New Documents on the Mozarts and the Netherlands
Posted: Tue, 29 Aug 2017
With this group of new documents on the Mozarts and the Netherlands, we are pleased to welcome Kris Steyaert (University of Liège) as a guest contributor. The new documents, many discovered on the Dutch site Delpher, include a previously unknown version of a Dutch report on Wolfgang in England (16 Feb 1765); an advertisement by the Hummel brothers of Wolfgang’s op. 2 (K. 8 & 9; 28 Feb 1765); two reports of his performance on 18 Sep 1765 for William V, Prince of Orange; and the earliest known Dutch report of Mozart’s death (6 Jan 1792).
The centerpiece of the group is a collection of 7 new documents on the first Dutch edition of Leopold Mozart’s Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule as Grondig onderwys in het behandelen der viool, published in 1766 in Haarlem by Johannes Enschedé, using the elegant musical typeface created by Joan Michael Fleischman, an edition that Leopold considered finer than his own of 1756. These documents show that the translation was announced on 28 Feb 1765, much earlier than has been realized, and while the Mozarts were still in England. The first half of the edition had been printed by 21 Sep 1765, shortly after the Mozarts’ arrival in the Dutch Republic. The book was complete by 8 Mar 1766, when a copy was presented to William V, Prince of Orange (to whom the edition was dedicated) on the occasion of his installation as Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic on his eighteenth birthday. Enschedé’s earliest known advertisement for Grondig onderwys was published on 1 Apr 1765, nearly a month and a half earlier than the advertisement of 13 May 1765 that Deutsch cites as “earliest” (Dokumente, 52).
The documents are:
DE dedicates this group of new postings to his sister Anne, on her birthday.