Mozart in English

[yanni]

There is a scientific explanation:

The eyes of moles and of some burrowing rodents are rudimentary in size, and in some cases are quite covered by skin and fur. This state of the eyes is probably due to gradual reduction from disuse, but aided perhaps by natural selection....and as eyes are certainly not necessary to animals having subterranean habits, a reduction in their size, with the adhesion of the eyelids and growth of fur over them, might in such case be an advantage; and if so, natural selection would aid the effects of disuse. (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Laws of Variation).

One day Musicology may learn not to be a snide, pompous jerk. Though, we doubt this will ever happen.

[Musicology]

If Mutatis Mutandi has anything to say on W.A. Mozart this is his chance. He probably does not know Yanni has been reminded no less than 10 times on this thread that its subject was (and is) the life and career of W.A. Mozart. And now Mutatis Mutandi has been told the same. (Perhaps he will learn this quicker than Yanni ?).

(One struggles to keep the thread on its subject. The 'Mozarteans' don't like that. They have no answer. As usual).

The fraudulent mythology of the musical 'genius' of Salzburg is, we see, not able to survive daylight. Cross-examination. What does that say about the Mozart industry ? Biographical and musical evidence shows what we are dealing with here. It's garbage. It always was. Music deserves better. As Mutatis Mutandi can see and as everyone can see who examines the facts. But they still teach this stuff to children and to students as musical 'history' though anyone can see it's fraternal nonsense. And we are seeing this, over and over again. From the first years of Mozart's life to the very last.

Stick around -the best is still to come ! And where are these 'experts' when you need them ? They've gone awfully silent. Don't feel bad. 200 years of fiction is enough fiction for musicology.

LOL !!

Yanni has an advantage over you. He already knows Mozart was a stage-managed invention and he tells us this himself. Seems like facts are greater than fictions. And they are !

Please do not presume to speak on behalf of 'we'. It indicates that you have multiple personalities. Since we do not know who the 'we' is. Perhaps you can tell us. Let me guess - you work for the Austrian Tourist Board, or the fraternity of science fiction writers, perhaps ? Do they pay you 30 pieces of silver to defend one of the big monuments of pseudo-history ? They do ? In that case you should post in the fiction section.

One day Musicology may learn not to be a snide, pompous jerk. Though, we doubt this will ever happen.

'Everything you've heard is true' (and that's 'official')

(Trailer to the film 'Amadeus) '

We continue our irreverent series on the legendary musical career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) with another free article, this time dealing with musical and biographical matters related to Mozart's first musical tour of Italy which he made in 1770. During which time (as you already know) he wrote 90 operas before breakfast, 20 concertos before lunch, 23 concertos before sunset and designed 29 suspension bridges. And wrote from memory several volumes of Homer, the Bible, and the notes of a mass performed in Rome. All of which prove his 'genius' status, as you know.

This section examines the thorny problem of 'Who Taught Mozart Musical Composition' ? (If anyone). (Cough, cough !).

In recent years (as you may appreciate) the need to provide the identity of the composition teacher of this mercurial genius from Salzburg (now that Padre Martini of Bologna has been discounted from the list) has become something of a priority to identify in official/conventional 'Mozart Studies'. One influential teacher and writer (as you will see) has been bravely suggesting it was probably a musical aristocrat of the time named the Marquis de Ligniville (1730-1788). Which, if true, solves a centuries old mystery. And rescuing the Austrian Tourist Board and German musicology from that small problem.

Ligniville, for sure, was described in a letter by Leopold Mozart (who met one another at this time) as being one of the best composition teachers in Italy at the time. So he sounds promising, doesn't he ? We examine this theory. We also examine other exaggerations, falsehoods and crude errors which relate to Mozart's presence in Florence during that year of 1770 and the contents of reports made on them during their stay. Thanks especially to Luca Bianchini of Italy and to those interested in the subject of musical history (aka as the struggle to introduce criticism in to the teaching of musical history). And best wishes to investigative journalism and those relying on the oxygen of criticism.

http://www.mediafire.com/?yxngqext3vcb36r

[Pyras]

I congratulate you Robert on your research about the trip Mozart made in his earliest years. I think there are no books as interesting as these chapters, because you are collecting lot of problems, that were never studied in depth. You allow the reader to have a proper idea. So I like it very much. The research is a collection of problems, not a collection of solutions. So I thank you very much for these very intersting materials. Nobody I think has researched anything about Munich and 1763 and so on. I think these informations are strictly related to the researches on music in 1770.

I thank you also for the new link. I will read the new document with great interest.

Pyras

'Everything you've heard is true' (and that's 'official')

(Trailer to the film 'Amadeus) '

We continue our irreverent series on the legendary musical career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) with another free article, this time dealing with musical and biographical matters related to Mozart's first musical tour of Italy which he made in 1770. During which time (as you already know) he wrote 90 operas before breakfast, 20 concertos before lunch, 23 concertos before sunset and designed 29 suspension bridges. And wrote from memory several volumes of Homer, the Bible, and the notes of a mass performed in Rome. All of which prove his 'genius' status, as you know.

This section examines the thorny problem of 'Who Taught Mozart Musical Composition' ? (If anyone). (Cough, cough !).

In recent years (as you may appreciate) the need to provide the identity of the composition teacher of this mercurial genius from Salzburg (now that Padre Martini of Bologna has been discounted from the list) has become something of a priority to identify in official/conventional 'Mozart Studies'. One influential teacher and writer (as you will see) has been bravely suggesting it was probably a musical aristocrat of the time named the Marquis de Ligniville (1730-1788). Which, if true, solves a centuries old mystery. And rescuing the Austrian Tourist Board and German musicology from that small problem.

Ligniville, for sure, was described in a letter by Leopold Mozart (who met one another at this time) as being one of the best composition teachers in Italy at the time. So he sounds promising, doesn't he ? We examine this theory. We also examine other exaggerations, falsehoods and crude errors which relate to Mozart's presence in Florence during that year of 1770 and the contents of reports made on them during their stay. Thanks especially to Luca Bianchini of Italy and to those interested in the subject of musical history (aka as the struggle to introduce criticism in to the teaching of musical history). And best wishes to investigative journalism and those relying on the oxygen of criticism.

http://www.mediafire.com/?yxngqext3vcb36r

[Musicology]

Thank you Pyras.

We will shortly prepare a number of other articles on the life and career of Mozart. Using musical and historical evidence. These including a series on the well known 'Grand Tour' of 1763-6, articles on his other two tours of Italy, and on matters related to his later career (real or imagined). These will take us through the years of his childhood and youth. A solid foundation for studies of the years which follow them.

Peter Tchaikowsky (1840-93)
Symphony No. 6
3rd Movement
Herbert von Karajan
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bviS_Wt3L6M

In answer to George, members of the Order of St Hubert encouraged French Horns to be introduced in to orchestras in Germany/Austria/Bohemia. One of whose members was Sporke, patron of early opera in Prague during the 1730's. And one of whose relatives was also in charge of operas of the Austrian/Hungarian court in Vienna until 1775. (In fact this later Sporke was in charge of the enquiry in to the cancellation of the 'Mozart' opera of 1768 in Vienna, 'La finta semplice').

Regards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBT76...eature=related

[yanni]

Refocusing on 1762:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...t=51451&page=7

[Musicology]

We must remind ourselves that the conventional view of western musical history (so-called) is dominated by a mere handful of musical composers, they and music that has been traditionally attributed to them and which has always been published and performed in their names, but whose iconic status in each case begs the question of the context within which that music was first commissioned, edited, published and performed. But these are subjects rarely questioned within musicology and especially if they call in to question the dominant status of the composer in question. Nowhere is this more obviously true than in music of the 18th century. And particularly in that period known as the 'Enlightenment'. The alleged works of Joseph Haydn, of G.F. Handel, and of numerous others being clear and obvious examples. Nor is modern criticism of musical convention appreciated or encouraged within the wider academic and cultural world. Since these, the ’great’ composers, have become idols of western musical history. Seen as integral parts of western civilization, so-called. Belonging (as they do) to a virtual pantheon who today dominate our musical and cultural landscape with only minimal protest or criticism. Though this silent process of secularised canonisation has indisputably excluded more than 99 per cent of musical composers and has ruled out our appreciation or even the performance of their own music. The vast majority of musical works composed during the lifetimes of these neglected composers lying unpublished, unperformed, unstudied and unappreciated in countless libraries and archives today. As they have for over two centuries.

In the case of W.A. Mozart his canonisation has been justified by creation and survival of a vast quantity of documents related to him and his alleged career which seem to support the well known outlines of his life, career and supposed achievements. Though these, conventionally, are rarely questioned for the truthfulness of their contents. Indeed, the first fact we learn of Mozart Studies is that more documents survive on Mozart’s life and musical career (covering virtually every week of his existence) than on any other composer in the entire history of western music. Which is a foundational fact with which to begin. So, from the start, the attribution of music published and performed in Mozart’s name over the past two centuries has always tended to be accepted wholesale by teachers and students together with that of his giant reputation. These seeming to be justified and complemented by evidence of a biographical kind, which, as said, is voluminous. And, since biographical documents appear to balance and complement the music itself, there seems little more to say - except that we all need to acknowledge and celebrate the 'miracle of Mozart' as a true prodigy of nature and as a great composer. Which we dutifully tend to do. We assume one documentary miracle is related to Mozart (that of ’his’ musical scores) has been supported by a second miracle of roughly equal size, consisting of the voluminous travel diaries, family correspondence, anecdotes, notices, and other written material etc.

That the career of Mozart was falsified virtually from the start, that it was invented, exaggerated, and raised wholesale to iconic status by early and later patrons, by fraternal arrangements, by a stream of loyal publishers, biographers, managers and others may seem at first, to be absurd, preposterous, and highly improbable. Although it finds immediate credibility when we consider what we know, (or think we know) of musical achievement as a whole during Mozart’s own lifetime (1756-1791). Isn’t that a subject which has always been defined for us by conventional reference to Mozart as a finished genius of western music ? The Mozartean mantra has been of great value to controllers of many areas of academic and cultural ‘education’ and has certainly had the effect of excluding virtually all other composers of his time, both they and their music. And since that is not able to be denied we further note this process was swiftly followed by construction and deification of a pantheon of ‘great’ composers of which he, W.A. Mozart, is said to be a vital member.

In short, the fact that Mozart’s giant status can be demonstrated (even by common sense) to have occurred, that it is really a mockery of musical history in any fair or reasonable sense, and that it still lacks meaningful criticism within the academic and wider world prepares us for the fact which follows - that Mozart’s status, his life and career are still being rarely questioned in any meaningful sense. Which facts alone are more than sufficient justification for a modern study, a modern re-examination, of the Mozart phenomenon as a whole.

RN

Let’s Sanitise Our Musical ‘History’

FX Schlichtegroll's ‘Necrology’ (a work providing the outline of the lives and careers of famous people which appeared annually in German during the late 18th century) first appeared with an article on the late W.A. Mozart in 1793 - 2 years after his death and after a comedy of errors. Though it supposedly covered the official life and career of W.A. Mozart from 1756-1791. Furious with the fact that it did not credit Mozart with composing ’Le Nozze di Figaro’ and numerous other musical works for which he is today famous Constanze (widow of Mozart) waited until news came a second edition of the same work was in big demand and was about to be published in Graz in 1794 (a year after the 1st edition). When she arranged for all available copies to be purchased soon after they started appearing in bookshops. And had all of them destroyed. (The same as she had 8 years earlier bought up and destroyed the entire 1st Edition of the earliest Mozart biography of them all - by FX Niemetscheck of Prague (1797/8). (An unusual habit of hers, it seems !). As for her role in managing a third Mozart biography (whose authorship is credited to her second late husband, G. Nissen, and herself and which was published in 1826 she tells brazenly readers in its preface -

‘We must not speak of him (Mozart) as perhaps he would have spoken in the privacy of domestic evenings - to tell all the truth might do harm to his fame, to the success of his very music’

Apart from that, ‘everything you’ve heard is true’. And that’s official ! Bringing to mind those immortal words -

'We must not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories'

Luigi Boccherini
Minuetto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fLPB...eature=related

[yanni]

Mozart's death was faked. He reappeared as Nissen and made a mess (could not correct the long list of lies-ie other fake music masters, like himself, all manufactured by 'Kochs') of music history and his own biography.

[Musicology]

Yanni,

My concern is for Mozart's official life and career.

I hope to post soon on the first days of his 'Grand Tour' of 1763-6. In the meantime -

JS Bach
Overture
Orchestral Suite No. 4
BWV 1069/1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPnAw...eature=related

[yanni]

'Mozart's official life and career' has already been put in doubt by others, so I fail to see the point you are trying to make, your own contribution towards the truth, other than noises laced with irony!

Biographical accounts of Mozart published prior to the late 1820s make virtually no mention of his mistreatment in Salzburg. Not even Nannerl Mozart, in her reminiscences, has much to say about this. But with the publication in 1828 of Georg Nikolaus von Nissen's Biographie W. A. Mozart, the story of Mozart's early suffering became a standard biographical trope. What gave Nissen (Constanze's second husband) such authority was his publication of lengthy abstracts from the family correspondence - indeed, his is as much an epistolary biography (and as such at least indirectly related to the idea of the epistolary novel) as a scholarly one. The biographical power of these abstracts, including bitter complaints and frequent accounts of abuse, was beyond measurement: not only were they 'authentic', straight from the horse's mouth, but they reinforced the then current 'idea' of Mozart as a quintessentially Romantic artist – discarded and neglected, passed over in favour of lesser talents, sickly and impoverished, doomed to an early grave.
And the music composed between 1784 and 1788: so powerful, so moving, so 'absolute', so Viennese. Could a better foil be found for the creation of this classical (in the sense of exemplary) style than his miserable life in Salzburg, where he was subjugated by his father and the Archbishop and where, as most accounts have it, he was forced to toe the line musically? Almost inevitably, Salzburg came to occupy an important and thoroughly negative place in Mozart's history, fuelled by the composer's own words. Most important of all, perhaps, he was relieved of any personal culpability: it was not Mozart's fault that his life turned out the way it did - his true spirit, and the rewards that he deserved, are manifest in the grace and beauty and purity of his works.
It is a convenient story but not a convincing one.

------------------------------------------------------------

Cliff Eisen: Mozart and Salzburg

See also: 'The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassessment' by William Stafford

[Musicology]

Yanni,

You have again not read the books you are recommending. Such as William Stafford's book entitled 'The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassesssment', have you ?

If you actually read that book you will see Stafford never, at any time, questions the musical 'genius' of W.A. Mozart, and never, at any time, doubts that W.A. Mozart composed all of the music traditionally attributed to him. As if that is not bad enough he never, at any time, deals with the mountain of lies, falsification and fictions which ARE his official music nor the countless examples of his fraudulent career. That's just for a start.

I am convinced there were no 'great' composers. Not even JS Bach. There are those who serve mankind in music and those who do not. The rest is Babylonian, occultist, nonsense.

Cantata 205
Opening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33nKa...eature=related


Regards

[yanni]

Long ago I came to- and published-the conclusion that, on my subject at least, "everybody but me is lying", a conclusion that was later strengthened to a principle when the music side of the story was tackled in this forum. It would be thus inconsistent to really trust or recommend other authors on Mozart or any other music master. I never did so therefore for Stafford but merely wrote that Mozart's 'truth' was already placed in doubt by others, paralleling their 'work' to yours in their cloudiness (big titles-little content if any).

For what is worth however, Mozart's 'truth' is here, in this site, already, in the threads on music we have gone thru, which threads could serve as a basis to anyone interested, provided it (truth-and not false hope or private interest) is what people really need this day and age, which I very much doubt.


Regards.

Yanni,

You have again not read the books you are recommending. Such as William Stafford's book entitled 'The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassesssment', have you ?

If you actually read that book you will see Stafford never, at any time, questions the musical 'genius' of W.A. Mozart, and never, at any time, doubts that W.A. Mozart composed all of the music traditionally attributed to him. As if that is not bad enough he never, at any time, deals with the mountain of lies, falsification and fictions which ARE his official music nor the countless examples of his fraudulent career. That's just for a start.

I am convinced there were no 'great' composers. Not even JS Bach. There are those who serve mankind in music and those who do not. The rest is Babylonian, occultist, nonsense.

Cantata 205
Opening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33nKa...eature=related


Regards

[Musicology]

Yanni,

The history of western music (so-called) was and is, to a huge extent, officially approved nonsense. Of course it is. But there is the arrogant dogma that we 'know' the subject and Mozart was a genius. It doesn't matter how much contrary evidence you can present - the mantra remains. Although his myth was protected from the very start by members of the status quo on grounds that were and are entirely bogus. 'His' music in actual fact written by others. Almost totally. So says the evidence. Which teachers and students never see. Or choose not to. That is not, however, the end. It's really the start. The pantheon of 'great' musical composers of which Mozart became a vital member was, of course, an artificial , highly selective and grossly sanitised counterfeit. Requiring a lot of input. This fact can be shown by examining the lives and careers of virtually any 'great' composer from Palestrina up to and including Beethoven and beyond. Mozart is a case in point. So too Handel, Haydn, and many others.

Virtually from the start of the Christian era pagan influences of the east (via Byzantium, Venice and from places such as Como in North Italy from the 5th century onwards) started to control emerging organised churches and rulers of land estates through Rome and the papacy. Also in the control of music. The rise of the Holy Roman Empire from 800 AD and music within it is a classic example. The mystery cults of the ancient world never went away. They early infiltrated the Church of Rome and their influence was often supported by hierarchical nature of the papacy itself. (As a parasite lives on its host, so they, the occultists, lived on the organised structures of Rome and its system). This plus the continual influence of kabbalism and talmudism. In many cases the interests of Rome and those pagan beliefs were one and the same. The ancient guilds, the emergence of early fraternities, the Giovanni, the Cominici, early forms of Freemasony, English freemasonry (which came much later), the rise of the Illuminatists, the entire Enlightenment philosophy, and the dominant role down the centuries of land estate 'owners', of musical patrons and other members of the aristocracy thus presided over the rise of an official 'history' of music that is no history. A pseudo-history, in fact. Belonging to a world of legal fictions and heroic individuals. Welcomed and adored by millions.

A modern examination of Mozart provides proof positive that Babylonian/Assyrian/Egyptian/Talmudic beliefs have been in institutionalised revival since the late 18th century. Taking over and defending cultural monuments for the teaching and learning of music and its history (so-called) to generations and giving a pack of institututionalised myths and lies that are virtually never challenged or criticised. Consumed by the gullible with the help of the mass media as 'convention'.

Mozart was a musical Manchurian Candidate used at a crucial time for further revival of pagan control of a vital part of education and culture - music and its history.

(The control of music was always a vitally important part of control of 'civilization' as a whole. So Mozart was part of the globalist revival of paganism. His official story conforming to the philosophies and belief systems of pagan elites and their own ancestors). Patronised to this day by corporate mythmakers. That is the importance, if any, of a detailed modern expose of W.A. Mozart.

Cantata 201
Chorus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4yql...eature=related

[yanni]

You might as well blame it on Adam and Eve....or the rotten apple!

CONCERT IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI IN JAPAN

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem K.626 in D Minor

Conductor: Elias Voudouris
Chorus Master: Nikos Vassiliou

Solists:
Vassiliki Karagianni,
Victoria Ntina-Maifatova,
Antonis Koroneos,
Dimitris Kassioumis

Orchestra and Chorus of the Greek National Opera.


The Greek National Opera presents Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem on Saturday 16 April 2011 at 20:00 hours at the Olympia Theatre.



The Requiem in D Minor (K.626) is for many the crown jewel of Mozart's musical opus (1756-1791), his last and most superior achievement, since in that piece music and words blend in a transcendental way.
The conditions under which the work was written are even today shrouded in a veil of mystery. While the commissioning of the Magic Flute was a caprice of fate, and the commission for La Clemenza di Tito came from an enthusiastic impresario, the existence of the Requiem is surely a commission from some member of the aristocracy to Mozart. In return for paying a price of 60 ducats, this aristocrat intended to dedicate the work to the memory of his wife while presenting that piece as one of his own!
Mozart himself did not manage to complete the work. The contribution of Franz-Xaver Süssmayr, 1766-1803) was definitive in completing the composition and orchestrating the parts.

Starts 20.00

Tickets online

Tickets on sale in advance
from the OLYMPIA THEATRE ticket booths, 59-61 Academias St., Athens from 09:00 to 21:00 daily
Phone bookings 210 3662 100, 210 3612 461, 210 3643 725
Online bookings www.nationalopera.gr

[Musicology]

Yanni,

Why the need for wholesale fakery and falsehood ? Ah, yes - LOL !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzCsS...eature=related

HOW THE MOZART INDUSTRY WORKS
A Comedy in Three Acts

Overture

As the Second World War was drawing to its close a Milan music publisher and editor named Carin, (no doubt hopeful the people of Europe and everywhere else would soon return to peaceful sanity) made a surprising announcement. By providing details of a sensational musical discovery made a year earlier in music archives of the Pia Institutuzione in Cremona by Italian music writer Nino Negretti. An 18th century score of a previously unknown symphony by the Salzburg genius W.A. Mozart (1756-1791). An event which, over the next few years, and in consistency with the iconic name of that genius was soon to be celebrated as a major cultural and musical discovery. A typical example of the news being quick to spread being a French journal in the ‘Revue de Musicologie’ in 1946 under the name of ‘Publication D’Une Simphonie Inedite de Mozart’. (With similar reports appearing in Germany and in English speaking lands).

Now, readers of these pages will not surprised Mozart has long been to Musicology what Pavlov is to members of the canine family. (Since salivation is guaranteed in both cases). And if I tell you this discovery in Cremona burned a few late night candles at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at august music archives such as the Gesellschaft die Musikfreunde in Vienna, Austria, you will get a rough idea of what I mean). You may even be forgiven for thinking your correspondent in these Mozartean matters has, by the very act of sharing these revelations, finally ‘thrown in the towel’ - that he has repented of his ways and has ‘joined the bandwaggon‘, so to speak - of his long term criticism of the transcendental myth that is the Mozart story. (After all, what better way for me to do so than bring to your attention details of the discovery of a little known Mozart symphony, no doubt composed in the white hot moment of musical inspiration by that prodigy of nature against whom he has, over many years and until now had many sleepless nights ?).

But you may also be surprised to know experts, studying this particular discovery in Cremona were strangely reluctant to attribute it to W.A. Mozart. Which was unusual, I assure you. Indeed, there is a professor in the USA who has authored a book on Mozart symphonies who acknowledges that over the past 200 years nearly 100 works of a symphonic kind have appeared at one time or another in Mozart’s name. Most of them commercially published at one time or another. Amazing in itself. Do you know a similar case ? Though, today, less than one third of these symphonic works are still said to be by W.A. Mozart. Thus, we are reminded by such hard facts of his myth and of those promotional offers we see these days in supermarkets offering 3 for the price of 1, and so on.

As for Signor Negretti’s discovery (made in 1943 and announced the following year) its orchestral parts certainly certainly originated from a collection that went back to the 18th Century Accademia Filarmonica of Cremona. Which was a great start, as will see later. So, not unnaturally, Negrotti and others believed that unknown symphony may well have originated in Cremona since Wolfgang and his father stopped there in January 1770 on their way to Milan. And the work was still there awaiting rediscovery in 1943, filed there in Cremona under the name of ‘Mozart‘).

But there were, virtually from the start. numerous problems. Not least, that the work was soon acknowledged by all who actually examined it to be filled with musical errors. And, of course, Mozart did not make clumsy musical errors (as we know). Thus, from the start, its automatic attribution to the musical genius of Salzburg was, shall we say (?) problematic.

I am grateful to that indefatigable and honest Mozart researcher Dennis Pajot for the outline of what happened in the days and years after this remarkable discovery was first announced. Some of his writings on this subject I have briefly paraphrased below. And which I must add to at length myself. In my next post.

Pajot, for example, points out that 12 years later, in 1956, a very famous writer on Josef Haydn and Mozart, H.C. Robbins Landon, wrote briefly on the subject of this symphony. In building his case Landon went to the newly published "Union Thematic Catalogue of 18th Century Symphonies" and pointed out this work was already said to have been composed by one Anton Eberl (1766 - 1807). Moreover, Landon reminded us a score of this symphony exists elsewhere dated February 24, 1785. And, amazingly, it’s a signed autograph still able to be seen today in the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. And Landon, quite sure he had found its true composer, next told us Anton Eberl had once been one of ‘Mozart’s pupils’ in Vienna (apparently in the years of 1785-6). Listing as proof the fact that some more of Eberl’s early compositions had also been falsely attributed by various music publishers to Mozart. And thus, it seemed, this newly discovered symphony was definitely by Anton Eberl.

I must however introduce into this story the awkward fact that elsewhere in Italy (at the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini, for example) a copy of this very same symphony can today be seen in its music archives although it is neither attributed to W.A. Mozart nor even to Anton Eberl but to a third composer, one Franz Christoph Neuberger (1760-95) !

Landon, quite sure it was by Eberl, pointed out that once a symphony has been wrongly attributed the chances increase of it being wrongly attributed elsewhere. (That being a small understatement in Mozart research. Cough, cough ! You may agree). His remarks were however sufficient to achieve his objective of deflecting most researchers away from the difficulties of this subject. The Cremona symphony ‘became’ for Robbins Landon a simple matter of a symphony by Anton Eberl which, for reasons still not clear and not explained, has somehow been ‘wrongly’ attributed to Mozart. The fact that it had been attributed to him at Cremona since the 18th century was, well, considered to be incidental.

But these things are, I regret, typical when we seek to identify the true composer of music in the mid to late 18th century. As we see again when the editors of the standard list of Mozarts’s musical works (those learned editions known in Mozart studies as the Koechel List which arrived at its 6th edition in 1964) then placed this little known symphony in a special section of that catalogue under the section ‘Misattributed Works’ and even gave it the imposing reference number ‘C.11.14‘. Although its editors (Franz Giegling, Gerd Sievers and Alexander Weinmann) did not agree with Landon. They believed it was definitely a symphony by Franz Neuberger (1760-95). They did so because they knew it is available in other archives under Neuberger’s name. They further stated the piece was ‘unlikely to date from 1770’ (although they gave no reasons for saying so) . Although, of course, in 1770, Neubauer was less than 10 years old.

So the matter of the amazing ’Mozart’ symphony found at Cremona in 1943 rested. For 40 years. Until 1983. When one Stephen C Fischer took up a private study of that work in detail. Fischer began by examining Negrotti’s earlier view that the work may have been written in Cremona by W.A. Mozart around 1770. He concluded the stopover taken by the Mozarts that year had been too brief for that to be a serious possibility. He also dismissed it as being a work by Mozart on musically stylistic grounds. Thus, for Fischer, this was really a symphony by Anton Eberl. But Fischer did more. He decided to examine the Eberl autograph in Vienna (where, as it happens, it’s dated June 25, 1785) I.e. only 2 weeks before Eberl’s own 25th birthday. A fact which, as it happens, had already been considered proof enough to be considered as authentication of its true author by that zealous earlier collector of musical manuscripts Aloys Fuchs. (Whose relationship to the Mozart industry and to Mozart’s music we do not need to examine here). And Fischer, in support of Landon, provided two modern sources that have also attributed it to the same Anton Eberl (both in musical dissertations--A. Duane White in‘The Piano Works of Anton Eberl (1971) and Richard Swordsman in, ‘The Instrumental Works of Franz Christoph Neubauer’ of 1970.

So we can see that what started off in 1943/4 as a discovery by Sig. Nino Negretti of an unknown Mozart symphony in Cremona soon had not one but three candidates as its composer. W.A. Mozart (who started as the obvious favourite) soon falling behind. Overtaken by Anton Eberl and also by those who believe (with documentary evidence) that it is by Franz Christoph Neubaeur. While our knowledge of the music of these two is minimal.

The rest of this article aims to show Sig. Negretti was right. Not so much in the fact of the Cremona work being by W.A. Mozart, but in the fact that this work almost certainly arrived in Cremona in early 1770 with Mozart and his father - then visiting Italy on their first fabulous and grossly invented tour. Wolfgang having attempted to make it ‘his’ at the time and handing over the piece during his days in Cremona as 'proof of his abilities'. As one of ‘Mozart’s’ own symphonies. It’s true composer being, in fact, young Neubauer. And, as for Anton Eberl, to show his role in the career of W.A. Mozart (which was extensive even after Mozart's death in 1791) was merely that of diversion, falsehood, and the usual cover up. Not least in the creation of an ‘autograph’ today held at the Gesselschaft die Musikfreunde in Vienna that is no ‘autograph’ at all. Since the work in question is most definitely one by Franz Christoph Neubauer. Palmed off by Mozart in Italy, like so much else, as his very own.

- End of Overture-

[yanni]

Add another Mozart's double, Thomas Linley jr, to your list of unknowns and then try solving the equation via Eberl's dedication to JH (Joseph Haydn/John Hawkins etc) and Neubauer's alleged rivalry with the very obscure JCFBach, JS's youngest son (married to a Munchhausen no less), who passed allegedly away in 1795, a few years after Mozart did(not).

Linley, Mozart, Neubauer and Eberl, all wunderkinds of the undying wunderman!