Hello everyone !
I thought I'd take a break from scribbling notes in my spare time to share on some fresh controversies regarding the life and supposed career of Mozart.
My colleague/correspondent in Italy (Prof. Giorgio Taboga) has been researching recently on the supposed 27 Mozart Piano Concertos and I focusing (for many weeks now) on both the opera 'Le Nozze di Figaro' (1786) and the 5 'Mozart' Violin Concertos - this with a view to us meeting up in about a month or so from now in Paris (if possible).
Are there more revelations ? Yes, for sure ! I must startle this board by sharing the extraordinary opinion (which I now hold - almost alone, it seems) that the wonderful opera 'Le Nozze di Figaro' was NOT in fact composed by Mozart and also that he, Mozart, did NOT compose the 5 Violin Concertos which are today attributed to him in the Koechel list.
You will of course think these are extraordinary things to say and will certainly demand (at the very least) the name of the true composer of 'Le Nozze di Figaro' and the same of the true composer of those 5 (or is it 8 ?) violin concertos which have at various times been attributed solely to Mozart.
Very well, I believe the opera 'Le Nozze di Figaro' claimed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to have been composed by him during the first half of 1786 and attributed to him ever since was, in fact, composed FOR him by the only man able to have done so at that time - none other than than the mercurial Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792). (A man whom Mozart scholarship is slowly realising has some significance in Mozart's 'official' career).
I further believe that 'Mozart's librettist' Lorenzo da Ponte had virtually nothing to do with writing the libretto of 'Figaro' despite having been credited traditionally with having done so and of having collaborated with Mozart in several others. (In fact da Ponte had almost no talent to do so in 1786 or at any other time).
I further believe that the 'Mozart' Violin Concertos which have always been attributed to him since the late 1770's were NOT written by Mozart but almost certainly written FOR him by Joseph Mislivecek (1737-1781)- a tragic composer whose life and career has until recently been almost totally ignored by the wider music-loving public.
To justify such views in detail would require long arguments. But, in short, I now believe the available evidence better supports such opinions than it supports the traditional assumption that Mozart wrote all of these works.
I submit such 'heretical' views here briefly so that it cannot be said that no specific work has yet been identified by me which is falsely attributed to Mozart (though of course there are no less than 9 mature 'Mozart' symphonies which are already worthy of being described as the same and which have been refered to on this board some months ago).
These are my considered views on 'Figaro' and the Violin Concertos and I will of course be willing to say why I hold them in some detail if a traditionalist can tell us here why they believe Mozart was the true composer of both 'Le Nozze di Figaro' and these 5 Violin concertos.
Best regards
Robert Newman
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