Christine D. de Catanzaro, Ph.D. 1990

Advisor: Howard E. Smither

Dissertation Title: Sacred Music in Mozart’s Salzburg: Authenticity, Chronology, and Style in the Church Works of Cajetan Adlgasser

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Dissertation Abstract:

The church music of Cajetan Adlgasser and other Salzburg contemporaries of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has received relatively little scholarly attention. Nevertheless, judging from the large number and broad dispersal of sources, the composition of church music was a major occupation of these composers, including Mozart himself. Cajetan Adlgasser contributed to all the major subgenres of Salzburg church music in the mid-eighteenth century: his output included Masses, Requiems, Litanies, Vespers services, Offertories, Marian Antiphons, Hymns, and German sacred songs. His work as a composer, from c. 1745 until his death in 1777, bridged the activity of the older generation of Johann Ernst Eberlin and Leopold Mozart and the younger generation of Wolfgang Mozart and Michael Haydn. This dissertation examines both the sources and the style of this pivotal figure in the history of Salzburg church music.

In Part I of this dissertation, after a discussion of the dissemination of the sources of Adlgasser’s church music, the issues of authenticity and chronology are considered. Because of the lack of signed autographs, other means of verifying authenticity must be developed. Several criteria for examining the non-autograph sources are established, and each source is studied according to these criteria. The authenticity of each work is determined on the basis of this source study. In addition, all of the evidence regarding chronology is assembled, and a partial chronology of the works is developed. Part II examines aspects of the style of Adlgasser’s church music. The role of music in the liturgy is briefly considered, and the large-scale structure and instrumentation of the works are discussed. Fugal techniques and aria forms are examined in detail and compared to the fugues and arias of contemporaries, including Mozart. In Part III a thematic catalogue provides detailed information on all of the known sources of Adlgasser’s church works. This study contributes to a clearer understanding of the sources of Salzburg church music, and it expands our knowledge of this neglected but significant genre of Classic music. It also provides a context for the sacred music of the greatest Salzburg composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Dr. Catanzaro is currently a Music Archivist in the Archives of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Decatur.