Klarinet Archive - Posting 000015.txt from 1995/02

From: Jonathan Cohler <cohler@-----.NET>
Subj: Mozart clarinet manuscripts, Constanze, Stadler,...
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 13:55:59 -0500

Dan Leeson said,

>
>Jonathan mentioned both Konstanze Mozart as being responsible
>for the loss of the autograph of the concerto and Nissen
>as a musicologist who boarded at her home, stumbled on the
>manuscripts and began to get them published.
>
>It did not happen this way.
>
>Konstanze knew exactly what she had after her husband died.
>She kept very careful control over all the manuscripts, but
>never had access to either the concerto or the quintet. Both
>were given to Stadler by Mozart himself. It is quite possible
>that Stadler had paid for them and thus owned them, but this
>wrinkle will never be known. In any case Stadler had both
>autographs at Mozart's death. He then kept them in a picnic
>basket which, according to one rumor, he pawned in 1799 with
>the autographs inside the basket. They were never seen again.
>The fragmentary autograph of the concerto - the one for basset
>horn in G - was kept by Konstanze and that is how we have it
>to this day. A facsimile of this autograph is in the Barenreiter
>edition of the concerto, an edition that presents the work in
>two forms: standard clarinet and basset clarinet. I reviewed
>that volume for The Clarinet when it came out around 1978.
>

I was very interested by your response. Obviously, you've done a great
deal of research in this area. My source for some of this information is,
admittedly, second hand, so I would like your opinion on the accuracy of
the following. In the book "Mozart & Constanze" by Francis Carr (first
published in 1983 by John Murray, London), Carr notes (*** added by me):

"When Constanze was seventeen, her mother had increased her income by
taking lodgers, one of whom Constanze married. Now, a widow in her
thirties, Frau Mozart took the same step as her mother, and made one room
of her flat available for a paying guest. In 1799, she took in an official
from the Danish Embassy, Georg Nikolaus Nissen. He was a bachelor of
thirty-seven, two years older than Constanze. The newcomer was a great
admirer of Mozart's music, and he must have been highly surprised to find
that most of his works, over five hundred, still lay unpublished in the
Mozart apartment. ***Constanze, it seems, was not aware of their worth.***
Not more than seventy of her husband's works had been published while he
was alive.

Nissen saw at once what should be done. ***Acting as Constanze's business
manager, he set about the task of writing to music publishers and selling
these many masterpieces. Only some thirty of Nissen's letters to the
publisher, Anton Andre, have been preserved. Constanze added her signature
to these letters, so they have been presented as her letters in the
collected edition of the Mozart correspondence.*** These business letters,
written between 1800 and 1826, show that Nissen was certainly enthusiastic
and efficient, although sometimes petulant and verbose. He was not a
musician himself, and he could not have carried out this work without the
aid of the Abbe Maximilian Stadler, Mozart's friend and a skilled musician.
It was he who classified and catalogued the whole collection."

By the way, what is your source for the statement that Mozart had both
manuscripts (the Quintet and Concerto) at Mozart's death. I have not heard
that before.

Thanks.

Jonathan Cohler
cohler@-----.net