New at the Bibliotheca Mozartiana of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg - Mozart Autographs of the Eggers Collection

Ulrich Leisinger

Thursday, December 11, 2025

It is the fate of most private collections that the treasures brought together over a long period of time, are dispersed again. In former days typically in one single auction, nowadays often artificially prolonged over as series of sales so as not to saturate the market. Many of the Mozart autographs that had been sold during the troubled 1920s and 1930s, were auctioned again between 1975 and 2005. This offered professor Hans Joachim Eggers (1927–2016), a renowned virologist and Mozart aficionado from Cologne, a unique chance to bring together an exceptional collection of Mozartiana. This collection mainly consisted of letters and documents, but also included music manuscripts of the first rank. Thanks to the generosity of the heirs, twelve items – eight letters and documents as well as four music manuscripts – have come into the possession of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg. The collections of the Foundation rank among the finest in the world: they date back to the 19th century when the two sons of Wolfgang Amadé and Constanze Mozart donated almost all their Mozart memorabilia to the Dommusikverein und Mozarteum established in 1841 in Salzburg (one of the immediate predecessors of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, founded in 1880).

The Eggers collection is the most comprehensive and most valuable addition to the collections since the gifts of the Mozart sons. Hans Joachim Eggers was proud of his manuscripts but also rather reserved. He did not disclose the extent of his collections even to the Mozarteum Foundation in every detail, although he was a regular visitor to the Mozart week. Thus, no photographs were available to the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA X/28/Abt. 3–5/3) for Mozart’s arrangement of a Kyrie by Georg Reutter the Younger from his Mass in D Major HofR 44/80. This work was long regarded as a genuine Mozart fragment and was therefore counted formerly as KV 91 (in KV-1 and KV-2, but mistakenly also as Anh. 17), ‘redated’ in KV-3 to KV-6 as KV 186i and now described as KV 2024 Anh. A 26. Therefore, the special exhibition presented at the Mozart Residence in Salzburg from 28 November 2025 to 1 February 2026 rightly bears the title Prachtvolle Premiere: Die Mozart-Autographe der Sammlung Eggers, since most of these items have never been shown publicly.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Miserere in A Minor, KV 85 (fragment), copy in Leopold Mozart’s handwriting, presumably Bologna, 1770
Acquired from Hans Schneider, Tutzing, 1987
The “Miserere” in A minor, KV 85, survives only in a copy by Leopold Mozart. Wolfgang set Psalm 50 to music in 1770 in the style of Padre Giovanni Battista Martini, with whom he was studying in Bologna at the time. However, the copy breaks off at verse 16.
Bibliographic Metadata
RISM ID no. 1001313397 (RISM Catalog | RISM Online)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Rondo in A Major for Piano and Orchestra, KV 386, Autograph (folios 2–3 containing mm. 23–62)
Vienna, October 19, 1782
Acquired at Sotheby’s, London, June 14, 1976
Composed in 1782, Mozart’s second year in Vienna, the Concert Rondo in A major for Piano and Orchestra, KV 386, survives only in incomplete form. The manuscript’s first leaf was kept by a former owner, while the remaining pages – some intact, others cut into smaller fragments – were given away as souvenirs in the 19th century. Several of these pieces have since been lost.
Bibliographic Metadata
RISM ID no. 1001310631 (RISM Catalog | RISM Online)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Two Masonic songs
Autograph, Vienna, late 1785 or early 1786
Acquired from Hans Schneider, Tutzing, 1983
The Masonic song “Zerfließet heut, geliebte Brüder,” KV 483, for cantor, male choir, and organ, was first performed – together with “Ihr unsre neuen Leiter”, KV 484, written on the same leaf – at the ceremonial opening of the Lodge “Zur neugekrönten Hoffnung” in Vienna on 14 January 1786.
Bibliographic Metadata
RISM ID no. 1001313725 (RISM Catalog | RISM Online)

Georg Reutter Jr., Kyrie in D Major
Copy in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s handwriting, KV Anh. A 26 (formerly KV 91)
Vienna, ca. 1787–1788
Acquired at J. A. Stargardt, Marburg, June 8–9, 1982
This unusual manuscript contains the first 22 bars of a Kyrie by Georg Reutter the Younger, written in Mozart’s hand. Maximilian Stadler, who assisted Constanze Mozart in organizing her husband’s musical estate, regarded it as an unfinished original composition by Mozart and added thirteen bars in an effort to ‘complete’ it.
Bibliographic Metadata
RISM ID no. 1001313816 (RISM Catalog | RISM Online)

All four items have been catalogued for RISM by Armin Brinzing.

In addition to the musical autographs, the Eggers collection also includes eight letters and documents. All manuscripts from the collection can be found in the Bibliotheca Mozartiana digital.

If you have any further questions, please contact the Bibliotheca Mozartiana.

Image: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Miserere in A Minor, KV 85 (fragment). Available online.

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Category: Library collections

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