Does the music in this volume consist of one work or several? Jane Schatkin Hettrick, the leading specialist on Salieri's church music and the editor of this imposing volume, sends mixed signals. The title is ambiguous, ‘with’ allowing us to think of the Te Deum either as part of the Plenary Mass in C or as separate from it. In the Acknowledgments (vii) Hettrick uses the singular in referring to the music as ‘Salieri's most complex and monumental work of liturgical music’. In the Introduction (ix), though, she uses the plural: ‘The Te Deum . . . is the largest and most elaborate of the works presented in this edition’ (ix). On the same page we find singular and plural in a single sentence: ‘The compositions presented in this edition make up Salieri's largest work (and only composite work) of liturgical music’ (my italics). Later in the Introduction, the discussion of the music divides it, using headings of the same size, into the following: Mass in C (consisting of the Ordinary only), Introit (Beata gens), Gradual (Venite gentes), Offertory (Cantate Domino), Tantum ergo and Te Deum. This organization seems to imply that the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Tantum ergo and Te Deum are not part of the Mass in C after all.
Hettrick's phrase ‘composite work’ helps to explain the apparent contradictions. All the music in this volume belongs to a composite work, and more specifically a plenary mass. As I have discussed in some detail in a book published more than a decade ago, the plenary mass attracted the attention of composers working in Vienna and its cultural orbit in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; it consisted not only of the Ordinary but also Gradual and Offertory; some plenary masses also included a setting of the Te Deum. (See my Empress Marie Therese and Music at the Viennese Court, 1792–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 109–118.) Before the publication of my book, the Viennese plenary mass was little known to historians and performers, probably because Joseph Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote no such works. But scholars and choral conductors who can look beyond the great triumvirate will find a wealth of large-scale sacred music in this repertory. We owe Hettrick sincere thanks for making this example of the Viennese plenary mass accessible to study and performance.
Hettrick sees Salieri's plenary mass as a product of a ‘long-standing liturgical practice of the Hofkapelle’, according to which ‘musical performances of the mass always included composed (i.e. non-chant) settings of the gradual and offertory’ (ix). However, she does not cite any examples of such performances involving music written by one composer, for a specific occasion. In fact the plenary mass of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was normally conceived by a single composer as a single (albeit composite) musical work. It played an important role in the musical patronage of Emperor Franz II (later Franz I) and his second wife, the music-loving Empress Marie Therese, who commissioned plenary masses from Michael Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Joseph Eybler and others. Salieri's mass ought to be considered within the context of this larger efflorescence of the plenary mass at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Hettrick demonstrates convincingly that ‘from the beginning Salieri conceived the Mass in C as a plenary mass, including the gradual . . . and offertory . . . and that a setting of the Te Deum would eventually be included to create a complete liturgical-musical program’ (ix). But that does not mean that Salieri conceived all the music for this purpose. Quite the contrary: Hettrick shows that one part of the mass (indeed, the longest and most elaborate part) was written for a completely different purpose. Salieri composed the Te Deum in D for the coronation of Leopold II as king of Bohemia in Prague in 1791 (thus it was presumably performed on the same day as Mozart's La clemenza di Tito).
While in most plenary masses the Te Deum is placed last and serves as the culminating movement, in Salieri's the Te Deum is placed at the beginning. (The position of the Te Deum within the mass is documented by a manuscript particella, described by Hettrick in the Critical Report, 249–250). Since the Te Deum is in D major, I wonder about the appropriateness of calling this a Mass in C. I notice in the facsimile of the first page of the autograph score of the Kyrie that the title (written in crayon) is ‘Missa No. 3’ (plate 1). If we are to take seriously Salieri's intention that this work is to begin with a large-scale movement in D major, then the apparently modern title Plenary Mass in C is misleading. Also misleading is the placement of the discussion of the Te Deum in the Introduction after discussions of all the other elements of the mass. A further unusual detail: Salieri's work is not only a plenary mass but a mass for double choir: SATB + SATB. As Hettrick remarks, this is a rarity in Viennese sacred music. I know of only one other Viennese double-choir plenary mass from this period, Eybler's Missa Sancti Francisci (1806), probably composed in response to Salieri's mass.
Salieri's mass exists in two versions. In the first, composed in 1799, the two choirs are accompanied by a single orchestra consisting of the normal complement of winds, brass, timpani, strings and organ. Five years later, Salieri revised the mass for a performance at a celebration of thanksgiving (Dankfest) on 8 December 1804. The festivities celebrated the decree by which Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor, became Emperor Franz I, Emperor of Austria. For this occasion Salieri heavily reinforced the orchestration, primarily by adding an extra ensemble of winds, brass and timpani to the second choir.
It is this second, very heavily orchestrated version of the mass that Hettrick presents here. It is fascinating to see Salieri working on such a large scale. And we are lucky to have a modern edition of music so closely associated with an important turning-point in Austrian history. At the same time I wonder if it might not have been better to use Salieri's original 1799 version as the basis of this edition. Salieri's use of double choir and double wind and brass groups has required Hettrick to use systems of as many as thirty-one staves. Even with page dimensions (28 x 43 centimetres) considerably larger than those normally used by A-R Editions, the layout is crowded, the margins are narrow, and the music is not easy to read. Chorus 1 is separated from chorus 2 by as many as ten instrumental staves. The engravers found no way to separate visually the two vocal-instrumental choirs. Librarians will be annoyed at not being able to shelve this edition together with other ‘Recent Researches’ volumes.
Such difficulties would be acceptable if the rewards were proportionately great. But how often will a score that requires ten bassoons (four in choir 1 and six in choir 2) and eight trumpets (four in choir 1 and four in choir 2) be performed as written, especially since most of the brass and wind parts can easily be played by a much smaller number of instruments? One of the first things that most conductors will do when preparing a performance using this edition will be to cross out all the non-essential parts. In doing so they will be producing a score that will probably resemble the 1799 version. An edition of the 1799 version would have undoubtedly presented its own set of challenges to the editor. But it could have been published in a score much less cumbersome than this one, and it would have probably resulted in more performances of this beautiful music.
‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!’ Let me end by acknowledging what will be obvious to anyone who studies this edition. It is not only the product of years of hard work and intensive scholarship; it is a labour of love by a scholar/musician who has devoted much of her life to the study of the manuscripts of Vienna's court chapel. Hettrick and A-R Editions are to be congratulated for a score that must have been extremely difficult to edit, engrave and proofread. Together with a highly informative Introduction and a Critical Report that is awe-inspiring in its command of detail, this edition represents musical scholarship at its best.
