Anton Cajetan Adlgasser

Snapshot

The man who died at the Salzburg Cathedral organ. Anton Cajetan Adlgasser served as court organist for 27 years, was a colleague of Leopold Mozart and Michael Haydn, and was praised by Mozart himself. His dramatic death in 1777 is one of the most striking footnotes in Salzburg’s musical history.

The Story

Anton Cajetan Adlgasser arrived in Salzburg as a teenager, trained under Johann Ernst Eberlin at the court music school, and in 1750 took over the cathedral organist post from his teacher. He held it for 27 years without interruption, playing every Vespers, every solemn Mass, and every major ceremony at Salzburg Cathedral across the entire period of Wolfgang Mozart’s Salzburg childhood and youth.

He was a real part of the Mozart family’s professional world. He married Eberlin’s daughter, linking two musical dynasties. Leopold Mozart signed his marriage register. In 1767, the three men, Adlgasser, Michael Haydn, and Wolfgang Mozart, split a three-act sacred Singspiel, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes, each composing one act. Only Mozart’s act survives. That same year Adlgasser’s wife sang in the production. The professional and personal lives of these families were thoroughly interwoven.

Mozart wrote in a 1776 letter that Adlgasser was a “bravissimo contrapuntista,” a generous assessment from a composer who was not always generous. The two had worked alongside each other for years by then, and the compliment reads as genuine.

On 22 December 1777, during Vespers at Salzburg Cathedral, Adlgasser suffered what was almost certainly a stroke while playing. His fingers faltered during the first Psalm. A colleague stepped in to cover the bass pedals; Adlgasser clutched the manuals, unable to stop or continue. He died the following day, at the age of 48. Mozart was in Mannheim at the time, looking for a new post, and received the news in a letter from his father. He subsequently took over Adlgasser’s cathedral organist position. The end of one career created the space for another.