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

in the family correspondence took on an increasingly strategic character as events proceeded.
Mozart’s arrival and settlement in Vienna had presented him with a novel opportunity: the
prospect for the first time of complete freedom in religious matters, away from the direct
supervision of his parents and Leopold in particular. Mozart’s father, for his part, combined
a healthy scepticism for the Church’s institutional structures with a devout private piety, and
he continued to concern himself with his son’s religious development during periods of
separation. These efforts took on a heightened significance with the entry of Constanze
Weber into the Mozart circle, as Leopold became concerned over the state of Wolfgang’s
morals. Thus we encounter several instances of Mozart informing his father of religious
events in the city, with the implicit or explicit intention of demonstrating his interest, or at
least observance, of church ritual and the maintenance of spiritual well-being. These
references, together with a small number of additional documents, can be used to gain some
insight into Mozart’s attitudes towards the Catholic Church.
III. ‘SEYN SIE NICHT GAR ZU ANDÄCHTIG’
In attempting to discover the nature of Mozart’s religious outlook in the early 1780s, we
must remember that the vast majority of the composer’s day to day actions, thoughts, and
conversations, even those bearing on music, are now unknown to us. This inevitable lack of
documentation is problematic enough when attempting to discover the date on which a
Mozart piano concerto was first performed, for example, but becomes an especially complex
matter in the case of a highly personal matter such as religion. There is evidently material
that was once extant but is now apparently lost: in addition to the well-known loss of all
Leopold Mozart’s letters to his son after January 1781, at least four letters known to have
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