Loeb Music Library

After, I confess, a somewhat longer pause than anticipated, we return with the first of a series of posts on recently-digitized items from the collection. As always, these and many other scores are available in our collection of Digital Scores and Libretti.

To begin, I’ve selected a set of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: published editions, as well as copyist’s manuscripts, likely made from first or early editions. They’re assembled in a volume of music that may have been prepared for Count Anton Georg Apponyi, a member of the Gesellschaft der Associierten, the Viennese musical society founded in 1786 by Baron Gottfried van Swieten. It includes:

[Sonatas, piano, K. 533/494, F major]. Sonate pour le clavecin ou piano-forte, oeuvre 44 composé par W.A. Mozart. Vienne: Artaria, [1798].

RISM A/I, M/MM 6849

Artaria’s reissue of K. 533 and K. 494, from Hoffmeister’s first edition of 1788.

XIV. différentes pieces pour le piano forte par W.A. Mozart. A Paris: Chez Pleyel, [1805?].

RISM A/I, M/MM 7458

Volume 5 of Pleyel’s Collection complette des œuvres de piano par W.A. Mozart, containing 14 pieces for piano.

[Rondos, piano, K. 511, A minor]. No. 2o Rondeau pour le forte piano, ou clavicembalo composé par Mr. W.A. Mozart; J. Gyenis [copyist?]. Manuscript, ca. 1795-1800.

Manuscript music notated in ink on 8-stave paper with a watermark of 3 crescent moons and the letters “FA.” Originally composed in 1787; this manuscript probably derives from the 1st or a very early edition: the notation in measure 161 in the left hand corresponds to the autograph. Includes early (possibly contemporary) manuscript fingering to the bass line of measures 122-124. Some notation to measure 40 is lacking, and added in pencil in an early hand.

The last 2 pages of music are in a different hand, with the initials “MA.” This unidentified piece – arpeggiated passages over a chordal progression – consists of a simple tune, possibly for violin with piano accompaniment, with a correction and one measure crossed out, indicating that it may have been composed as a teaching piece.

[Sonatas, violin, piano, K. 454, B♭ major]. Sonata pour le clavecin ou piano forte avec un violon, no 21 par Mr. W.A. Mozart. Manuscript, ca. 1795-1800.

A manuscript of the keyboard part only, notated in ink on 8-stave paper with a watermark of 3 crescent moons and the letters “BAC.” K. 454 was composed in 1784 and published by Christoph Torricella in July; this copy was probably made from the first or an early edition.

On the verso of a the final leaf is a 1 page song notated in both ink and pencil, in a different hand.

[Trios, piano, strings, K. 496, G major]. Trio in G per il cembalo ò fortepiano, violino e violoncello del sig: W:A: Mozart. Manuscript, ca. 1795-1800.

A manuscript of the keyboard part of the Piano Trio in G major, K. 496, notated in ink on 8-stave paper with a watermark incorporating a canopy over the letter “A” countered by “GF” over “C.” At the bottom of the title page, in different ink, is written “Graf Anton Nr. 21 [crossed out, with "19" substituted] Sonate uman.”

This trio was composed in 1786 and published in Vienna by Hoffmeister in the same year; this copy was likely made from the 1st or an early edition.

[Quartets, piano, strings, K. 478, G minor]. Quartetto per il clavicembalo o forte piano accompagnement violino, viola, e violoncello del sig: W:A: Mozart. Manuscript, ca. 1795-1800.

A manuscript of the keyboard part of the String Quartet in G minor, K. 478, notated in ink on 8-stave paper with a watermark of 3 crescent moons over “Real,” a canopy, and the letters “GL,” similar to the watermark on paper Mozart used in 1791 for sketches of Die Zauberflöte. The quartet, composed in 1785, was published by Hoffmeister in December of that year; this copy was probably prepared from the 1st or an early edition.

“Graf Anton Apponyi” is written in light pencil at the right hand corner of the title page; at the bottom of the title page, in ink, is “Graf Anton” is scratched out, and “angefangen den 2. December N17 (corrected from 19) Anton” written below. In the score, early penciled annotations include fingering, accidentals, and dynamics.

The Loeb Music Library holds multiple copies of the other two pieces in this volume, and had already digitized these copies:

[Sonatas, violin, piano. Selections]. Six sonates pour le clavecin, ou pianoforte avec l’accompagnoment [sic] d’un violon, oeuvre II par Wolf. Amadee Mozart. Vienne: Artaria, [1781].

First edition, 1st issue, RISM A/I, M 6492

Mozart’s first works to be printed in Vienna, after his arrival in the city in March of 1781.

This copy is part of the Biblioteca Mozartiana Eric Offenbach (BMEO); digitized along with the score are a photocopy of a letter from Alexander Weinmann to Eric Offenbacher regarding the edition and Weinmann’s speculations about a possible earlier publication by Torricella, and a typewritten note containing information on this work.

[Symphonies, K. 543, E♭ major; arr.]. Wolfg. Ama. Mozarts grosse Sinfonie ins Claviergesetzt und dem verdienstvollen Tonküstler und Verehrer dieses unvergesslichen Meisters … von Johann Wenzel. Prag: Zu haben beÿm Verfasser; Leipzig: In der Breitkopfischen Buchhandlung, [ca. 1794].

First edition, RISM A/I, M 5540

- Kerry Masteller

In this week’s showcase of newly-digitized scores, I’ve selected three first editions of Mozart works:

Grande sonate : arrangée pour le clavecin ou piano forte avec accompagnement d’un violon obligé : oeuvre 21 tiré d’un trio de W.A. Mozart (À Vienne: Artaria, [1792]), RISM M and MM 6299.

The first edition of the earliest arrangement, for piano with violin obligato, of the Divertimento for violin, viola and violoncello in E-flat major, K. 563. The autograph manuscript of K. 563, composed in September, 1788, is lost, giving first editions of the piece particular value for research.

Ariette: [Ein Weib ist das herlichste Ding]: avec variations pour le clavecin ou piano forte. no. [10] par W.A. Mozart (Vienne: Artaria, [1791]), RISM M7096.

The first edition, first issue of K. 613, Variationen über das Lied Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding. Between 1789 and 1795, Benedikt Schack and Franz Xaver Gerl set seven libretti by Emanuel Schickaneder for performance at the Theater auf der Weiden in Vienna. Mozart took the theme for this set of variations from Die verdeckten Sachen (September, 1789), the second of these seven Singspiels featuring the comic character Anton.¹

Sonate pour le forte-piano, ou clavecin avec accompagnement d’un violon composé par Mr. Wolf. Amad. Mozart (Vienne: Hoffmeister, [1786]), RISM M6543.

The first edition, first issue of the Sonata for violin and piano in E-flat major, K. 481; the piano part is printed, while the violin part is manuscript, in an 18th-century copyist’s hand.

These scores join almost sixty other Mozart manuscripts and early editions already in the library’s collection of Digital Scores and Libretti. Later this month, we’ll be returning to opera, with vocal scores by J.C. Bach, Busoni, Cherubini, Verdi, and Zemlinksy.

-Kerry Masteller

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1. Peter Branscombe. Dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebirge, Der. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Ed. Stanley Sadie. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. 2 Nov. 2010. (Access restricted to Harvard affiliates)

A few recent acquisitions in the recordings collection:

Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer

We recently received this deluxe bound edition of Anita O’Day’s complete scrapbooks that includes a documentary film about the singer and a bonus DVD of outtake interviews and musical performances. The set also includes tributes by jazz writers James Gavin and Will Friedwald, as well as excerpts from Anita O’Day’s autobiography High Times, Hard Times. Many will know of her performance from Jazz on a Summer’s Day, a documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, but this edition provides a wealth of new material about her fascinating life.

Find it here: Loeb Music Library AC 36770.

Eddy Brown (Symposium)

Recently the Marston label featured early recordings (Dec. 1914) by violinist Eddy Brown in its set The Dawn of Recording: The Julius Block Cylinders. Born in Chicago in 1895, Brown studied violin with Jenö Hubay in Budapest and Leopold Auer in St. Petersburg and he made his debut in Germany in 1910. On this new Symposium disc, he can be heard playing Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky from Berlin in the mid-1920s and the Sonata Virginianesque by American composer John Powell around 1940 (with Powell himself accompanying). In the 1930s Brown became active in radio, and he served as director of WQXR for almost twenty years.

Find it here: Loeb Music Library CD 37296.

Karl Amadeus Hartmann and the String Quartet (Cybele)

This 3-CD set inaugurates a new series (Künstler im Gespräch) on the Cybele label that will combine a featured composer’s music with spoken word recordings that help to illuminate that composer’s work. Here the focus is on Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s complete works with string quartet – two quartets, the Little Concerto for String Quartet and Percussion, and the Chamber Concerto for Clarinet, String Quartet and String Orchestra. The spoken word material includes Hartmann himself from 1962, an interview with his wife in 1994, and a conversation with his son from 2009. Notes in German and English are also rich with biographical detail and illustrations.

Find it here: Loeb Music CD 37004.

- Peter Laurence