Music at Salzburg Cathedral. The Repertory [...]

For a long time, Salzburg Cathedral has been one of the most important buildings of the city and the area of Salzburg, which were ruled by a Prince archbishop until 1803. It has the church of an archbishop, who, since Matthäus Lang, could claim supremacy as Primas Germanie among the German speaking bishops. On the other hand, since 1635 it was the main parish church and, thus, pivot point of a system of city churches, which played an important role for the citizens as the locations for baptisms, marriages, funeral services, but also as destinations for pilgrimages or starting points of processions. The impulse for this volume was given by cataloging the holdings of Salzburg Cathedral (A-Sd, Series A), which have been preserved in the Archiv der Erzdiözese Salzburg, between 2007 and 2014 by the RISM Salzburg Working group. These holdings, from the manuscript parts of the last third of the 17th century up to the sources stemming from before the foundation of the Dommusikverein and Mozarteum in 1841, were entered into the RISM-Database. They can be found in a printed catalog as well as in the RISM-Database <opac.rism.info>. In the focus of the publication is the music practice at the metropolitan Cathedral of Salzburg. The repertory of sacred music, and the institutions of the Hofkapelle, the Cathedral Choir and the chapel boys as well as the liturgical and ceremonial requirements of musical practice are discussed. Thus, for the first time in Salzburg music historical writing, the context emerges, whose knowledge is part and parcel for dealing with sacred music, especially with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts, whose sacred works were, to a large part, written for Salzburg Cathedral. The chapter on performance practice is also one that yielded surprising insights. Motivated by musical sources we were not able to assign to the music of the metropolitan church, brought to light the hitherto unknown musicians of the city parish and thus the organization and history of music at the other Salzburg churches. Moreover, music practice at the cathedral in the first half of the 19th century, which has been neglected so far, is explored in detail for the first time. Research in other archives, as in the library of the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence (Italy) and the musical archive of the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Einsiedeln (Switzerland) has contributed to our understanding of diverse cultural transfers from the collection, which was made possible by intense research in paper and copyists.

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