Recent Discoveries in Viennese Copies of Mozart’s Concertos (original) (raw)

Beethoven's and Mozart's Lost Oboe Concerto Manuscripts: A New Lead in Augsburg

Beethoven's and Mozart's Lost Oboe Concerto Manuscripts: A New Lead in Augsburg, 2022

In 2002 the research for Beethoven's lost oboe concerto came to a temporary end. Now I've found new leads to the autograph manuscript – and to Mozart's lost oboe concerto, too, and to a lost opera of Joseph Haydn. It is no coincidence that all autograph manuscripts are missing at the same time: They were together and possibly are, played in a concert in Augsburg/Germany. Maybe one of the last steps to solve this old riddle? Dive with me into still unknown depths of Augsburg's musical history.

Mozart, Kirnberger and the Idea of Musical Purity: Revisiting Two Sketches from 1782

Eighteenth Century Music, 2016

ABSTRACTWhen Beethoven praised Mozart'sDie Zauberflöte, he emphasized the multitude of musical styles and genres to be found in the opera, ranging from folk tunes to arias to hymn-like textures. The most extraordinary stylistic and generic allusions occur during the ‘Song of the Armoured Men’ in Act 2. This movement owes its extraordinary character to a ‘baroque’ accompaniment and a Lutheran-hymn quotation, the source and meaning of which continue to be discussed in Mozart research. While scholars have often suggested that Mozart took the hymn melody from Johann Philipp Kirnberger'sDie Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik(where it is quoted without its text), Reinhold Hammerstein argues that because the composer also appears to have known the hymn's text, he must have encountered the melody elsewhere. This article, based on a study of Mozart's sketches forDie Zauberflöteand a close reading of Kirnberger's writings, supports the thesis that Mozart borrowed the hym...

Mozart and the Practice of Sacred Music, 1781-91

Traditional accounts of Mozart’s oeuvre have regarded the final decade of the composer’s life as a fallow period for the composition of sacred music, broken only by the production of two divergent large-scale works and a small motet. While a number of articles have challenged this picture through the redating of various fragments and copies, there has yet to be a comprehensive study that integrates these discussions with recent developments in the assessment of non-autograph sources. The present thesis attempts to provide a detailed re-evaluation of the place of sacred music in Mozart’s thinking during his residence in Vienna. A common explanation for Mozart’s apparent silence is the introduction in 1783 of a city-wide Gottesdienstordnung by the Emperor Joseph II, reducing the number of services at which instrumentally-accompanied sacred music could be performed. The severity of the restrictions has been exaggerated, and there is evidence to suggest that the provisions of the Gottesdienstordnung were ignored at prominent churches in Vienna, including St. Stephen’s Cathedral. In its scale and technical demands, the contemporary Mass in C minor, K. 427 is a telling indication of where Mozart’s aesthetic sensibilities lay. Mozart’s associations with the Hofkapelle and St. Stephen’s Cathedral are the most important examples of the composer’s interest in sacred music in Vienna. A number of previously inaccessible sources from both institutions provide new evidence on the origins of the “Coronation” Mass K. 317 and the context of Mozart’s petition to become adjunct Kapellmeister at the Cathedral in 1791. The early textural history of the Requiem K. 626 has been widely misunderstood, and the development of the work is reconsidered within the framework of the obsequies for Mozart held on 10 December 1791, an occasion at which part of the Requiem is said to have been performed. Newly uncovered documentary and musical sources provide evidence for the dissemination of Mozart’s sacred music during the composer’s lifetime, and suggest that Mozart may have been associated with St. Michael’s, the church where the composer’s obsequies were eventually held.