Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Introduction
In assembling and editing this collection of essays, my hope was to share with a broad audience some of the enjoyment and sense of discovery I have experienced in studying, teaching, writing about, and performing Mozart’s music. In particular, I will regard this book a success if it encourages performers and listeners to explore some of the riches to be discovered when one ventures off the straight-and-narrow path represented by Mozart’s works (fewer than a hundred) found in the regular concert and opera repertory.
There are, for instance, dozens of pieces from Mozart’s last decade that are seldom heard. And hundreds of others from the 1770s also await proper recognition; for example, the Salzburg divertimentos and serenades, the operas, and the church music, are often undervalued. In a previous generation, when eighteenth-century music was represented by a handful of “masterpieces” by Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, this undervaluation may have been inevitable. Nowadays, however, when one can hear convincing performances of most of the music of those four famous men as well as music by dozens of their contemporaries, the means for understanding, appreciating, and reveling in “all” of Mozart’s music are finally at hand.
A few words about the genesis of this “compleat” Mozart guide: in the winter of 1988 Nathan Leventhal, President of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., Joseph Polisi, President of The Juilliard School, Albert K. Webster, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the New York Philharmonic, and William W. Lockwood, Jr., Executive Producer, Programming, for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., met to discuss how Lincoln Center’s constituent organizations (The Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, The Juilliard School, New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center Theater, School of American Ballet, The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.) might commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death. I was among the Mozarteans invited to that meeting to make comments and suggestions. One of the ideas that was eventually adopted was to perform all of Mozart’s music during the bicentennial year. Subsequently, the heads of all of Lincoln Center’s constituent organizations joined the project, and I was asked to serve as consultant and musicological adviser.
The first problem was to define all in the phrase “all of Mozart’s music”, for in addition to the large number of unquestionably genuine works by Mozart, there are many others whose status remains uncertain. The latter category includes works lacking authentic sources whose attribution to Mozart may be questioned; works that Mozart never completed; additional versions of works that exist in two or more authentic versions; recently discovered works whose provenance has yet to be clarified; and works of other composers arranged by Mozart. To deal with these and other germane matters, I worked with Fiona Morgan Fein, who had been appointed to coordinate the Mozart Bicentennial at Lincoln Center.
The result of our efforts was the “Mozart Bicentennial at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts: Repertoire Database”, which, because it drew on the latest research, is more complete, accurate, and up-to-date than comparable lists found in such standard references as the sixth edition of the Köchel Catalogue, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and the new complete works edition (Neue Mozart-Ausgabe).
The trickiest aspect of creating the “Mozart Database” was deciding which pieces to include. After considerable discussion and some trial and error, the following guidelines were established: in addition to the unquestionably genuine works we would include (1) incomplete works with completed movements (for instance, the unfinished opera L’oca del Cairo, K. 422, with its seven completed numbers); (2) fragmentary works completed soon after Mozart’s death by former pupils or other members of his immediate circle (which meant that we did not have to exclude the Requiem!); (3) recently discovered works of uncertain status (the Symphony in A minor, K. 16a, was eliminated as probably spurious, but the wind octet arrangement of Die Entführung aus dem Serail was included on grounds that a shrewd case had been made for the possibility of its genuineness); (4) second and third versions of Mozart’s works made by Mozart himself.
Excluded from the canon were questionable and spurious works and Mozart’s arrangements of other composers’ works (including such items as his reorchestration of Handel’s Messiah). The only exceptions to the last category were the seven early pastiche concerto s for keyboard and chamber ensemble, K. 37, 39, 40, 41, and 107, based on movements of keyboard sonatas from the 1760s by J. C. Bach and others; these were included on the grounds that they are not merely mechanical arrangements or orchestrations, but new compositions in a genre different from their models. The total number of Mozart’s compositions according to this way of reckoning (but not counting authentic second versions) proves to be more than 800.
As Lincoln Center’s plan to perform “all” of Mozart developed, a committee was formed to discuss what sorts of publications would prove useful in support of this sprawling effort. In addition to the predictable programs, calendars, posters, and the like, I suggested a collection of historical essays for “all” of Mozart’s music (as defined above). This would be a solid but accessible reference book for the music lover who wants to be able to look up any piece by Mozart before or after listening to it and to find an accurate, up-to-the-minute description of the work and what is known about it. Thus, a brief, readable essay about each work listed in the “Mozart Database” will be found in the current volume, prefaced by a headnote containing the information that would most interest Mozart lovers.
As this volume had to be assembled expeditiously if it was to be ready for 1991, I asked my former student, the musicologist-harpsichordist William Cowdery, to assist me in locating and editing suitable materials and in organizing the book, all of which he did with great efficiency.
The essays themselves have been chosen for their pertinency, their readability, and their avoidance of both technical jargon and that main curse of writings about music for non-professionals: purple prose. The majority of the essays were orginally written to accompany recordings, but others come from books, articles, or concert programs (and several have been written specially for this collection by William Cowdery or the undersigned). All of them have been edited to suit their new context.
The editors would like to thank Claire Brook and Juli Goldfein of W. W. Norton & Company for their efficiency and professionalism in seeing this volume through the press, Fiona Morgan Fein of the Mozart Bicentennial at Lincoln Center and Lauren Cowdery for invaluable editorial suggestions and proofreading, and Jane Marsh Dieckmann for making the index.
NEAL ZASLAW
Ithaca, New York
January 1990