Heilig Kreuz (c)
There has always been a connection between the canon’s founding of “Heilig Kreuz” and the Mozarts. Leopold was member of the boys’ choir of the Catholic baroque church “Heilig Kreuz”, and when Wolfgang Amadeus and his mother stopped in Augsburg on their way to Paris in 1777, he met the canons and played the church’s organ. Some of his compositions were also played in this collegiate church. On October 23, Mozart wrote a letter to his family and described the events in the monastery as follows: “…I then had dinner together with my cousins at the church, and they played some music at the end of the table. I performed a symphony and played the violin very much to their liking. The dean is an honest and funny man called Zeschinger, who knows Dad quite well. During the night of the soupée, I played the Strasbourg Concerto very well. After that, they got me a clavicord and I played some preludes as well as a sonata and some variations by Fischer…”.
Even after their death, the relationship between father and son and “Heilig Kreuz” still existed. Leopold’s daughter Nannerl sent musical scores from their private archive to Augsburg after her father had died in 1787, and Wolfgang Amadeus gave copies of his compositions to the monastery we now know as the Dominican monastery. In a music archive, which was started in 1855, there are now the many pieces of Christian music which Wolfgang Amadeus composed: 15 masses, one Sanctus, one Agnus Dei, three Gradualien and Offertorien, four litanies, three vespers as well as four symphonies and arias. A great part of this archive has survived, despite secularization and World War II and still belongs to the Dominican monastery.
Even by the end of the 18th century, Augustinian Canton P. Matthäus Fischer (1763-1840), who met Wolfgang Amadeus at the age of 14, supported the performance of Mozart’s music in Augsburg. Fischer used much of the sheet music in the archive of “Heilig Kreuz” to make the scores complete. As the material from the archive contains original comments made by Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus, it is of great importance to those who work on new interpretations of Mozart’s compositions.
Nowadays, especially the Protestant church of “Heilig Kreuz” serves as a venue where Mozart’s music is played during the Mozart Festival and within the context of other concert series.
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