“I had no thought what I used to be going to seek out. » François-Pierre Goy, curator within the music division from the BnFfound a treasure: an autograph manuscript of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), a “main discovery acknowledged by specialists” in response to the establishment.
This 44-page pocket book incorporates a dozen “composition classes”, workouts given each day, from Could to July 1778, by the Austrian composer to Marie-Louise Philippine de Bonnières de Guînes, a wonderful harpist, daughter of the Duke of Guînes, himself a famend flautist. The pages additionally embrace seven items for flute and harp, the final of which is unfinished, detailed the curator.
An nameless manuscript and clues
Experience, perseverance, ardour and a little bit of luck are on the origin of this discover. On February 2, François-Pierre Goy, who has a selected style for anonymous manuscriptsthese “unloved”, opens this little pocket book “which doesn’t seem like a lot”, with out a title, amongst round twenty others that he intends to look at earlier than his upcoming retirement, he says. This manuscript “is a part of two packages of music confiscated from the house of the Duke of Guînes in 1794” throughout the French Revolution“entered the Library within the following years”, in response to the BnF.
“It seems that within the previous weeks, I had had to have a look at Mozart’s instructional manuscripts,” explains the curator. Going via the notes and staves, sure “attribute” parts of the writing query it: to start with these braces, a graphic image which teams collectively a number of workers traces on a rating, comprising two indirect traces. Then “the pretty rounded treble clefs tilted slightly ahead” and even “the bass clef” performed in the other way to how it’s represented in France. “Couldn’t or not it’s him?” », he then asks himself.
Comparisons with different digitized autographs, the paper used, French, and even the truth that the pocket book has the identical stamps as a French copy of Mozart’s “Concerto for flute and harp” commissioned by the Duke of Guînes, go within the route of his instinct. The opinion of a musicologist after which the experience of the Mozarteum in Salzburg will verify it.
“Sudden” discovery
This discovery supplies data “concerning the younger professor Mozart, in dialogue together with his scholar”, the Duchess of Guînes, who was his first recognized scholar in composition, notes Gilles Pécout, president of the BnF. Within the composed items, “the arms of the grasp and the scholar mingle in various proportions”, in response to the BNF, however they “at all times begin from an thought proposed by Mozart”. For instance, “he writes the harp half” and asks the Duchess “to write down the flute half.” Then, they reverse,” specifies François-Pierre Goy.
For harp and flautist musicians, who’ve “pretty few repertoires” at their disposal, it’s an “sudden” discovery, notes Mathias Auclair, director of the music division. “Miraculously”, seven new songs arrive to play! The items, lasting twenty minutes in whole, have been recorded this week and shall be broadcast on France Musique on Monday at 3 p.m.
A live performance on Sunday
The performs will even be carried out for the primary time on Sunday on the event of the Music festivalcarried out by two musicians from the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, Mathilde Calderini (flute) and Nicolas Tulliez (harpist), in entrance of an viewers of company on the BnF. The unique manuscript shall be revealed throughout the occasion, then offered within the BnF museum.
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Discoveries “on such a well-known composer, we virtually by no means make them,” notes Mathias Auclair. They are often counted on the fingers of 1 hand. In 2012, for instance, a piano rating, an “Allegro molto” of some minutes composed by Mozart on the age of 11, unknown till then, was present in a pocket book left within the attic of a personal home in Austria.
