“Mozart: New Documents” reaches 100

We restore two paragraphs that Otto Erich Deutsch omitted from the famous article on Mozart in the journal L'Avantcoureur, and show that this article was published at least seven times in German-language periodicals and books over the following months, in two independent translations, making it the most widely distributed description of young Mozart prior to the publication of Daines Barrington's famous report in 1771. The second of the restored paragraphs can be regarded as the earliest advertisement of Mozart's music. The introduction to one German version of the article describes Mozart as a phenomenon analogous to the annular eclipse of the sun visible in Paris on 1 Apr 1764.

One of the earliest advertisements of Mozart's music.

A previously unknown report from a Berlin newspaper on the reception of the Mozart children in Paris.

A quotation, first published in the 19th century, from a letter by diplomat Hugh Elliot, who attended the premiere of Mozart's La finta giardiniera in Munich on 13 Jan 1775 (discovered by John Rice).

The Grand Duke and Duchess of Russia, traveling incognito as the "Count and Countess of the North," attended Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 8 Oct 1782, with Mozart directing the performance from the keyboard. Our extended commentary examines in detail the musical and theatrical contexts of the two Viennese sojourns of the Grand Duke and Duchess, from 21 Nov 1781 to 4 Jan 1782, and again from 4 to 19 Oct 1782, bringing to light several previously unknown musical events during their visits and new details about ones that were previously known.

The previously unpublished primary source for the date of the premiere of Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Bonn at the court theater of Maximilian Friedrich, Elector of Cologne. This is the third documented local premiere of the opera outside Vienna, following those in Strasbourg on 24 Jan 1783 and Warsaw on 8 May 1783. This performance was very likely young Beethoven's first exposure to Mozart's dramatic music.

Otto Erich Deutsch (Dokumente, 277) wrote that Mozart's Figaro had its Lübeck premiere on 18 May 1788, in a German translation. This “fact” has been widely accepted in the Mozart literature—but the performance is a phantom; it didn't happen. The confusion resulted from a typographical error in the primary source and a failure to read the surrounding context carefully.

A favorable reference to Mozart's variations on “Lison dormait”, K. 264, in a review of variations attributed to Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel on the same tune.

Two new reports on Mozart's appointment as unpaid adjunct to Leopold Hofmann as Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Two reports on Mozart's death in the Mercure universel, with Viennese datelines 7 and 10 Dec 1791.

An anecdote, probably apocryphal, published in Vienna in 1793, in which Mozart tells a young musician to notice the mark of a master even in a piece of musical fluff like Haydn's "Toy" Symphony (Kindersymphonie)—which (we now know) is probably not by Haydn.