Beethoven's Early Years In Bonn

[Kalimac]

Mr. Newman has kindly given us his evidence that the symphonies cataloged as by Haydn and Mozart in Modena are the same as the ones held by the same library when cataloged in Bonn in 1784: namely, that the numbers add up identically.

This is certainly suggestive, but it is no more than that. In orthodox scholarship, when a relationship like that is found and there is no other evidence, a scholar will accept on a provisional basis that the two lists are identical, subject to correction by contradictory evidence. In this case the contradictory evidence (namely, that some of these symphonies hadn't been written in 1784) already exists.

There are many follow-up questions which Mr Newman's evidence does not answer, however, such as:
1) Are these the ONLY symphonies in the catalog? If not, then given the difficulty of making complete one-to-one matches in the lists as given, it cannot be said that each list has 58 symphonies.
2) If the 1784 Bonn catalog contains no incipits, does the Modena catalog? If not, how do we know that the symphonies credited to Mozart in the Modena catalog include those dated after 1784? (Only four Mozart symphonies - the "trilogy" and the "Prague" - are given post-1784 dates by conventional scholarship, so there's plenty of other Mozart symphonies that could have made up the lot, even leaving aside the possibility that some are by L. Mozart rather than W. Mozart.)
3) It appears that the 1784 catalog lists 38 symphonies "by different authors" without specifying who the authors were. This would make sense if they were not itemized, but it appears that they were. This is puzzling.
4) Mr. Newman stated in an earlier post, "The inventory of 1784 was corrupted by the fact that it (contrary to accepted practice) did not credit anonymous works automatically to the existing Kapellmeister (Luchesi)." I do not know of any such accepted practice (which proves nothing either way), but the wording implies that the standard practice would have been to credit to Lucchesi works that he did not write. That being the case, the absence of any identified attributions to Lucchesi in the 1784 symphonies amounts to evidence that he didn't write any, for if he's not being credited with works he didn't write, why is he also not being credited with works he did write, if indeed he did? Surely if the Kapellmeister's name was supposed to be prominent in the inventory, it would be odd to dump his works namelessly among the "different authors." Or are we postulating a conspiracy by Neefe, who supervised this catalog, to diminish Lucchesi? Wheels within wheels, conspiracy within conspiracy, turtles on the backs of turtles all the way down.
5) If I understand the point of all this correctly, the 1784 inventory was an honest inventory, and the Modena inventory ripped all the title-pages off and attributed works to Haydn and Mozart that they did not write. Yet if this is the case, where is the evidence that they were actually written by Lucchesi?
6) Taboga's breathtaking claim (see his web page) is that Haydn never wrote ANY SYMPHONIES WHATEVER. His late symphonies are all by Lucchesi and the early ones are all by Sammartini (a claim that made me laugh; early Haydn doesn't sound like Sammartini). Yet the 1784 inventory lists 19 symphonies by clear variants of the name Haydn. Therefore either Taboga is wrong or the 1784 inventory isn't any more reliable than the Modena inventory.

That's just a beginning of the huge mound of unanswered questions which the Taboga/Newman claims raise, and which Mr. Newman has told me are "not really very useful" and fail to understand the "tremendous work" Signor Taboga has done. I have read his English language summary, which is quite long, and which is filled with unwarranted assumptions and completely specious logic. The skeptical observer owes nothing in terms of respect to this quite pathetic "effort". He owes us evidence to back up his claims. Implications that we should bow down in uncritical respect will not be taken kindly.

[Kalimac]

Droell writes, "As Mr. Newman pointed out, Mozart's career - and life, in general - fell apart after his father died, which makes me wonder if the father, not Wolfgang, wasn't the driving force."

Leopold Mozart certainly spent a lot of time trying to persuade his son to buckle down and work in a manner that would bring him commercial success. For instance in 1787 he tried to get his son to relax his standards and overcome his dislike of the amateur who had commissioned a large number of flute works. In this he was only partially successful: Wolfgang only wrote some of the commissioned works.

Yet if we accept this evidence, it is evident that what Leopold was the driving force of was getting his son to work, not that he was the real creator of the works himself. If he were, he should hardly have had to go to such trouble, and none of this is relevant to the Lucchesi theory.

Similarly, Droell's theory of the traveling virtuoso (which Haydn was not) going from town to town, picking up rights to call other composers' works his own, would have produced an oeuvre of tremendous inconsistency in both style and level of genius, something true of neither Haydn nor Mozart.

Similarly, Mr. Newman's vague statement that there are inconsistencies early on in the Koechel catalog is evidence that there is a lot we don't know, not that Mozart did not write the works. He does not add that the later years of Mozart's catalog are far clearer. To assume that Mozart adopted as his own works that he did not write would require that he:
1) elaborately faked his activities as reported in his correspondence;
2) elaborately faked his own catalog of his works;
3) planted fake or stolen drafts among his papers to be found after his death;
4) carefully only stole works which were written in a perfect Mozartean style, by composers who either wrote their other works in a different style, or whose other works Mozart somehow arranged to be lost so that 20th century stylistic analysis could not uncover their resemblance;
5) fooled the musicians he worked with into believing he wrote works which he did not;
6) simultaneously maintained another level of borrowing other's works which he did not claim as his own, presumably to maintain deniability to posthumous researchers.

We quickly arrive at a scenario far more improbable than any improbabilities it seeks to explain.

[Peter]

Originally posted by robert newman:

Peter,

I understand you are very keen to know who the copyists were of those works credited at Modena to Haydn and Mozart. Unfortunately (as is so often the case in such things) the answer remains the same as it was a few months ago - we simply do not know at this time who these copyists were.

Exactly, which is why I find it hard to understand why without such a crucial piece of evidence you present your case as fact rather than theory? If those initials turn out to be Anton Reicha (as would seem likely given he was Neefe's assistant), the whole argument collapses as it would prove works were added to the 1784 inventory at a later date as you yourself have suggested. This would explain how Mozart's Prague and Jupiter symphonies came to be listed in an inventory started but not completed in 1784.

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'Man know thyself'



[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 12-24-2005).]

[Hofrat]

Not knowing which of these three similiar threads will be closed, I resubmit to the forum part of an interview with Dr. Allan Badley, a leading expert in 18th century music:


"Establishing authenticity is one of the biggest problems in 18th-century music given the paucity of autograph material and authentic copies. Scholars are generally agreed upon how best to proceed in terms of establishing a hierarchy of reliability of sources, and yet all too often we find that a work – often an important work – survives in a single copy of unknown provenance in spite of our best efforts to identify contemporary professional copyists and paper types. Once one is reduced to deciding a work’s authenticity on stylistic grounds (i.e. on internal evidence), the picture becomes even more confused. The American scholar James Webster once pointed out that to decide a work’s authenticity on stylistic grounds means having to prove that no other composer could possibly have written it. This is a tough ask, particularly when dealing with secondary figures about whom we know comparatively little. To illustrate how problematic this can be, we need only consider the case of the Haydn D major Cello Concerto. For many years it was believed that this work may have been composed by Haydn’s principal cellist, Anton Kraft. Examined from every stylistic point imaginable the work just didn’t seem to be convincing as Haydn ... until one day Haydn’s signed-and-dated autograph score was discovered in the cellars of the Austrian National Library! Very often, though, there is no alternative but to make a judgement call based on style, and one relies almost as much on gut instinct as on a detailed knowledge of the composer’s style. Most scholars have made mistakes, and as we learn more I dare say more of these mistakes will come to light. It is very frustrating, though, to see works still being performed under the wrong composer’s name after the question of authenticity has been settled. One of Leopold Hofmann’s Flute Concertos is still frequently offered as a Haydn work over 70 years after the misattribution was first discovered.

"Nonetheless, as the secondary figures begin to emerge from the shadows I think many of these problems will disappear, except, perhaps, where the original mistake is in itself hallowed: Brahms’s ‘Variations on a Theme by Haydn’ will forever conceal Pleyel’s authorship of the theme in question.

"The selections made by history generally have been pretty much on the mark. However, the obscurity of many 18th- and early 19th-century composers is undeserved. A number of these figures were composers of enormous vitality and imagination and their later obscurity owes much to the fact that there was no conception of a classical canon until comparatively recently. It is only in the past few decades that any serious work has been done on the so-called secondary figures (Haydn’s symphonies – one of the cornerstones of the classical repertory – were not published in their entirety until the 1960s). Only now – and as a consequence of the kind of work I have been doing for so long – are we beginning to realise the extraordinary riches to be found in this missing tradition, and with this comes a curious paradox: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven emerge as less original than first thought and yet at the same time incomparably greater since the music of their most talented contemporaries was so good. Nothing we discover will upset the essential rightness of placing these composers at the top of the heap, but context will change everything. I’m also convinced that the day is not too far off when it will not be heretical to say that a good symphony by Wanhal is better than a weak symphony by Haydn and that Joseph Martin Kraus wrote far more interesting sonatas than Mozart. As a result, the classical canon and all of our musical lives will be enriched and the current ossification of classical music may be reversed."


I hope this sheds light on the rresent discussion!

Hofrat

[Peter]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
Not knowing which of these three similiar threads will be closed, I resubmit to the forum part of an interview with Dr. Allan Badley, a leading expert in 18th century music:


"Establishing authenticity is one of the biggest problems in 18th-century music given the paucity of autograph material and authentic copies. Scholars are generally agreed upon how best to proceed in terms of establishing a hierarchy of reliability of sources, and yet all too often we find that a work – often an important work – survives in a single copy of unknown provenance in spite of our best efforts to identify contemporary professional copyists and paper types. Once one is reduced to deciding a work’s authenticity on stylistic grounds (i.e. on internal evidence), the picture becomes even more confused. The American scholar James Webster once pointed out that to decide a work’s authenticity on stylistic grounds means having to prove that no other composer could possibly have written it. This is a tough ask, particularly when dealing with secondary figures about whom we know comparatively little. To illustrate how problematic this can be, we need only consider the case of the Haydn D major Cello Concerto. For many years it was believed that this work may have been composed by Haydn’s principal cellist, Anton Kraft. Examined from every stylistic point imaginable the work just didn’t seem to be convincing as Haydn ... until one day Haydn’s signed-and-dated autograph score was discovered in the cellars of the Austrian National Library! Very often, though, there is no alternative but to make a judgement call based on style, and one relies almost as much on gut instinct as on a detailed knowledge of the composer’s style. Most scholars have made mistakes, and as we learn more I dare say more of these mistakes will come to light. It is very frustrating, though, to see works still being performed under the wrong composer’s name after the question of authenticity has been settled. One of Leopold Hofmann’s Flute Concertos is still frequently offered as a Haydn work over 70 years after the misattribution was first discovered.

"Nonetheless, as the secondary figures begin to emerge from the shadows I think many of these problems will disappear, except, perhaps, where the original mistake is in itself hallowed: Brahms’s ‘Variations on a Theme by Haydn’ will forever conceal Pleyel’s authorship of the theme in question.

"The selections made by history generally have been pretty much on the mark. However, the obscurity of many 18th- and early 19th-century composers is undeserved. A number of these figures were composers of enormous vitality and imagination and their later obscurity owes much to the fact that there was no conception of a classical canon until comparatively recently. It is only in the past few decades that any serious work has been done on the so-called secondary figures (Haydn’s symphonies – one of the cornerstones of the classical repertory – were not published in their entirety until the 1960s). Only now – and as a consequence of the kind of work I have been doing for so long – are we beginning to realise the extraordinary riches to be found in this missing tradition, and with this comes a curious paradox: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven emerge as less original than first thought and yet at the same time incomparably greater since the music of their most talented contemporaries was so good. Nothing we discover will upset the essential rightness of placing these composers at the top of the heap, but context will change everything. I’m also convinced that the day is not too far off when it will not be heretical to say that a good symphony by Wanhal is better than a weak symphony by Haydn and that Joseph Martin Kraus wrote far more interesting sonatas than Mozart. As a result, the classical canon and all of our musical lives will be enriched and the current ossification of classical music may be reversed."


I hope this sheds light on the rresent discussion!

Hofrat

This thread will remain open, until it gets to about 5 pages, then I'll open a new thread for this debate to continue.

I agree with the arguments in your post Hofrat as it seems a perfectly reasonable position. The lines "Nothing we discover will upset the essential rightness of placing these composers at the top of the heap, but context will change everything" are my own sentiments, but of course in complete opposition to the views of Mr.Taboga and Robert!

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'Man know thyself'

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Peter:
This thread will remain open, until it gets to about 5 pages, then I'll open a new thread for this debate to continue.

I agree with the arguments in your post Hofrat as it seems a perfectly reasonable position. The lines "Nothing we discover will upset the essential rightness of placing these composers at the top of the heap, but context will change everything" are my own sentiments, but of course in complete opposition to the views of Mr.Taboga and Robert!

Dear Peter;

I quoted Dr. Badley in an attempt to show that there are no absolutes in the fields of music, musicology, and music history. Between the black (Taboga and Newman) and the white (you and Kalimac), there are many shades of gray. I am writing metaphorically. Please do not connotate anything with respect to the designations of "black" and "white."


Hofrat

[robert newman]

Really, Kalimac is making these claims that nothing has been proved that would radically alter the Koechel list of Mozart's works. The very opposite is surely true. I say that beyond all reasonable doubt the Koechel list (in its 6th, 7th or even 8th manifestation) is a curious mixture of granting to Mozart many, many works which by any fair and reasonable reckoning he cannot be said to have composed. Far from being dogmatic on such issues I am saying that a fair minded person who sets out to judge these issues solely on the basis of the available evidence, and using his common sense, would come to the same conclusion if he was not isolated from mainstream 'Mozart scholarship' for doing so. The simple facts are these - that many, many works credited to Mozart in his childhood have no more support for him being their true composer than they have of being written by Voltaire or George Washington. 'K' numbers are today, still, and without any logical reason, given to works that are simply NOT by Mozart. They remain in the canon because if they were removed the whole structure of convention would collapse.

Let me support this with hard facts. We are informed by Maynard Solomon that of all the 'Mozart' symphonies written by him (supposedly) up to the year 1771 (i.e. up until the time he is 15 years old) there is today no autograph score for any of these with the single exception of KV74 !! How relevant a fact is THAT ?

But let me continue. Cliff Eisen adds that of the 25 or so symphonies said by Koechel to have been composed by Mozart between the years of 1764 and 1771 more than half of them lack any authentic sources with none of them being convincing proof that even one of them is actually a composition of Mozart !! (Maynard Solomon 'Mozart' p.79 and p.503 note 20).

In addition to various other spurious works we have too K16a, K17, K74 - none of which are compositions of Mozart despite them being long portrayed as such.

Again, the church work K35 is frequently sold as a work of Mozart. At best he, Mozart, wrote only a small part of this, the rest being written by Michael Haydn and others.

The situation would be laughable if it was not so ridiculous. We then have the first 5 or so piano concertos by Mozart (which were credited to Mozart falsely) which end up as being, in fact, works by JC Bach !

We have in later years his 'Linz' symphony being (according to Koechel and to 'experts'a the Mozarteum) none other than the work we know today as KV444. And this was the official line until the year 1908. But today the Mozart 'experts' have now abandoned their 200 year old error and have given the name of the 'Linz' symphony to a quite different work, KV 425 - work that is not even in Mozart's own catalogue of works ! But still we are not finished. For, KV444 is now credited to none other than Michael Haydn. Why is is today credited to Michael Haydn ? Well, because Michael Haydn had access to this same work at Salzburg and performed it there as his own. But he too was NOT its composer.

Thank God that Beethoven (with the exception of those student pieces which are obviously problematic in Bonn) has never been associated with such blatantly dubious versions of what he did, or did not, write.

Let me end here (though I could continue for many, many pages) by saying that Dr Luigi della Croce (author of a book on 'Mozart's Symphonies') has confirmed at meetings held in Berlin at the Hochschule (June-July 1999) that the young Beethoven's true teacher was (and it could hardly have been otherwise) none other than his Venetian Kapellemeister at Bonn, Andrea Luchesi, whose pupil he (Beethoven) was from January 1781 to November 1792 when he, Luchesi, gave him his necessary 'placef' approving the young man for for his career in Vienna. It was of course the same Luchesi who, is documented to have been the person who ensured that Beethoven's father received his paid pension. Therefore, again, I strongly suggest that in spite of your textbooks saying nothing, you should come to terms with the reality that Luchesi was, indeed, the main and the official teacher of Ludwig van Beethoven during those years, this with the exception of the 1 year (1783/4)during which Luchesi was on extended leave in Italy.

Regards

Robert

[Hofrat]

Dear Forum;

I am now looking at a recently released score of a symphony in D by Leopold Mozart (Eisen D.13) circa 1760. In light of this ongoing discussion on "who wrote what," I thought it would be illuminating for the forum members to see what the musicologists and editors have to struggle with, especially in connection with copyists.

I am talking about 300 bars of music, scored for 2 horns, violins I, violins II, celli, and basses, lasting 8 minutes. The music fits comfortably on 11 pages of A4 paper.

According to the commentary, the manuscript score is lost, and there are no contemporary copies of it. The main source used by the editors was a unique set of parts from 1760. The parts are 23 pages and analysis of the handwriting shows that 3 unknown copyists worked on the them. In addition, there is a secondary source: a manuscript score based on the above mentioned parts from 1900. This score is 13 pages long and done by an unknown copyist.

All of the above dove-tails with my experience at editing. Namely:
1. the older the work, the more likely that original manuscripts and performance documentation will not be found.
2. there are many unknown copyists who work on any particular composition, even short pieces. From the work I have seen them do, it is easy to understand Beethoven's carping about their errors.

I can not remember which forum member asked about the copyists. I hope this answers his questions.


Hofrat

[robert newman]

Thank you Hofrat for this information. It's certainly no easy business to assign a particular work to a particular composer if the autograph score is missing and even (sometimes) in cases where one has been manufactured by a person who wishes to pass it off as a work of their very own composition.

In the case of Mozart these things matter a great deal. He is either a competent writer of symphonies from his late boyhood onwards or he is not. What we have (by means of Koechel, the Mozarteum and the generally held view) is a young man so talented that he could and did successfully produce a string of works in virtually every form from almost the time that he was old enough to hold a pen in his hand. We have seen already (even here on this forum) evidence that grave doubts were raised about the young Mozart's ability to do the things claimed of him - even by musicians and singers themselves of the time. Letters written by Leopold Mozart to his own son in 1773 expressly say that his symphonies are not of a standard that do him justice, and that Leopold is therefore not allowing others to see them. We even have letters from Constanze Mozart written after the death of Wolfgang in which she speaks of hiding certain truths in order to protect his reputation and to sustain the myth that was being cultivated of 'Mozart the supremely gifted composer' having arrived in the world with genius not only as a keyboard player but as a great writer of operas, sonatas, concertos, masses, etc. etc. - and the development within 50 years of his death of a version of his life and work that comes close to that which we read 'officially' today.

It does not seem to matter how many contradictions or absurdities must be believed to support this 'chocolate box' image. And, above all, any suspicion that the mature Mozart was, in fact, up to his eyeballs in procuring works from other composers (which he would then pass off as his own) is seen as somehow detracting from him as he really was.

I believe that the works of 'early Mozart' are to a very great extent falsely manufactured and that even the middle period (let us say, for 1773 to 1780) is filled with problems. For example, there is a strong argument that many symphonies during those years are also not his (despite them too being portrayed as a legitimate part of the Koechel list). These same problems continue with Symphony No. 31 - the so-called 'Paris' Symphony and are again found in the so-called 'Haffner' symphony. (The Haffer began its life as a symphony written by Luchesi, which he, Luchesi, sold to Salzburg, and which Leopold Mozart used in Salzburg with the addition of several movements written by his son, then in Vienna). After its performance it was then returned to Mozart, who further orchestrated the piece (changing it back from the serenade that had just been used at Salzburg in to the work we know today as 'Mozart's Symphony No. 35. In full support of this fact is the existence at Modena of a copy of this same symphony minus the additional instruments which first Leopold and then later Wolfgang used before calling this work one by Wolfgang Mozart. Thus a symphony by Luchesi became a Serenade in Salzburg before being transformed back to a symphony with new orchestration by Mozart in Vienna - this last form being paraded by Mozart as his own composition some months later at public concerts.

It would be much easier to be at peace with convention as far as Haydn and Mozart are concerned. But all sorts of reasons make that impossible. I truly believe that such things are in stark contrast to the life and career of the great Ludwig van Beethoven.

Regards

Robert

[Peter]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
Dear Forum;

I can not remember which forum member asked about the copyists. I hope this answers his questions.


Hofrat

Not at all - one of the copyists of the Bonn inventory signed himself A.R who in all probabilty was Neefe's assistant Anton Reicha who didn't arrive in Bonn until 1785, one year after the 1784 inventory! It is entirely feasable as Robert states that the inventory was added to at a later date, but then there is no mystery that later works of Mozart are found in it. His identity needs to be established and if it was Reicha it shouldn't be difficult to prove this.

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'Man know thyself'

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 12-25-2005).]

[robert newman]

Firstly, Christmas greetings and best wishes to everyone !

Peter may be right that the key to making progress on this issue of the music archives of Bonn may be to determine who were the various copyists whose initials are found on some (but not all) the manuscripts of 'Mozart' and 'Haydn' works now at Modena.

But (and there always seems to be a but in such things) the very fact that Reicha seems to have begun working at Bonn only in 1785 (the year after the Inventory) does not itself solve these issues.

For example, you will recall that at Bonn in 1784 the Inventory made by Neefe includes a work called there 'The Seven Words of our Redeemer' - a work which eventually came with all the others to Modena (catalogued there as Mus-D-640) as none other than Haydn's work of that name - which he, Haydn expressly claimed to have composed in 1786/7 - i.e. 2 to 3 years AFTER the Inventory of 1784. (Taboga suggests that, in fact, this is a Luchesi work which was written around 1782 for a Spanish patron). And of course the trilogy of 'Mozart' symphonies (known as 39,40,and 41) are traditionally said to have been composed by Mozart in the summer of 1788, fully 4 years later than the Bonn Inventory. How is it then that we have a copy of 41 ('Jupiter') at Modena ? One could give many such examples. (Mozart himself certainly claims to have written these 3 symphonies in 1788, but, again, evidence at Modena seems to indicate something different exists). The 'Jupiter' may be a work by Luchesi written around 1783 in Bonn by Luchesi which, 5 years later (according to the system by which he was supplying Haydn and Mozart) became a 'Mozart' symphony and could thus be claimed by Mozart publicly as his very own. (In fact, the same as occurred with the Haydn '7 Last Words of our Redeemer and many other works').

Then too we could consider this. If Reicha arrives 1 year after the Bonn Inventory (and I see no reason to doubt that he did arrive in 1785) it follows that the manuscripts handled by Neefe in the Inventory of 1784 cannot possibly have included any on which Reicha had already worked. So what we seem to have here are the following basic facts -

1. Inventory at Bonn made May 1784
2. Reicha arrives 1785
3. Luchesi continues working on his own catalogue (now called C/53.1 and today held at Modena) in which, between 1784 and around 1791/2 credits certain works to 'Haydn' and to 'Mozart')
4. The entire music archives taken away from Bonn Chapel in 1794 by the Elector, Max Franz
5. The Bonn Chapel closes in 1794 (due to the Napoleonic invasion of the Rhineland)
6. The music archives held at Bad Mergentheim (the residence of Max Franz) until his death in 1801
7. Prior to his death Max Franz leaves most of his goods to relatives in Modena
8. The Bonn archives come to Modena (at a date that is still not known - the Director of the Beethoven Archives in 1987 suggests they arrived in Modena around 1836
9.The Modena archives catalogued for the first time only around 1860-65
10. The Modena archives recognised to include those inventoried at Bonn in 1784 only in the late 20th century
11. By the time of their arrival at Modena many of these works had had covers and first pages purposely removed
12. Works that were not attributed to anyone in 1784 (which is itself an error in established inventory procedure) can be shown to now be credited to 'Haydn' and 'Mozart'at Modena.

There are surely a number of indisputable facts that suggest irregularities here -

1. 'The 7 Last Words', inventoried by that same name in Modena in 1784 strongly suggests that this work was not composed as claimed by Haydn and it further suggests that it was not written as he, Haydn, claimed.

2. Neefe (for reasons that defy an logical explanation) did not automatically credit Luchesi with being the composer of those works which bore no name in 1784. Had he done so then, I suggest, Luchesi would have been credited with the very symphonies which are today credited to 'Haydn' and 'Mozart' at Modena.

So, as Peter again suggests, it is vital now that a list is drawn up of 'copyists' signatures on all those works which are today credited to Haydn and Mozart at Modena.

One last puzzle - at Modena there are various works from Bonn that contain handwriting on them in English language ! For example -

The 'Haydn' Symphony Hob.22 is known generally as 'The Philosopher'. A copy came to Modena with the Bonn archives. But, curiously, this work has not had its cover removed and on this cover the numbers '32' and also '22' can be read. Also the initials 'A.R'. But, amazingly, in English is also written, 'Auth. of Mr Joseph Haydn' and also the title 'Le Philosoph'. This copy of the work is the ONLY existing one in the world to bear this title despite the fact that various other copies of this same work exist from the 18th century which have no such title.

So I think, as Peter suggests, that identifying (if possible) these copyists is crucial. And why would some of these manuscripts have English writing on them ?
Again, a second copy of the very same work is also at Modena (this known as Mus-D-145) without the title 'Le Philosoph'. It bears an indication 'n.32' and, again in English language 'Mister Joseph Haydn's'.

We will see soon where 'A.R.' and other initials take us - to Herr Reicha at Bonn or, perhaps, elsewhere.

Regards

Robert

[Peter]

Originally posted by robert newman:

So I think, as Peter suggests, that identifying (if possible) these copyists is crucial. We will see soon where 'A.R.' and other initials take us - to Herr Reicha at Bonn or, perhaps, elsewhere.

Regards

Robert

There is no problem if the inventory were compiled over a 10 year period 1784-1794. This would account for virtually all the works you suggest have been misattributed. If Reicha is the copyist then this does indeed imply compilation over many years. Surely this is a more probable explanation than the incredible conspiracy theory suggested by Taboga that would have involved not only figures such as Luchesi, Neefe, Haydn, Mozart, Reicha (or whoever the copyists were) but the musical establishment for the next 2 centuries.

Happy Xmas to all!

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'Man know thyself'

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 12-25-2005).]

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by robert newman:


So, as Peter again suggests, it is vital now that a list is drawn up of 'copyists' signatures on all those works which are today credited to Haydn and Mozart at Modena.

Dear Robert;

That will be a monumental task. It has been my experience that most of these copyists at that time (1780) were anonymous short term help brought in when needed. Very few signed or initialled their work. Reicha was assistant kapellmeister, not a mere copyist, which explains his initialling the copy he prepared. It is not until the early 19th century that composers kept on call regular copyists whose handwriting is identifiable.


Hofrat

[robert newman]

Sorry I didnt reply sooner Chaszz to your post.
I appreciate what you say - that it's more likely the archives at Modena are defective than the established careers of both Haydn and Mozart.

I've often considered this. But there are good reasons why I think it cannot be correct. Firstly, the archives at Modena were only catalogued systematically in the 1860's - by which time the reputations of Mozart and Haydn were already quite close to what they are today. Secondly, there are many cases where the finds at Modena are not even recognised by editors of the Koechel list (and that is largely still true today).

You suggest it unlikely that a sort of mafia may have existed which oversaw the careers and reputations of Mozart and Haydn - promoting them as glories of the Empire. And you again ask why Luchesi should have gone along with such a scheme.

I think that our understanding of the 'Wiener Klassik' period (which is loosely that of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) is seriously defective in many ways. It fails to acknowledge, for example, the immense importance of those many Italian composers who not only invented the concerto, the symphony, the quartet, the opera etc. etc. but were also (in many, many cases) reponsible for the development of music within the empire ruled over by the Hapsburgs. It is perfectly true to say that this preference for things Italian led to all sorts of abuses. (For example, at Salzburg where Italians were prefered for musical posts ahead of local talent).

But the backlash to this is also just as clear. It consists in us reading of, say, Beethoven, without much questioning how he emerged as he did and who, in fact, may have been largely responsible for his musical schooling. To have edited out Luchesi in this way seems to me very unjust, even to the point where important works such as official cantatas for the death of Joseph, or the cantata for the accession of his successor, are credited to the talented youth Beethoven rather than to the man whose official job it was to write such works, the then Kapellmeister. Is it wrong to say that in these cases we have lurched too far in the other direction ?

If we look at the career of Mozart is it unjust to point out that Leopold's input was major in determining which works were credited to his son in his childhood and in his youth ? So we, 250 years later, have the difficult task of trying to get to the truth of this - even though it might run up against Koechel or popular opinion. We see, in fact, a pattern beginning to emerge if we look closely enough - that of bending the truth, of making claims that are (by any fair reckoning) out of the ordinary. And this record of Mozart from boyhood to youth in terms of his compositions (not in his undoubted skill at performance) just seems to carry on being controversial in to his adulthood.

So the track record is already there. And it seems to me that it does continue, even after the time when he quits Salzburg and comes to live in Vienna.

The same is unfortunately true of Haydn.

Now, I understand that we are here dealing with reputations. But, yes, I think that to a great extent these two, Haydn and Mozart, were in some way groomed by the powers that existed as a sort of demonstration of Austrian supremacy in things musical. The extent to which this involved irregularities remains to be seen. But I think it clear that these irregularities occurred and on a scale that calls their actually achievements in to serious question.

Did Luchesi do all of this ? No, I don't believe so. Sammartini was also involved and this (I think) can easily be shown.

Nobody is suggesting that the Mozart/Hadyn phenomenon is a huge swindle. But, at the same time, it is suggested that many core assumptions of their output may not, in fact, be true.

Why would Luchesi have gone along with this ? That's a great question and one that I don't know the answer to. I know that he married locally. That he on his arrival in Bonn during 1771 took on citizenship and was to spend the rest of his life in Bonn, dying there around the same time as the Elector Max Franz (in 1801). That, in fact, even when the Bonn chapel closed its doors due to the French invasion remained in the city for a further 7 years and received a pension. It is unusual is it not that he did not return to his native Italy ?

I assume that he, like Sammartini before him, was being paid for what he did. But who paid him if, in fact, he was supplying both Haydn and Mozart with a series of compositions ?

These are all great questions and all I can tell you is that myself, Giorgio Taboga and others are working actively on all of these things. This next year should see some answers.

Regards

Robert

[robert newman]

You are right Peter, that the most obvious and clear solution is that the inventory was being made right up to the time when the Bonn music archive was taken away in 1794.

And, to some extent this is already proved to be true. For, as already mentioned, Luchesi kept up to date a catalogue until 1791/2 at least, in which works are credited alphabetically to Haydn and Mozart - that catalogue being C.53/1 at Modena.

You've suggested, in fact, that all problems disappear by such an explanation - that 'A.R.' is Reicha who, from 1785 onwards is the copyist at Bonn whose initials are found at manuscripts in Modena.

But (and here comes the 'but') if this is correct, how do we explain that in 1784 (the year before Reicha's arrival) 8 Symphonies are credited by name to 'Haydn' and a further 11 Symphonies to 'Heyde' - this plus, of course 'The Seven Last Words of our Redeemer' ? This gives us 20 symphonies being credited to Haydn in 1784.

But these Hadyn symphonies at Modena (which came from Bonn) are not only written on paper known to have been used in Bonn but also (in many cases)have the initials 'A.R.' written on them.

How is it possible that the inventory of 1784 in Bonn credits Haydn with these works if the initials appearing on them if those copies could not have been created until 1785 onwards ? And how does one explain the existence in 1784 of the '7 Last Words of our Redeemer' if, in fact, Hadyn did not compose this work until 2-3 years after the 1784 Inventory ?

I will always be guided by the logic and simplicity of your solution but this itself makes us ask which manuscripts were actually inventoried in 1784 and how they could have been credited to Haydn in that year ? If Reicha makes copies it follows that he had originals (or other copies) at his hand.

But that is to create 2 music archives and not one. Is that your view ?

Robert