New Mozart works

Click on the links below to hear the two newly discovered Mozart pieces.

The International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg on Sunday presented two works which have only recently been identified as being compositions by the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The pieces, a movement of a keyboard concerto and a prelude for keyboard, were performed by Florian Birsak for the first time for an invited audience on Mozart's own fortepiano in the Mozart Residence in Salzburg.

An orchestral version of the concerto movement has been reconstructed by Harvard professor and pianist Robert Levin, which will be performed for the first time during the annual Mozart Week festival in Salzburg in January 2010.

Works penned by Mozart's father

Mozart was born into a musical family on Jan. 27, 1756, at the house Getreidegasse No. 9 in Salzburg. Father Leopold was a violinist and deputy leader of the court orchestra of the prince-archbishop, the ruler of what was at that time the independent principality of Salzburg.

Leopold Mozart greatly encouraged the musical talent of his two children: Maria Anna, known as "Nannerl," who was five years older than her brother Wolfgang. For Nannerl, Leopold compiled a collection of pieces intended to help her practice on a keyboard instrument.

It is in "Nannerl's Music Book" that the two pieces have been identified as early compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Until now, the works, written in Leopold Mozart's hand, were considered to be anonymous.

Ulrich Leisinger, musicologist and director of the Research Department of the International Mozarteum Foundation, identified the works while planning and preparing a facsimile edition of "Nannerl's Music Book."

Detective work and musicological analysis

While analyzing and evaluating the works in the music book, Leisinger noticed that there was a striking discrepancy in the appearance of the manuscript and the musical composition. By analyzing the handwriting and taking other stylistic criteria into consideration, he concluded that two works were actually composed by the young Mozart, who was not competent enough in musical notation, and transcribed by his father while the boy played the works at the keyboard.

"The handwriting makes the impression as if it was a working manuscript, as if Leopold was involved as a composer, but the musical style of these two pieces is so extraordinary," Ulrich Leisinger told Deutsche Welle.

"The concerto movement has such difficult things like runs in semi-quavers over several pages in a molto allegro; the hands crossing each other sometimes, almost intermingled in each other and there are heavy and wild jumps in the right hand part which make it a very tricky and almost over-ambitious piece," he added.

Mozart far beyond his years

It is not possible to date the works precisely, but they are believed to have originated prior to Mozart's tenth birthday - that is, before 1766. After that date, no more entries were made in "Nannerl's Music Book."

The music book came into the collections of the Cathedral Music Association and Mozarteum, the forerunner of the International Mozarteum Foundation, in 1864. The Foundation fosters Mozart's heritage and owns many of the Mozart family's original letters and autograph manuscripts as well as Mozart's own piano and violin.

After the composer's death in 1791, his sister Nannerl, who survived him by 38 years, collected anecdotes from people who had known him in Salzburg.

The court trumpeter and close friend of the Mozart family, Johann Andreas Schachtner, recalled that one day he and Leopold came home to find Mozart busy writing with ink and quill. When Leopold asked his son what he was doing, young Wolfgang replied, "I'm writing a keyboard concerto."

When Leopold looked at the musical notation which was full of ink blots, he was, according to Schachtner, moved to tears when he realized how correctly his son had set everything. However, he criticized the boy for making the work too difficult for anyone to play. Wolfgang responded by saying: "That's a concerto movement and you really have to practice hard to play it."

From simple dances to complicated concertos

In reconstructing the orchestral part of the piano concert, Robert Levin said he began by identifying the very first motive that the keyboard plays, since the orchestra always begins with the principle theme, according to Classical concerto form.

"You search for a form of the tune which is apt for a stringed instrument and probably a bit simpler," he said.

For musicologists, the value of the works lies in analyzing how Mozart developed as a composer and how he managed to make a leap from writing small, dance-like movements with limited dimensions to a much larger scale piece like his first symphony which he composed in London in 1764/65.

A facsimile edition of the newly identified works has been issued and a CD recording of the orchestral version is also in the works.

In autumn 2009, the complete "Nannerl's Music Book" will appear in a facsimile edition.

Author: Elizabeth Mortimer
Editor: Kate Bowen