Dec 12, 2016

Mauro Giuliani's Viennese Residence at Stadt 1083

In the article "New Light on Mauro Giuliani's Vienna Years", which in April 2015, I published on this blog, I uncovered the secret second family that Mauro Giuliani founded during his stay in Vienna. In late 1806, Giuliani left his wife in Italy and went to Vienna where, between 1808 and 1817, he fathered four daughters with his Viennese mistress Anna Wiesenberger (1784–1817). In 2015, I was unable to locate a joint residence of Giuliani and Wiesenberger, or at least find Giuliani's name on one of the conscription sheets that the municipal conscription office drew up to keep track of the men who were fit for military service.

In June 2016, by pure chance, while doing research on the painter Thomas Ender, who at a later point of time also lived at this address, I was able to identify the house where Giuliani and Anna Wiesenberger shared an apartment. Some time around 1815, they are documented to have lived together in apartment no. 4 at Stadt 1083 (today Seilergasse 3).

Anna Wiesenberger and her lover Mauro Giuliani on a conscription sheet of Stadt 1083 from around 1814 (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Stadt 1083/4r)

In 1811, the quarters in question were inhabited by Germain Trotter (1768–1836), a tradesman from Fiera di Primiero in Tirol. Trotter had a close relation to other Italians and musicians in Vienna, such as his business partner and sole heir, the widowed merchant Rosa Motta, née Dischendorfer (a sister-in-law of the wife of the composer Paul Wranitzky), and Antonio Salieri with whom in 1816, he served as witness to the wedding of the I. & R. cabinet courier Anton Kemperle.  

Germain Trotter ("Burg Handelsmann") and Antonio Salieri ("primo maestro di Cappella della Corte Imp: e Reale Cavaliere della Legion d'Onore") signing as witnesses to the wedding of Anton Kemperle on 12 June 1816 (A-Wstm, Am Hof, Tom 3, fol. 193)

It is possible that in April 1814, before he moved to his sister Josepha in the Trattnerhof, Trotter recommended his apartment to Giuliani. But the reason why Giuliani chose to live in this particular house lies in the family relations of Anna Wiesenberger which will be dealt with below. This apartment seems to have been the quarter where Giuliani attracted the attention of the Vienna police, which in 1815, suspected him of "providing procuration for persons of higher social status". Two details in connection with the entry in the conscription sheet are intriguing: first, that none of the couples illegitimate daughters are listed in the record. The first one, Maria Willmuth, had been born on 20 April 1808, the third, Emilia, on 23 April 1813. Like their deceased sister Aloysia (1810–12) they were obviously living in foster care. And second, that Michele, Giuliani's son from his marriage, lived together with his father and Anna Wiesenberger. This suggests that at some point, Giuliani's wife may have become fully aware of her husband's extramarital love life. The entry in the conscription sheet reads as follows:
Germain Trotter         768    ofentl[icher] / Handl[un]gs associe / ledig
Anna Wisenberger    786    Großhändlerstochter
Anna Lanzenmeier    781    Anv[erwandte]
Mario[sic] Güliany                Künstler von aus Italien
S.[ohn] Mich:             802

(A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Stadt 1083/4r)

It was not possible to identify Wiesenberger's alleged relative Anna Lanzenmeier whose name I tend to consider a pseudonym. People by the names of "Lanzenmeier" and "Lanzmeier" (in all possible different spellings) cannot be documented to have lived in Vienna at that time. This name appears in Viennese records only after 1850. The different handwriting in the note "Künstler aus Italien" after Giuliani's name shows that it was added at some later time. It is not known when Giuliani moved out of Stadt 1083, and if he immediately moved to Stadt 939 (last numbering 885, Singerstraße 13) where he is documented to have lived at the time of Anna Wiesenberger's death in 1817. Giuliani's successors as tenants of this apartment were the licensed jeweler Johann August Veith (b. 1787) and his wife Rosalia, née Herzog (b. 1792). Soon after, on 1 August 1811, Veith had received his official license as "privilegirter Goldarbeiter", he married on 3 November 1811, at the parish church of St. Ulrich (St. Ulrich, Tom. 34, fol. 27).

The House Stadt 1083

From 1951 until 1958, the Austrian amateur historian Paul Harrer-Lucienfeld worked on the second (expanded) edition of his magisterial eight-volume work Wien - seine Häuser, Geschichte und Kultur which comprises the history of all buildings in Vienna's Inner City from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century. Fundamental as Harrer's work is, its main deficiency is the fact that Harrer mainly based his research on the land registers in the Vienna Municipal Archives and a selection of out-dated secondary sources on local history. This resulted in Harrer's work being a history of sequences of ownership. The real, much more extensive history of the houses, which would cover their architectural design, based on the surviving evaluations and exact descriptions of the buildings, remains yet to be written. What follows is not only meant to serve as a model for a more ambitious level of research on the history of Viennese houses, it also answers the question as to why Mauro Giuliani chose to live at the house Stadt 1083.

Although the house in question was torn down in 1895, and replaced in the following year with a five-story building, it is possible to get an impression of the appearance of the original building using various archival sources. These materials comprise:
  1. The building consent, issued by the municipal Unterkammeramt 
  2. Werner Arnold von Steinhausen's 1710 map of Vienna
  3. Joseph Daniel von Huber's 1778 and 1785 maps of Vienna (the so-called Vogelschaupläne)
  4. The Josephinische Steuerfassion Formular II (the municipal tax register) of 1787/88, and (most importantly)
  5. The descriptions and evaluations of the building by master builders which are preserved in the probate files and commercial court records of the house's various owners
Since the fifteenth century, the building that was to become Stadt 1083 had always consisted of two separate units which can be seen on Steinhausen's map from 1710.

The future house Stadt 1083 (above the word "Rosen"), still consisting of two units, on Steinhausen's 1710 map (A-Wsa, Kartographische Sammlung, Akt 3.2.1.1.P1.234). At that time, the broad section of the Seilergasse was still named "Rosen=Gassen".

On 21 June 1723, the house on the left of the above map was bought by Bartolomeo Patuzzi (1674–1736), a spice trader from Limone sul Garda. On 24 November 1733, Patuzzi also purchased the other house, and on 21 June 1734, he applied for the permission to completely tear down his own and the desolate "Schinaglisches Haus", which had once belonged to Johann Baptist Schinagl (1673–1727), and replace them with a single new building. One of the ground plans of the houses is marked "dermahlige Patuzische Behaußung" and "Erkaufte schinaglische Behaußung". The area of the yard bears the note: "This is now only one house, only the yard was built differently".

The ground plan of Bartolomeo Patuzzi's house on the left and the house, newly purchased from Johann Schinagl, on the right (A-Wsa, Unterkammeramt, A33, Alte Baukonsense 388/1734)

One of Patuzzi's arguments for the new edifice was the smooth facade line of the new structure that would "increase the street area" (which it actually did not). The plan he submitted to the municipal Unterkammeramt bears the following notes, referring to the projected new (A) and the old exterior wall (B):
Demolition of both of the Patuzi houses
A: Newly projected line of the two houses providing regularity.
B: Old corner of both houses by which the City street gains a very useful section.

The 1734 ground plan of Bartolomeo Patuzzi's new house in the Seilergasse (A-Wsa, Unterkammeramt, A33, Alte Baukonsense 388/1734)

Bartolomeo Patuzzi died on 27 May 1736, and his three sons inherited the house. The official evaluation of this building in Patuzzi's probate file does not survive. Because his file was later filled with documents related to the estate of his widow (1743) and the transfer of the spice business to his son Joseph (1750), the material from 1736 was discarded (A-Wsa, Alte Ziviljustiz 140/5). In 1776, the total balance of Patuzzi's business amounted to 172,064 fl 57 x (A-Wsa, Alte Ziviljustiz 240/10). The 1785 edition of Huber's map shows the building in the Seilergasse with its yard.

The house Stadt 1083 (then 1094) on Joseph Daniel von Huber's 1785 map Die Kays. Königl. Haupt und Residenz Stadt Wien. Wie sie im Jahr 1785 unter der Regirung Josephs des Zweyten stehet (W-Waw, Sammlung Woldan). 

The yard of Stadt 1083 was a little smaller which can be seen on the map of Robert Messner's standard work Die Innere Stadt Wien im Vormärz. All red colored buildings on this map date from before 1846.

The area around "Stock im Eisen" on Messner's map (Robert Messner, Die Innere Stadt Wien im Vormärz. Historisch-topografische Darstellung auf Grund der Katastralvermessung Wien 1996-1998,. Band 1)

The earliest estimate of the house can be found in the probate file of Bartolomeo Patuzzi's son Joseph who died on 4 October 1776, at the age of 54. The estate of Joseph von Patuzzi (who had been ennobled in 1763) was evaluated at 26,341 fl 45 x. The value of the house was estimated at 24,000 gulden and, because Joseph von Patuzzi owned it together with his brother Karl, his half is given as follows in his list of assets.
Concerning the house in the City
I likewise have to refer to the original estimate of 24,000 f:, deposited with the honorable municipal account chamber of wards, whereof, because according to the certificate B Karl Patuzzi owns an equal half, the following amount must be listed here ― "12,000" ―

The value of the Patuzzi brothers' house in the Seilergasse given as 24,000 fl in Joseph von Patuzzi's probate file (A-Wsa, Alte Ziviljustiz 240/10)

The earliest detailed description of the house Stadt 1083 (then 1094) survives in volume five of the 1787/88 municipal tax register (the Josephinische Steuerfassion). At that time, the building belonged to Karl Patuzzi who, together with his son Franz, ran a spice shop at Graben 1150 named "Zur Weißen Rose" (The White Rose). At that time, spice dealers also sold wine and Patuzzi's shop was known to offer the best French and Italian vintages. The tax register shows the following thirteen-unit layout of the five floors (with annual rents in gulden).
Ground floor: seven shops and one "Handgewölb" (salesroom) which was not used between 23 April 1787 and 23 April 1788 [one shop at 50 fl and the others at 65 fl each]
First floor [second floor, American counting]: one apartment with 5 rooms, 2 chambers, kitchen; one attic room and a chamber on the 4th floor 450 fl. One  apartment with 3 rooms, 2 chambers, kitchen, cellar and an attic 350 fl
Second floor: one apartment consisting of 5 rooms, 2 chambers, kitchen, cellar, attic; one chamber on the ground floor 450 fl. One apartment with 3 rooms, 2 chambers, kitchen, cellar and an attic 325 fl
Third floor: one apartment with 8 rooms, 4 chambers, kitchen, cellar and attic; one attic room and 2 chambers on the 4th floor, and [on the ground floor] a very damp salesroom [see above] 280 fl [corrected to 480 fl]
Fourth floor: one apartment with 3 rooms, 4 chambers, an extra chamber, kitchen, a firewood vault and an attic 200 fl

The house Stadt 1083 (then 1094) in the Josephinische Steuerfassion (A-Wsa, Steueramt B34/5, fol. 77)

In 1788, the taxable rental revenue of Stadt 1083 was 2247 gulden. The house owner Karl Patuzzi lived in the eight-room apartment on the third floor, a fact that is also documented in his will of 1 June 1791 (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 3391/1793). The two five-room apartments on the first and second floor were the most expensive ones, but their relatively low rent of 450 fl suggests that the rooms were rather small and the apartments did not have much daylight. The number of Giuliani's apartment on the conscription sheet points to the smaller, three-room apartment on the second floor as Giuliani's quarters in 1814.

On 7 December 1793, the house owner Karl Patuzzi died of tuberculosis. His house was bequeathed as "a grandfatherly token" to his three grandsons Joseph, Karl and Franz Patuzzi, while his son Franz was granted the life-long benefit of half of the rental revenue. Because on 4 May 1794, a fire had partially destroyed the fourth floor (which had been fully built of wood), Franz Patuzzi on 19 May 1794 (in the name of his sons), applied for the permission to restore this floor with a less flammable brick-built structure (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 3391/1793). After in March 1798 Franz Patuzzis son Joseph had bought the spice business of his colleague Johann Philipp Weiß to establish his own shop, "Zur goldenen Gans" at Haarmarkt 776, he had to prove that he owned the financial assets that were required for registering his own business. He did this by presenting a description and evaluation of the house Stadt 1083 (then 1150) of which he owned a third (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B1.24, fol. 106). The estimate, signed on 28 June 1798 by the master builders and sworn appraisers Joseph Millinger and Liborius Gerl, and the carpenter Joseph Knötzl, is the earliest surviving document of this category related to Stadt 1083. This description does not distinguish between apartments, but simply lists all rooms on each floor.
Appraisal
which we, the undersigned sworn master-workmen, conducted in the Patuzzi house located in the City in the Seilergasse N° 1150 and where we assessed the following.
Below the ground.
41 wooden steps deep three midsize and five small cellars, 18 steps above them eleven vaults for wood and two smal cellars, from the above depth a stone stairway leading to the ground floor.
On the ground floor.
A vaulted driveway from the Seilergasse with a draw well in it; the toilets have a seperate connection to the sewer, seven shops, each with a display window toward the street, two storerooms, then five vaulted chambers. One vaulted room with a chamber.
On the first floor.
Three hallways of which two are stuccoed and one is vaulted, one vaulted and one stuccoed kitchen, two vaulted and six stuccoed rooms, one storeroom and three stuccoed chambers.
On the second floor.
One vaulted and one stuccoed hallway, two kitchens, eight rooms, one of which has an alcove, three chambers, everything stuccoed.
On the third floor.
Three hallways, two kitchens, eight rooms one of which with an alcove, three chambers, everything stuccoed.
On the fourth floor.
A hallway, three kitchens, nine rooms, one of which with an alcove, five chambers, two panties, everything stuccoed.
There is a stone staircase from the ground floor to the attic, in the yard there are three connecting corridors arched on each other, four consecutive wooden walkways with iron railings, the attics are paved with bricks, the roof is tiled. This house is five stories high, is in good building condition and is evaluated at sixty-thousand eight-hundred gulden.
To strongly confirm this the three appraisers have personally signed
Joseph Millingermp civil master builder and sworn appraiser
     Liborius Thade Gerlmp civil master builder and sworn appraiser
Jos: Knötzl civil appraiser of carpentry

The appraisers' description and evaluation of Stadt 1083 (then 1150) from 28 June 1798 (A-Wsa, Merkantil- und Wechselgericht, A3, Firmenakten 1. Reihe, BP 132)

On 11 April 1801 (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften B1.25, fol. 36r), Joseph Patuzzi and his brother Franz sold the house in the Seilergasse to the silk manufacturer Sebastian Rosenkart (1756–1809) and his wife Barbara who, already on 27 November 1801, sold it to a certain Katharina Himpel (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B1.25, fol. 81v). It was Katharina Himpel who in 1814 was to be Mauro Giuliani's landlady. On 2 April 1822, the house Stadt 1083 was bought by Lorenz Aumüller and his wife Barbara (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B1.28, fol. 103). Lorenz Aumüller, who had been born in 1752 in Obergänserndorf (Pfarre Niederhollabrunn, Tom. 4, 167) and had come to Vienna before 1774 (St. Ulrich, Tom. 27, fol. 359v), started out as a modest ribbon weaver and during the following fifty years established one of Vienna's most sucessful productions of silk ribbons. When Aumüller died on 27 December 1827 at his house Schottenfeld 349 (which he had appropriately named "Zur Aumühl"), he owned five houses and a garden which were estimated at a total value of 262,192 fl 24 x. This was only half of his overall assets. Among the three houses, that Aumüller owned in the Inner City, was Stadt 1083 which in January 1830, was evaluated at 93,200 gulden by the municipal appraisers. Aumüller's probate file contains a detailed description of the house. Compared to the assessment from 1798 the building was basically unchanged. The only alteration on the second floor (Giuliani's presumable quarters) was a "Communicationsgang" (connecting corridor) that had been added. The third floor now had two more rooms.

The second and third page of the 1830 appraisal of Stadt 1083 in the probate file of Lorenz Aumüller (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 881/1829). This document was signed by the master builders Joseph Adelpodinger, Wenzel Deimmel, Georg Rueff, and the master carpenter Joseph Fellner.

After the death of Lorenz Aumüller's widow Barbara on 5 October 1831, the house Stadt 1083 was described and evaluated again. The appraisal, drawn up on 26 November 1831, evaluated the house at 97,200 gulden, an increase of 4,3% within two years, which sheds light on the inflation rate at that time. In 1833, the house went to Aumüller's five grandchildren. One of them, Barbara Aumüller in 1830 had married Joseph Bujatti (an elder brother of the industrialist Franz Bujatti) and thus, had become a family member of one of the most prominent dynasties of Austrian silk manufacturers. When her brother Karl Grienauer (1808–1883) was ennobled in 1876, he chose the predicate "Edler von Auenegg" in memory of his grandfather Lorenz Aumüller. In 1896, the house Stadt 1083 was replaced with a new building. As far as I could determine, no photograph of the old house exists.

The house Seilergasse 3 today

The Wiesenberger-Hauptmann-Patuzzi Family Connection

Giuliani's choice of residence was based on the relations between the Wiesenberger and the Patuzzi families. In spring of 1798, Joseph Patuzzi, who at that time still owned a third of the house where he had been born in 1773 (A-Wd, Tom. 91, fol. 31v), realized the marriage plans which were to become the basis of his family relationship with Mauro Giuliani's extramarital family. On 12 April 1798, he applied to the Lower Austrian Government for a permission to marry Theresia Hauptmann, the daughter of the goldsmith and appraiser Johann Kaspar Hauptmann. "Since I am about to open a trading business", Patuzzi wrote, "a wife is absolutely indispensable for the management of my household".

The first page of Joseph Patuzzi's 1798 marriage application to the I. & R. Lower Austrian Government (A-Wstm, St. Peter, Verkündakt 35/1798)

On 13 May 1798, at St. Peter's Church, Joseph Patuzzi married Theresia Hauptmann who was the sister-in-law of Johann Georg Wiesenberger, the father of Giuliani's mistress Anna Wiesenberger. Accordingly, in 1798, Johann Georg Wiesenberger served as Patuzzi's best man. The witness of the bride was her uncle, the I. & R. Aulic Councillor and protonotary Franz Xaver von Bergauer.

The entry concerning Joseph Patuzzi's and Theresia Hauptmann's wedding on 13 May 1798. Johann Georg Wiesenberger's name appears at the upper right. The original copy of the marriage register with the witnesses' original signatures does not survive (A-Wstm, St. Peter, Tom. 1, 442).

In 1792, seven months after the death of his first wife, Johann Georg Wiesenberger had married nineteen-year-old Maria Anna Hauptmann (A-Wstm, St. Peter, Tom. 1, 294) who had lived in the Trattnerhof on the same floor as Wiesenberger.

The apartments of Johann Georg Wiesenberger, Andreas Annes, and Johann Kaspar Hauptmann on the fourth floor of the Trattnerhof, listed in the 1788 tax register (A-Wsa, Steueramt, B34/3, fol. 464)

The last page of Johann Georg Wiesenberger's and Maria Hauptmann's marriage contract which was drawn up on 30 August 1792. This document was signed by the bridal couple, the bride's parents Johann Kaspar, and Rosalia Hauptmann, the bride's uncle Franz von Bergauer, and Wiesenberger's best man, the merchant Andreas Annes (1735–1814) (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 3545/1802).

Only one document from Georg Wiesenberger's marriage file survives: on 1 September 1792, Anton Leopold Haßlehner, the inspector of the Trattnerhof, attested to the bride's long-time residence at this building.

The certificate of residence, issued on 1 September 1792, for Maria Anna Hauptmann (A-Wst, St. Peter, VKA 65/1792). I extend my gratitude to the incomparable Constanze Gröger for making the publication of this document possible.
It is herewith certified that the very noble Johann Kaspar Hauptmann, civil goldsmith, I. & R. sworn jeweller and jewelry appraiser, has been residing continuously at the Trattnerhof N° 591-596 in the City on the Graben into the 20th year, beginning on 23 April 1773, and that his legitimate daughter Anna Maria was born there and until now has really been living there with him. Vienna, September 1st, 1792
                               [L.S.] Ant: Leop: Haßlehnermpia Inspector
That Joseph Patuzzi and Johann Georg Wiesenberger became brothers-in-law was to have long-term consequences. After the death of Karl Patuzzi (the youngest of the three brothers), who died in February 1799 during his apprenticeship in Rovereto, Karl's third of the house Stadt 1083 (then 1150) went to Joseph and Franz Patuzzi (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B1.24, fol. 320v). The death of their father Franz Patuzzi senior on 10 February 1799 sounded the economic decline of the family business. At the time of his wedding, Joseph Patuzzi still declared himself a "bürgerlicher Handelsmann", but he soon followed the career of many other Viennese tradesmen, whose business suffered under the unfavorable political circumstances, and became a commodity broker. Since Joseph Patuzzi, between 1799 and 1814, fathered eleven children, it is easy to trace his steps in the following years, steps that – not surprisingly – lead back to Stadt 1083, the house of his ancestors. In 1798, Patuzzi lived at Stadt 585 (the birthplace of Haydn's wife) at Hoher Markt 4. 1801 saw him residing at Stadt 685 (Rotenturmstraße 21), and 1802 at Stadt 799 (Bäckerstraße 5). On 14 October 1803, his daughter Anna Theresia Patuzzi was born at Stadt 518 (Rabensteig 8). Her godmother was her aunt Maria Anna Wiesenberger, Johann Georg Wiesenberger's widow.

 The entry concerning the baptism of Anna Theresia Patuzzi at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, Tom. 103, fol. 248)

From 1806 until early 1810, Patuzzi lived at Stadt 1017 (Seilerstätte 18), but as of February 1810, he is documented to have moved back to his place of birth, Stadt 1083 (then 1150), where on 4 February 1810, his son Moritz was born (A-Wd, Tom 105, fol. 213). Patuzzi's return to the house in the Seilergasse eventually led to Anna Wiesenberger and Mauro Giuliani move there as well. Joseph Patuzzi, his wife Theresia and their second child Joseph show up in a conscription sheet of Stadt 1083 where they lived until 1815.

The family of Joseph Patuzzi ("k.k. Waarensensal") registered at Stadt 1083 (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Stadt 1083/1r). Of Patuzzi's eleven children only five were still alive in 1830 (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Landstraße 14/37r).

On 6 May 1810, Joseph Patuzzi's brother-in-law Peter Hauptmann, a goldsmith and jewelry appraiser like his father, married the renowned opera singer Paulina Anna Milder (St. Josef ob der Laimgrube, Tom. 5, fol. 273).

Peter Hauptmann's and Anna Milder's "Verkündigungs Schein", written on 2 May 1810, by the curate of St. Peter's Thomas Huber. This document certifies that the banns for the wedding were published once at St. Peter's, that the couple was exempt from the two other publications, and that there was no legal obstacle to the marriage (A-Wstm, St. Peter, VKA 49/1810). At the time of their marriage, Hauptmann lived in the Trattnerhof (No. 8, 2nd floor, 4th stairway, A-Wsa, Handschrift A 325/1, 959f.), and Milder at the Theater an der Wien (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Laimgrube 26/7r). Peter Hauptmann had been born on 6 February 1779 (A-Wd, Tom. 95, fol. 112r) in the Trattnerhof (the number "691" in the baptismal entry is an error), son of the goldsmith Johann Kaspar Hauptmann (1740–1826) and his first wife Rosalia, née Bergauer.

Anna Milder-Hauptmann (who had been Beethoven's first Leonore in all versions of Fidelio) served as godmother of one of Joseph Patuzzi's children. Her godson Sigmund Paul Patuzzi was born on 19 February 1814, at Stadt 1083 (then 1150) and baptized at the Cathedral on the following day. The state official and diarist Mathias Perth, who was the tutor of Patuzzi's children, was present at the ceremony and testified to the child's legitimacy (A-Wst, Perth, Tage-Buch, C H.I.N. 226988/26, 131).

The entry concerning the baptism of Anna Milder-Hauptmann's godson Sigmund Paul Patuzzi on 20 February 1814. Mathias Perth's signature is at the bottom right (A-Wd, Tom. 106, fol. 113). This child died of measles on 23 September 1815 (A-Wd, Tom. 40a, fol. 209).

It is interesting to trace the further fate of the Hauptmann siblings, Peter Hauptmann, Maria Wiesenberger, and Theresia Patuzzi. In 1815, Anna Milder-Hauptmann was granted an emigration permit and went to Berlin. Her emigrant status was revoked in 1819 by the Emperor and converted into a five-year passport (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Stadt 618/41v). Peter Hauptmann seems not to have accompanied his wife to Berlin, because at the time of his father's death in 1826, he was still living in Vienna (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 1340/1826). Milder-Hauptmann visited Vienna one last time in January 1836, on which occasion she gave a concert at the hall of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Peter Hauptmann paid rent for his apartment in the Trattnerhof until 29 September 1834 (A-Wsa, Handschrift A 325/3, 97f.). A unique source regarding the last decades of Hauptmann's life survives as an anonymous report titled "Juwelier Hauptmann, der Gemahl der Sängerin Milder" in Vienna's Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv (A-Whh, StK, Adelsakten 7, fol. 390-402). In 1845, heavy financial problems, which allegedly were caused by his being liable for debts of too many of his friends, caused Hauptmann to leave Vienna. He spent the following two years in Gloggnitz and Ödenburg, and in 1847 – on the advice of Vienna's mayor Ignaz Czapka – moved into the Versorgungsanstalt in Ybbs an der Donau. There he died of old age on 8 February 1858 (Pfarre Ybbs, Sterbebuch der Versorgungsanstalt, Tom. 4, fol. 32).

Eleven months after the death of Johann Georg Wiesenberger in 1802, from whom she had inherited 23,500 gulden, his widow Maria Anna bore an illegitimate daughter who on 6 May 1803 was christened Theresia Anna Karolina after her godmother Theresia Patuzzi (Maria Rotunda, Tom. 2, 51f.). The name of the child's father is not given in the records, but later documents show that the father was Joseph Rantsch (b. 4 June 1774, St. Ulrich, Tom. 34, fol. 100r), head accountant with the bank and trading firm of Baron Andreas von Fellner (1751–1819). Rantsch and Maria Wiesenberger got married on 6 May 1806 at Vienna's Dominican Church (Maria Rotunda, Tom. 2, 214f., and A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A10, 156/1827), and eventually had seven more children. The godmother of one of them was their mother's stepdaughter (and Mauro Giuliani's mistress) Anna Wiesenberger.

The entry concerning the baptism of Adolph Alois Rantsch on 1 March 1811 (St. Augustin, Tom. 5, fol. 100). The midwife was Theresia Bernegger who in 1808 had already helped deliver Mauro Giuliani's daughter Maria Willmuth.

Although in 1810 Joseph Rantsch had become a business associate of Baron von Fellner, his business activities seem to have been unsuccessful. 

The seals and signatures of the Barons Alexander and Karl von Fellner and Joseph Rantsch on their joint associate contract which was signed on 1 January 1810 (A-Wsa, Merkantil- und Wechselgericht, A3, 1. Reihe, F 80, fol. 69r)

At the time of Joseph Rantsch's death on 13 March 1827, his meager assets were completely compensated by the financial claims of his widow. Maria Rantsch proposed her brother Peter Hauptmann as guardian of her eight children, but Hauptmann refused to accept this appointment (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A10, 156/1827).

The "Großhändlerswittwe" Maria Rantsch and five of her children registered on a conscription sheet from around 1834 (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Stadt 476/9r)

Maria Rantsch died on 18 July 1849 completely destitute. At that time, only four of her children were still alive (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 7815/1849). In her will, written on 13 May 1845, she left all her belongings to her unmarried daughter Maria.

The will of Maria Anna Rantsch, née Hauptmann, widowed Wiesenberger (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A10, 511/1849)

Maria Anna Rantsch's will was closed with the seal of her first husband Johann Georg Wiesenberger.

The seal of Johann Georg Wiesenberger on the outside of Maria Rantsch's will (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A10, 511/1849)

Between 1815 and 1820, Joseph Patuzzi and his wife Theresia, née Hauptmann moved from Stadt 1083 to the Landstraße. At that time, Patuzzi began to pull off a rare feat of imposture: he used the sixty-year-old predicate of nobility of his uncle Joseph von Patuzzi and successfully passed himself off as nobleman. All documents from after 1820 show him as "von Patuzzi, according to the produced diploma" (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Landstraße 14/4v). 

Joseph von Patuzzi's coat of arms issued by the Court in 1763 (in private ownership)

Patuzzi's ruse was so convincing that his and his wife's estates were settled by the court of the Lower Austrian Landrechte which was responsible for members of the nobility. The two probate files of the Patuzzi couple were destroyed in 1927.

Joseph "von" Patuzzi and his family, registered on a conscription sheet of Landstraße 14 (today Marxergasse 8), dating from around 1835, which was later transferred to Landstraße 43 and 311 (A-Wsa, Konskriptionsamt, Landstraße 14/37r). As can be seen, the son Joseph was a municipal market judge, Ludwig a public servant in Amstetten, and Moritz an office scribe in St. Leonhardt (today's St. Leonhard am Forst).

Theresia Patuzzi, née Hauptmann died on 4 August 1840 at Landstraße 43 (today Marxergasse 16), her husband Joseph on 31 January 1847 at Landstraße 311 (today Rochusgasse 6).

To address marginal issues like the above in a detailed manner may seem hyperbolic. But the knowledge of the historical sources and the broad archival overview, which makes it possible to bring them into an informative context, holds the obligation to address such questions with the greatest possible meticulousness. All my research – may it lead ever so far into peripheral areas –  has always two main purposes: to be a model for future efforts and to serve as guidance for my successors.



© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2016. All rights reserved.

Updated: 17 August 2023

For their support during my research for this blogpost my thanks go to Anna Forster-Petrova, Otmar Seemann, David Buch, and Lucia Schuger.

Sep 8, 2016

Fux Documents

In 2015, the Styrian publishing house Leykam published a book about Austria's most prominent baroque composer, titled Johann Joseph Fux. Leben - musikalische Wirkung - Dokumente, edited by Rudolf Flotzinger, professor emeritus of musicology at the University of Graz. This book, which is a collection of articles by several musicologists on the composer's life and work, is structured in three main sections: 1) Life and work, 2) Compositions and writings and 3) Documentation und interpretation. The chapters dealing with the composer's biography and work ("Leben und Wirken") and the documents related to Fux's life were written by Flotzinger, the chapter dealing with Fux's compositions and writings by a number of other Austrian Fux specialists. The cover of this book is special already, because it bears a different title than the title page inside the book ("Dokumentation" versus "Dokumente").


According to the blurb on the back cover, this book "contains extensive appendices concerning original documents". In a twelve-page chapter in the book's appendix, titled "Dokumente zur Biographie" (biographical documents), Flotzinger presents transcriptions of Fux documents dating from between 1680 and 1741. Of course, this collection of documents only leaves an apparent impression of completeness. There are too many Fux documents to present all of them, most of which have been published in 1872 in Ludwig von Köchel's book Johann Josef Fux, Hofcompositor und Hofkapellmeister der Kaiser Leopold I., Josef I. und Karl VI. von 1698 bis 1740 (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1872). But this basic fact, and the fact that Köchel's edition is not complete, is never addressed in this book, and the editor's arbitrary choice of documents is essentially problematic.

When I began to do research on Fux documents, I planned to write a short piece about the costs of Fux's obsequies. But as I delved deeper into the body of known Fux documents, I realized that I had come across a plethora of unreliable pieces of documentation and flawed transcriptions. Owing to some authors' limited paleographic expertise, the available transcriptions of Fux documents contain hundreds of mistakes of which only the most serious can be addressed here. What follows is not a review of the above book. I do not claim to be a Fux expert and I do not intend to delve into Fux's musical oeuvre, or to draw up a list of all the transcription mishaps in the above book's documentary chapter. However, if eighteenth-century sources, on which I profess to have a modest expertise, are mistranscribed or misinterpreted, I dare to take issue. The objective of this blogpost is to present a number of unknown Fux documents, to address the worst mistakes in the edition of already published material, and to point out directions for future research.

Fux's Obsequies

On 13 February 1741, the retired Court Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux died of "hectica Fieber" (tremorous fever) in the house "Zum goldenen Bären" on the Fleischmarkt (today Fleischmarkt 14). The house was named after an inn which at that time was run by the house's owner Mathias Müllner. The Wienerisches Diarium of 18 February 1741 and several other sources give 14 February as Fux's date of death, but the fact that Fux's will was already opened on February 13, proves that he died one day earlier. Fux's obsequies and burial took place in the evening of Wednesday, 15 February 1741, at St. Stephen's Cathedral. Since the source concerning this ceremony is the entry in the so-called Bahrleihbuch (protocol of funeral fees) of St. Stephen's, Flotzinger presents a transcription of this entry. Not only is this transcription flawed and incomplete, it is also interpreted in a way that does not meet scholarly standards. I have spent years studying the Bahrleihbücher of St. Stephen's and eighteenth-century funeral ceremonies at this Cathedral. In 2014, my research led to the publication of the article Haydn Singing at Vivaldi's Exequies: An Ineradicable Myth where the four different classes of peal of bells are described, and the expenses for various types of funeral procedures at St. Stephen's Cathedral are explained in detail. As far as funeral rites at St. Stephen's in 1741 are concerned, I consider my work pioneering and indispensable for musicologists who want to delve into this special topic. If Flotzinger actually checked the 1741 Bahrleihbuch himself (which I have reasons to doubt), he certainly did not read any other entries similar to the one related to Fux's obsequies. He apparently took notice of only one entry which is the kind of narrow perspective that often leads to a source being misinterpreted. The situation is reminiscent of Mozart scholars who write about Mozart's Sperrs-Relation (probate file), while the only Sperrs-Relation they actually know (meaning whose flawed transcription they have read) is Mozart's. Time and again, it can be seen that the ability to read eighteenth-century Viennese Kurrentschrift is not enough to transcribe and understand historical documents. Equally important is the knowledge of the vocabulary, large archival holdings, and the general context of sources. Lacking sufficient insight into eighteenth-century Viennese burial procedures and their costs, Flotzinger, who was obviously impressed by the cost of 180 florins 52 kreutzer of Fux's obsequies, mistakenly considers this amount "extraordinarily high". In his book, he describes Fux's burial as having been conducted "with great efforts" with costs of "almost 190 fl,–" and claims that these efforts and the burial in the crypt of the Cathedral "were requested by the Court" (Flotzinger, 76). On 1 February 2016, Flotzinger appeared as guest on the Austrian classical music radio program Apropos Musik where he talked about his new book. He elaborated his personal point of view concerning Fux's burial and – unsupported by any research – presented the following assertions.
  • Fux's obsequies were carried out with a "wahnsinniger Aufwand" (insane effort).
  • "The Emperor[sic!]" paid for the ceremony.
  • "The Emperor" was present at Fux's obsequies.
  • The Court chapel took part in the obsequies.
  • The boy Joseph Haydn took part in the ceremony.
  • The whole chapter of the cathedral attended the ceremony. 
Apart from the fact that by February 1741, Fux's former employer, Emperor Charles VI had been dead for four months, none of the above claims is tenable. Fux's obsequies were carried out according to the rate of a regular half-price Großgleuth with an additional Requiem, an effort that in 1741 everybody could receive at the Cathedral whose relatives were willing to pay for it. Given that Fux was able to bequeath 10,000 florins to his nephew Matthäus, his relatives certainly did not need the financial support of Maria Theresia to pay for the ceremony. In the evening of 15 February 1741, Maria Theresia was not present at Fux's obsequies, because at exactly that time she was receiving Joseph Wenzel I, Prince of Liechtenstein in audience, who had just returned from Paris. This information was published in the Wiener Diarium, on the same page as Johann Joseph Fux's death notice. Flotzinger's claim is also refuted by the entry in the 1741 Zeremonialprotokoll (OESTA/HHStA OMeA ZA-Prot. 18, fol. 21v).

The Wiener Diarium reporting the return of Prince von Liechtenstein in the evening of 15 February 1741, and his following reception in audience by "Her Majesty the Queen" (Wiener Diarium 1741, 149)

The Court chapel did not take part in Fux's funeral ceremony, because its collaboration would only have been allowed in the Cathedral (a premise that was subject to municipal administration), if the Court musicians had performed without pay. The entry concerning the obsequies of Antonio Caldara in 1736, shows that such a gratis performance was explicitly registered in the Bahrleihbuch (see below). The six Kapellknaben (one of whom at that time was Haydn) never took part in funeral ceremonies that were performed according to the valid Stol-Ordnung (regulation of ceremony fees). They took part in activities of the Domkapelle, such as High Masses on Sundays and feast days.

Let me begin with the most important source concerning Fux's obsequies: the entry in the 1741 Bahrleihbuch of the parish of St. Stephen's. The transcription of this entry, which Flotzinger presents in the chapter "Dokumente zur Biographie" (biographical documents), shows that he did not fully understand this source. His transcription is flawed and incomplete.

Flotzinger's transcription of the entry concerning Fux's obsequies (Flotzinger, 2015, 369)

The author of this transcription obviously never saw even one other entry in an eighteenth-century Bahrleihbuch [henceforth BLB]. These entries always begin with the date of the burial (if it was the first on that day) and not with the word referring to the time of day. The word "Nachtbestattung" did not exist at that time. The term which was used was "Nachtbegräbnis" (which actually means "funeral after dark" and not "during the night" as claimed by Flotzinger).

An example of the word "Nachtbegröb[nis]" from 1683, before the abbreviation became shorter (A-Wd, BLB 1683, fol. 62v)

"Krufften" is a well-known misreading of the downward-bent upper horizontal stroke of the "f" as a second letter f. Decades of work with eighteenth-century handwritten documents made me realize that this is only one single letter and that the "double-f-appearance" is actually a phenomenon of an illusion, caused by a learned visual pattern. The second vertical stroke causes an almost irresistible visual "double f" impression. For more examples, related to this particular issue, see my article A Little Leitgeb Research. A special phenomenon connected with this misreading is the fact that it soaked into contemporary printed sources which are now taken as "proof" that this is a double f.

The word "Kruften" in Fux's Bahrleihbuch entry. This is a single f with the upper horizontal stroke drawn downwards to avoid lifting the pen and to have backswing space for the following t.

The word "Clafter" in a 1744 property register (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B106.17, fol. 174r). Every example of eighteenth-century handwriting I present in this blogpost stands for thousands of similar examples. Flotzinger always mistranscribes this combination of letters as "fft".

The word "Hofmaisterin" in the entry concerning the death of Princess Maria Theresia von Auersperg in 20 January 1741. Again the horizontal line of the f is curved downward to avoid having to make a horizontal line to the left (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt [henceforth TBP] 42, fol. 184v).

Two more words from the 1741 municipal death records with the kind of single f that is usually mistranscribed: "Apfel" and "Tauf" (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt 42)

The signature of Gottlieb Muffat on the will of his friend Heinrich Holzhauser, father of the singer Theresia Reutter. Technically this is a single f and the signature reads "Mufat". I located this signature (A-Wsa, AZJ, Test. 3945/18. Jhdt.) in 2012 for the cover of Alison Dunlop's book The Life and Works of Gottlieb Muffat.

The word "Hofcamerath" in an endowment deed of 1737 (A-Wsa, Stiftungen, A2/5254). The misreading of this single f lead to the origin of the family name "Hoffmann", a profession that does not exist.

The word "Hof=Decreten" in a document from 1715 that shows nicely why the horizontal stroke in the letter f was bent downward to facilitate the upward continuation (A-Whh, OMeA, Alte Akten, Karton 15)

The most prominent misreading of this single f occurred in the transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Kurtzer, iedoch höchstnöthiger Entwurf einer wohlbestallten Kirchen Music" from 1730 which was first published on 10 November 1837, in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (Siebenter Band, No. 38). The reading "Entwurff" is simply wrong. Further mistranscriptions of the single letter f in Bach's text appear in the words "nothdörfftig",  "Wißenschafften", "Beÿhülffe", "begreiffen", and "Guffer".

The title of Bach's "Entwurf" which, on 23 August 1730, he wrote to the Leipzig city council (Bach-Archiv Leipzig, Rara I, 5)

The misreading of a single f as a double f is the cause of countless transcription mishaps in Flotzinger's book. Many of these mistakes are copied from Herwig Knaus's three-volume book Die Musiker im Archivbestand des kaiserlichen Obersthofmeisteramtes (Vienna: VÖAW, 1967-69).

The entry in the municipal death records concerning the inspection of Fux's body by the coroner on 14 February 1741 (A-Wsa, TBP 42, fol. 207r)

The above entry of course reads "Hof-Capellmaister" and "Hectica-fieber" (the latter of which was correctly published by Köchel [Köchel, 288]). The note "Motteten mit Sart" in Fux's Bahrleihbuch entry completely mystified Flotzinger.

The note "Motteten mit Sart" in Fux's Bahrleihbuch entry (A-Wd, BLB 1741, fol. 36v)

Flotzinger's transcription of the above words as "Moteten[sic] mit Sait[eninstrumenten]" – albeit amusingly creative – is wrong. In 1741 Vienna the technical term "Saiteninstrumente" (string instruments) was not yet in use. The modern meaning of this collective term was coined but in the 19th century. The word in the Bahrleihbuch is not "Sait", but "Sart" which is the abbreviation of "Sartin". This item is explained in my aforementioned article about Vivaldi's burial. A Google search quickly leads to the solution of this mystery. The question at hand is of course: is an author of a biography of Fux, which is published in 2015, under the obligation to do a Google search? The issue of the "Sartin" will be dealt with below. The real blunder in Flotzinger's transcription of the Bahrleihbuch entry comes at the end, as it becomes apparent that the last two lines of the original entry are missing. Entries related to burials of the four main classes ("Großgleuth", "Fürstengleuth", "Bürgergleuth" and "Kleingleuth") never end with the total sum of the expenses. They always end with a note concerning the picture on the bier, the peals at various chapels in the city, and the possible cortege, consisting of "Steuerdiener" (tax payers), "Spitaller" (poor people) or children. Even the modest "Kleingleuth" ceremonies (unless they were obsequies of children) featured at least the picture of the Pelican (symbolizing the Passion of Christ) which is listed at the end of the entry. The entry concerning Fux's obsequies (merged into one picture) looks as follows:

The entry concerning Johann Joseph Fux's obsequies on 15 February 1741 at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, BLB 1741, fol. 36)

The correct transcription of this document reads as follows (the amounts are florins and kreutzer):
den. 15. Febr.[uarii] / Nachtb[egräbnis] / Fux. /
Der |:tit[u]l[o]:| herr Johann / Joseph Fux, Weÿl:[and] der / R.[ömischen] K.[ayserlichen] M.[ajestät] Hof Capelmai= / ster, ist beÿm gold[enen] bärn / am alten fleischmarkh / an hectica fieber b[e]schaut / worden, alt. 81. Jahr, zu / St. Ste:[phan] in die kruften. /
grossgleüth " 9"41" / herrn Canonici " 24"―" / herrn Curaten " 6"―" / bahrtuch " 8"30"/ Pfarrbild " 1"12" / grabstell " 50"―"/ Musici " 10"―"/ Motteten mit Sart[in] " 15"―"/ bahrleicher und Mesner " 3"―"/ Kirchendiener " –"30 / 8. bahrsteller mit mantl " 6"―" / 14. Kuttenbuben " 2" 6" / bahr "―"45"/ baumeister und todten= / graber " 4"―" / 3. altar " 2"15" / 12 stüll " 3"―" / fürstengleüth zum / Requiem vorgeleüth " 4"20" / herrn Curaten " 6"―" / 2. accolidi " 1"―" / Lat:[us] "157"19" / [fol. 36v] f. xr. / Latus herüber "157"19"/ Musici " 15"―" / bahrleicher und Mesner " 2"―" / Kirchendiener "―"30" / 2. Kuttenbuben "―"18"/ 3. altar " 2"15"/ 12. stüll " 3"―"/ grabtuch und leichter " ―"30" / S[umma] "180"52" / gleüth: Magd.[alena] Lorenzerin.[nen] / Pelican. 12. Steü[e]rd.[iener] (A-Wd, Bahrleihbuch 1741, fol. 36)

[translation:]

On 15 February [1741]. Evening burial. The honorable Sir Johann Joseph Fux, Court Kapellmeister of his late Majesty, the Roman Emperor, was inspected at the Golden Bear on the Old Fleischmarkt as having died of tremorous fever, 81 years of age, [buried] in the crypt of St. Stephen's.
Peal of the great bell " 9"41" / canons " 24"―" / curates " 6"―" / shroud " 8"30"/ parish picture " 1"12" / gravesite " 50"―"/ musicians " 10"―"/ motets with muted brass "15"―"/ bier renter and sexton " 3"―"/ sacristan " –"30 / 8 bier setters in coats" 6"―" / 14 cowlboys " 2" 6" / bier "―"45"/ builder and gravedigger " 4"―" / 3 altars " 2"15" / 12 chairs " 3"―" / Peal of the Fürsten bell as peal preceding the Requiem " 4"20" / the Curates " 6"―" / 2 acolytes " 1"―" / subtotal "157"19" / [fol. 36v] florins. kreutzer. / overleaf subtotal "157"19"/ musicians " 15"―" / bier renter and sexton " 2"―" / sacristan "―"30" / 2 cowlboys "―"18"/ 3 altars " 2"15"/ 12 chairs " 3"―"/ shroud and lampstands " ―"30" / total "180"52" / peals at St. Magdalene's and the convent of St. Laurenz / [picture] Pelican. 12 citizens [as cortege].
This entry describes an ordinary "grossgleüth" ceremony with an additional Requiem, preceded by a separate "fürstengleüth". The "peals at St. Magdalene's and the convent of St. Laurenz" (missing in Flotzinger's transcription) refer to St. Magdalene's Chapel south of the Cathedral and the chapel of the convent of St. Laurenz on the Fleischmarkt, close to Fux's last residence. This ceremony was expensive, but it was not "incredibly" expensive. As a matter of fact, there were several items that could have raised the price even higher which in Fux's case were not employed, such as a higher count of clergymen, altars (on several consecutive days), more cowlboys and acolytes (at one florin apiece). It was always possible to have a number of altars set up for several days in different apses (with chairs that had to be paid extra), a luxury that could cost more than 80 florins extra. Fux's status as non-noble citizen precluded him from receiving a peal of the "Josephinische Glocke" (the old Pummerin) and the fact that his body was not transferred to the Cathedral in a carriage with six horses – an effort which, on 29 June 1742 was applied at the funeral of the architect Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach (A-Wd, BLB 1742, fol. 174r) – exposes Flotzinger's claim of "ein wahnsinniger Aufwand" as gross misrepresentation. There were several obsequies in the Cathedral in 1741 whose efforts exceeded Fux's burial. The most expensive funeral of 1741 was that of Johann Caspar Joseph Kolb von Kollenburg, "Weÿl[and] der K.K. M[ajestät] Unter Stabelmaister" (deputy staff holder of His late I. & R. Majesty), which cost 195 florins and 16 kreutzer. It included a Großgleuth, a tomb in the crypt, a Requiem with a Fürstengleuth, 30 cowlboys, and five altars. What makes his funeral significant in regard of the alleged "incredible effort" at Fux's is the fact that the musicians that were employed for Kolb's Requiem cost nine florins more than those that performed in the Requiem of the deceased Court Kapellmeister.

The entry concerning the obsequies of Johann Caspar Joseph Kolb von Kollenburg on 13 January 1741 (A-Wd, BLB 1741, fol. 10v and 11r). The expense of 24 florins for the Requiem was extraordinary. This was basically the highest possible cost for exequies in 1741, except for a possible additional peal of the Pummerin and additional altars. 

The only way to get a factual perspective on the relative costs of Fux's funeral and the effort that it implied, is to compare it to similar ceremonies that took place at that time at the Cathedral. One of the most suitable sources for such a comparison is the entry concerning the obsequies of Fux's wife Clara Juliana on 9 June 1731. Unfortunately this document is not included in Flotzinger's collection of Fux documents.

Clara Juliana Fux, née Schnitzenbaum died on 8 June 1731, of internal gangrene, at an approximate age of 60 (as will be shown below, she was not born in 1671). Her death was reported on the following day (Wiener Diarium, 9 June 1731). This note was already published in 1872 (Köchel, 1872, 295).

The announcement of Clara Juliana Fux's death in the Wiener Diarium of 9 June 1731

Neither Köchel nor Flotzinger published the entry in the municipal death records (the Totenbeschauprotokoll) concerning the death of Fux's wife.

The previously unpublished entry in the Totenbeschauprotokoll concerning the death of Clara Juliana Fux (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt 34, fol. 244r)
Den. 8. Junÿ. 731. / Dem Wohl Edl gestrengen Herrn Joh. Joseph Fux, Kaÿ[serlichen] / Hof-Capell-Maistern, sein Frau Clara Juliana, gebohrne / Schnizenbaumin, ist beÿm gold[en] Bärn am alten Fleisch= / marckt an innerlichen-Brand und Seiten-stech[en] b[e]sch[au]t, / alt. 60. Jahr.

[translation:]

June 8th, 1731. The honorable and stern Imperial Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux's wife Clara Juliana, née Schnitzenbaum was inspected at the Golden Bear as having died of internal gangrene and side stitch, 60 years of age.
Also missing in Flotzinger's book is the entry in the regular death records of St. Stephen's concerning Juliana Fux's burial.

The entry concerning the burial of Juliana Fux in the regular Sterbebuch of St. Stephen's (A-Wd, Tom. 20c, p. 756). Note the single f in "Hof Capelmaister".
d.[en] 9. dito. [Junii] des Wohl Edl gestr:[engen] herr Joseph / Fux, Kaÿ[serlichen] Hof Capelmaisters / seine Frau Julia[n]a, zu St: Ste[phan] / grossgleüth " 6"―" / Requiem " 6"―"
The costs of Juliana Fux's obsequies on 9 June 1731 immediately relativize those of her husband's ten years later. Her funeral ceremony cost 130 florins 10 kreutzer, but, apart from a much cheaper grave, the ceremony included the exact same effort as her husband's. Why did a simple wife of a Kapellmeister receive a grossgleüth with a Requiem? Because her husband was willing to pay for it. The difference of over 50 florins between the costs in 1731 and the costs of Fux's burial in 1741 was mainly caused by the fact that Juliana Fux did not get a grave in the crypt for 50 florins, but only an ordinary one in the cemetery around the Cathedral which only cost a tenth of that amount. Her burial also saw fewer biersetters and cowlboys. No builder for a crypt had to be paid. On the other hand, the music for her Requiem cost even three florins more than the one of the Court Kapellmeister in 1741 (which was probably caused by special musical efforts requested by Fux). The relation of these amounts – which are starkly at odds with Flotzinger's claim of a unique and "incredible" effort at Fux's obsequies – prove that Fux and his wife were not buried according to their social, but according to their financial status. Compared to most of his colleague musicians, who were holding higher positions (such as Caldara or Reutter), Fux was a very wealthy man. His wealth was based on his annual income of 3100 fl as of 1715, a one-time gift of 8000 fl from the Court in 1723, and the fact that beginning in August of 1733 – owing to the extraordinary merits of his uncle – Fux's nephew Matthäus was granted an annual "Scholarengehalt" (court scholarship) of 360 florins (A-Whh, OMeA, Prot. 14, fol. 203v). This important detail is not mentioned in Flotzinger's book.

The entry concerning the obsequies of Clara Juliana Fux on 9 June 1731 at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, BLB 1731, fol. 155)
den. 9. Junij. [1731] / Nachtb[egräbnis] / Fuxin. /
Des Wohl Edl gebohrnen / herrn Johann Joseph Fux, / Kaÿl: Hof Capelmaisters, / sein frau Clara Julia[n]a, / gebohrne Schnizenbaumin, / ist beÿm golden Bärn am / alten fleischmarckh / an Innerl:[ichem] Brand und sei= / tenstechen b[e]schaut / wor= / den. alt. 60. Jahr, zu / St. / Stephan. /
grossgleüth " 9"41" / herrn Canonici " 24"―" / herrn Curaten " 6"―" / Pahrtuch " 8"30"/ Pfarrbild " 1"12" /  Lat:[us] "49"23" /  [fol. 155v] F. xr. / Latus herüber "49"23"/ grabstell am fürstenbichl" 5"―"/ Musici " 10"―"/ Motteten mit Sart:[in] " 15"―"/ Pahrleicher und Mesner " 3"―"/  Kirchendiener " ―"30 / 6. Pahrsteller mit mäntl " 4"30" / 12. Kuttenbuben " 1"48" / Pahr "―"45"/ todtengraber "―"36" / 3. altar " 3"―" / 8. stüell " 2"―" / den 2t[en]. tag d[a]s fürsten= / gleüth zum / Requiem vor / geleith worden " 4"20" / herrn Curaten " 6"―" / Musici " 18"―" / Pahrleicher und Mesner / " 2"―" / Kirchendiener "―"30" / 2. Kuttenbuben "―"18"/ 3. altar " 3"―" / 8. stüell " 2"―" / S[umma] "130"10" / gleith. Magd.[alena] Lorenzerin.[nen] / Pelican. Joh.[ann] Nep:[omuk] / 12. Steü[e]rdiener. (A-Wd, Bahrleihbuch 1731, fol. 155)

[translation:]

On 9 June [1731]. Evening burial. The well and noble-born Sir Johann Joseph Fux, Court Kapellmeister's wife Clara Juliana, née Schnizenbaum was inspected at the Golden Bear on the Old Fleischmarkt as having died of internal gangrene and side stitch, 60 years of age, [buried] at St. Stephen's.
Peal of the great bell " 9"41" / canons " 24"―" / curates " 6"―" / shroud " 8"30"/ parish picture " 1"12" / subtotal "49"23" / [fol. 155v] florins. kreutzer. / overleaf subtotal "49"23"/ gravesite at the Fürstenbühel ("Counts' Hill") " 5"―"/ musicians " 10"―"/ motets with muted brass " 15"―"/ bier renter and sexton " 3"―"/  sacristan " –"30 / 6 biersetters with coats" 4"30" / 12 cowlboys " 1" 48" / bier "―"45"/ gravedigger "―"36" / 3 altars " 3"―" / 8 chairs " 2"―" / on the 2nd day the peal of the Fürsten bell was pealed before the Requiem " 4"20" / the Curates " 6"―" / musicians " 18"―" / bier renter and sexton " 2"―" / sacristan "―"30" / 2 cowlboys "―"18"/ 3 altars " 3"―" / 8 chairs " 2"―" / total "130"10" / peals at St. Magdalene's and the convent of St. Laurenz / [pictures] Pelican and St. John of Nepomuk. 12 citizens [as cortege].
Another document that puts Fux's funeral expenses into a much more realistic perspective (and which is also missing in Flotzinger's book) is the entry concerning the obsequies on 20 May 1749, of the composer's sister-in-law Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum. Again we are faced with the intention to show off by consecrating an unmarried woman of basically no exceptional social status, but surprisingly large financial means, with a grossgleüth and providing her with a tomb in the crypt of the Cathedral. Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's ceremony cost 141 florins 16 kreutzer and again included expenses of 30 florins for the clergy, 50 florins for the tomb, and 25 florins for the music (again with "Moteten mit Sardin"). The difference of about 40 florins to the cost of Fux's burial was caused by Fräule von Schnitzenbaum not receiving an extra Requiem.

The entry concerning the obsequies on 20 May 1749, of Fux's sister-in-law Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum (A-Wd, BLB 1749, fol. 80). Again the bells of the churches in the vicinity of the last residence were pealed: at St. Salvator's and Maria Stiegen.

Countless entries in the Bahrleihbuch prove that the presumption of Fux having been buried with "incredible effort" has no basis. The sources related to Fux's family alone provide enough documentation to reveal the facts. The burial of Fux's brother-in-law Paul Anton Schnitzenbaum took place on 17 March 1740, in the Cathedral. Although he had only been a k.k. Cammer-Concipist, his relatives again had his burial ceremony performed in style: he received a grossgleüth, 30 florins were paid for the presence of clergymen, 50 florins for a tomb in the crypt, and 25 florins for the music which of course included "Motteten mit Sardindl".

The entry concerning Paul Anton Schnitzenbaum's obsequies on 17 March 1740 (A-Wd, BLB 1740, fol. 70v-71r). Note again the peal of bells at St. Magdalene's and the chapel of St. Laurenz on the Fleischmarkt.

Here are two more entries in the Bahrleihbuch which are of relevance to the assessment of the supposed "extraordinary effort" at Fux's obsequies and Flotzinger's claim that the court requested and paid Fux's funeral expenses. The court organist Georg Reutter the Elder (father of the more prominent composer Johann Georg Reutter) died on 28 April 1738. He received a Fürstengleüth for 4 fl 20 x including a Requiem. The total price of his burial amounted to 65 fl 23 x, a relatively modest effort which was caused by the fact that Reutter had died without leaving any savings. Following a resolution by the City Council, the price of Reutter's grave in the crypt of the Cathedral was reduced by 80% to ten florins. The significant detail is that this discount was recorded in the Bahrleihbuch (and it is recorded in the 1738 Oberkammeramtsrechnung): "Grabstell von Statt Rath placitirt worden" ("the grave was approved by the City Council").

The entry concerning the obsequies of the Court organist Johann Georg Reutter on 30 August 1738 (A-Wd, BLB 1738, fol. 224f.)

The burial of Antonio Caldara, who for twenty-two years had served as Imperial deputy Kapellmeister, is an interesting case as well. Caldara's obsequies took place on 29 December 1736, in the Cathedral. Although Caldara had drawn an annual salary of 3,900 florins and had received a one-time payment of 12,000 florins (4,000 more than Fux), at the time of his death, all the money had been spent and Caldara's widow, his daughter, and his mother-in-law were left in debt. This, and Caldara's artistic merits, were the obvious reasons why the musicians of the Cathedral chapel performed free of charge ("Musici gratis") at his obsequies. Of course, this gratis collaboration was recorded in the Bahrleihbuch. This would also have been the case, if any members of the Court orchestra had taken part in Fux's obsequies, because these musicians were not permitted to receive payment for activities at the Cathedral within the jurisdiction and financial administration of the Vienna Magistrate. That Caldara received an expensive burial in the crypt was based on the fact that Fux was able to persuade the Emperor (against an earlier agreement) to grant Caldara's widow an annual Gnadenpension (pension of grace) of 400 fl. Although Caldara had drawn a much higher salary than Fux, his burial cost about 100 florins less, which is yet another proof that burial efforts were not determined by "requests and payments from the court", but by the financial means of the bereaved.

The entry concerning the obsequies of Antonio Caldara on 29 December 1736 (A-Wd, BLB 1736, fol. 288f.)

A Digression: The Sartin

The Sartin (or Sardin) was the particular Viennese term for what in northern Germany was called Sordun: a wooden mute for brass instruments which in Vienna was used pars pro toto to refer to the use of muted trumpets or trombones in burial ceremonies. The use of muted brass had to be paid extra. While a regular performance of the song "Der grimmig Todt" cost six florins, the note "mit Sardin" refers to the additional use of muted brass instruments which raised the price to ten florins (suggesting the use of four instruments). In his treatise Versuch einer Anleitung zur heroisch-musikalischen Trompeter- und Pauker-Kunst (Halle, 1795) Johann Ernst Altenburg writes the following [my translation]:
The Surdun (or Sordin) has its name from Surdus, which means weak or muted. It is basically a turned tool made of hard and firm wood which does not produce a sound itself; if it is put into the trumpet, it not only provides the instrument with a totally different, almost oboe-like sound, it also, if it is turned well, raises the pitch by a whole tone. [...] The essential use of the Surdun consists of the following: 1) If an army is to decamp in silence so that the enemy does not become aware of it. 2) At funerals and burials. [...] (Altenburg, 86f.)
The Toccata at the beginning of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo is preceded by the following (rarely observed) instruction: "Toccata che si suona avanti il levar de la tela tre volte con tutti li strumenti, & si fa un Tuono più alto volendo sonar le trombe con le sordine."

In early 2012, the late musicologist Alison Jayne Dunlop entered into a little fun competition with me as to who would be the first to find a Viennese eighteenth-century source that documents the use of the word Sartin as a local term for Surdun. I was eventually able to locate such a handwritten document: on the second page of his will, written on 18 September 1726, the Court trumpeter Tobias Andreas Pernebmer (b. 17 August 1666 in Mauthausen [Mauthausen, 407/01, p. 51], d. 17 June 1727 in Vienna) addressed the distribution of his instruments and referred to the accessories of his two small brass trumpets.

A clip from the autograph will of Tobias Andreas Pernebmer (A-Wsa, AZJ 4940/18. Jhdt.)
Die Silberne Trompetten gehört der Frau Wittib Catharinæ, welche in dem Kaÿßerl: Hof futter=Ambt kan außgelöst werden, doch ohne Mundstükh, wonit, so kan sie es verkaufen nach ihrem Belieben. Von denen zweÿ kleinen Mesßingen Trompetten, soll ein ieder Sohn eine haben, sambt Mundstükh und Sartin.

[translation:]

The silver trumpet belongs to the widow Catharina and can be redeemed at the Imperial Court fodder-office, but without mouthpiece, if not, she can sell it at her convenience. Each son should get one of the small brass trumpets, including mouthpiece and mute.
A printed source containing the word Sardin has recently become accessible on the Internet: Augustin Auracher's eulogy for the Bavarian field marshal Count Ignaz von Törring, entitled Der Gute Freund des Kaisers; Das ist: Ehren- und Trauer-Rede Weyland Ihro Excellenz des Hochgebohrnen Herrn, Herrn Ignatz Felix Joseph, Des Heil. Röm Reichs Grafen v. Törring und Tengling, auf Jettenbach (Salzburg 1763). Auracher's description of Count von Törring's funeral procession contains the following passages:

 [translation:]
17. After these there marched a trumpeter on horseback with Sardin, dressed in black, a cavalry captain, a lieutenant, a cornet, holding an ancient, richly embroidered with gold and silver, draped with a black crape, together with a company of riders, constituted by the Brotherhood of the Poor Souls from Aschau, consisting of four men that followed. [...]
19. A timpanist with timpani covered with black cloth, with flags and four trumpeters on foot blowing with Sardin.
The meaning of the word Sart[in] reveals itself quite easily, as soon as one is willing to read complete volumes of the Cathedral's Bahrleihbücher.

Fux's Marriage Entry

It is fascinating to see that some of Flotzinger's transcription errors date all the way back to Ludwig von Köchel's biography of Fux. Not only did Köchel lack the necessary expertise on eighteenth-century handwritten sources, he probably delegated some research and transcription work to an assistant who was not really up to the task. A case in point is Köchel's edition of the entry in the records of St. Stephen's concerning Fux's wedding. Köchel avoided some of Flotzinger's errors, but he also committed transcription mistakes that Flotzinger was to copy obediently 143 years later. The reasons for these errors were lack of experience and limited knowledge of a greater body of sources. On 5 June 1696, Fux married Clara Juliana Schnitzenbaum, daughter of the deceased secretary with the Lower Austrian government Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum and his second wife Maria Ursula, née Crän. Fux's marriage entry in the records of the Cathedral looks as follows.

The entry concerning Johann Joseph Fux's wedding on 5 June 1696 at St. Stephen's Cathedral (A-Wd, Tom. 33, p. 85). 

Köchel transcribed this document as follows.


Flotzinger manages to improve on Köchel's flawed edition, but he repeats some of Köchel's mistakes, or replaces them with new ones.

Flotzinger's transcription of Fux's marriage entry (Flotzinger 2015, 359)

Since the three vertical dashes at the beginning of the entry refer to the three publications of the banns, they must be transcribed. Flotzinger's transcription "copulaty à" is wrong. The apparent letter y in "copulaty" is a common form of the Latin final syllable "-us". The transcription "à" is meaningless. The note on the left reads "copulatus e[st]" (which is proved by thousands of similar entries). The correct spelling of the month is "Junij". The missing genitive case "Mariæ Ursulæ" is essential and the fact that the mistranscription of the final note "Tax. a Scotensibus" already appears in Köchel's edition and is disimproved by Flotzinger into "Test[es] tax[ati] à Scotensib[u]s" ("the witnesses were taxed by the Schotten parish"), does not make it less nonsensical.

The note at the end of Fux's marriage entry that neither Köchel nor Flotzinger could unriddle (A-Wd, Tom. 33, p. 85)

The dash above the "a" is not a kind of grave accent (in Latin?), but a common abbreviation sign. The g-like letter at the end of "Scotensibus" is not an abbreviation, but literally means "us". Witnesses of a wedding were not taxed by a parish. The note at the end of the entry actually reads: "Test[imonium] den[untiationis] a Scotensibus" (i.e. "certificate of proclamation from the Schotten [parish]").

There is yet another, earlier entry concerning the publication of the banns of Fux's wedding in the records of Fux's home parish (Pfarre Schotten, Tom. 16, fol. 37r) which has also never been published correctly. In his smaller monograph about Fux (which was published in 2015 by the Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt Graz) Flotzinger gives a wrong folio number of this document and again misdates it as having been written "on 4 June 1696", not realizing that this date refers to the wedding date of the preceding entry and thus cannot pertain to that of Fux whose banns had to be published on three consecutive Sundays before 5 June 1696. This basic circumstance dates Fux's entry at the Schotten parish to around 20 May 1696 which is also corroborated by the fact that the couple, which was entered into the records right after Fux, got married earlier than the composer, namely on 31 May 1696. Flotzinger also mistakenly claims that the bride's witness Paul Schmuderer "owned a house in the Singerstraße". In April 1702, Schmuderer bought two houses from his brother-in-law: the "Eisgrübel" near St. Peter's and a "Soldatenhäusl" in the Krugerstraße. He did not own a house in the Singerstraße.

Fux's Will

Fux's will, which the composer wrote and signed on 5 January 1732, was first published in 1872 by Ludwig von Köchel.

The last two pages of Fux's will (A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 3v and 4r)

As of today, there are three different editions of the text of this document: 1) Köchel's transcription (Köchel, 287), 2) a transcription by Michael Hochedlinger in the book "Mein letzter Wille". Kulturhistorisch bedeutende Testamente und Verlassenschaftsabhandlungen in Wiener Archiven (16.-18. Jahrhundert) (70f.), and 3) the transcription in Flotzinger's recent book (Flotzinger 2015, 366f.). None of these transcriptions is complete and fully correct. Köchel's effort cannot be judged by modern scholarly standards, because he was under no obligation to completely transcribe every document, let alone provide exact shelfmarks of his sources. Hochedlinger's transcription (of which Flotzinger is unaware) is astonishingly flawed which is even more surprising given the fact that Hochedlinger has held university courses in paleography and in 2009, published a text book titled Aktenkunde. Urkunden- und Aktenlehre der Neuzeit (Vienna: Böhlau). Because Hochedlinger observes a totally arbitrary policy of transcription – disregarding the capitalization of letters and the compounding of separate words – his edition of Fux's will contains more than 60 mistakes. In addition to that, there are silently resolved abbreviations and classic transcription errors that are caused by ignorance of historical orthography. Again, only a few examples can be addressed here (and these also relate to Flotzinger's transcription problems). The first paragraph of Fux's will looks as follows (fol. 2r).

The beginning of Fux's will (A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 2r)

Köchel, Hochedlinger, and Flotzinger (being unable to disengage their minds from modern spelling rules) mistranscribe the headline as "Letzter Wille" (it reads "Lezter"). That the important note ("præs 13 Febr 1741"), written right after the headline by the clerk of the Obersthofmarschallamt, is missing in Köchel, can be tolerated. But it is also missing in Hochedlinger (70) and silently resolved in Flotzinger (366). Hochedlinger (to name only a few of his many mistakes) turns all capital Ms into small ones, colons into commas, transcribes "Matthæus" as "Matthaeum", compounds the words "zehen tausend", and silently resolves all abbreviations of words and final syllables. On folio 3v of the document, all three editors of Fux's will were unable to pass what I call "the litmus test of eighteenth-century paleography": the correct transcription of the so called "Fahnen-h" which looks like a regular Kurrent "h", but doubles the following consonant. The following phrase reads "In fall aber".

The "Fahnen-h" in the word "fall" in Fux's will (A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 3v)

It is obvious that Köchel was unaware of this orthographic intricacy which in the second half of the 19th century had already been forgotten. The disappearance of this practice from the public memory led to countless mistranscriptions of German family names, such as "Reihsner", "Bihler" and "Muhm". This particular use of a doubling-h is repeatedly mistranscribed by Hochedlinger and Pangerl in their edition of wills of prominent historical figures in the aforesaid book. It appears in the wills of Paul Strudel ("genohmen"), Johann Michael Rottmayr ("Fahl", "Todtsfahl"), Georg Reutter the Elder ("einfahlen", "gleichfahls"), and Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach ("genohmen"). Since I have already dealt with the issue of the Fahnen-h in an earlier blogpost, I shall only present three examples here: two double-ls from the 1740s and one of the very rare cases where the "Fahnen-h"actually doubles a following r.

The word "Todenfall", written on 14 July 1744, with a doubling "Fahnen-h" before the l (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B106.17, fol. 172r)

The words "vier Zoll" (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B106.17, fol.178v)

The only word I have found so far, where the "Fahnen-h" doubles an r, is the word "Pfarr" (parish). This way of spelling "Pfarr" and "Pfarrer" appears in the also probate file of Johann Anton Chumar, the parish priest of St. Marein, which is published in appendix II (other sources) of Flotzinger's book. But Flotzinger did not understand this spelling.

The word "Pfarr", written with a capital "Fahnen-h", on the title page of a marriage register of the Viennese parish of St. Leopold (St. Leopold, Trauungsbuch Tom. 6, 1716-21)

Probably influenced by Herwig Knaus, Flotzinger continuously misunderstands the eighteenth-century practice of shortening the German final syllable "-en". Because he thinks that this common Kürzel is an n without an e, he transcribes the following words (and many others in Fux's will) with an "n" at the end, for example: "zu theilln" and "nach Christlichn".

(A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 2v)

And yet, this Kürzel is actually an e without an n, and in the above cases it should be transcribed "theille[n]" and "Christliche[n]". In all three published editions of Fux's will a mysterious comma appears right after the composer's signature. This comma does not exist in the autograph. It is the result of a collective illusion that originated with Köchel: all three authors misread the upward hook of the letter "x" in Fux's name as a comma.

(A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 4r)

Flotzinger, who, influenced by Köchel, also turns the "ma" at the end of Fux' signature into an "mp", includes the following note after Fux's signature as "angehängter Amtsvermerk". After marring the text with the usual rate of mistakes (wrong are: "Haint", "Matthei", "H. Obrl:", "publiciert", "hievon", "abschrifften", and "ertheilln"), he forgets to include the signature of the Obersthofmarschall, Prince Heinrich Joseph von Auersperg. Like Hochedlinger, he also fails to include Fux's inscription on the outside of the will: "Lezter Wille / mein / Johann Joseph [Fux] / Kaÿl. HofCapelM[aister ma]" (this signature was garbled by paper loss when the will was opened).

Fux's will consists of four leaves and it is the type of document where the envelope was an integral part of the will and bears handwriting on both sides. Unusual about Fux last disposition is that it bears no signature of a witness. A close-up examination of the original shows that the early paper losses, caused by the opening, were replaced sometime in the 20th century and (with the exception of the seal) the will was fully laminated with 1 g/m² gossamer tissue. This high-quality restoration measure protects the paper and (more importantly) forestalls expectable ink corrosion. Spaced holes in the fold of the paper also show that at some time the document was part of a bound bundle of papers.

Gossamer tissue, covering the partly torn fold of the inner leaf of Fux's will (A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 2v and 3r)

The area around the seal on Fux's will which shows the section that is not covered by tissue. The beginning of the laminated area is clearly visible above the seal and in the flattening of the ink in the letter K. The area left of the seal is an older paper replacement. Note the tail of a horse in Fux's seal which will appear again below (A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 4r).

A backlight shot of the outside inscription on Fux's will which shows the old replacement of the paper loss and the gossamer tissue circumventing the seal (A-Wsa, Hauptarchiv, Persönlichkeiten A1. F14, fol. 4v).

Fux Documents in the City's Alte Registratur

Three documents in the so-called "Zusammengelegte Akten" (merged files, A-Wsa, Alte Registratur, Serie 1.2.1.A1) of the municipal administration from between 1700 and 1759 refer to Fux's employment at St. Stephen's. Two of these files are decrees, issued in 1706 and 1707 by the City Council to the Kirchenmeister (the financial administrator of the Cathedral), regarding the distribution and the boarding of the choirboys. One is a complaint from 1714 by the Council that some of the church musicians (and their substitutes) fail to fulfill their duties in the services at the miraculous image of Our Lady of Pötsch. Excerpts of these three documents were already published (without complete shelfmarks) by Köchel. Flotzinger's new edition of these sources claims to be complete, but it is not, and furthermore it is fraught with errors of which some were demonstrably copied from Köchel. Out of many mistakes only the most serious shall be addressed. The following passage in the file A-Wsa, AReg. A1, 153/1706, referring to the replacement of inept choirboys of the Cathedral with six more able ones from the church of the Bürgerspital, was transcribed by Köchel as follows: "Von denen Sachsen[sic], welche in dem Burgerspital instruirt werden, heraussgenomben[sic] [...]".

A clip from a decree of 1 July 1706 from the City Council to the Kirchenmeister concerning the replacement of choirboys (A-Wsa, Alte Registratur, 1.2.1.A1, 153/1706)

Since it changes the meaning of the sentence, the mistranscription "Sachsen" (Saxons) – instead of the correct and quite obvious "Sechsen" (the six) – is not a minor flaw. How does Flotzinger treat this text and how does he improve on Köchel's version? On p. 58 and 361 of his book he writes: "Von denen Sachsen, welche in dem burgerSpittal instruirt werden, Heraußgenomben [...]". In his transcription of the file A-Wsa, AReg. A1, 92/1707 Flotzinger twice misreads the name of the Cathedral's Kirchenmeister Leopold Friedrich Pfeifer as "Pfeister" and at the end of the decree from 1706 the transcription ends with the note "[außen ...]" (outside), but apart from the note "Expedirt den 3ten Jan 707", the text on the file's cover was not considered worthy of publication. The same applies to the file from 1707 whose rubrum also remained unpublished.

The cover of the decree from 1707 which so far has escaped publication. Note the Kirchenmeister's correct name being "Leopold Friderich Pfeifer" (A-Wsa, AReg. A1, 92/1707).

Fux Documents in the Kirchenmeisteramtsrechungen

The so-called Kirchenmeister was the municipal accountant in charge of the Cathedral's budget. Since between 1712 and 1715 Fux served as Essentialkapellmeister at St. Stephen's, the costs of Fux's employment are recorded in the account books of the Kirchenmeisteramt. The series of these records is not complete and furthermore these records represent a special situation, because they have never been united and today are held by three different Viennese archives, namely: 1) the Vienna City Archive, 2) the Domarchiv (the archive of the Cathedral) and 3) the Diözesanarchiv (the archive of the Diocese of Vienna). The years 1712 and 1714 only survive in a preliminary draft versions at the Domarchiv and the year 1715 seems to be lost. The entries related to Fux always appear in two different sections of the books: first, under "Außgab auf gestüffte Heilige Messen, Litaney, Angst und Jahrtäg" (expenses for endowed Holy Masses, litanies, days of anxiety and anniversaries), and second, under "Außgab auf die Cantorey beÿ S. Stephan" (expenses for the music at St. Stephen's). For six litanies at the Madonna's miraculous image, on six Marian feast days, Fux was paid 36 florins. For each of the four endowed Requiems in 1712, which were celebrated on Ember days, he received 6 florins 30 kreutzer.

The first appearance of Fux's name in the 1712 Kirchenmeisteramtsrechnung (A-Wd, Kirchenmeisteramtsrechnung 1712, fol. 47r). The sloppy handwriting marks the draft character of this copy.
                       Außgab
               Auf gestüffte H.[eilige] Mesßen, Litaneÿ,
               Angst, und Jahrtäg ./.
              
               Erstl:[ich] bezalte Ich dem Hn Capell=
N° 99.    Maister Fux lauth N° 99. umb
               Will[en] d Anno 1712. An den[en] 6.
               Frauen täg gehaltene[n] litaneÿe[n],
               beÿm alte[n] Marianisch[en] G[na]d[en] bildt.
               In d[er] Kürch[en] die Gebühr mit       // 36. f. ―
[…]
               Mehr dem Capellmait: Fux
N° 101.  Craft Qitt[ung] N° 101. weg[en] der
               Fraue[n] Salome Siglpaurin, Elisabeth
               Müllnerin, Veronica Kertenkalchin,
               und Caspar Franckh seel: qua=
               temberliche 4. Requ[i]em pro Anno
               1712.                                                // 26. f. ―
In the section "Außgab auf die Cantorey" the expenses for the musicians are listed. Fux's annual salary at the Cathedral was 300 florins with an additional "Kleydgeldt" (clothing allowance) of 24 florins. For the six choir boys, whom he had to teach and sustain, Fux in 1712 received 1200 florins per year. As can be seen in my article about Vivaldi's obsequies, these amounts were to remain unchanged for the next 30 years. In 1713, Fux seems to have had his duties at the Madonna's image reduced. Three of the choristers were transferred into the care of Georg Reutter who for these three boys received an additional "Zimmerbeyhilf" (housing allowance) of 60 florins. The distribution of the six boys between Fux and Reutter and the payments of 600 fl to each of them is documented on the following page of the 1713 account book.

Fux's and Reuter's salaries and compensation fees in the 1713 Kirchenmeisteramtsrechnung (A-Wsa, Handschriften A41/21, fol. 63r). This is a representative final copy.
                               Außgab
               Auf die Cantoreÿ beÿ St. Stephan.
              
               Erstl: erichte ich dem H. Johann Joseph
               Fux Capell=Maister sein ordinari Be=
               soldung und Kleider gelt pro Anno 1713
 N° 230.  undter N° 230. mit                           // 324. f. ―
               Mehr weg[en] der 3. Capell=Knaben Ihr Ver=
               pflegungs gelt auf solch gantzes Jahr ut
 N° 231.  N° 231.                                          // 600. f. ―
 N° 232.  Item nach Weißung N° 232. dem H. Georg
               Reiter Capell Maister zum Gnaden Bildt
               daß Verpflegungs=gelt von seinen dreÿ
               Capell=Knaben vor daß angezeigte gantze
               Jahr                                              // 600. f. ―
               Verrers dem H. Reiter sein Zimmer
               beÿhilf auf bemelte dreÿ Knaben,
 N° 233.  und solches gantzes jahr nach zeugnuß
               seiner Quittung N° 233.                 // 60. f. ―
In 1713, Fux is also referred to as having examined the work of the Cathedral's music copyist Lambert Graf. A transcription of all entries related to Fux in the Kircheneisteramtsrechnungen from 1712-14 can be downloaded here. The account books of St. Stephen's Cathedral belong to the many historical records that have been sadly ignored by Austrian musicologists.

Fux Documents in the Account Books of the Municipal Oberkammeramt

Vienna's municipal Oberkammeramt (superior chamber office) was responsible for the entire City's finances. Although its account books, the so-called Oberkammeramtsrechnungen (the earliest of which fragmentarily survive from the 14th century) are a priceless source regarding the City's finances and payroll expenses, they have hitherto been steadfastly ignored by Fux scholarship. Of course this was caused by the fact that Köchel did not become aware of these sources. But Köchel's work should really not be the defining benchmark of modern Fux research. In 1705, Fux was appointed deputy Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's where he took over Johann Michael Zächer's musical duties at the miraculous image of Our Lady of Pötsch (which at that time was still located on the Cathedral's main altar). In 1712, Fux succeeded Zächer (the spelling "Zacher" is wrong) as Essentialkapellmeister at the Cathedral, an office he kept until the end of 1714. Between 1712 and 1715 (the time Fux held the Kapellmeister post at the Cathedral), the following types of entries related to the composer can be found in the Oberkammeramtsrechnungen:
  • An extraordinary payment in April 1712 for Fux's musical scores (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn B1/228, fol. 105v)
  • Five biannual payments of 215 florins (in May and November) for Fux's supervision of the "Litaneÿ am Hof" (the litany on Saturdays at the Marian column Am Hof) (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn B1/229, fol. 66v and 67r. B1/230, fol. 70v. B1/230, fol. 130r. B1/231. fol. 61v. B1/231. fol. 115v)
  • Two payments of ten florins each for ordinary musical services that are not specified in more detail (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn B1/230, fol. 250r. B1/231. fol. 228r)
  • Payments for Fux's musical services "beÿ Unsern Herrn", a term that refers to the Passion altar in the Cathedral's Apostle Choir behind the tomb of Emperor Frederick III. These services included music for a Mass (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn B1/230. fol. 135v), the celebration of an unspecified anniversary, possibly the Our Lady of Pötsch festivity on 6 November 1712 (B1/229, fol. 142r), Rorate coeli services (B1/229, fol. 143r. B1/231. fol. 229r), and Masses and Requiems which were paid for by the City and were held at this altar for deceased members of the City Council (B1/230, fol. 244r. B1/230, fol. 247v. B1/232, fol. 229v and 230r.)
Since it is not possible to publish all fifteen Fux entries in the five account books in question (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn B1/228-232) in a blog post, I shall only provide the shelfmarks and limit the presentation of these sources to a few examples. Between 1705 and 1712, Fux's name does not appear in these records and his service at the Madonna's miraculous image is never mentioned. The earliest reference to Fux in the Oberkammeramtsrechnungen can be found in the first account book of 1712 which was the very last ledger that the Ober-Kämmerer Johann Sebastian Höpffner von Brendt (b. 1657, d. 13 July 1712) drew up. On 11 April 1712, the municipal treasurer paid 300 florins to Fux as compensation for the compositions that Fux had given to the Cathedral when he had resigned from his post as deputy Kapellmeister.

The entry in the municipal Oberkammeramtsrechnung concerning the City's payment of 300 florins on 11 April 1712 for Fux's musical scores (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn. B1/228, fol. 105v)
Am 11t dito [April 1712] zalte Ich Herrn Johann / Joseph Fux, alßwelcher die Cap= / pelmaister Stöll beÿ dem Gna= / den Bildt zu St: Stephan resignirt, / anbeÿ seine Compositiones der Kirchen Hinterlasßen hat, die / Ihme desßentweg[en] angeschafte[n] / Dreÿ Hundert Gulden, vermög / berathschlagten Anbring[ens] (13.), undt Quittung (14.) Hiebeÿ          Id e[st] 300 f " –: –:

[translation:]

On April 11th, I paid Johann Joseph Fux, who resigned from his post as Kapellmeister at the Miraculous Image at St. Stephen's and left the scores of his compositions to the church, 300 florins which were put aside for this according to the assessed application no. 13 and the attached receipt no. 14.       That is 300 f " – : –:
On 30 November 1712 the City treasurer paid Fux a half year's fee of 215 florins for the litanies at the Marian column Am Hof.

Two pages from the 1712 Oberkammeramtsrechnung. The entry concerning Fux's fee for the 1712 litanies Am Hof is at the lower left and upper right (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn, B1/229, fol. 66v and 67r).

Ingleichen zalte Ich Herrn Johann / Joseph Fux Capellmaistern / beÿ St: Stephan, die wegen der / Litaneÿ am Hof den Lezten / 9bris auf ain halbes Jahr / verfallene Zweÿ Hundert [fol. 67r] und Fünfzehen Gulden, Laut / Quittung (18.) Hiebeÿ             Id e[st] 215 f " –: –:

[translation:]

Likewise on the last of November [1712] I paid to Johann Joseph Fux, Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's 215 florins for the litany Am Hof for half a year according to the attached receipt no. 18.   That is 215 f " – : –:
On 24 December 1712, the City paid Fux 33 florins for the music at the Rorate service at the Passion altar.

The entry concerning the payment of 33 fl. for the Rorate service in December 1712 at the Cathedral's Passion altar (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn, B1/229, fol. 143r)

Den 24t: dito [Decembris] zalte ich Herrn Joseph / Fux Capellmaistern beÿ St: Ste= / phan, wegen d[em] Rorate dienst / beÿ Unsern Herrn, die der ge= / sambten Music gebührendte / Dreÿ und dreÿßig Gulden. In= / halt Quittung (3.) Hiebeÿ           Id e[st] 33 f " –: –:

[translation:]

On December 24th [1712] I paid to Joseph Fux, Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's, because of the Rorate service at Our Lord's [altar], the 33 florins that were due for the whole music ensemble. According to the attached receipt no. 3.           That is 33 f " – : –:

On 19 August 1713, the Oberkämmerer paid Fux 20 florins for the Mass and the Requiem that were held in connection with the obsequies of the councilman Johann Nicola Ruckebaum.

(A-Wsa, OKA Rech, B1/230, fol. 244r)
Den 19t: dito [Augusti 1713] zalte Ich Herrn / Johann Joseph Fux Capell= / maistern beÿ St: Stephan / wegen d[er] Beÿ Unßern Herrn / für Weÿl: Herrn Johann / Nicola Ruckhebaumb deß / Inneren Statt Raths seniore / seel:[ig] gehaltene Lob: und / Seel Ämbter, die d[er] Music / gebührendte Zwainzig / Gulden, Laut Quittung (5.) / Hiebeÿ        Id e[st] 20 f " –: –: 

[translation:]

On August 19th I paid to Johann Joseph Fux, Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's, for the sung Mass and the Requiem performed at the Passion altar for the deceased Herr Johann Nicola Ruckhebaum, senior member of the Inner City Council 20 florins, due for the musicians, according to the attached receipt no. 5.  That is 20 f " –: –:
The burial of the councilman and superintendent of the Bürgerspital Johann Nicola Ruckenbaum (1639–1713) had taken place on 5 August 1713, at the Cathedral. The information that the City paid Fux 20 florins for the music is an interesting addition to the entry in the Bahrleihbuch concerning Ruckenbaum's obsequies. The City not only paid for the music, but also for the grave in the crypt. The musical items that cost twenty gulden cannot be exactly identified. They could have been the "Musici" for 10 fl. and the performance of "der grimige Todt mit Sartinln" for 10 fl., but the note "für gehaltene Lob: und Seel Ämbter" in the account book suggests that the 20 florins either covered the 18 fl. for "Musicis vor d[a]s Requiem mit Sartinln" (with the remaining amount unaccounted for), or the free musical service is nor recorded in the Bahrleihbuch.

The entry concerning the obsequies of Johann Nicola Ruckebaum on 5 August 1713 at the Cathedral (A-Wd, BLB 1713, fol. 141v and 142 r)

The four other obsequies that are referred to in the 1712-15 account books and for which Fux each time was paid 20 florins were that of the following members of the Vienna City Council (all of whom were also house owners):
  • Augustin von Hirneis, I. & R. councilor, senior member of the City Council and superintendent of the Bürgerspital, buried on 30 August 1713 (A-Wd, BLB 1713, fol. 155)
  • Johann Fürth, member of the citizen council and municipal Ober=Raith=Handler (superior accountant), buried on 22 November 1713 (A-Wd, BLB 1713, fol. 166v and 167r)
  • Ferdinand Philipp von Raidegg, member of the citizen council, buried on 14 March 1715 (A-Wd, BLB 1715, fol. 35v and 36r)
  • Adam Schreyer, 22 March 1715, (A-Wd, BLB 1715, fol. 40v and 41r)
The burial services of the two last councilmen are especially interesting, because Fux was obviously still involved in the musical services at the Cathedral in March of 1715, at a time when he had already resigned from his post as Kapellmeister.

The entry concerning the payment of 40 fl to Fux for the music at the obsequies of the councilors von Raidegg and Schreyer (A-Wsa, OKA Rech, B1/232, fol. 229v and 230r)
Den 30t: dito [Martij 1715] zalte Ich Herrn Johann / Joseph Fux Capellmaistern / [fol. 230r] wegen gehaltenen Requiem für / Weÿl:[and] Herrn V: Raidegg, und / Herrn Schreÿer seel: die der / Music gebührendte vierzig / Gulden, ut Quitt: (85.) Hiebeÿ                  Id e[st] 40 f " –: –:

[translation:]

On the 30th of the same month, I paid Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux for the Requiem held for the late Herr von Raidegg and the late Herr Schreyer 40 florins which were due for the music ensemble, according to the attached receipt.        That is 40 f " –: –:
My research in the account books of the Oberkammeramt is still ongoing. Other references to Fux in these records may yet be found.

Fux Documents in the Court Archives

Documents of the Obersthofmarschallamt

The two important Fux documents in the holdings of the Imperial Court's judicial authority, the Obersthofmarschallamt (OMaA) are the probate files of Fux's wife from 1731 and that of Fux himself from 1741. Flotzinger's edition of these documents is a strange mixture of an original update and a simple copy of Köchel's age-old, heavily shortened transcriptions (Köchel, 286f. and 289f.). Flotzinger seems to have checked the original sources, but he does not completely transcribe them and repeats some of Köchel's mistakes. Since he is not familiar with regular non-noble Sperrs-Relationen in the Obersthofmarschallamt, he also fails to realize that both files are far from complete and have been heavily reduced by removal of material. A Sperrs-Relation was supposed to essentially deal with the assets of a deceased person, but such documents are missing from both, Fux's and his wife's files. A good example of a typical probate file is that of the (relatively poor) sculptor Georg Raphael Donner (A-Whh, OMaA, 5008/1741) which contains the usual lists of belongings and expenses and a marriage contract which originally may also have been a part of Fux's probate file. Only two examples will suffice to demonstrate Flotzinger's way of mingling Köchel's old mistakes with new superficiality. On 29 August 1731, Fux's declaration of inheritance was presented at the Obersthofmarschallamt. The following document was published in 1872 by Köchel in a flawed and incomplete edition (Köchel, 286). Köchel mistranscribed the "p[erge]" as "etc." (I shall not address all the wrong double fs, or the transcription "Auffleg" instead of "auflag") and he chose to ignore the whole rubrum (summary) of Fux's application. The only notes from the rubrum (on the right half of the left part of the following picture) that Köchel transcribed are the number "2048" and the words "praes. 19. August 1731". The rest is missing and it is also missing in Flotzinger's edition where a lot of Köchel's mistakes reappear, including the unresolved abbreviation "abstè" (meaning absolute) and the mistranscription "K. Martinitz" as the signature of Obersthofmarschall Count Adolf Bernhard von Martinitz (Flotzinger, 365f.). In his transcription of the accompanying letter, Flotzinger mistranscribes the abbreviation "p[erge]" as an ampersand. The previously unpublished part of this document reads as follows:
O:[berst] H:[of] M:[arschall] / gehor[samst] erstate Erbs= / Erklärung sine beneficio / legis et Inventarij / Von mir Jos[e]ph Fux: Kaÿl: Hof=CapellMeister alß / ab intestato Erklärt[en] Erben / über Weÿl: Clara Juliana / Meiner Ehewührtin seel: hin= / terlassene Verlassenschaft / Pr[o] ingebettene acceptier[ung] / invermelter Erbs=Er= / clärung und weitere / verfügung betr[effend] [vertatur]

Fux's Erbserklärung in the probate file of his wife Clara Juliana (A-Whh, OMaA, Karton 687, 3454/1731). There is no information in Flotzinger's edition concerning the appearance of Fux's seal and that the signature is autograph.

The edition of the composer's probate file from 1741, the second document in the OMaA, is rife with similar problems. Flotzinger publishes the report of the Amtstrabant Paul Anton Bernhard (with the usual mistranscriptions, such as "Hoff" and "vorgenohmen"), but he fails to include the text on the second leaf of the document, i.e. the rubrum and the final note which is signed by the Obersthofmarschall Prince von Auersperg. We are presented with the transcription of the Erbserklärung of Fux's niece Eva Maria (with one telling mistake that is copied from Köchel), but the note "[seitlich Vermerk]" (side note) beside the heiress's signature proves that – contrary to the claim on p. 357 of Flotzinger's book – the text is not a transcription of the original document, but a mere copy of Köchel's edition. This alleged "side note" only appears in Köchel (Köchel, 290), but it cannot be found on the second page (fol. 4v) of Eva Maria Fux's original Erbserklärung. In the original file, this note is part of a longer entry on a different page of the document (fol. 5v), and it comes as no surprise that the text on this page is missing in Flotzinger's edition. Of course, one could claim that these notes contain no important information. But such a negligent approach should never be the rule of a scholarly edition of documents. With the exception of the note "præs 21 Febr 1741" (which, as can be seen, is really not a "seitlicher Vermerk" beside a signature) the text on the left half of the following picture has never been published.

The pages 5v and 4r of the Erbserklärung of Fux's niece Eva Maria Fux. The supposed "note beside her signature" is underlined in red, the signature is not visible, because it is located on the other side of this document (A-Whh, OMaA, 5006/1741).

Documents of the Obersthofmeisteramt

The Court's Obersthofmeisteramt (OMeA) was responsible for the employment and remuneration of court officials. Since Fux had to evaluate all employments of musicians and raises of their salary, the largest stock of Fux documents is located in the holdings of this court authority in Vienna's Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. In appendix VI (376-453) of his book, Köchel published 260 of Fux's autograph assessments from between 1715 and 1740 which can be found on the back side of the original applications that were submitted to the Emperor. Gottlieb Muffat's application for a Court scholarship for his son Joseph, which was submitted on 16 October 1732, to the Emperor, is a nice example for such an assessment by the Court Kapellmeister:

The cover page of Gottlieb Muffat's 1732 application: on the lower right are the address and the rubrum, the rest of the page contains Fux's autograph assessment (A-Whh, OMeA, Alte Akten, Karton 29). For a transcription see Köchel, p. 437. The exact dates that Köchel provides for Fux's statements are mostly arbitrary. Neither the applications nor the assessments bear exact dates.

Fux's comments in the files of the Obersthofmeisteramt can be considered the most interesting documents related to the composer's personality. In these written statements, which show great sympathy and are mostly in favor of the musicians' requests, Fux's character comes to life in an uncanny way. That Flotzinger does not include a single one of Fux's assessments in his collection of "documents related to Fux's biography", is surprising. Totally inexplicable however is the fact that he does not even mention the existence of these documents or their earlier publication by Köchel. From hundreds of Fux documents in the archive of the Obersthofmeisteramt Flotzinger presents three documents from between 1698 and 1702 that Herwig Knaus already published in 1969. It turns out, however, that Flotzinger also has problems copying printed material, because he adds a lot of curious mistakes to Knaus's texts. The misspellings "Virtzuoso" and "allerdgnädigst" are plain typos, the word "weder" instead of "wegen" (in the protocol of 19 August 1702) is the result of mere sloppiness. Knaus's term "seitlicher Vermerk" (side note) for the text on the left side of a two-column document is already problematic. Flotzinger's changing of Knaus's term into the even less applicable "Rand-Vermerk" (marginal note) is just bizarre. It looks as if Flotzinger has never actually seen the original documents.

A page of the Obersthofmeisteramt protocol of 19 August 1702, concerning Fux's transfer into full court service (A-Whh, OMeA, Karton 12, fol. 160r). The address to the Emperor and his handwritten decision on the left half of the page are described as "side note" by Knaus and "marginal note" by Flotzinger.

The other three files in Flotzinger's presentation of OMeA files are Fux's applications to the Emperor for gifts of grace from 6 March 1727 (Köchel, 301), 3 January 1727 (Köchel, 304), and 9 April 1733 (Köchel, 307). Flotzinger's edition of these documents – which he mislabels as belonging to the Obersthofmarschallamt (instead of the Obersthofmeisteramt) – are again a mixture of Köchel's old errors with new mistakes and omissions. One is hard pressed not to bore the reader with a list of mistakes that suggest that Flotzinger's texts were not copied from the original sources, but from Köchel's 143-year-old book. The main problem with the presentation of Fux's applications is, that for them to make sense, they have to be published within their context, i.e. together with the detailed legal arguments on which the final resolutions were based. A case in point is the concert commission's long argument in the report of 29 April 1727, concerning the historical precedents of granting pensions to the widows of Schmelzer, Draghi and Ziani (A-Whh, OMeA, Alte Akten, Karton 23). Lack of space cannot be a reason for not including these important documents in Flotzinger's book, given the fact that in the chapter "Sonstige Quellen" there is enough room for a quote from the 1943 article "Das Weihnachtsgeschenk 1940 des Reichsgaues Steiermark an den Führer" (Flotzinger, 387). In March 1733, Fux wrote a relatively long letter to Count Johann Ferdinand von Lamberg concerning the abilities of the singer Maria Sophia Navetschan and the organ builder Giovanni Moysè. This document, which, apart from Fux's will, is the longest document in the composer's handwriting, does not appear in Flotzinger's book. There is no conceivable reason as to why this letter should not be published in a chapter titled "Documents concerning Fux's biography".

Pages 3 and 4 of Fux's autograph letter to Count von Lamberg which on 6 March 1733, was presented to the Obersthofmeisteramt (A-Whh, OMeA, Alte Akten, Karton 29). For a transcription of this document see Köchel, p. 314f.

As far as the documents of the Obersthofmeisteramt are concerned, a lot of work still remains to be done. A closer scrutiny of the Obersthofmeisteramt's so-called "Alte Akten" (dating from between 1650 and 1780) shows that the collection of Fux's assessments that Köchel published is not complete. Köchel, in probable anticipation of being criticized for publishing too many sources, only published about two thirds of the handwritten Fux documents from boxes 15-34 of the Obersthofmeisteramt's Ältere Reihe. Since the missing documents have never been published after Köchel, and Flotzinger does not address this bizarre situation, it is obvious that between 1872 and 2016, no Fux scholar ever laid eyes on the archival sources in question. Two examples of unpublished Fux documents from the Obersthofmeisteramt shall be published here.

On 27 November 1720, the Obersthofmeister had to deal with a request from the cellist Pietro Adò (b. 1683 in Barcelona, d. 6 August 1762 in Vienna) who asked to be allowed to keep the monthly salary of 50 thaler that he had already received during his service in Milan. Fux wrote the following favorable assessment:
Pietro Adò Violoncellista / kombt allerundterth.[änigst] ein, / daß Ihme seine bißhero / zu Maÿlandt angewise- / ne, und genossene Besol= / dung dere[n] 50 Thaller / Manatlich, möchten allhir / in dem Universal Banca= / litets Zahl Ambt, gleich / andere[n] Kaÿl Musicis / angewisen werd[en]. / Weillen ich sein allerundterth. / Bitt gar billich finde, weille[n] er, von der Zeit / an, daß Ihro Kaÿl. Maÿl: / von Barcellona anhero / kome[n] würkhlich gedient / Hat, und noch dienet. / Alß meine allerundth / meinung er Supplicant / möchte in seine[m] anbrin= / ge[n] allerg[nädig]st consolirt werd[en]. / JohannJosephFux / CapelMaister

 
Fux's statement in favor of Pietro Ado's request (A-Whh, OMeA, Alte Akten, Karton 17)

On 4 January 1721, the presentation of petitions to Emperor Charles VI included one from the cellist Franz Carl Drenger (1702–1745) whom, in 1718, the court had sent to Naples to study cello at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini (Köchel, 382). Drenger received an annual scholarship of 250 fl and wanted it raised to the amount of the regular "Scolarenprovision" of 350 fl. Fux expressed his opinion as follows:
Franz Carl Drenger Kaÿl. / Scolar in Violoncello zu Neapel, so bißhero nit mehr / alß 250 f iarlich genü= / set, kombt allundterth.[änigst] / ein umb die gantze sonst ge= / wändliche Scolarn provisi= / on deren 360 f. iährlich. / Wan nun diser Supplicant, / vermöge beÿligend[er] Au= / thentisirte[n] Attestatione[n] / von seine[n] Obren, sich / dergestalten wohl verhalte, / daß zu Hoffen ist, er werde / mit der Zeit gar gutte / Dienst leiste[n] könne[n] beÿ / der Kaÿl. Music: Aber / mit dermahle[n] genüsende[n] / 250 f unmöglich sub- / sistire[n] kan, umb so vill / weniger, weille[n] er nebe[n] / dem Violoncello, auch in dem Contrapunct sich / üben solle, welches zum / Accompagnire[n] notwen / dig ist; worzu ein neuer / LehrMaister, mit Hin neue / Spesen erfordert werd[en]. / alß ist meine wenigste mai / nung er Drenger möchte / möchte mit der völlige[n] Scola / ren Provision allerg[nädig]st consolirt / werd[en]. Fux CapelMaister

Fux's statement in support of Franz Carl Drenger's request (A-Whh, OMeA, Alte Akten, Karton 17)

On 4 December 1738, the Obersthofmeister and Fux had to deal with an application from the violinist Tommaso Piani who asked to have his eldest son Carlo Lodovico be granted a court scholarship to receive singing lessons. To support his request, Piani referred to his 20 years of service, his seven children and the continuing health issues of his wife and children. Tommaso Piani – who was a younger brother of the violinist Giovanni Antonio Piani (1678–1761) (and not a cousin, as claimed by Martial Leroux in MGG2) – was born around 1685, in Naples, and in 1717, was hired as violinist by the court (Köchel, 367). Fux obviously had a close relationship with Tommaso Piani, because on the occasion of Piani's wedding to Francesca Borrini – a daughter of the court singer Rainiero Borrini (1659–1724) – on 15 May 1725, Fux served as Piani's best man. The other witnesses of this wedding were the groom's brother Giovanni Antonio Piani, the Modena-born court chamber accountant Gaetano Virgilio Carrara (1699–1778), and Carrara's brother-in-law Giacomo Fumée, personal surgeon of Prince Eugene of Savoy. Curiously enough, in 1757, Tommaso Piani was to become the first father-in-law of Wolfgang von Kempelen, inventor of the chess-playing machine The Turk (Hofburgpfarre 4, 10f.).

The entry concerning the wedding of Tommaso Piani and Francesca Borrini on 15 May 1725, at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, Tom. 44, 701). Giovanni Antonio Piani's date of death is still unknown. My research concerning this unsolved issue is almost finished. After her husband's death in 1767, Francesca Piani was employed by the Court as an I. & R. lady-in-waiting. She died on 3 January 1782 in the Hofburg (Wiener Zeitung, 9 January 1782).

Piani's eldest son Carl Ludwig (b. 1728, d. after 1767), whom his father wanted to become a singer, was a godson of Emperor Charles VI. Fux's assessment concerning Tommaso Piani's 1738 application reads as follows.
Tomaso Piani der Jüngere, in / die 20 Jahr Kaÿl: Musicus Violi= / nista, und Vater von 7 unmün= / digen Kindern, komt allerunterth[äni]gst / supplicando ein, um die Allerhöchste / Gnade, daß sein ältester Sohn Carl / Ludwig, als Kaÿl: Hof=Scolar, in / der Music, und sonderbahr in der / Sing=Kunst, möchte allergnädigst / an= und aufgenomen werden. / Wann nun er Piani, durch 20. Jahr / embsig, und fleÿßig gedient hat, / und wegen so zahlreicher familia, / sowohl, als auch fast unaussezlicher / Krankheit seines Weibs, und Kinder / in grossem nothstand sich befindet; / alß würden Ihro Kaÿl: Maÿl: nicht / allein ein grosses Werkh der / Barmherzigkeit thun, wann Aller= / =höchst dieselbe den Supplicanten mit / der, für ernant= seinen Sohn, aller= / =unterthgst ansuchenden Hof= Scolarn= / stelle, und der gewöhnlichen Scolarn= / Provision, deren jährlichen. 360 f: / allermildest zu begnaden geruheten; / sondern es würde auch Ihro Maÿl: / mitler zeit |:weilen der Knab von / einem treflichen talento ist, und / die beste Hofnung von sich giebet :| / ein guter Virtuos zuerwachsen. Johann Joseph Fux, / CapelMaister.

Fux's statement in support of Tommaso Piani's request (A-Whh, OMeA, Alte Akten, Karton 32)

The many unpublished Fux documents among the files of the Obersthofmeisteramt are not the only problem that is apparent in connection with Flotzinger's collection and its totally fictitious completeness. In theory, the entries in the protocols of the OMeA are mere copies of the presentations (Referate) in the files that cover the sessions. But a scrutiny of the presentations shows that this is not the case, and these sources contain additional information that is also waiting to be published.

The Schnitzenbaum Family

The maiden name of Fux's wife was Clara Juliana Schnitzenbaum. What does the Fux literature tell us about her? Flotzinger writes: "The bride Juliana Clara was the supposedly eldest daughter of Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum (d. 5 October 1683), a secretary with the Lower Austrian government, and his wife Maria Ursula. She was about ten years younger [than Fux], born around 1671, because at the time of her death on 6 June 1731, she was 60 years of age. Important dates concerning the family were determined by Köchel." (Flotzinger, 38). After this, Flotzinger immediately proceeds to present information regarding Fux's sisters-in-law all of which can already be found in Köchel. In the modern Fux literature the central missing piece of information concerning the Schnitzenbaum family is never addressed: when exactly was Fux's wife born and why is her exact date of birth still unknown? In 1872, Köchel outlined the "important dates" of the Schnitzenbaum family in the following family tree (with Fux's wife appearing at the bottom left):

The Schnitzenbaum family tree according to Köchel (Köchel 1872, 294)

Several details in this fragmentary genealogical outline immediately draw attention: the unspecific dates of birth of the family members prove that Köchel never checked any baptismal records of Viennese parishes. What was Köchel's source for the identity of the grandfather of Fux's wife Josef Schnitzenbaum and his two marriages? What was the source for "19 September 1664" as Josef Schnitzenbaum's date of death? How did he know about the existence of Josef Schnitzenbaum's two other children, Johann Georg and Anna Maria? Of course, Köchel did not give his sources and in 1872, he was not obliged to do so. But it is rather surprising that in the following 143 years, no Fux scholar ever tried to answer these questions. Many authors simply chose not to address these issues at all, and, instead of trying to find answers, simply ignored this topic of research.

Biographical research concerning people who lived in Vienna in the seventeenth century is aggravated by the scarcity of sources. There are only fragmentary series of probate files in the archives of governances, and because at some point, 33 earlier volumes were destroyed, the municipal death records only survive from 1648 on (with a 26-month gap between 1656 and 1659). The church records (especially the death records) are not complete and have unreliable indexes which sometimes are sorted according to first names. Biographical information from the early seventeenth century can basically only be obtained from four types of archival material: 1) church records, 2) wills in the holdings of the old municipal civil court and various other dominions, such as the Obersthofmarschallamt, the Schotten, the Bürgerspital or the Domkapitel (these wills are very scarce, but probate files are even rarer), 3) records of the municipal financial administration, such as the accounts of the Oberkammeramt (beginning in 1424) or the Steueramt (as of 1500), and 4) municipal property registers of which the earliest date from around 1300 (but these sources are of course are limited to owners of real estate). Because of this difficult source situation, several missing biographical dates of members of the Schnitzenbaum family are unlikely to ever be determined.

Hanns and Sophia Schnitzenbaum

The earliest appearance of the family name Schnitzenbaum (Schnizenpaumb, Schnitzenpämer) in a Viennese source occurs in 1616. On June 5 of that year, Hans Schnitzenbaum, a fellow (Geselle) from Hall in Tirol, married Sophia Eisang. Sophia (born around 1575), daughter of the furrier Anton Kurz, was the widow of the stone accountant ("Stainschreiber") and former trumpeter Elias Eysang, whom she had married on 15 July 1598, in Vienna (A-Wd, Tom. 8, fol. 87r).

The entry concerning the wedding of the Tyrolese Hans "SchnitzenPämer" on 5 June 1616, at St. Stephen's (A-Wd,Tom. 11, fol. 15v)
1.2.3. / Cop:[ulatus] 5 Junij / Der Erbar und fürnemb Hanß Schnitze[n]= / Pämer, von Hall auß Tirol ein ledige[r] / gesell, nimbt fraue Sophia, weilland / Herrn Eliaß Eÿsanngge[ns] Khaÿl: / Stainschreibers hind[er]lass:[ene] Wittib.
Hans and Sophia Schnitzenbaum turn up in the sources again in August of 1625, when they bought the house Stadt No. 215 (on today's area of the Concordiaplatz) at the corner of Tiefer Graben and Salzgries, which at that time, of course, bore no number, and in the land register was described as "ein Hauß alhier Innerhalb deß Werther Thor, mit ainem thaill zunechst Balthasar Puchhauser Stainmezen seel: Erbns Hauß gelegen". By 1625, Hans Schnitzenbaum was a "Haringer" (herring vendor) by profession and "out of conjugal love and faithfulness" he shared the ownership of the house with his wife ("Welcher alßdann sein Hausfrau Sophia, auß Conlicher Lieb und Threu, neben ihme an Nuz und Gewör schreiben lassen").

The beginning of the entry in the municipal land register concerning the granting of ownership ("Gewähranschreibung") of the house Stadt 215 on 29 August 1625, to Hans and Sophia Schnitzenbaum (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B1.14, fol. 28v)

Because the municipal death records only survive as of August 1648, and the death records of the Schotten parish only as of 1649, Sophia and Hans Schnitzenbaum's dates of death can only be conjectured from other sources. Sophia Schnitzenbaum died in 1630, because her will – written on 22 August 1626 – was submitted to the court on 25 June 1630. At that time, the Schnitzenbaum couple seems to have still been in good financial standing. In her will, Sophia Schnitzenbaum decreed various charitable bequests, she refers to a house in Penzing and vineyards that she owned, and bequeathed 600 florins, silverware, and linen to Maria Jacobina Schmitmaier, a daughter from her first marriage. Each of the five witnesses of her will received a gold ducat for their service. Especially touching in Sophia Schnitzenbaum's will is the passage where she writes "I wish to be buried in the cemetery of St. Stephen's, beside the morgue where the large linden tree is, and where all my friends are buried".

The envelope of Sophia Schnitzenbaum's will from 1626 (A-Wsa, AZJ 3143/17. Jhdt.)

The following events are only documented in a copy of a report of a municipal Raithandler (administrative accountant), which only on 22 June 1660, was copied into the land register, on the occasion of a later sale of the house. Hans Schnitzenbaum died before 1633. Because his estate was insolvent, it was put under sequestration. The house remained unsold which led to tax debt, loss of rental revenues and the desolation of Schnitzenbaum's vineyards: "in deme nicht allein, die Weingarten ungepauter gelegen, undt in merckhliche aböedtung gerathen, sondern auch engestangezogenes Hauß, durchgehendt Lähr verbliben, undt kheinen Zinns ertragen, hingegen, von dem darauf gehaften Saz: deßgleichen, über dreÿhundert Gulden, im ausstandt sich befundtenen Steuern, die Interesse täglicher fortgelofen, undt also disorths, denen sambentlichen interessierten ein mehrerer schaaden zuegewachsen" (A-Wsa, Patrimoniale Herrschaften, B1.15, fol. 602). To avoid more damage to the interested parties, on 1 October 1633, the house was sold ex officio by the City Council to a butcher from St. Ulrich. Owing to the lack of a will and a probate file, Hans Schnitzenbaum's family relation to Joseph Schnitzenbaum (the grandfather of Fux's wife) cannot be determined. Another likely relative of Clara Juliana Fux could have been the Veith Schnitzenbaum who in August 1650 – according to an entry in the municipal Oberkammeramtsrechnung – paid an acceptance fee of two florins in the course of being appointed a Viennese Bürger.

The entry in the Oberkammeramtsrechnung concerning Veith Schnitzenbaum paying a fee for being appointed Viennese citizen. His name is the second in the list of August 1650, after the Khranzlbinder Veith Pfanzeldter (A-Wsa, OKA Rechn. B1/172, fol. 34r)

Joseph Schnitzenbaum

Because of missing sources, biographical information concerning the grandfather of Fux's wife, Joseph Schnitzenbaum, is difficult to ascertain. The dates and location of his birth and two weddings have yet to be located. The pivotal source related to his life is his will which he signed on 31 May 1662. The date "19 7bris 664", written on the envelope of this document, was Köchel's source for the supposed date of Joseph Schnitzenbaum's death (Köchel, 294).

The envelope of Joseph Schnitzenbaum's will bearing his and his four witnesses seals and signatures. The date "19 September 1664" appears twice: left of the seals and at the end of the note on the right margin (A-Wsa, AZJ 7609/17. Jhdt.).

Joseph Schnitzenbaum's will can be summarized as follows: After eighteen years of government service, Schnitzenbaum's annual salary as "N:Ö: Regierungs Canzleÿ Verwandter" (Lower Austrian Government official) was 278 florins. For his burial at St. Rupert's Church he bequeathed fifteen florins. With his second wife Anna Maria he had a small son, named Johann Richard, to both of whom he bequeathed his Gnadengeld of 300 florins in equal shares, his small amount of silverware, and all his "Vahrnuß" (movables). From his first marriage with Susanna, three children were still alive (a son Johann Leonhard, born on 18 March 1640, had already died in May 1641): Johann Joseph (Fux's future father-in-law), Johann Georg and Anna Maria (b. 28 July 1635), to whom he still owed their mother's inheritance of 100 thaler. This debt was to be covered with the 1026 florins that Schnitzenbaum had deposited with the Lower Austrian government. He appointed the three children from his first marriage universal heirs of his remaining assets, but since these three children had already received a major inheritance from their mother, and their nourishment, sustenance, education, and other expenses had cost him a lot ("sie mich mit ernehr. und nothwendiger underhaltung, studire[n], und andere[n] aufwendtunge[n] nit wenig gecostet"), he requested them to cover all immediate expenses and observe his bequest to his wife and his youngest son. A very special feature of Joseph Schnitzenbaum the elder's will is the fact that it contains handwritten personal requests to the four witnesses who were the following individuals: the government official Philipp Ludwig Rinkhensatl, the surgeon barber Michael Planckh, the salt accountant and member of the Citizen Council Johann Georg Reißner, and the mayor of Bruck an der Leitha, Johann Fronhofer.

Köchel (or his assistant) did not understand the meaning of the date on the envelope of Schnitzenbaum's will. It does not refer to the date of death, but to the date the will was presented to the civil court. Joseph Schnitzenbaum already died on 28 July 1664, at the "Marinisches Hauß auf der Fischerstieg[en]". The cause of death was a stroke, his age is given as 58.

The entry in the municipal death records concerning the death of Joseph Schnitzenbaum on 28 July 1664 (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt 7, fol. 54r)

As he had requested in his will, Joseph Schnitzenbaum, in the evening of 28 July 1664, was buried in St. Rupert's Church. His Kleingleuth cost 11 florins 42 kreutzer. The summation in the Bahrleihbuch concerning his burial is not correct, because two "Pueben mit Kutten" did not cost 54, but 18 kreutzer. For the calculation in the records to be correct, there must have been four cowlboys, costing 36 kreutzer.

The entry in the Cathedral's Bahrleihbuch concerning Joseph Schnitzenbaum's burial at St. Rupert's Church: "Der Joseph Schnizenbaumb im Marinischen Hauß auf der Fischerstiegen ist am schlaag bsch. alt 55 Jahr / Nachtbegröbnus. In der Kirchen St. Rueprecht". The text at the lower left refers to the next burial (A-Wd, BLB 1664, fol. 83v).

Joseph Schnitzenbaum's seal, showing a tree in the coat of arms (A-Wsa, AZJ 7609/17. Jhdt.)

The signature of Joseph Schnitzenbaum the elder (A-Wsa, AZJ 7609/17. Jhdt.)

On 25 November 1664, Joseph Schnitzenbaum's widow Anna Maria married Wilhelm Franz Hirsch von Hirschfeld, an army lieutenant stationed at the Castle of Raab (A-Wd, Tom. 23, fol. 52r).

The "Adelsburgisches Haus"

Joseph Schnitzenbaum died at the "Marinisches Hauß" which in 1770 was to be numbered Stadt 455. In the second half of the seventeenth century, this building was named after the lawyer Marini de Thomasis who had bought it in 1652. In 1689, the house was sold to Maria Elisabeth Koch von Adlersperg which led to its being misnamed "Adelsburgisches Haus". In some sources this house is also referred to as "Bei Unsern Herrn" (A-Wd, BLB 1703, fol. 161r).

The "Marinisches (later Adelsburgisches) Haus", Stadt No 455 (last No. 378) at the corner of the Salvatorgassel and the Fischerstiege, on Joseph Daniel von Huber's 1778 map of Vienna (W-Waw, Sammlung Woldan). On the upper right is the church of Maria am Gestade.

In this house members of the Fux and the Schnitzenbaum families are documented to have lived between 1664 and 1773. In 1749, Fux's sister-in-law Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum died there (Wiener Zeitung, 21 May 1749) and so did Fux's niece Maria Fux in 1773.

A view into the Salvatorgasse towards Maria am Gestade in 1907: visible on the far left is the portal of the St. Salvator, the building in the foreground is the "Adelsburgisches Haus", Salvatorgasse 8 (Wien Museum, I.N. 33655/2).

The special, previously unknown, significance of the "Adelsburgisches Haus" for the history of music is based on the fact that on 3 March 1766, Joseph Sonnleithner, the co-founder of the "Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde" and librettist of Beethoven's Fidelio, was born in this house.

Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum

Johann Joseph Fux's father-in-law Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum was born around 1631. Like several other sources concerning the Schnitzenbaum family his baptismal entry turned out to be untraceable. Only four of his siblings could be located in the records of the Cathedral: Anna Maria, b 28 July 1635 (A-Wd, Tom. 11, fol. 243v), Johann Leonhard, b. 18 March 1640 (A-Wd, Tom 13, fol. 289r), Joseph, d. May 1641 (A-Wd, Tom. 9, p. 13). An elder brother named Adam officiated as best man at his brother's first wedding. Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum was married twice. On 4 November 1653, at St. Stephen's Cathedral, he married Anna Maria Hirsch who may have been a relative of the second husband of Schnitzenbaum's stepmother.

The entry concerning the first wedding of Joseph Schnitzenbaum on 4 November 1653 (A-Wd, Tom. 20, fol. 110r)
1.2.3. / copulatus e[st] / Der Edl und Gestrenge Herr Joseph / SchnitzenPäumb. der Ro: Kaÿ: Maÿl: und / N. O. Regierungs Canzlei Verwanter p. / nimbt die Edl Ehrntugentreiche Junkhfrau / Annam Mariam Hirschin. weilent des / Edl und Gestrengen Herr[n] Jacobi Ernreich / Hirsch. der R: Kaÿl: Maÿl: geweste[r] Haubtman / und Annæ Dorotheæ seiner Ehelichen / Hausfraun, beeder Seelig Eheliche hinterlasen[e] d[o]chte[r] / Testes. H Joan. Wagner. d N.O: L[andtschaft] p. Expeditor / H Adam SchnitzenPaumb. Frater sponsi. / H. Hanß Jacob Weinzierl. I. Ehw. Contralor. / H. Ferdinandus Jurcko. Camerdiener J. Ehw: / ad S. Rupert[um] / 4. Novb. [1653]
With his first wife, Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum is documented to have had two sons: 1) Johann Ferdinand, born on 9 June 1655 (A-Wd, Tom. 22, fol. 154v) and Johann Richard, born on 21 June 1657 (A-Wd, Tom. 23, fol. 9r). Baptisms of other children from this marriage have yet to be found in the records. Schnitzenbaum's second wedding took place on 3 May 1665, at Vienna's St. Michael's Church. The entry in the church records concerning the publication of the banns for this wedding contains previously unknown information about Johann Joseph Fux's mother-in-law Maria Ursula Crän. Together with the entry concerning the marriage of her sister Maria Catharina Crän to the Lower Austrian Landschafts-Expeditor Adolph Cremer on 11 February 1665 (A-Wd, Tom. 23, fol. 69v), this entry in the Verkündbuch of St. Michael's is the most important source regarding the maternal ancestors of Fux's wife. Fux's mother-in-law Maria Ursula Crän was born in Regensburg, daughter of Heinrich Khräne (Crän, Krane), Doctor of Canon and Civil Law, councilor and resident of the Electorate of Cologne at the Vienna Imperial Court, and his wife Maria Clara, née Sinich. At the time of Maria Ursula Crän's wedding in 1665, both her parents were already deceased.

The entry concerning the publication of the banns in April 1665 for the wedding of Fux's parents-in-law (A-Wstm, Verkündbuch 4, 219). These entries were crossed out after the wedding had taken place.
Der Edl und wohlgelehrte Herr Hannß Joseph / Schnizebaumb, gebirtig v[o]n Wien in Oësteraich / des Herrn Joseph Schnizenbaumb und fraun Susannæ hinderlaßener Ehelicher Sohn, nimbdt / zu der Ehe die Wollehrn dugentraiche Jungfrau / Maria Ursula Cränin, geborne Sinichin gebirtig vo[n] Regenschburg / des Herrn Heinrich Cränn und frau Mariæ / Claræ geborner Sinnichi[n] beede[r] hinderlaßener Eheliche Tochter 1 2 3 / die tertia Maij 1665 / testes sunt Joannes Conradus Albrecht ed D[ominus] Geor / gius Reisner ed Joannes Georgius Sinich ed D[ominus] / Joannes de Grane

[translation:]

The noble Mr. Hans Joseph Schnitzenbaum, born in Vienna in Austria, son of Joseph Schnitzenbaum and his wife Susanna, takes as wife the honorable and virtuous maiden Maria Ursula Crän, born in Ratisbon, legitimate daughter of Heinrich Crän and Maria Clara, née Sinich. The banns published on May 3rd, 1665. The witnesses are Johann Conrad Albrecht, Georg Reisner, Johann Georg Sinich and Johann de Grane.
The actual entry concerning this wedding in the regular marriage records of St. Michael's contains only a fraction of the above information.

The entry concerning the wedding of Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum and Maria Ursula Crän on 3 May 1665 (A-Wstm, Tom. 33, 149)

The wedding of Heinrich Khräne and Maria Clara Sinich, the maternal grandparents of Johann Joseph Fux's wife, had taken place on 31 August 1637, at St. Stephen's Cathedral.

The entry concerning the wedding of Heinrich Khräne on 31 August 1637, at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, Tom. 15, fol. 203r)

Not all entries concerning the baptisms of Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum's children can be located in the church records which is the reason why the exact date of birth of Fux's wife will probably never be known. Instead of openly addressing the inaccessibility of this important source, the Fux literature has so far treated this issue as if it did not really matter. That several sources concerning births and weddings of members of the Schnitzenbaum family are untracable (especially telling is the missing baptismal entry of Paul Anton Schnitzenbaum from around 1675), suggests that this family had several religious ceremonies performed in a quasi private setting at St. Rupert's Church. Another explanation would be flawed indexes in several of the Cathedral's baptismal registers (Tom. 29 and 31-34), but such a scenario is extremely unlikely. From Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum's second marriage the following nine children can be documented.
  1. Anna Maria, b. 26 June 1666 (A-Wd, Tom. 27, 185)
  2. Maria Anna, b. 14 November 1667 (A-Wd, Tom. 28, fol. 182r), d. 16 February 1736 (according to Köchel, 295, but this date is obviously wrong, because her death is neither listed in a parish register nor in the municipal death records)
  3. Joseph Adam, b. 4 June 1670 (A-Wd, Tom. 30, 203)
  4. Jacob Ignaz, b. 25 July 1671 (A-Wstm, Tom. 3, 349), d. 9 March 1683 "an Blattern [of smallpox], beim Schmäkherten wurmb in d[er] Pekherstr[aßen]" [Wollzeile 5] (A-Wsa, TBP 15, fol. 158r; A-Wd, Tom. 14, 266)
  5. Clara Juliana (Fux's future wife), b. ca. 1672, d. 8 June 1731
  6. Paul Anton, b. ca. 1681, d.16 March 1740 "beÿm Golden[en] Bärn am alten Fleischmarckht [Fux's last apartment] an Inner[em] Brand" [of internal gangrene]
  7. Maria Maximiliana, b. 15 January 1676 (A-Ws, Tom. 16, fol. 286v)
  8. Franz, b. 23 January1678 (A-Ws, Tom. 17, fol. 84v)
  9. Maria Theresia, b. 5 August 1679 (A-Wd, Tom. 35, fol. 49r), d. 19 May 1749 (A-Wsa, TBP 47, fol. 464v; Wiener Diarium, 21 May 1749)
The births of Joseph Adam Schnitzenbaum in June 1670 and that of Jacob Ignaz in July 1671 prove that their sister Clara Juliana (Fux's wife) cannot have been born in 1670 or 1671 (the latter of which is generally given as her year of birth in the Fux literature). The godparents of the seventh child, Maria Maximiliana Schnitzenbaum, were Countess Maria Maximiliana von Collalto, née Countess von Althann and her second husband Count Anton Franz von Collalto (1630–1696). The godparents of the six other children (and most likely also of Clara Juliana and Paul Anton) were Adam Dores and his first wife Anna Maria. Because Dores was employed as accountant of the Moravian county administration in Brno (A-Wd, Tom 28, 335), he was sometimes substituted as godfather by the Salzburg-born barber Johann Michael Kreitzthaller and his wife Regina, or assisted by Georg Reisner and his wife Ursula Rosina. Adam Dores left a mark in the history of Moravian geology when in the 1660s, he was the first to describe the Macocha Gorge north of Brno. Johann Michael Kreitzthaller was a brother-in-law of the ironmonger Paul Schluderer who in 1698, was to serve as witness at Fux's wedding. In 1658 and 1676, the ironmonger Georg Reisner officiated as best man at both of Paul Schluderer two weddings (A-Ws, Tom. 8, fol. 190r. A-Wd, Tom. 25, 112). As of 20 February 1650 (A-Wd, Tom. 19, fol. 130r), Reisner was married to Ursula Rosina Schnitzenbaum, a cousin of Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum (her parents had been Joseph Schnitzenbaum's brother Adam and his wife Lucia).

Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum died on 5 October 1683, in the house of Martin Tattenrieder (1618–1683) which was the abovementioned house "Zum schmeckenden Wurm" ("The Tasting Reptile") between Wollzeile and Lugeck, where in 1671, one of Schnitzenbaum's children had died. 

The entry in the municipal death register concerning Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum's death (A-Wsa, TBP 15, fol. 245v)
der wohlEdlgest:[renge] H Johan Joseph Schnitzebaumb N:O: / Regier[ung] Secretarius im H Martin Tadtenrieder haus, / in der wollzeill, ist an Rother Ruhr be[sc]h[aut] alt 53 J[ahr]
That Schnitzenbaum lived in one of Martin Tattenrieder's two houses was not a coincidence. Tattenrieder's father-in-law Johann Pistorius was Schnitzenbaum's colleague at the Lower Austrian Government, and in 1665, Schnitzenbaum's friend Johann Michael Kreitzthaller, the aforementioned barber from Salzburg, had served as witness at Tattenrieder's wedding (A-Wd, Tom. 23, fol. 97v). Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum's obsequies took place at the Cathedral. He was buried in the crypt of the Augustinian Church.

The entry concerning Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum's obsequies on 5 October 1683 at St. Stephen's. Note the spelling of the word "wollzeile" with the h-like letter that doubles the following "l" (A-Wd, BLB 1683a, fol. 165r).
Conduct. der H: Johann Joseph Schnüzenbaumb N:Ö:, / Rg: Secret: in H: Martin Dattenried[erischen] haus / in d[er] wollzeile ist Lauth H: dr: Stumpf : / Zeug:[nis] an d[er] roth[en] ruhr b[e]sch:[aut] alt 53 J: / Zu den[en] P: August:[inern]

[translation:]

Obsequies. Mr. Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum, secretary with the Lower Austrian government, according to Dr. Stumpf's certificate was inspected to have died of bloody dysentery in Martin Dattenrieder's house in the Wollzeile, 53 years of age, and was buried in the Church of the Augustinian Friars.
Johann Joseph Schnitzenbaum's probate file is not extant in the holdings of the Obersthofmarschallamt.

Addenda and Corrigenda

Maria Fux's Probate File and Will

Johann Joseph Fux's niece Maria Fux died on 6 April 1773, at 7 a.m., at the "Adelsburgisches Hauß N. 455. beÿ St. Salvator" (A-Wsa, TBP 67/II, FVU, fol. 13r). At that time she had been living "von eigenen Mitteln" (on her own resources) which means that her livelihood was based on bank shares that had come from Fux's and Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's estates. Köchel published no further details from Maria Fux's probate file, except the following numbers that he considered to describe the final amount of money that the universal heiress received ("demnach blieben der Erbin", Köchel, 292).


The amount, that Köchel considered the net inheritance of Maria Fux's foster daughter Josepha Perger, is wrong. Köchel disregarded the fact that the supposedly final amount of 10,149 fl 8 x was still subject to a 10% inheritance tax of 1,014 fl 54 x which reduced Perger's net inheritance to 9,134 fl 14 x. Maria Fux's probate file consists of 43 pages of which Köchel only published two and a half, namely the acknowledgement of receipt, which was drawn up on 20 May 1774, in Graz, and signed by ten of Maria Fux's Styrian relatives who had inherited 800 florins from the composer's niece. Not only is Köchel's transcription rife with mistakes (Köchel, 292), it is also incomplete, because it disregards the seals and signatures of the eight witnesses who were needed, because all of Maria Fux's Styrian heirs were illiterate and only signed with nine crosses and one circle. It comes as no surprise that, apart from Josepha Perger's declaration of inheritance, Flotzinger limits the material he publishes to Köchel's material and also copies several of Köchel's mistakes. There is no village named "Oberfläding" ("Oberflädling" according to Köchel). The name of the village written in the document is Oberfladnitz. Flotzinger not only claims that the inheritance of the universal heir Josepha Perger amounted to "11776,41 fl" (incorrectly decimalizing the sexagesimal of florins and kreutzer), he also mistakenly describes this amount as being gross and net at the same time: "After the deduction of legacies, expenses and fees the universal heir is left with 11776,41 fl which includes[sic] obligations to pay for Mass endowments, legacies and other things" (Flotzinger, 382). I shall not present a detailed list of mistakes here. Flotzinger's method is yet further proof that publishing a heavily abridged version of an eighteenth-century Sperrs-Relation is always problematic, because it leads to a gross distortion of a historical source. The second page of the receipt, which Maria Fux's heirs signed in 1774, provides a glimpse on the strangeness of the editorial process at hand: none of the witnesses was considered important enough to be included in Köchel's and Flotzinger's edition of this document.

The second page of the receipt of the "Fuxische Freundschaft" in Graz (A-Wsa, Alte Ziviljustiz, 217/82). All the signatures of the witnesses beside the seals are missing from Köchel's and Flotzinger's transcription.

The eight witnesses were the following administration officials from Graz:
  • Franz Xavier Adrinegg, chancery clerk with the Styrian "k.k. Landrecht" (he wrote the receipt)
  • Johann Dominicus Lovironi, "Hochgräfl: Kienburg: Gülten Administrator" (rent administrator of Count von Kuenburg)
  • Franz Anton Reitter, "grundobrigkeitlicher Administrator"
  • Johann Dobida
  • Marcus Hermann, lessee of the dominion Stadl in Mitterdorf an der Raab
  • Franz  Joseph Wagner, administrator of the dominion Oberfladnitz
  • Ferdinand Joseph Bezler, administrator of the dominion and the castle of Riegersburg
  • Johann Baptist Mossmiller, administrator of the dominion of Mössendorf (today's Messendorf)
Flotzinger's edition of Maria Eva Fux's will is plagued by additional problems. Like Köchel's edition it is fragmentary and marred by a number of mistranscriptions and typos that show the carelessness that this supposedly "minor source" was treated with. The worst mishaps are: "Freundschafft", "Taßend", "numehro", "Bak-Obligationen" and "Landstaffts". Flotzinger's "Frau v. Vittelbach", who appears in paragraph nine of the will, is actually Frau [Maria Anna] von Dittelbach (the surname "Vittelbach" does not exist). The supposed name of the first witness "Stöckl von Gerburger" is a mistake that was copied from Köchel. This privy coucilor's name was Ignaz Xaver Stöckl von Gerburg (b. 6 April 1717 in Passau, d. 17 July 1779 in Vienna). The second witness of Maria Fux's will was her physician Franz Pachner (b. 28 January 1718 in  Bad Leonfelden, d. 14 January 1777 in Vienna), a member of the Pachner von Eggenstorf family, whose nephew in 1790, was granted knighthoood and in 1793, founded the Neusiedler paper factory.

The seals and signatures on Maria Fux's will (A-Wsa, AZJ, Test. 14129/18. Jhdt.)

For the sake of historical significance alone, Maria Eva Fux's probate file and will should be published in their entirety. 144 years after Köchel, we should be able to raise our scholarly aspirations to more than excerpts and summaries of Fux documents. The fact that in her will Maria Fux still used her uncle's seal matrix, has previously been overlooked by Fux scholars. One of the most beautiful impressions of Fux's seal was created thirty years after the composer's death.

Johann Joseph Fux's seal which in 1771 was still used by his niece Maria Fux to close the envelope of her will (A-Wsa, AZJ, Test. 14129/18. Jhdt.)

A much earlier imprint of Fux's seal from 17 December 1730 on the marriage contract of Johann Michael Edelbauer reveals that the seal shows a fox with a chicken in its mouth. Note the initials "I F".

Johann Joseph Fux's seal, imprinted on 17 December 1730, on the court musician Johann Michael Edelbauer's marriage contract (A-Wsa, Herrschaft Stift Schotten, 2.1.1.16.A1/2.17170). Edelbauer's wedding took place on 7 January 1731, at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, Tom. 46, 356).

Maria Fux's Mass Endowments

In her will, Johann Joseph Fux's niece Maria established two mass endowments. The deed of the first one, which comprised the establishment of a fund of 1300 florins for the reading of a weekly Mass on every Monday at the parish church of St. Marein near Graz, was partly published by Köchel (Köchel, 292f.). Because in Köchel's book the excerpts of Maria Fux's probate file are followed by this Mass endowment deed, Flotzinger assumed that this document was part of Maria Fux's Sperrs-Relation,and he refers to the fact that he could not find it in the probate file with the note "da nicht aufgefunden" (could not be found there) (Flotzinger, 382). It could not be found there, because endowment deeds are part of a different archival holding, namely the Bestand 1.2.4.7.1 - Stiftungen allgemein | 1525-21.Jh. in the Vienna City Archive's Sonderregistraturen (special registries). The original of Maria Fux's Mass endowment deed shows that Köchel published a heavily cut version of the document. Köchel may already have foreseen Eduard Hanslik's point of criticism that in his book most of these documents, although of very little interest to nineteenth-century music historians, are quoted much too extensively: "But where diligence and accuracy go so far that almost whole archives are being printed verbatim, admiration easily changes into horror." (Hanslik in the Neue Freie Presse of 31 October 1871). Because Köchel not only cut the second paragraph of the endowment deed, but also committed several transcription mistakes and modernized the spelling, I present a complete transcription of the document's original text.

The deed of Maria Fux's Mass endowment to the Church of St. Marein in Styria (A-Wsa, Sonderregistraturen, Stiftungen, A4/7372)
Wir Joseph Georg Hörl Burgermeister, wie auch
der gesamte Rath der Kaÿl: Königl: Haupt= und Residentz=Stadt Wienn geben hiemit jedermänniglich zu vernehmen, was mass[en] weÿl: Ma[ri]a Fuxin seel: in ihrem den 6: April 773: beÿ uns, alß derselben rechtmässigen Abhandlungs Instanz eröfneten Testament im 5ten Abschnit der Pfarrkirch St: Marein in Steuermarkt beÿlaufig zweÿ Stund ausser Gratz zu einer wochentl[ichen] heÿl:[igen] Meeß auf einem privilegirten Altar alle Montag für die sammentl:[iche] Fuchsische verstorbene Freÿndschaft zu lesen 1000: f mit dem Beÿsatz verma[c]het habe, daß Wann diese Stiftmeeß nicht angenommen, und für solches quantum gar nicht gelesen werden könnte, deroselben Uni[iver]sal Erb den Abgang, und nöthigen Betrag daraufzuzahlen schuldig seÿn solle.

Wann nun der Erblasserin Testaments Executor H: Frantz Xavier Pach N:Ö: Landschafts Syndicus das Stift Capital mit zuschlag 300: f: folgsam mittels einer den 1te[n] Xbr: 773: mit N° 10614: auf unseres, und g[e]m[eine]r Stadt Grundbuchs Kammer zu 4: pcnto ausgestellter K.K. Kupferamts Oblig[ation] pr aintausend dreÿhundert Gulden berichtiget, auch den innerösterreicher[sch]en Ordinariats Consens dd° Gratz 20te[n] Julÿ dieß Jahrs |: kraft welchem von dem von erdeutten 1300: f: abfallend jährl: Inte[ress]e pr fünfzig zweÿ Gulden für einen jeweiligen H: Pfarrer zu ersagten St. Marein für die jährl[ich] zu persolvirenden fünfzig zweÿ montägige heÿl: Meeßen a: 45: x. dreÿssig neun Gulden, dann dem dortigen Schullmeister a: 6: x. fünf Gulden 12: Kr: und der Pfarrkirch a: 9: Kr: die übrige[n] sieben Gulden 48: Kr: pro paramentis et reliquis requisitis abgereichet werden sollen :| beÿgebracht hat, auch von dem Herrn Pfarrer [....] und deren Kirchen=Vättern zu ermeldten St: Marein wegen getreu und beständiger Ausrichtung der Stifterin obgehört frommen Willensmeÿnung in Folge des den 10: Junÿ h:[uius]a:[nni] berathschlagten Grundbuchsberichts, jedoch gegen richtigen Empfang deren erstausgewiesenen Stipendien die den 3: Augusti a:[nni] c:[urrentis] datirte Reversales behörig eingeleget worden sind, alß haben Wir es beÿ sothaner Stiftung allerdings belass[en] und darüberhin gewöhnliche Stiftbriefe zu errichten verordnet.

Solchemnach sind zu ewiger Gedächtnüß, und Vesthaltung dieser Gottgefälligen Stiftung dreÿ gleichlauttende Exemplarien errichtet, mit unserem grösseren Grundinsigl bestättiget, sodann eines davon der K:K: milden Stiftungs Commission, das zweÿte dem ernannten Gotteshauß hinausgegeben, und das dritte beÿ obbesagten Grundbuch zu den Stift Akten hinterleget worden. Geschehen Wienn den 28ten Aug: 774:

L:S: (Gemeiner Stadt Wienn Grund Buchs Insigl)
Because Maria Fux's second Mass endowment, the one to the Theatines' Convent in Vienna, was not published by Köchel, it remained unknown to Fux researchers. This is incidental proof that since Köchel, no intensive research has ever been done by Fux scholars in Vienna's archives. Maria Fux's second Mass endowment was based on a copper share worth 1300 florins and was supposed to fund a weekly mass on the weekday on which the foundress of the endowment was to die. This day (6 April 1773) turned out to be an "Erchtag" (Tuesday).

The previously unknown deed concerning Maria Fux's Mass endowment to the Theatines' Convent in Vienna (A-Wsa, Sonderregistraturen, Stiftungen, A4/7373)
Wir Joseph Georg Hörl Burgermeister, wie
auch der gesamte Rath der Kaÿl: Königl: Haupt= und Residentz= Stadt Wienn geben hiemit jedermänniglich zu vernehmen, was mass[en] weÿl:[and] Maria Fuxin seel: in ihrem den 6: April 773: beÿ uns, Als derselben rechtmassigen Abhandlungs Instanz eröfneten Testament im 4tn Abschnied den wohlehrwürdigen P:P: Theatinern allhier beÿ dem heÿl: Kajetan an der hohen Bruken zu dem Ende aintausend dreÿhundert Gulden vermachet habe, auf daß eine wöchentl: heÿl: Meeß für sie auf einem privilegirten Altar jedesmahl an dem Tag ihres Hinscheidens gelesen werde solle.

Wann nun von der Erblasserin Testaments Executore H: Frantz Xaverio Pach N:Ö: Landschafts Syndicus das Stift Kapital mit zuschlag 300: f: folgsam mittels einer den 1: Xbr: 773: auf unseres, und g[e]m[eine]r Stadt Grundbuchs Kammer zu 4: pcnto mit N 10615 ausgestellt, und dorthin erlegten K.K. Kupferamts Obl.[igation] pr 1300: f: berichtiget, und von wohlernannten P:P: Theatinern nach von hochlöbl[icher] N:Ö: Reg: den 24: März dieß Jahrs erfolgten Bestätigung die hochfürstl: Geistl:[ichen] Bewilligung den 8tn April darauf bewürkhet, auch in Folge des von uns den 10ten Junÿ a:[nni] c:[urrentis] berathschlagte[n] Grundbuchs Berichts die den 1te[n] dieß gefertigte Reversales |: kraft welcher die Wochentl: Heÿl:[ige] Meeß jedesmahl an einem Erchtag auf einem privilegirten Altar zu der Stifterin frommen Intention gelesen werden sole :| eingelegt worden sind; Alß haben Wir es Inhalt erstangezogenen Grundbuchs Berichts beÿ sothaner Stiftung allerdings belassen, und darüberhin gewöhnl:[ich]e Stiftbriefe zu errichten verordnet.

Solchemnach sind zu ewiger Gedächtnüß, und Vesthaltung dieser Gottgefalligen Stiftung dreÿ gleichlauttende Exemplarien errichtete mit unserem grösseren Grund=Insigl bestättiget, sodann eines davon der Kaÿserl. Königl: milden Stiftungs Commission, das zweÿte den wohlernannten P:P: hinausgegeben, und das dritte beÿ ged:[achtem] unserem Grundbuch zu den Stift=Akten hinterleget worden. Geschehen Wienn den 4: J[ulÿ] 774

L:S: (Gemeiner Stadt Wienn Grund Buchs Insigl)

The Theatines' Convent at the Hohe Brücke in Vienna (colored engraving after Salomon Kleiner). In the chapel of this convent Mozart and his bride, on 2 August 1982, went to their prenuptial confession.

It is not known when the Mass endowment for St. Marein was discontinued. The endowment for the Theatine Friars probably ended when in 1782, the convent was closed by Joseph II.

Josepha Perger

Maria Fux's universal heir (and thus, the eventual sole heir of Johann Joseph Fux's estate) Josepha Perger was born on 8 November 1744, in the Lower Austrian village of Guntersdorf, daughter of the "Herrschafts-Regent" Joseph Perger and his wife Eva Theresia. It is not known why at that time her parents were staying in the country, but her mother seems to have had relatives in Guntersdorf. Joseph Perger's two other children Anton Wenzel (b. 1750) and Maria Elisabeth (b. 1752) were born in Vienna. Perger obviously became an orphan at a very young age which lead to her adoption by Maria Fux.

The entry concerning the baptism of Maria Josepha Perger on 8 November 1744, in Guntersdorf. Her father Joseph Perger is given as "dermahliger Landtgerichtsverwalter", the godmother was Eva Theresia Wurtz, "Verwalterin in dem Johannes Hof zu Wienn" (Pfarre Guntersdorf, Tom. 3, p. 76).

Köchel gives a short list of successors to Fux's estate ("Vererbung des Vermögens des Joh. Jos. Fux", Köchel, 293), but not only are several of Köchel's dates wrong, he also failed to observe the decrease of Fux's assets in the course of their transfer to subsequent heirs. After having signed a marriage contract on 28 August 1774, which included a mutual appointment as one's heir, Josepha Perger, on 16 October 1774, married Johann Elias Linck, a head cook in the service of Count Kolowrat-Liebsteinský (Köchel's claim that this wedding took place in September 1774 is again wrong).

The signatures and seals of the marriage contract of Johann Elias Link and Josepha Perger (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 3084/1789)

The entry concerning the wedding of Johann Elias Link and Joseph Perger on 16 October 1774, in the Schottenkirche. Note the dates of the three publications of the banns: September 25th, October 2nd, and October 9th. The groom hailed from Arnau (today's Hostinné) in Bohemia and lived at the "K.K. Bancohaus" (today Singerstraße 17-19) (A-Ws, Tom. 34, fol. 51r).

On 16 October 1789, Josepha Link died of a stroke (the date given by Köchel is wrong) and was buried three days later in St. Marx Cemetery.

The entry concerning Josepha Link's obsequies on 18 October 1789, at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, BLB 1789, fol. 347v)

The list of Josepha Link's assets in her probate file shows that in 1789 a bigger part of her inheritance was already gone. What was left were a 1000 fl. bond of the "Stadt-Banco" and a 500 fl. "Kupferamts-Obligation".

The list of financial assets in Josepha Link's Sperrs-Relation (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 3084/1789)

On 1 July 1790, Johann Elias Link married again (the date of this wedding given by Köchel is wrong). His second wife was Maria Theresia Nimpfling, born 12 April 1761 (Graz, St. Peter Tom. 4, p. 377), daughter of a "Tabak-Amts-Officier" in Graz. By the time of Johann Elias Link's death on 24 March 1792 (Wiener Zeitung, 31 March 1792, 849), the assets from Maria Fux's estate were depleted. In Link's probate file a copper bond of 250 fl. is listed as deposit of the Schnitzenbaum endowment.

The entry in Johann Elias Link's probate file referring to the Schnitzenbaum endowment (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A2, 1258/1792)
Ein Schnitzenbaumisches Stiftungs Depositum in einer / Kupferamts Obligation sub nro [...] ddto 1t octobris / 793 auf Josepha Bergerin lautt[end] per 250 f

[translation:]

A deposit of the Schnitzenbaum endowment in form of a copper bond with the number [...]  dated October 1st, 1793 issued under the name Josepha Berger at 250 florins
Some items in Johann Elias Link's estate nourish the fascinating conjecture that they could still have come from the personal property of Johann Joseph Fux: two old silver shoe buckles, an old golden pocket watch with double glass and varnished casing, and an old sword with a silver hilt. On 18 August 1793 (Köchel's date is again wrong), Johann Elias Link's widow married the merchant Michael Anton Constantin (b. 2 February 1767). This chronological sequence of inheritance is of little relevance to Fux research. Its only significance lies in the previously unknown fact that Michael Constantin was an older brother and (as of 1796) guardian of Magdalena Constantin, who was Johann Nestroy's mother. Josepha Perger's long-time heirs had no financial profit from the inheritance. They only kept the right to appoint the beneficiary of Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's charitable endowment of four florins and 30 kreutzer per month to a resident of Vienna's St. Johannes Nepomuceni Spital. This endowment will be dealt with below.

Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's Will

On 16 September 1743, Fux's sister-in-law Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum drew up and signed her will. Parts of this document were published in 1872 by Köchel (Köchel, 295). Flotzinger also presents a fragmentary edition of this document (Flotzinger, 379), and, not surprisingly, manages to botch it in several different ways. First, he falsely describes it as being held by the Niederösterreichisches Landesarchiv in St. Pölten, while it is actually a part of the remains of the files of the Lower Austrian Landrecht in the Austrian State Archives which were heavily decimated in the 1927 fire of the Palace of Justice.

The first page of Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's will which she signed on 16 September 1743 (OeStA, AVA Inneres NÖLR Test 186). Because this document in 1927 suffered heavy water damage, in the course of restoration it was completely covered with Japanese paper.

Because (possibly owing to her extraordinary wealth) Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum was erroneously considered a noblewoman, her probate file and will ended up in the holdings of the Lower Austrian Landrechte Court. The correct shelfmark of Schnitzenbaum's will is A-OeStA/AVA Inneres NÖLR Test 186 (Karton 4, fol. 160-67). Second, Flotzinger, showing unwillingness to go any further than Köchel, only presents three paragraphs of the will which actually consists of nineteen paragraphs. There is no obvious reason to suppress a large part of Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's various legacies which are of significant historical interest, such as her Mass endowments to the Convent of St. Nikolai, to the Wiener Herberg and her other pious bequeathments to various clerical institutions. Not surprisingly, Flotzinger's supposedly updated transcription of the document is flawed: "derfe" was misread as "diesse", "köne" as "sölle" and "in" as "sie" (to name only the gravest errors).

Matthäus Theophil Fux's 1749 "Erbseklärung[sic]" (declaration of inheritance) to the estate of Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum, which Flotzinger describes as "dzt. unauffindbar" ("currently untraceable", Flotzinger, 379), was part of Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's probate file at the Landrechte Court. It cannot be located, because it was destroyed in the 1927 Palace of Justice fire. If Flotzinger had looked for this document at the right place, he would have realized this.

Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's Charity Endowment Deed

In paragraph twelve of her will Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum established a charity endowment of 1500 florins to the St. Johannes Nepomucenispital, an almshouse in the Viennese suburb of Landstraße. The interests of the endowment were to be used to secure the livelihood of a poor woman who was to be chosen by the foundress's heirs and to be supported with a daily payment of nine kreutzer. The recipient of this charitable endowment received the regulatory free clothing on which she was obliged to carry Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's coat of arms. Furthermore, the chosen poor woman was obliged to say a daily prayer and to go to confession and attend Communion on every May 19th, the anniversary of the benefactress's death. Köchel quotes one paragraph from Schnitzenbaum's endowment deed which he located "among the files of the k. k. Statthalterei in Wien" (Köchel, 296). This copy seems to be the one that today is held by the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives in St. Pölten (Allgemeine Pergament-Stiftbriefsammlung Nr. 242 [Karton 9]) from which Flotzinger published a very short passage (Flotzinger, 380). But Flotzinger's text, although it is presented as if it were an original quote, is just a short extract. There is yet another, previously unknown copy of this endowment deed. In March 1841, a copy of the original was made for the municipal administration which survives in the Vienna City Archive's collection of endowment deeds (A-Wsa, Sonderregistraturen, Stiftungen, A2/5341). The complete text of this document is herewith published for the first time.
Regierungs Stiftungsbriefsamlung
N° 242.
Wir Maria Theresia von Gottes
Gnaden Römische Kayserinn etc.
Bekennen hirmit für Unß, unsere Erben und Nachkommen, welchermassen Weyl: Maria Theresia v. Schnitzenbaum seel. in ihrem unterm Sechzehenten Septembris Ain Tausend Sieben Hundert drey und vierzig verfast und den neunzehenten May Ain Tausend Sieben Hundert Neun und Vierzig bei der N. Ö: Regierung in justiz Sachen publicirten Testament §vo: 17tmo [sic] zur größeren Ehre Gottes zum Trost ihrer Seelen und zum Behuff der verlassenen Armuth eine Ewige Stiftung auf eine erarmte Weibs Person mit Ain Tausend Fünff Hundert Gulden Capital in das St. Johannes Nepomuceni Spital auf der Landstraße allhier dergestalten errichtet habe; daß
Erstens: sowohl die dermalige als zukünftige praesentation oder ersetzung dieses Stiftungsplatzes ihrer instituirten Universal-Erbin Eva Maria Fuxinn und nach derselben zeitlichen [fol. 1v] Hintritt ihren Nächsten anverwandten und befreundten zu allen Zeiten verbleibe, mithin derselben oder ihren besagten Anverwandten und befreunden die jedesmahlige apertur zeitlich erindert und jene Persohn welche praesentiret wird wann solche anderst nach der verfaffung[sic] des Spittals hier erarmt, und sonsten würdig befunden wurde, von der zu Besorgung mehrgemelten Spittals versamleten Congregation ohne aller wider Red angenommen. Dann
Andertens diser Stüfftungs=Persohn zur Portion Tägl. Neun Kreutzer nebst institut mässiger Kleydung gereichet auch sonst sie allenthalben denen übrigen Armen gleichgehalten werde. Daentgegen
Drittens solle dieselbe zur immerwehrenden Gedachtnuß der genießenden Wohlthatt, daß Wappen diser milden Stiffterinn an denen Kleydern führen und nach der Verfassung widerholten Spittels nicht nur ihr tägliches Gebett und übrige Andachtsübungen, sondern anbey alljährlichen an dem Tag der Stifterinn ableibens als den Neunzehenten May eine Heilige Beicht und Communion für sie Stiffterinn zu verrichten schuldig seyn Allermassen auch
Viertens: das hievor angeregte Stifftungs Capital pr: Ain Tausend fünff Hundert Gulden von vorgangs benannter Universal Erbinn Eva Maria Fuxinn vermittels einer Statt Banco Obligation untern Dreÿzehenten Februarij dises zu endstehenden Jahrs an das Spittal St: Joannis Nepomuceni mit der Verordnung richtig abgeführet worden, daß selbes alljährlich bey dasiger [fol. 2r] Spittals=Haubt=Rechnung besonders in Empfang und Ausweisung gebracht, auch auf das aller vorsichtigste, wie es immer die menschliche Kluegheit zulasset administriret und genossen werden solle.
Wann nun dise Stifftungs-Sach von unserer N.Ö. Repraesentation und Cammer nach Verrechnung der zur Besorgung dieses Spittals Versammleten Congregation behörig untersuchet und befunden worden, daß sothane fromme Stifftung zu Vermehrung Christlicher Barmherzigkeit und höchst erwünschlicher Versorgung deren allhiesig Statt=Armen gereiche das hirzu gewidmete Capital auch zur unterhalt eines Armen allerdings zuelänglich sey, mithin wir in ausfertigung des gebettenen Stüfft=Brieffs gnädigst gewilliget, und die beregte Stüfftung in unseren allerhöchsten Schutz genommen haben.
Solchemnach Befehlen wir hiemit gnädigst, und wollen, daß über angezogene Stüftungspuncta festiglich gehalten, zu dem Ende dises Stiftbriefs drey gleichlauthende Exemplaria aufgerichtet hirvon eines bey unserer Closter=Raths=Registratur verwahrlich aufbehalten, das andere widerhohlten St. Joannes Nepomuceni Spittal extradiret  auch daselbst in dem Stifftungs-Protocollo ordentlich eingetragen das dritte aber der Stifterinn Universal=Erbinn zu ihrer guten Versicherung ausgehändiget werden solle. Thuen dieses hirmit auch wissentlich mit Urkund dises Brieffs der mit unseren Landesfürstlichen Insigl [fol. 2v] Bekräfftiget und gegeben ist.
Wienn den Sechs und Zwanzigsten Juny des Sibenzehen Hundert Fünfzigsten Jahrs.
P.T. G.[raf] Rosenberg
L.S. Per Commissionem Sacrae Caes Regiae Majestatis in Consilio Repraesentationis et Camerae Inferioris Austriae
Jos. Fr. Edl v Reichmann m/p
Johann Friedrich Edler von Schmidt m/p
Collationirt ex offo: und ist diese Abschrift dem in der Regierungs Stiftungsbrief-Samlung sub N° 242 aufbewahrten original Stiftungsbrief wörtlich gleichlautend. Wien den 23ten März 841.
[L: S:] Ignaz Hirsch mp Regierungs Sekretär und Registraturs Direktor
Maria Theresia Schnitzenbaum's charitable endowment existed way into the late 19th century. The last reference to its bestowal, that I could find in an Amtsblatt, appeared on 6 September 1878 in the newspaper Die Presse.

The announcement of an opening funded by the Schnitzenbaum endowment at the beginning of the Amtsblatt of 5 September 1878 (Die Presse [Abendblatt6 September 1878, p. 3)

According to the 1898 Kataster der in Niederösterreich verwalteten weltlichen Stiftungen nach dem Stande des Jahres 1893, in that year, the Schnitzenbaum endowment had financial assets of 1,915 florins and an annual profit of 78 fl.

Further Mistakes

Flotzinger's article about Fux's life is fraught with more small, not easily noticeable mistakes of which only a few can be addressed here.
  • To identify houses in late seventeenth-century Vienna, Flotzinger relies on Johann Jordan's book Schatz, Schutz und Schantz deß Ertz=Hertzogtumbs Oesterreich (Vienna: van Ghelen, 1701). But since this book merely consists of a listing of houses and their owners according to a virtual walk through the city, it is unreliable and cannot be used to exactly determine the modern location of individual buildings. Thus, Flotzinger is unable to locate the "Winklerisches Haus" where Fux's bride lived in 1698 (Flotzinger, 38). Flotzinger's statement "Winklerisches Haus" offenbar irrig statt Winkherisch, gegenüber dem Lorentzer Gäßl" is false, because not only is Jordan's name "Winkherisch" wrong, this house is also not located opposite the Laurenzergasse. It is the house "Zur Mariahilf" (today Fleischmarkt 9, last conscription number 704) which, as of 1693, was owned by the merchant Johann Niklas Winkhler and his wife Maria Apollonia, née Weigl, widowed Wendtenzweig.
  • Empress Amalia's Kapellmeister Heinrich Holzhauser was not born "c.1685" (Flotzinger, 60), as (as of 2016) given in the notoriously flawed Österreichisches Musiklexikon. Holzhauser was born on 10 July 1675 in the Lower Austrian village of Wilfersdorf (Pfarre Wilfersdorf, Tom. 1, 75). He died on 8 March 1726, in his house Stadt 1061 in Vienna.
  • Otto Heinrich Ponhaimer's first name was not "Johann" (Flotzinger, 60).
  • Flotzinger's transcription of the entry in the 1773 records concerning the death of Maria Fux is flawed (Flotzinger, 381). The word "wo[n]ach" makes no sense and actually reads "word[en]". The mysterious initials "AH" in this entry, that Flotzinger adorns with a question mark, refer to the municipal coroner Anton Hochmayr.
  • The merchant Johann Baptist Muffat did not get married in September 1691 in the Schottenkirche. Flotzinger mistook the entry concerning the publication of the banns in the records of the Schotten parish for Muffat's marriage entry. Muffat's wedding actually took place on 19 August 1691, at St. Leopold's Church (St. Leopold, Tom. 1, 484).
  • A number of curious oversights suggest that Flotzinger's text never underwent a thorough proofreading process. Botched wordings such as "eine Gedenktafel wurde an Fux angebracht" (12) and "Fuxens zweites Ansuchen von Fux" (364) are not supposed to pass a meticulous editing process. This also applies to the misplaced Latin name "Joannes Fux Styrus Hirtenfeldensis" (368), the repeated misspelling of Köchel's name as "Koechel" (363f., 367), and the curious use of an ampersand in italic Garamond (&) in the title of the journal Music & Letters (412).
  • Flotzinger repeatedly refers to Joseph Sonnleithner as "Joseph von Sonnleithner". Unlike his brother Ignaz and his nephew Leopold, Joseph Sonnleithner was not ennobled.
The authors could not agree on the German genitive for Fux's name – Flotzinger prefers "Fuxens", while his colleagues use the word "Fux'". This can be considered an amiable variety.

Conclusions

As far as the edition of documents from Fux's life is concerned, the somewhat unsatisfactory state of Fux research needs no further comment. The situation is reminiscent of O. E. Deutsch's flawed and completely out-of date edition of Mozart documents which will not be replaced by better work in the near future, because the people in charge (and the ones holding the purse strings) are unable to realize the seriousness of the situation. I have repeatedly addressed this particular problem on this blog, a problem that of course is not limited to historical musicology. An annoying phenomenon in the field of humanities is the fact that there is no reliable authority which is qualified to do a vetting process of palaeographic work on a general academic level. Only too often, the scientific institutions, which are supposed to teach transcription skills and expertise on archival sources, show themselves to be unable to even assess the skills of their own graduates. Scientific projects, that are funded by major institutions like the Austrian Science Fund and are based on the transcription and study of historical sources, never even once face a thorough vetting process, because this kind of quality management would not only overburden the sponsor's resources, the funding institution would also at some point have to rely on outside experts (and possible applicants) whose lack of competence is the cause of most problems in the first place. Concerning this kind of projects, I have come up with a rule of thumb which describes the problem at hand: to be safe from any quality control (by the sponsor or your peers), try to base your historical research on the transcription of at least of 5000 files. No evaluation management will then be able to ever check the quality of your work and what you did with your sources. And the same rule – involving much fewer documents – applies to the publication of books.

Fux scholars should detach themselves from the influence of Köchel (like Mozart scholars from that of Deutsch), go back to square one and implement the demands of modern editorial practice into their work. A complete edition of all Fux documents should be the first and most important task. For this project the funding that the University of Graz and the State of Styria have already invested in Flotzinger's book will not be available again. A Viennese publishing house, which recently released a new edition of Köchel's Fux Werkverzeichnis, has begun with the edition of works by Fux (for which the demand must be considered rather marginal). Considering the astonishing fact that a great number of Fux documents are still unpublished, this publisher would be well advised to also initiate the publication of an up-to-date collection of these sources. This project, however, could be facing problems, because Ernst Weidinger, the owner of this publishing firm, has not only shown himself unable to work with competent and independent-minded researchers. He is also known for paying academically qualified freelancers an hourly fee of only 15 Euros. A member of the staff of this publishing firm tried to explain this stunning stinginess with "the bad economic situation of the construction industry".



Bibliography
Altenburg, Johann Ernst. 1795. Versuch einer Anleitung zur heroisch-musikalischen Trompeter- und Pauker-Kunst. Halle.

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© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2016. All rights reserved.

Updated: 21 September 2023

My thanks go to Cristina Iordache, Janet Page, Maurizio Tomasi. Francesco Centola, Christine Babelon, Nigel Boon, Kris Steyaert, Wolfgang Oehmicke, Joachim Tepperberg, Georg Gaugusch, Reinhard Gruber and Susanne Claudine Pils for their support during my research for this article.



Postscript (March 2020)

Given the fact that the above study, which massively increased the corpus of known Fux documents, was produced without any financial support from any scholarly institution, some people have asked me what the Fux researchers are doing who actually are getting paid for their work. I cannot speak for all of them, but, to give an example of what is being done at public expense, I want to point readers to a page of the Fux online website which is funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the City of Vienna, and the Katholischer Medien Verein Privatstiftung in Graz. Under the header "Fux-Dokumente und -Erwähnungen" this page presents what some people consider serious Fux research: a list of "Mentions of Fux in the Wien(n)erisches Diarium" which was collected in the digitized volumes of the Wienerisches Diarium by entering Fux's name into the search mask on the ANNO page of the Austrian National Library. These feeble research methods which – as is the iron rule in this part of the world – avoid the visit of an actual archive like the plague, are a phenomenon that thoroughly defines the current situation of historical musicology in Austria.