Klarinet Archive - Posting 000488.txt from 1996/04

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Fred Jacobowitz's suggestion about K. 622
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 09:22:40 -0400

Fred offers his view that there probably never was a score of
K. 622, just parts. Not likely, Fred. The standard mechanism
of late 18th century composition (and one which Mozart followed
to a "t") was that the composer produced an original manuscript
score (called "the autograph") that was then sent to a copyist
(Mozart's wife's father was a professional copyist) who produced
a set of performance parts. Both were the property of the composer
who received everything back from the copyist.

Now Fred is correct that, at this point, the score was no longer
necessary, and orchestras did play the work with the concertmaster
leading the group. But all compositions started with the autograph
score and not a single case exists in Mozart's entire output in
which the work was created without one. So an autograph of K. 622
did exist. It was complete (or else the copyist could not have
produced parts), and it was lost through a mechanism that is not
entirely clear though there are several different and contradictory
stories about what happened to it. (One exception: when Mozart
produced a piano concerto that he was writing for himself, he often
did not put the piano part in the autograph score. He sort of
faked it during the performance. The c minor piano concerto,
K. 491 has a very sketchy piano part.)

When a work was commissioned for a fee (which is certainly the
case for K. 622), the performance parts and the autograph score
became the property of the commissioner. So the score and parts
went out of Mozart's hands and into Stadler's. Konstanze never
had the score, and this is more than just speculation.

In 1799 she sold every autograph then in her possession. A catalog
of the sale was made by the purchaser, Johann Anton Andre, president
of a music publishing firm in Offenbach near Frankfurt. I have
a copy of that catalog and the clarinet concerto is not listed.

This description is the way things went normally and there is no
reason to believe that K. 622 behaved abnormally. Stadler comissioned
it and he owned it. But the idiot then went and lost it, either
by accident or deliberately through a sale. It is almost inconceivable
to think that it might still exist someplace. But stranger things
have happened, too.

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