Mozart autograph from Budapest now available online
Balázs Mikusi
Thursday, July 16, 2015
The head of the RISM national working group in Hungary, Balázs Mikusi (National Széchényi Library, Budapest; H-Bn), has announced that the newly discovered autograph fragment of Mozart’s famous Sonata in A major (K. 331, with the ‘Alla Turca’ finale) is now available online. The National Széchényi Library has just launched a website to make this valuable manuscript freely accessible to all:
http://mozart.oszk.hu/index_en.html
A provisional record for this work is in the RISM online catalog (RISM ID no. 530011221).
The website describes the background of this discovery:
“In the spring of 2014, an unknown Mozart manuscript was found in National Széchényi Library, Budapest, by Dr. Balázs Mikusi, head of the Music Collection. Since the four-page fragment includes close to half of one of Mozart’s best-known pieces, the Sonata in A major (K. 331, with the ‘Alla Turca’ finale) in the composer’s own handwriting, the discovery attracted extraordinary attention. At the manuscript’s public presentation, held on September 26, 2014 in the packed Ceremonial Hall of the Library, Zoltán Kocsis performed the sonata on a copy of a fortepiano from Mozart’s time, rectifying some errors in earlier editions of the work, but the discovery was in the headlines all over the world several weeks before. Since we received a great number of both private and institutional queries, National Széchényi Library has decided to make a digital copy of this precious manuscript freely available to all, so that music lovers could study Mozart’s handwriting, and practicing musicians and musicologists may compare earlier editions of the A-major Sonata with the original notation of the composer.”
For more information, please contact Balázs Mikusi (mikusi@oszk.hu)
This newly-discovered manuscript has already been incorporated into a modern edition, published by Henle Verlag and edited by Henle CEO and our very own RISM president, Wolf-Dieter Seiffert (see our article about this publication, “The music world will sit up and listen,” June 2015).
CEO of Henle Verlag and our very own RISM president, Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, - See more at: www.rism.info/en/home/newsdetails/browse/1/article/64/the-music-world-will-sit-up-and-take-notice-on-the-new-urtext-edition-of-mozarts-piano-sonata-in.html
CEO of Henle Verlag and our very own RISM president, Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, - See more at: www.rism.info/en/home/newsdetails/browse/1/article/64/the-music-world-will-sit-up-and-take-notice-on-the-new-urtext-edition-of-mozarts-piano-sonata-in.html
Image credit: First page of the sonata, used with kind permission of the National Széchényi Library.
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