ABSTRACT
This article clarifies three issues concerning Haydn's late masses and their association with the name day of Princess Maria Esterházy. 1. The theory that the princess' name day fell on the Feast of Mary's Birth (September 8) with festivities simply postponed to the following Sunday fails to recognize that in the 1800s that Sunday was always the Feast of the Name of Mary, a little known moveable feast. 2. The first three of Haydn's late masses have tenuous connections to the princess' name day, either due to lack of evidence about their premieres, Haydn's own titles (none of which suggest a Marian celebration), or expressive contents that raise questions of propriety to a Marian celebration. 3. A closer look at liturgy reconnects these three works to the name day in intriguing ways: the St. Bernard Mass should have premiered on his feast day (September 11) which in 1796 happened to be the Sunday of Maria Namen; and the bellicose rumblings
286of the Missa in tempore belli and the aggressive qualities of the Missa in angustiis might be seen as appropriate to the origin of Maria Namen which was instituted to commemorate the liberation of Vienna from the Turkish siege of 1683.
