News of this event was published by Mercy’s Anzeiger 31/10/1854. The report noted: ‘Next Sunday 5th November will take place the festival inauguration of the newly built Organ, by Mr Josef Prediger from Albrechtsdorf [Liberec], in the Capuchin Church of St Joseph [Josef] in the New Town. At 9am will the Reverend Dr Hieronymus Ziedler, Abbot of Strahov, conduct the ceremonial inauguration. Then will a sermon-song [Predigtlied] be intoned with the accompaniment of the new organ, whereupon a German festival service will be given by the Reverend Dr Tersch. There follows the pontifical Mass, in which M. Hayden’s [Haydn] folk-Mass [Volksmesse] will be performed by the chorus of the Institute for the Blind of St Raphael. During the afternoon the Reverend H.P. Hawránek [Havránek] at 4pm will give a Czech festival service. That will be followed by a Te Deum laudaumus.’ No further details of these events were given by the source. Prediger, from Liberec, was one of the most active and effective organ builders in nineteenth-century Central Europe. The ‘Volksmesse’ by Michael Hayden was almost certainly his then well-known and widely performed German Singmesse, Deutsches vollständiges Hoch-Amt of 1795.

A review, signed with a mark of a dot surrounded by a circle, of this occasion was published by Mercy’s Anzeiger 31/10/1854. The correspondent reported that the organ builder Jos. Prediger from Albrechtsdorf [Liberec] had already built the ‘splendid organ’ at St Rafael in the Institute for the Blind. After giving details of the religious content of the occasion, the source related that members of the Institute for the Accommodation and Employment of the Adult Blind performed Haydn’s Volksmesse under the direction of their music teacher Mr Jos. Glanz. In the afternoon a priest of the Order of the Hospitallers, Hawranek, gave a service in Czech followed by a performance of a Te Deum.