Unknown piano piece by Mozart discovered in Tyrol, Austria
Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider
Friday, March 23, 2012
The musicologist Univ.-Doz. Mag.art. Dr. phil. Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider came upon a handwritten music book from around 1780 during her everyday work for RISM in Tyrol. This volume contains, among other pieces, a previously unknown piano piece, which is unequivocally attributed to the junior “Wolfgango Mozart”.
On pp. 12-14 there is a piece with the tempo mark “Allegro molto” and authorship “Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart”.
It is not registered in the Koechel catalogue, the standard directory of Mozart’s works, nor is it mentioned as a piece by Mozart anywhere else thus far.
It is known that especially during the second half of the 18th century, there have been numerous false author attributions, handwritten and printed, for different reasons. In the course of scholarly cataloguing and acquisition of knowledge, it was therefore necessary to investigate whether the claim “by the junior Mr Wolfgang Mozart”, written contemporaneously on the piece, is justifiable or not.
Immediately after the Allegro molto KV deest, and still later in the collective manuscript, are undoubtedly genuine pieces by Wolfgang Amadé’s father Leopold. In them, the author is presented consistently as “Del Signore Mozart”.
Thus the first conclusion can be drawn: If in the same source the father is always properly described as “Signore Mozart”, then why should the son, who appears only once here as is the case, not be appropriately differentiated with the attribute Junior (“giovane”)?
The entire former private music collection from the Tyrolean Lech Valleywas purchased in 2011 by the Museum Gruenes Haus in Reutte/Tyrol, where regionally-specific cultural assets are held in safekeeping. This was made possible through funding by the Cultural Department of the Provincial Government of Tyrol. In the RISM database, the piano book “Sterzing 1780” has already been completely recorded. The bibliographic records are accessible to all in the RISM online catalog (library siglum: A-RTgh).
The Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg will present this piano piece to the public at 11 AM on March 23, 2012 in the Tanzmeistersaal of the Mozart Residence in Salzburg. Florian Birsak will play it on Mozart’s original pianoforte.
Listen to the first recording of the new Mozart piece beginning Saturday, March 24, 2012, played by Florian Birsak on Mozart’s original pianoforte on iTunes. Please find more information here.
Complete press release English
Modern edition of the piece (© Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider, 2012)
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