Beschreibung:

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus FINE AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF THE KYRIE IN C, K. ANH. 18 (166F) the full orchestral score, left unfinished by the composer, comprising 49 bars, a working manuscript, notated in brown ink on one 12-stave system per page, scored for four-part chorus, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings, including violas, and organ, with autograph tempo indications at b.1 ("Adagio") and at b. 15 ("Allegro"), and containing a number of deletions, corrections and smudgings-out; inscribed at the head of the work, by Maximilian Stadler, "Anfang eines Kyrie [Beginning of a Kyrie]", and to the right of this, by Constanze Mozart's second husband Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, "NB. Bruchstück von Kirchenmusik Von Mozart und seiner Handschrift [Church music fragment By Mozart and in his handwriting]", the inscription "M.f.d.G. / Kirche [i.e. Musik für den Gesang / Kirche [Vocal music / Church]]" in the upper left-hand corner of fol. 1r also by Nissen, the underlinings and parentheses in cerise ink by Aloys Fuchs 5 fully scored pages and 3 blanks on 4 leaves [2 gathered bifolia], oblong 4to (22.8 x 29.7cm), 12-stave machine-ruled paper (not in NMA X/33/2, Wasserzeichen Katalog [= Watermark IV]), ties, modern pencil foliation ('1'-'4'), library stamps of the Musikarchiv Stift Göttweig to fols. 2r and 3r, together with an octavo leaf containing a manuscript transcription of much of the entry for the Kyrie in the third edition of the Köchel catalogue (1937), possibly in the hand of Maximilian Zenger, no place or date [Salzburg, 1772], some very light spotting, browning to edges and to blank fols. 3v and 4r This is the most substantial and important autograph music manuscript by Mozart to have been offered at auction for ten years. The manuscript has been unavailable for consultation since the 1930s. Its re-emergence now represents a significant Mozart discovery. One of the most notable of all Mozart's unfinished compositions. The music of the 49-bar Kyrie is on the grand scale, and of the finest quality - certainly Mozart will not have set aside the work on account of any dissatisfaction with it. Had it been completed it, it would certainly have ranked among the composer's mostly closely-worked Kyrie movements. A 14-bar slow introduction provides one of the most thrilling openings to any Mozart mass before the great C-minor - built up strikingly with a pause on a weighty initial C-major chord, followed by a softly dramatic rising sequential passage that yields to bold forte chords, before sinking down quietly on the dominant. Admirably contrasted is the following Allegro section, by turns emphatic and lyrical, which regrettably breaks off after the choral repetition of a generously-proportioned 20-bar orchestral ritornello. At his death Mozart left in the region of 150 independent fragmentary compositions, works which, for whatever reason, were never completed (these in addition to rejected drafts for around 50 finished scores). The present Kyrie fragment occupies a worthy place among other famously incomplete church works of Mozart, notably the dramatic D-minor Kyrie, K.341 (368a), dating probably from around 1781, the mighty torso of the great C-minor Mass, K. 427 (417a), from Mozart's early Vienna years, and of course the sublime Requiem, K.626, written at the very end of Mozart's life, perhaps the iconic music fragment, which has come to symbolise the composer's tragically cut-short life. Before Mozart settled in Vienna at the age of 25 in 1781, where his musical universality found an outlet in all the major genres, especially comic opera, it was arguably above all in the field of church music that Mozart's genius found its greatest expression. It was certainly no casual claim, when Mozart himself later noted, in a draft letter from 1790 petitioning the Archduke Francis, that he had made himself, from his youth up, 'completely familiar' with music for the church. For many admirers of the composer, Mozart 'became' Mozart only