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On Mozart's Partial Autograph of the Duet ‘Nun, liebes Weibchen’, K.625/592a

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David J. Buch*
Affiliation:
University of Northern Iowa

Extract

Mozart's partial autograph of the duet ‘Nun, liebes Weibchen’, K.625/592a, written for Emanuel Schikaneder's heroic-comic opera Der Stein der Weisen oder die Zauberinsel (Theater auf der Wieden, 11 September 1790) has not yet received the attention it deserves in the secondary literature. Perhaps this is due to the reluctance of scholars to accept Mozart's authorship. Because the initial string parts and all of the vocal lines are in another hand, and because Mozart did not enter the duet in his own handwritten catalogue, Alfred Einstein suggested that Mozart merely orchestrated original material possibly composed by Benedikt Schack, a suggestion that has been repeated as if it were a fact in several prominent studies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1999

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References

1 For example, Hermann Abert, W. A. Mozart, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1921), ii, 705, doubted its authenticity and described the duet as a thoroughly modest piece in the then current comic style, which one could attribute to Mozart only reluctantly. Théodore de Wyzewa and Georges de Saint-Foix, Wolfgang Amadée Mozart: Sa vie musicale et son æuvre, v (Paris, 1946), 120–1, praise the orchestration in Mozart's hand and describe the material in the other hand as banal.Google Scholar

2 See Köchel, Ludwig von, Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts, ed. Alfred Einstein (Leipzig, 1937), 756. Constanze Mozart recounted that he omitted a number of authenticated works from his own catalogue (see below for details).Google Scholar

3 For example, Kunze, Stefan, ‘Die Arie KV 621a von W. A. Mozart und Emilian Gottfried von Jacquin: Satztechnik und Gattung in den Liedern Mozarts und seiner Zeit’, Mozart Jahrbuch 1967 (Salzburg, 1968), 205–27, and Alan Tyson, Wasserzeichen-Katalog, Mozart, W. A., Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke (hereafter NMA), Serie 10, Werkgruppe 33, Abteilung 2, Textband (Kassel, 1992), 37.Google Scholar

4 See Spitzer, John, ‘Musical Attribution and Critical Judgment: The Rise and Fall of the Sinfonia Concertante for Winds, K.279b’, Journal of Musicology, 5 (1987), 319–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See W. A. Mozart: Werke, ed. Ludwig von Köchel et al. (Leipzig, 1881), Serie VI, xlvii, 235-9, and the annotations by Gustav Nottebohm in W. A. Mozart: Werke, Revisionsbericht, nach den hinterlassenen Papieren von Gustav Nottebohm zusammengestellt von Paul Graf Waldersee, Serie VI (Leipzig, 1883), 28. A piano reduction, based on the edition in W. A. Mozart: Werke, is given in Blanka Glossy and Robert Hass, Wiener Comödienlieder aus drei Jahrhunderten (Vienna, 1924), 46–9. Fuchs's copy is in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus. MS 15166/8.Google Scholar

6 The earliest known libretto survives in Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Carl von Ossietzky, Theater-Bibliothek, Nr 721. An incomplete set of manuscript role booklets survives in Frankfurt am Main, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, as part of the materials in Mus. Hs. Opern 508. A manuscript libretto also survives in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus. MS 861. Although the watermark suggests a Viennese source, tlie Berlin text differs substantially from all others; it may be Ignaz von Seyfried's revision of the opera for the later revival at the Theater an der Wien (1804). Printed texts of four arias, one duet and one chorus were included along with three engraved scenes from the opera in the Allmanach für Theaterfreunde (Vienna, 1791), a copy of which survives in Vienna, Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, G83479. Prints of the complete text for the musical numbers (the original songbook, advertised on the poster for the première, has apparently not survived) include Arien und Gesänge aus Dem Stein der Weisen oder: Die Zauber-insel: Eine heroisch-komische Oper in zwei Aufzügen (Frankfurt am Main, 1796; copy in Washington, Library of Congress) and Gesänge aus der Oper Der Stein der Weisen oder Die Zauberinsel (n.p., n.d.), bearing the indication on the title-page ‘Musik gesetzt von Herrn Mozart’, currently in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, L. eleg m.3170v. A third songbook, Gesaenge zur heroisch-comischen Oper, Der Stein der Weisen (n.p., 1802), survives in Regensburg, Proskesche Musikbibliothek, Mus. tx. 116/9.Google Scholar

7 Dexter Edge has concluded that the Hamburg manuscript was almost certainly produced by a copyshop associated with the Theater auf der Wieden and probably dates from the mid-1790s (personal communication, 2 July 1997). For details on the opera, its theatrical context and the attributions of numbers to Mozart, Johann Baptist Henneberg, Franz Xaver Gerl, Benedikt Schack and Schikaneder, see my ‘Mozart and the Theater auf der Wieden: New Attributions and Perspectives’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 9 (1997), 195–232.Google Scholar

8 Wieland, Christoph Martin, Dschinnistan, oder auserlesene Feen- und Geistermärchen (Winterthur, 1786-9), ed. Gerhard Seidel (Berlin, 1968). Modem editions include only the Wieland stories.Google Scholar

9 For watermark information, see Tyson, Wasserzeichen-Katalog, Abbildungen, no. 78. This watermark is not unique to the paper of the duet, but occurs also in other autograph scores by Mozart from the years 1785-91, e.g. K.477/479a, 480, 481, 482, 488, 492, 503, 506a, 527, 576a/385h, 593, 613b, 620.Google Scholar

10 See Köchel, Ludwig von, Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts (Leipzig, 1862), 491. See also Einstein's discussion of the duet in his 1937 revision of the catalogue, p. 756.Google Scholar

11 Some 1,300 printed librettos survive today in Vienna's Theatre Museum in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Some manuscript scores and parts from the Theater auf der Wieden are preserved in Viennese archives and elsewhere. This material will be discussed in a forthcoming study.Google Scholar

12 (1) Frankfurt am Main, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Mus. Hs. Opern 508 (1), copied some time in the period 1790-5. For details see Robert Didion and Joachim Schlichte, Thematischer Katalog der Opemsammlung, Katalog der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothiek Frankfurt am Main, 9 (Frankfurt, 1990), 251. (2) Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. MS anon. 1451 (olim 15,156), a manuscript full orchestral score in two volumes. The title-page reads ‘Der Stein der Weisen/eine/große heroisch komische Oper/in zween Aufzügen/von Emmanuel Schikaneder/In Musik gebracht/von H[err]n: Mozart, Henneberg, Schack und Gerl'. (3) Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Carl von Ossietzky, Musiksammlung, ND VII 174. This is the only source with specific attributions to the composers.Google Scholar

13 Florence, Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini, MS 738. Scholars have been denied access to the library's sources since 1966; the library now states that MS 738 is not in its possession. A set of parts for wind band based on selections from Der Stein der Weisen and Peter Winter's (sic, but probably Ferdinand Kauer's) Die Serenade, ‘opere ridotte in armonia’, survives there (Fondo Pitti Strumentale 372), I wish to thank Elena Tonolo for this information.Google Scholar

14 The duets in the three manuscript copies are in different hands, but the hand that copied the duet in the Frankfurt score is the same as that which copied most of Act 1 in the Hamburg manuscript. I believe that all three scores can be traced back to the autograph: like MS 247, all three indicate the viola following the bass by inserting a bass clef at the same bars. Although the general layout and the pitches are surprisingly close to MS 247, the Berlin and Hamburg copyists are generally sloppy, omitting many of Mozart's detailed articulation marks, dynamics and ties. The least careful copyist is that of the Hamburg score, who leaves out the second bassoon part at bars 77–8, begins the flute's trill at bar 50 instead of bar 49, and fails to observe Mozart's correction of the b♭ in the viola part of bar 7 (it should be a d’). It would not have been easy for the copyist to determine which note is indicated because Mozart did not cross out the original but wrote over it, thickening the stem of the new note to try to cover the original. Only a careful reading reveals that the d’, written in black ink, is Mozart's preference. The more careful scribes of the Berlin and Frankfurt scores noticed this and indicated the d'. (This phrase appears twice more in the viola part, and the Hamburg copyist got it right in both of these instances.) The copyist of the score in Berlin appears somewhat more precise than the scribe of the Hamburg score. The pitches in the Berlin score are identical with those in MS 247, except for one, the last note of the penultimate bar of the viola part, which has a rest instead of a c’; this copyist omits the flute's trill sign in bars 49-50 altogether. The most observant and careful copyist is that of the Frankfurt score, where most of Mozart's original performance indications are included. His version takes up more space because it is more carefully written. Mozart's own oversights in the initial clef of the second oboe and the articulation signs above slurred syllables (e.g. at bar 10) are corrected. The col basso indications are the same for the viola parts, as is the flute's trill in bars 49–50. This copyist is also more observant than the other two in his writing out of the original meows. In the Berlin and Hamburg scores the meowing is haphazardly indicated in shorthand form.Google Scholar

15 Only the 1802 songbook includes these and other minor changes that appear in all three surviving scores.Google Scholar

16 All the sources differ in the text underlay of these meows, and none seems faithfully to reproduce the great number of meows in the autograph.Google Scholar

17 There are in fact some 40 other occasional pieces, arias, canons, variations, dances and fragments written after February 1784 that were not included in the Verzeichnüβ. Mozart seems intentionally to have omitted certain kinds of works, including German songs, Italian arias and one ensemble, listed in Albi Rosenthal and Alan Tyson, Eigenhändiges Werkverzeichnis Faksimile, NMA, Serie 10, Werkgruppe 33, Abteilung 1 (Kassel, 1991), 1718. In an Anmerkung to Georg Nikolaus Nissen, Anhang zu W. A. Mozarts Biographie, nach Originalbriefen, Sammlungen alles über ihn Geschriebenen, mit vielen neuen Beylagen, Steindrücken, Musikblättem und einem Facsimile, ed. Constanze Mozart Nissen (Leipzig, 1828; repr. Hildesheim, 1964), 10, Mozart's widow explained that he gave away certain pieces to his friends, copies of which he did not keep; these were not entered into his own catalogue.Google Scholar

18 I wish to thank Dexter Edge for this observation.Google Scholar

19 These include the following sources in Munich's Dom zu Unserer Lieben Frau: the offertorium pastorale ‘Wir lagen schaudernd auf dem Boden’ (shelfmark Mf 1234, the earliest datable autograph, before 1796), the offertorium ‘Justorum animae’ (Mf 1217), one setting of the Lytaniae lauretanae in a partial autograph (Mf 1218) and another setting with an autograph score from 1798 (Mf 1219), the Mass in D minor from c.1817 (Mf 1223) and the Requiem in D minor from 1817 (Mf 1229). A number of manuscripts in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musiksammlung, are listed as possible autographs, including the graduale ‘Christus factus est’ (Mus. MS 2527), the offertorium ‘Dextera domini’ (Mus. MS 2528) and the Mass in A minor (Mus. MS 2729). One manuscript score is catalogued as an autograph in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, Hs. 18454, a patriotic song entitled ‘Weiß und blau, blau und weiß (Die national Farbe) ‘. A comparison of these manuscripts with the unknown hand in MS 247 shows that several significant letters do not match, e.g. the L, the B and the V. The clefs and the rests are clearly different, as are the minims and quavers. I am grateful to Dr Gertraut Haberkamp for helping me assemble and evaluate the Schack autographs, both original and microfilmed, in Munich.Google Scholar

20 Gerl's handwriting is preserved in the second volume of Otto Hatwig's autograph album, in Vienna, Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, Ja 45935, p. 13, which contains a paraphrase from Kant on the mystery of the human mind dated ‘Brünn den 25ten Dezember 1798'. I wish to thank Michael Lorenz for bringing this to my attention.Google Scholar

21 Examples of Schikaneder's handwriting survive in documents preserved in Vienna, Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, I. N. 8356 (1807), I. N. 93886 (1801), I. N. 128.188 (c.1789-90), I. N. 128.737 (9 April 1805) and I. N. 128.190 (1806). For a ready example from 1800, see the reproduction of an official petition preserved in Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, in Anton Bauer, 150 Jahre Theater an der Wien (Vienna, 1952), 39. I wish to thank Michael Lorenz for helping me locate and evaluate these documents.Google Scholar

22 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, Hs. 19145 contains a Henneberg autograph of the duet ‘Schau Mädel, jetzt wär halt die hübscheste Zeit’, a gift from Aloys Fuchs, who wrote the inscription. The music collections of the Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, Vienna, and of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, possess autographs of Henneberg's Notturni The hand in these scores is also not that found in MS 247. Handwriting specimens also survive in the Verlassenschaftakten of the Henneberg family, preserved in Vienna, Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Verlassenschaft Abhandlung, Fasz. 2/4213/1795-1814. I wish to thank Dr Rita Steblin and Michael Lorenz for their help in locating the Verlassenschaftakten.Google Scholar

23 The first violin and viola play in thirds with a supportive second violin during the first finale of Der Stein der Weisen (bars 111-19, repeated at bars 224-32 and 300-8). In the Hamburg score this section is attributed to Schikaneder with orchestration by Henneberg.Google Scholar

24 I wish to thank Prof. Lathan Jernigan of the University of Northern Iowa for his observations on the contrapuntal aspects of Mozart's corrections.Google Scholar

25 The only other examples of this layout in Der Stein der Weisen scores are found in Act 2, no. 3 (a pantomime march for the dwarfs) and no. 6 ('Ihr gütigen Götter’, an aria for Nadir attributed to Gerl in the Hamburg manuscript).Google Scholar

26 Felix Joseph Lipowsky, Baierisches Musik-Lexikon (Munich, 1811), cited in Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch, NMA, Serie 10, Werkgruppe 34 (Kassel, 1961), 532. Constanze believed her husband was helping Schack during this time. Perhaps this piece is a result of that relationship, although it is certainly not a pedagogic exercise but a performing score. For Constanze's three accounts of the collaboration of Schack with her first husband, see my ‘Mozart and the Theater auf der ‘Wieden'.Google Scholar

27 In letters from July 1791 Mozart refers to copywork by Süßmayr being done from his working score of Die Zauberflöte ('meine Spart.’, ‘meiner Partitur’, ‘meiner schrift'), and seems to refer to some kind of compositional duties ('was ich ihm herausgelegt, auch gleich zu schreiben'). See his letters to Constanze of 2, 3 and 5 July in Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch and Joseph Heinz Eibl, 7 vols. (Kassel, 1962-75), iv, 144-6 (nos. 1173, 1176, 1179). Süßmayr's role in the composition of recitatives in La clemenza di Tito is speculatively based on stylistic analysis and cannot be verified since the original sources are lost.Google Scholar

28 The String Quintet in G minor, K.516. For details, see Lorenz, Michael, ‘Franz Jakob Freystädtler (1761-1841): Neue Forschungsergebnisse zu einer Biographie und seinen Spuren im Werk Mozarts’, Acta Mozartiana, 44 (1997), 85108.Google Scholar

29 Joachim Daniel Preisler, a visitor to Mozart's apartment in August 1788, reported that Constanze was cutting quills for a ‘Notenschreiber’ while ‘ein Schüler komponierte'. See Deutsch, Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, 289. The manuscript of a contemporary Allegro in G minor for piano (K.312/590d), today in Oxford, Bodleian Library (MS M. Deneke Mendelssohn C. 21), is also a partial autograph, but here the initial 106 bars of music in Mozart's hand break off and another hand continues the piece. This is not the hand in MS 247.Google Scholar

30 See the account of Johann Ritter von Rittersburg, reproduced in Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, Addenda und Corrigenda, ed. Joseph Heinz Eibl (Kassel, 1978), 99. Also see Franz Gräffer, Kleine Wiener Memoiren, historische Novellen und Wiener Dosenstücke (Vienna, 1845), ed. Anton Schlossar and Gustav Gugitz (Munich, 1918), pt 3, 21–3.Google Scholar

31 Deutsch, Die Dokumente, Addenda, 100: ‘Wahr ist es, daß die Gesangsstücke des “Papageno” dem Mozart von meinem Onkel zum Theil vorgesungen wurden.’Google Scholar