Klarinet Archive - Posting 000298.txt from 1994/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: For Chris Zello (and anyone else) on the Concertante
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 1994 19:33:46 -0500

Mozart's Sinfonie Concertante has been a problem from day
one. He was in Paris in 1778, and the concerto for multiple
instruments (which is what a Sinfonie Concertante is) was the
rage. Everybody and his brother was turning them out for
various combinations of solo instruments. Barry Brook of
CCNY wrote a doctoral thesis on the importance of the form in
Paris between 1775 and 1800 (after which it went downhill
fast).

So somehow Mozart got himself commissioned by a certain
Jean Le Gros who was the manager of a Paris concert series,
to compose a concertante for flute, oboe, horn, bassoon, and
orchestra. This is not speculation but fact for Mozart wrote to
his father and told him of the commission specifying the very
players who were going to play it. The combination of those
four winds and orchestra was not new to him. He had used
them along with voice in one aria in Idomeneo called "Se il
padre perdei." It is really a concerto for voice, flute, oboe,
horn, bassoon, and orchestra and you might listen to it if you
have a chance to see how he handled massed solo winds.

Suddenly a problem arises. Mozart writes another letter to his
father and talks about plots and cabals against the
performance of his concertante. He also says that the players
are goofy about the piece (which means that they had to have
had an opportunity to at least play the solo parts together, or
else how would they have known), but there are problems
getting it performed. He says that he went to Le Gros' office
and found the score in a pile of music, asking Le Gros if he
intended to send the score out for copying the orchestral parts
out. And Le Gros gives him a brush off.

Bottom line, is that Mozart's work got pulled from the concert
and a concertante of identical instrumentation by a rival got
substituted instead. Mozart had tried to play politics with
someone who had better lines into the community than he did
and he mopped the floor with Mozart, politically that is.
So the work was not performed, Le Gros owned the score
(meaning that he had paid Mozart something or else Mozart
could have taken it back) and the fact that he had a score
shows that Mozart really composed the piece.

One more letter from Mozart to his father references the piece
and then all hard documentation stops cold. Mozart left Paris
under a cloud. Actually he got thrown out of Paris because the
other composers saw what he was and simply ganged up on
him. On his way back to Salzburg he wrote a letter from
Nancy in which he says something like, "Well Le Gros may
think he has the piece, but I've got it in my head and I'll write
it all out again when I get back to Salzburg." Frankly he
sounds like he is making the bravado of badly embarrassed.

As far as facts go, that is the end of the story. The score in
Mozart's hand has never been found (and you have no idea
how many people have been looking for it, even to this day).

When Koechel did his catalog in 1862 he makes reference to
the work, but since it is a lost work, he puts it in that section
of the catalog reserved work lost works, the appendix (in
German: Anhang) as the 9th work in that appendix. Thus it
bore the listing K. Anhang 9. On the other hand, for example,
he gave the clarinet concerto the 622nd listing in the main body
of the catalog because, though the autograph was lost, the
music had been preserved. And the quintet is the 581st entry,
and the piano quintet the 452nd entry, etc. But there are lots
of pieces in the appendix of lost works, even to this day.

Then it hits the fan: in 1869 Otto Jahn dies. He was a great
Mozart scholar and had tried to get a copy of every work he
could lay his hands on. He would even have stuff copied if it
were not printed. After his death, some estate cataloger comes
in to see what it is he has. And Jahn's estate was vast. For
one thing he was a specialist in Greek vase painting, too, a
Beethoven scholar, etc. So the estate cataloger spends weeks
sorting out all the stuff he finds in Jahn's house.

And in a big pile of manuscript music that has a lot of Mozart
in it, he finds a work with the title "Concertantes quartet." It
is not in Mozart's hand, it doesn't even have an author's name
on it. But it is a concerto for four wind instruments and
orchestra and it is for clarinet, oboe, horn, bassoon, and
orchestra. But this estate cataloger knows from nothing so he
presumes that, since the score was in a pile of Mozart's music,
this must be a Mozart piece too. So in the catalog of Jahn's
estate we find this weird work attributed to Mozart's
authorship by none other than Mr. Estate cataloger who had
as much knowledge on the subject of Mozart scholarship as my
pet turtle.

The score was bought by the Berlin State library where it is to
this day. Suddenly, the Mozart specialists wake up on seeing
the catalog of Jahn's estate. What the hell is this piece with
clarinet, oboe, horn, bassoon and orchestra? Where did it
come from? WHAT IS IT?????

Suddenly (and by 1870) everybody and his brother is now of the
opinion that this piece is the lost Mozart work. The fact that
it was not the correct instrumentation was not even noticed
until 1903, believe it or not. It was published in 1875 and until
the 2nd world war was presumed to be synonymous with the
Mozart work written in Paris.

Obviously when everybody woke up to the fact that it was not
the right instrumentation, scholarly papers began to come out
on how it got changed from flute to clarinet. If you had three
people talking about this, you got 7 opinions.

"Obviously Mozart took out the flute and inserted the clarinet
when he got back to Salzburg just as he said he would do."

"The piece is too good to be by anybody but Mozart."

"It is obvious that this is the work that Mozart wrote in Paris
in 1778."

etc., etc., etc. (By the way, watch out for people who say,
"Obviously ....")

I have seen, perhaps 100 reviews of various performances of
this work that took place between 1920 and 1940 and all of
them talk about the glory of the work, and how obvious it is
that it's by Mozart, and how cleverly he rearranged it to take
out the flute and stick in the clarinet, etc.

After WW2, things started to go sour for that piece. In fact
they went sour starting in the mid 1930s when a big name
English musicologist said, "The man who wrote this work could
not compose!" Pretty damning stuff. It got worse after WW2
when certain other matters began to be investigated until,
around 1960, the work was removed from the Koechel catalog
and put into that section reserved for doubtful and spurious
pieces, K. Anhang C17.01.

In the late 1960s a seminar was held in Washington on nothing
but the Sinfonie Concertante and both Bob Levin and I went
there, examined each other's work and wrote a paper for the
Mozart Jahrbuch which argued the following: the solo parts of
the Concertante are by Mozart, but the orchestral
accompaniment is not. Further, in order to take out the flute
and add the clarinet required a major alteration to all four
instrumental lines since the flute and clarinet do not occupy
the same place in the instrumental choir. That paper is in the
1976/77 Mozart Jahrbuch (published out of Salzburg) in
English and has the title "On the Authenticity of K. Anh. C.
17.01 (297b), a Symphonia Concertante for Four Winds and
Orchestra." If you get a copy, I'll autograph it for $2 but that's
because I can't afford to pay you more than that.

Levin then went and reconstructed the original wind grouping
by going backwards to produce a flute version which has been
recorded and is available on rental from Barenreiter. A piano
reduction is also available. Finally, Levin wrote a very detailed
book on what he had to do (and why) to produce the flute
version. It is called "Who wrote the Mozart Wind
Concertante?"

Today, the work has very little standing because it has been
excluded from the most recent Kochel catalog which is the bible
of Mozart scholarship. But I was chatting with the guy doing
the newest version of the catalog and I think we might be able
to push it back in.

Did I miss anything? Are you awake? Got any questions?
That will be $1.53, please.

There is a lot left out of this story so you may very well need
more information to put it all together. For example, what is
not Mozartean about it? Objectively??? Exactly what is wrong with
the work that caused some pretty heavy duty people to say, "This is
doo-doo" (though I am not one of them). Also, what is right about this
work? Aha!

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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