The duties of this large and impressive retinue of musicians were threefold; the provision of music for the court chapel, the performance of opera and oratorios, and on Sundays and other special days to provide music to accompany formal public dinners. Although a large number of court operas date from the period under discussion, opportunities for presenting them were restricted to one work mounted for the Carnival season in January and February, and the birthdays and name-days of the emperor and his consort. The latter were performed in the Hofburg’s main theatre, a lavishly decorated venue which had been totally remodelled from the existing Tanzsaal at the end of the century by Francesco Galli-Bibiena, the founder of the hugely influential family of architects and scenic designers. It would be the Galli-Bibienas grandiose architectural stage sets, indissolubly linked with the rise of opera seria, which transformed the staging of opera in Vienna and throughout Europe. Such productions were, according to report, given “at the greatest expense, and performed with such magnificence, according to connoisseurs, as London and Paris had never seen”. Astonishingly, these performances on so-called “gala days” were given only once. A composer commissioned to provide a Carnival opera, which were given in the smaller Hofburg theatre, might expect his work to be seen and heard rather more widely, since they received several performances. Commissions for both Carnival and “gala day” operas were widely sought after and by no means restricted to composers attached to the court. Among them were several women composers, including the Roman Camilla de Rossi, four of whose oratorios were given during the reign of Joseph I. One, Il Sacrificio d’Abramo (1708), has been recorded. A few years later Maria Margherita Grimani’s Pallade e Marte (1713) became the first court opera by a woman to be produced in the Hofburg.

Sacred music

Religious music occupied an even more important part in the life of the Hofburg, particularly during the reigns of the pious Leopold I and his second son, who became Charles VI in 1712. The entire court calendar was in fact structured around the Roman Catholic liturgical year, with every year witnessing the same sequence of religious celebration and devotions. Religious processions played an important role, contemporary observers noting that the imperial court even outdid Italy in this respect. The main focus of such devotions was centred around Easter, much to the disconcertion of some of the more worldly visitors to the Hofburg. In 1726 the Duc du Richlieu felt constrained to voice his discomfort after claiming to have spent more than a hundred hours in church with Charles VI between Palm Sunday and Easter Monday, a regime Richlieu felt to be suited only to “the sturdiest of monks”. Not surprisingly, it was during Lent that musical activity was at its most concentrated. Every Sunday during this period witnessed the performance of an oratorio or sepolcro, a genre that appears to have been peculiar to the Viennese court. The sepolcro dates back to the time of Ferdinand III, taking its name from the opening act of a religious drama in which Christ’s sepulchre was initially viewed covered in black velvet. During the orchestral introduction this was then removed to reveal the sepulchre, the remaining acts also being staged. Originally the cast lists of sepulcri consisted entirely of allegorical characters, but later biblical characters were also included, eventually taking over entirely as the form became increasingly indistinguishable from oratorio.