B + cr + 2 bsn D 3/4 128 Quoniam Allegro Trio S, T, B E 4/4 171
Jesu Christe Adagio Chorus C–G 4/4 6
Cum Sancto Spiritu Chorus vivace D 3/4 128 Cum Sancto Spiritu [Allegro] Chorus (double fugue) C 4/4 190

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 232 ulrich leisinger

Mozart’s distribution of the verses – except his own Missae solennes K. 139
of 1768 and K. 66 of 1769.31
Consideration of the instrumental and, particularly, the vocal forces
proves to be more significant. Remarkably, even quite lengthy masses did
not require a large orchestra. Strings and brass, usually two to four trumpets
and/or clarini, timpani and two trombones, were often deemed sufficient.
Occasionally obbligato woodwinds – two oboes (rather than flutes) and two
bassoons – were added, more rarely also two horns. Not even trumpets and
timpani were essential in order to achieve solemn effects: in the Mass in
B-flat major by Monn, M. 39, for example, they are lacking. Whereas solos
for trombone are not uncommon in Viennese masses, particularly those
predating 1750, movements with independent or soloistic woodwinds are
predominantly found in St Cecilia masses. This might indicate that these
masses were indeed destined for the Musicalische Congregation, whose
orchestra consisted of professional musicians, creating music themselves
for the glory of their patron. The exceptional quality of the performers is
addressed in the ‘Ehren-Rede’ delivered in 1753 by Edmund König: ‘In your
noble ensemble almost as many masters as numerous members have
gathered . . .’.32 The use of a five-part chorus, previously mentioned as a
characteristic trait of both Bach’s and Mozart’s Mass settings, is less remark-
able than one might think: in the body of the seventy-two masses discussed
by MacIntyre, five masses surpass the typical four-part chorus, among them
Hasse’s Mass in D minor for the consecration of the Dresden Hofkirche of
1751, M. 24. The others were also composed decades before the Mass in
C minor: Holzbauer’s Mass in C major (M. 30) predates 1739, Ferdinand
Schmidt’s Missa St. Caeciliae M. 50 was composed in 1746, and Reutter’s
Missa Conceptionis M. 46 was written in 1749, while the latest – a work
by Leopold Hofmann in his early twenties if the attribution is correct, a
Missa Sanctae Theresiae M. 27 – stems from before 1761. In the seventy-odd
masses by Georg von Reutter,33 eight employ more than four vocal parts. As
in Hasse’s Mass, where in the ‘Laudamus te’ the second soprano concertato

31
See R. D. Levin (ed.), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Missa in c KV 427 (417a): Rekonstruktion und
Ergänzung (Stuttgart: Carus, 2004), preface, p. xiii.
32
E. König, Lob- und Ehren-Rede über Leben und Tod der heiligen Jungfrauen und Martyrin
Cæciliæ, als eine Hochlöbl. allhier in Wien aufgerichte Musicalische Congregation in der hohen
Metropolitan-KIrche bey St. Stephan das gewöhnliche Titular-Fest Ihrer Schutz-Frauen den 22 ten
November mit jährlich=feyerlicher und prächtiger Andacht begienge (Vienna: von Ghelen, 1753),
fol. A3: ‘In eurem sittlichen Cörper seynd fast so viele Meister, als zahlreiche Mit-Glieder
vereiniget . . .’. Copy in A-Wn.
33
N. Hofer, ‘Thematisches Verzeichnis der Werke von Georg Reutter jun.’, typescript (1947),
A-Wn, shelfmark S.m. 28992.

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 233

doubles the first soprano, except for two bars, the additional parts are rarely
used to expand the chorus; they serve rather as additional soloists in brief
sections of the Mass. Choruses with five real parts are rarely found, a notable
exception being the ‘Qui tollis’ of Reutter’s Missa St Caeciliae. There is no
trace, however, of any other mass from the Viennese repertoire employing
varying numbers of choral parts – four, five and eight – as in the B-minor
Mass and the Mass in C minor, with the possible exception of a Missa St.
Francisci de Paula by Georg von Reutter, Hofer 75, which could not be
consulted. In the Gloria of Mozart’s Mass in C minor we find a four-part
chorus for the ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ and the ‘Jesu Christe’ with the
subsequent ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ fugue, a five-part setting for the ‘Gratias’
and a double choir in the ‘Qui tollis’. In this respect, Bach’s B-minor Mass
may indeed be regarded as an immediate forerunner of Mozart’s Mass in C
minor, although in Bach’s work the double choir is not employed until the
‘Osanna’. It should be mentioned that – outside the mass repertoire –
double choirs are occasionally found in those of Handel’s sacred works
and oratorios that are known to have been available in Vienna during
Mozart’s time.34
The slow introduction to the ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’, on the other hand, is
less exceptional than one might believe. A two-bar introduction leading
from D minor to G major occurs in Monn’s Mass in C major (M. 38) as
shown in Example 11.4. A five-bar introduction starting in A minor and
ending on the dominant (before a fugue subject in C major) is employed in
Reutter’s Missa St. Caeciliae (see Example 11.5). Arguably the best-known
example (starting on E major in first inversion and ending on the dominant
of C major) is Haydn’s Missa Cellensis Hob. XXII:5.
This leaves us with the ‘Qui tollis’ of Mozart’s Mass in C minor. Virtually
none of Mozart’s Viennese predecessors or contemporaries missed the
chance for an expressive setting of the ‘Qui tollis’ by using ‘diminished
and augmented intervals, chromatic melodies, rhythmic agitation, melodic
sighs, accented dissonances, dynamic contrasts, woefully descending melo-
dies, and dramatic pauses or gaps’.35 The parallel structure of the text
naturally supports a three-part division of the music:

Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem meam.
Qui sedes at dexteram patris, miserere nobis.

34
See e.g. Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate HWV 278–9.
35
MacIntyre, ‘The Viennese Concerted Mass of the Early Classic Period’, p. 295.

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 234 ulrich leisinger

Example 11.4 G. M. Monn, Missa in C major, M. 38, ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’: introduction

Example 11.5 G. von Reutter, Missa St. Caeciliae, ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ (vocal parts and string parts
only): introduction

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 235

Example 11.6 G. von Reutter, Missa St. Caeciliae, ‘Qui tollis’ (excerpts): ground bass

Often composers use the same musical material placed solely on different
degrees of the scale for each verse. Mozart’s treatment, however, as a basso
ostinato is unparalleled in the Viennese repertoire. Reutter’s five-part chorus
from Missa St. Caeciliae, mentioned above, is probably the closest example;
there the repetition of the musical material occurs on varying degrees of the
scale, and the setting is strictly homophonic as opposed to Mozart’s contra-
puntal setting. The figured bass alone demonstrates the ostinato-like organ-
isation of the movement (see Example 11.6).36 Very similar is Dittersdorf ’s
treatment in his Mass in C major (see Example 11.7). This model, however, is
restricted to the opening bars of each section of the movement. Between the
sections a contrasting element, a duet between violins I and II without
accompaniment, is introduced. Dittersdorf ’s setting therefore lacks the
density and concision of Mozart’s movement. There is also no counterpart
in Viennese sources for the sharp rhythmic profile found in Mozart’s
composition.
Although similarities with the forms and procedures applied in the Mass
in C minor may be discovered in various pieces, there is apparently no
example from mid-eighteenth-century Vienna that shows the remarkable
combination of unusual traits extant in Mozart’s work.
Two more recent masses, Gassmann’s Missa St. Caeciliae and Haydn’s
Missa Cellensis, are closer to Mozart’s Mass than most of the older pieces

36
The figuration in Examples 11.6 and 11.7 is incomplete in the sources consulted and has been
emended.

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 236 ulrich leisinger

Example 11.7 C. Ditters von Dittersdorf, Missa in C major, Krebs 326, ‘Qui tollis’
(excerpts): ground bass

addressed here, as shown in Table 11.2.37 With respect to the selections of

keys and musical forms, Haydn’s Missa Cellensis is remarkably similar to
Mozart’s Mass in C minor: the movements ‘Laudamus’, ‘Domine Deus’ and
‘Quoniam’ are given to the soloists – though their distribution varies –
whereas the remaining movements are choral movements with very brief
vocal solos. Parallels can also be drawn with regard to the ‘Cum Sancto
Spiritu’ fugues; each fugue is a double fugue with the word ‘Amen’ consis-
tently associated with the counter-subject. In both Masses the fugue is
preceded by a short modulating introduction. The approaches to the text
are slightly different: Haydn uses the entire final verse ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu,
in gloria Dei Patris. Amen’ in the introduction and does not repeat the
words ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ in the fugue; Mozart’s approach – applying
the final words ‘Jesu Christe’ from the previous verse as the introduction to
the fugue – enables him to start the fugue at the very first statement of the
words ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ with great effect. Although Mozart’s idea is
seemingly new, Hasse’s Mass in D minor M. 24 also highlights the words
‘Jesu Christe’ by an extended – though tonally stable – written-out ritar-
dando at the end of the preceding ‘Quoniam’.
Haydn’s Mass is less daring in its harmonic organisation than the Mass in
C minor: The ‘trumpet key’ C major is not only used for the first and final
sections of the Gloria but also returns – without and with trumpets – in the
‘Domine Deus’ and ‘Quoniam’ movements. Overall, two thirds of the

37
I am grateful to James Webster (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY) for pointing out the exceptional
position of Haydn’s Missa Cellensis in the Viennese mass repertoire.

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 Table 11.2 Disposition of the Gloria in Gassmann’s Missa St. Caeciliae and Haydn’s Missa Cellensis

Gassmann Haydn

Text incipit, tempo indication Form Key Metre Bars Text incipit, tempo indication Form Key Metre Bars

Gloria Allegro maestoso Chorus C 3/4 71 Gloria Allegro di molto Chorus C 3/4 128
Laudamus te Allegretto Chorus + 2 bsn F 3/4 192 Laudamus Moderato S solo G 4/4 60
Gratias Adagio Chorus fugue e 2/2 146
Domine Deus Andante Chorus B 2/4 130 Domine Deus Allegro Trio A, T, B C 3/8 244
Qui tollis Adagio Chorus g 4/4 38 Qui tollis Adagio Chorus g 4/4 57
Quoniam Allegro Chorus G 3/4 60 Quoniam Allegro di molto S C 4/4 91
Cum Sancto Spiritu Largo Chorus E6–G 4/4 5
Cum Sancto Spiritu Allegro Chorus C 4/4 75 In gloria Dei Patris Allegro cum spirito Chorus C 4/4 90

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 238 ulrich leisinger

movement are in C major. Gassmann’s Mass, on the other hand, shows a

carefully designed tonal plan, gradually moving away from C major and
then shifting from G minor to G major in the ‘Qui tollis’ and ‘Quoniam’
movements for a convincing arrival in the home key of C major.
In his study Bruce MacIntyre describes the following general stylistic
trends for the composition of orchestral masses during the forty-year period
of the reign of Maria Theresia:
1. Fewer but larger movements
2. Greater unity of key
3. Greater variety in metre
4. Vocal solos in the choral movements instead of solos in independent
arias
5. More independent oboe, violin, and cello parts; decrease in solos for
trombone
6. Forms reflecting the influence of sonata and concerto designs.38

Gassmann’s Mass in C major – in contrast with the masses by Reutter or

Monn – may have served as a model for the new type of Gloria. Both
Haydn’s Missa Cellensis and Mozart’s Mass in C minor adhere to the
historically older type. In Mozart’s Mass, only MacIntyre’s criteria 3, 5
and to some extent 6 can be observed. The Mass – like Haydn’s Missa
Cellensis – is clearly retrospective with respect to criteria 1 and 4, which
cannot be seen as being entirely independent of one another.
Mozart’s approach to keys and tonalities is exceptional, at least for the
period after 1750. The home key of C major is used only in the opening and
final sections of the extended movement; the two sections ‘Gratias’ and ‘Jesu
Christe’ are unstable, and in the other sections the keys of F major, D minor,
G minor and E minor are juxtaposed. A similar variety is not found even in
Bach’s B-minor Mass. Mozart’s treatment of the ‘Quoniam’ as a solo move-
ment, in this case a trio, in the minor mode is extraordinary; in the body of
works discussed in MacIntyre’s study only three out of seventy-two settings
of the ‘Quoniam’ are in the minor mode. The broad harmonic spectrum
seems to be Mozart’s specific response to music of the past; the same
principle can be observed in his fragmentary keyboard suite K. 399, where
each movement is set in a different key – C minor, C major, E-flat major,
G minor – negating rather than simply ignoring the tradition of the suite
with its unity of key.

38
MacIntyre, ‘The Viennese Concerted Mass of the Early Classic Period’, pp. 566–7.

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 239

It might appear as if a work such as Haydn’s Missa Cellensis is entirely

sufficient to ‘explain’ the characteristic features of the Mass in C minor,
particularly with respect to the overall organisation and the forms of the
movements. There is, however, a decisive difference between Mozart and
Haydn with respect to the arias: in Haydn’s Mass, the solo movements are
up to date in their melodic invention and overall formal arrangement. This
is not the case in the Mass in C minor, where the ‘Domine Deus’ and
‘Quoniam’ are clearly set apart from the up-to-date and almost operatic
‘Laudamus te’. The ‘Domine Deus’ is particularly ‘Baroque’ (or ‘gothic’ as
contemporaries might have termed it), not only with respect to melody as
described above, but also in its ritornello structure. The motto (Devise) from
the main theme is presented on the following degrees of the scale: i (bars 1,
15), III (bar 27), i (bars 50, 56) and VII (bar 82) – before the aria is
concluded with the second half of the ritornello. The imitative treatment
of the theme adds significantly to the ‘sublime’ effect. There are virtually no
parallels with Mozart’s canonic settings at the distance of one beat (from bar
50 onwards) in Viennese masses composed after 1750, whereas there is a
striking similarity to Bach’s B-minor Mass, where this device not only is
restricted to the ‘Domine Deus’ movement (see bar 49) but is also prom-
inent in the ‘Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum’ of the Credo. While
Haydn’s Missa Cellensis in all its movements is traditional – in the proper
and positive sense of the word as ‘respectful to the achievements of the
past’ – Mozart’s Mass in C minor is retrospective in alluding to musical
styles of the past such as imitative counterpoint in soloistic movements and
the implementation of the basso ostinato, a movement type that was no
longer in use, even among the most learned composers.

Mozart, Handel and Bach

The rediscovery of the Eisenstadt score and the exploration of its early
history provide an entirely new basis for understanding the astonishing
similarities between two of the most demanding mass compositions of the
eighteenth century. A score of the B-minor Mass was not only available in
Vienna at the time when Mozart started composing his Mass in C minor
around 1782–3, but was also subject to diligent study there, apparently in
the circle of Gottfried van Swieten, in which Mozart played a crucial role.
Mozart may thus have used the B-minor Mass as a source of inspiration and
as model for movements ‘in the ancient style’. It is safe to assume that no
connoisseur – in either Mozart’s or our day – would mistake Mozart’s

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 240 ulrich leisinger

setting for Bach, since it contains sufficient individual traits and cannot be
regarded as a mere copy. Additionally, even if its substance were shown to
mirror Bach, its treatment recalls Handel no less: the repeated dotted
rhythms in the strings are often found in Handel’s music but rarely, if
ever, in Bach’s, as has often been remarked in the Mozart literature. Using
an observation by Wolfgang Plath as their point of departure, Silke Leopold
and Ulrich Konrad have convincingly demonstrated that the texture of the
‘Qui tollis’ closely resembles the chorus ‘The people shall hear’ in Handel’s
oratorio Israel in Egypt HWV 54 (No. 25a), published for the first time in the
1760s.39 The correlation is restricted to the sharp rhythmic profile of the
accompaniment and the relationship between the chorus and the orchestra;
Handel’s movement, however, provides no model for the formal organisa-
tion and the text-related ‘pathopoeia’ of the Mass movement. In this respect,
Bach’s ‘Crucifixus’ remains much closer to Mozart’s ‘Qui tollis’.
To understand better what Mozart may have intended when alluding to
the music of Baroque masters such as Bach and Handel, we need to consider
a different genre. In his Mozart anecdotes, Friedrich Rochlitz decribes
Mozart’s veneration for Handel:

He knew the most excellent works of this master, who in several fields has not yet
been surpassed, as if he had been the director of the London Academy of Ancient
Music for all his life. His love of Handel went so far that he wrote many works –
without concealing it – in his manner . . . He did not only appreciate and admire
Händel’s choruses, but also many of his arias and solos . . . He even had such fancy
ideas as to write an aria in Don Giovanni in Handel’s manner and to refer to this
openly in his score’.40

39
Regrettably, Wolfgang Plath’s paper ‘Zwischen Bach und Händel: Bemerkungen zum “Qui tollis”
aus Mozarts c-Moll-Messe’, read at the conference ‘Alte Musik als ästhetische Gegenwart’ in
Stuttgart in 1985, remains unpublished. See, however, S. Leopold, ‘Händels Geist in Mozarts
Händen: Zum “Qui tollis” aus der c-Moll-Messe KV 427’, Mozart-Jahrbuch, 1994 (1995),
89–112; U. Konrad, ‘On Ancient Languages: The Historical Idiom of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’,
in S. Gallagher and T. F. Kelly (eds.), The Century of Bach & Mozart. Perspectives on
Historiography, Composition, Theory & Performance, Isham Library Papers, 7; Harvard
Publications in Music, 22 (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2008),
pp. 253–78.
40
Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Anecdoten aus Mozart’s Leben. (Fortsetzung)’, AMZ, 1/8 (21 November
1798), cols. 115–16: ‘Die vorzüglichsten Werke dieses in einigen Fächern noch nie übertroffenen
Meisters, hatte er so innen, als wenn er lebenslang Direktor der Londner Akademie zur
Aufrechthaltung der alten Musik gewesen wäre . . . Diese Liebe zu Händeln ging bey ihm so weit;
daß er vieles – was er aber nicht bekannt werden ließ – in dessen Manier schrieb . . . Er hatte
sogar die Grille, eine Arie in seinem D. Giovanni in Händels Manier zu sezzen, und seiner
Partitur dies offenherzig beyzuschreiben.’

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 241

Indeed the aria ‘Ah fuggi il traditor’ from Don Giovanni sounds ‘like
Handel’, but all efforts to trace a direct model in his oeuvre have led to
nothing.41 Mozart apparently did not copy Handel, but was able to integrate
Handelian ideas into his own music so that the spirit of both contributors,
Handel as well as Mozart, can be grasped by the listener, though perhaps
eluding description. Remarkably, another contemporary, Ignaz Ferdinand
Cajetan Arnold, when describing the same aria attributed its inspiration to
the music of J. S. Bach:

How zealously he studied the works of the old masters from Italy and Germany!
How he tried to penetrate the spirit of a Bach, Handel, Graun, Hasse, Durante, Leo,
Gluck, Piccini! . . . Mozart is equally capable in melody and harmony. One need
only glance at his operas and Requiem, or at his Don Juan, where the finest
dalliances combine with utmost seriousness, the loftiest melodies with the weight-
iest counterpoint. For example the aria in Act I, where Elvira warns Zerlina: ‘Ah
Fuggi il traditor’ . . . ; this is entirely in the manner of Bach with pure counterpoint,
as compared with the aria of Don Juan: ‘Fin ch’han dal vino’.42

In his chapter on Don Giovanni Arnold explains this idea in greater

depth:

Elvira’s aria [. . .] ‘Ah fuggi il traditor’ is a contrapuntal masterpiece. It is as if Mozart

wanted to prove that he, too, could compose in Bach’s style – the style is beautiful
but so infinitely dissimilar from all other pieces in this opera that its performance is
disconcerting and as with a stroke of a magic wand moves into the golden age of the
Bachs, Handel and Hasse.43

41
Not surprisingly the autograph score of Mozart’s aria, now held at the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France in Paris, does not contain any note such as ‘in Handel’s style’. Cf., however, the
editorial addition ‘dans le style de G. F. Händel’ in the first edition of the non-fragmentary
movements of the Keyboard Suite in C K. 399 in vol. XIV of Breitkopf & Härtel’s Oeuvres
completes de W. A. Mozart.
42
I. F. C. Arnold, Mozarts Geist: Seine kurze Biographie und ästhetische Darstellung seiner Werke.
Ein Bildungsbuch für junge Tonkünstler (Erfurt: Müller, 1810), pp. 140–3, and p. 453,
‘Verbesserungen’: ‘Mit welchem Eifer studirte er die Werke der alten großen Tonkünstler Italiens
und Deutschlands! Wie suchte er in den Geist eines Bach, Händel, Graun, Hasse, Durante, Leo,
Gluck, Piccini einzudringen! . . . Mozart ist in Melodie und Harmonie gleich groß. Man werfe
einen vergleichenden Blick auf seine Opern und seine Seelenmesse, oder auf seinen Don Juan, wo
sich die feinste Tändelei mit dem höchsten Ernst, die schwebendste Melodie mit dem vollsten
Gewichte des Kontrapunkts vereinigen. Z.B. die Arie im ersten Akte, wo Elvire Zerlinen warnt:
Ah Fuggi traditor . . . ; sie ist ganz in Bachischer Manier und reinem Kontrapunkt, gegen jene des
Don Juan: Fin ch’han dal vino.’
43
Ibid., pp. 313–14: ‘Elvirens Arie . . . Ah fuggi il traditor! . . . ist ein kontrapunktisches Kunststück.
Mozart scheint, als habe er zeigen wollen, daß er auch in Bachischer Manier setzen könne. – Ihr
Stil ist schön, aber von allen andern Pieçen dieser Oper so unendlich verschieden, daß ihre
Ausführung bei den Vorstellungen befremdet und wie mit dem Schlage einer Zauberruthe in das
goldne Zeitalter der Bache, Händel und Hassen versetzt.’

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 242 ulrich leisinger

In a similar way one of the earliest references to the unfinished Mass in

C minor is made to Handel. Maximilian Stadler reports about his involve-
ment with the settling of Mozart’s estate:

For the rest I cannot resist speaking of the pleasure this investigation gave me.
I discovered how diligent Mozart was in his youth, how he committed to paper not
only his own original ideas but also those of other masters that especially appealed
to him, in order to work them up later in his own manner and transform them, as
the saying is, in succum et sanguinem. I discovered that he constantly studied the
great Handel and chose him as his model in serious vocal music. There was a large
mass, which he did not fully complete but rewrote many years later as the oratorio
Davide penitente. It is composed entirely in the style of Handel.44

The reports by Rochlitz and Stadler about Mozart’s indebtedness to Handel

make it obvious that allusions to Baroque masters in his operas and church
music were regarded as deliberate stylistic choices by the composer. It is not
surprising that Stadler refers to Handel and not to Bach; apparently
Stadler – like most people in Vienna – was more familiar with Handel’s
music than with Bach’s. In this respect the often-raised question of whether
Mozart owes more to Handel or Bach is anachronistic. Compared with the
immense gap between the musical languages of the Baroque and Classical
eras, the stylistic differences between Bach and Handel are subtle and
perhaps solely of scholarly interest. We should not forget that the names
of Handel and Bach (rather than Bach and Handel) were regularly used to
mean ‘composers of the past’ in eighteenth-century reports. Mozart’s own
usage of the pair of names in his letters is no exception to the rule.
Stadler’s observation is of primary importance in that Mozart assimilated
ideas by other masters, transforming them into his own language. Mozart
certainly did not learn from Bach how to write a six-bar introduction to a
fugue or how to use a basso ostinato. Rather, the B-minor Mass – more than
any other work – proved to be a model for a Mass that decisively moved
beyond the limits of church music in its liturgical context. Each work may
44
M. Stadler, Vertheidigung der Echtheit des Mozart’schen Requiem (Vienna: Tendler and von
Manstein 1826), pp. 9–10: ‘Inzwischen kann ich nicht verhehlen, daß mir diese Untersuchung
viel Vergnügen verschaffte. Ich fand, wie fleißig Mozart in seiner Jugend war, wie er nicht nur
seine eigenen originalen Ideen, sondern auch von andern Meistern, die ihn besonders anreizten,
zu Papier brachte, um späterhin sie auf seine eigene Art auszuführen, und wie man sagt, in
succum et sanguinem zu verwandeln. Ich fand, wie er unausgesetzt den großen Händel studirte,
und ihn zu seinem Muster in ernsthaften Singsachen wählte. Es fand sich eine große Messe vor,
die zwar nicht ganz vollendet, aber nach längerer Zeit von ihm selbst in das Oratorium: Davide
penitente, umgeschaffen wurde. Es ist ganz in Händels Manier geschrieben.’ English trans. from
C. Wolff, Mozart’s Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 149.

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 Haydn’s copy of the B-minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C minor 243

be described as a summary and culmination of all the features of liturgical

music of its time. In its kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated
though discretely ordered styles, the B-minor Mass served as a successful
model combining historical elements with up-to-date musical styles in an
eclectic and exemplary manner. When writing his Mass in C minor, Mozart
was indebted to Bach and Handel in the same way as Bach had been
indebted to the stile antico of the seventeenth century when he composed
and compiled his B-minor Mass.
The strong focus on Berlin and Hamburg has probably led to an under-
estimation of Vienna as an important centre of Bach reception in German-
speaking lands since the 1770s. It now appears that the B-minor Mass
played a crucial role there in the reception of Bach’s vocal music. The
Berlin provenance of the oldest manuscript associated with Vienna seems
to prove that the copy was originally prepared for Gottfried van Swieten,
who in all likelihood had acquired it already before he left Berlin for Vienna
in 1777. The entries of a Viennese musician in the score – however insig-
nificant each of them may seem – make it very likely that van Swieten
showed the valuable manuscript to musicians like Mozart who took part in
the study sessions and performances at his home. In the first decade of the
nineteenth century several copies of the Mass circulated in Vienna, indicat-
ing a broader interest in this work, one no longer limited to a small circle of
admires of ancient music. The strong transmission history of the Mass in
Vienna invites further investigation into its reception history prior to
publication of the work. The recovery of the long-lost manuscript from
Haydn’s library makes it a worthwhile endeavour to pursue in greater detail
the idea that Mozart may have known Bach’s B-minor Mass before he
started composing his own Mass in C minor – a tempting and tantalising
premise which has had little justification until now.

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