| During the eighteenth century, the concerted setting of the mass with orchestra including trumpets and timpani flourished prevalently in Habsburg Vienna and prince-archiepiscopal Salzburg, whose ruling institutions utilized it to adorn their most important religious rituals of state. Its characteristic choral-orchestral sonority and integration of traditional and modern styles embodied the melding of secular and ecclesiastical authority that distinguished these cities. Though initially the genre resounded exclusively in the chapels of the highest of imperial princes, over the century its cultivation spread beyond court boundaries, becoming a typical element of Austrian music. It represents a significant nexus of musical art and the imperial-political spirituality of this age.;This dissertation uses the life and works of Johann Michael Haydn (1737-1806) as a lens for examining the cultural significance and stylistic development of the missa solemnis in these settings during the waning decades of the Holy Roman Empire, ca. 1740 to 1806. This lesser-known Haydn, long overshadowed by his elder brother Joseph and erstwhile colleague Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was celebrated as a master of church music in their time. The wide dissemination of his nearly two dozen missae solemnes throughout central Europe during and after his lifetime testifies to their broad appeal and esteem. These works build on compositional principles rooted in the genre's Baroque heritage; at the same time, they incorporate innovations in musical style and shifts in Austrian political-spiritual imperatives during this era. They reflect the demands of both contemporary ceremonial life and traditional liturgical aesthetics, as well as the predilections of influential patrons. My study sheds light on both the composer and the genre by combining strands of cultural history, the history of musical style, and biography. It also draws upon an extensive body of musical examples by Michael Haydn as well as his pertinent musical forbears and contemporaries, including a substantial amount of heretofore unpublished music. It thus serves to reveal a neglected facet of eighteenth-century musical culture and a considerable swath of a forgotten repertoire, as well as the impact of a once-eminent practitioner. |
