Unraveling a Mozart Mystery

Unknown complete composition first to be re-discovered in 80 years

By Mary Robbins

In 2020, the International Mozarteum Foundation announced that a new manuscript by Mozart had been found, which is, of course, a rare occurrence! After Mozart’s musical handwriting had been verified by experts, a grand celebration was organized in Salzburg to present to the world his newly found Allegro in D Major, K. 626b/16. However, there were many questions surrounding it: no one could determine when he wrote it or where he was, since he didn’t write it on manuscript paper that could be traced — as by watermark, etc. — to its source. Rather, he wrote it on a scrap piece of paper on which he had to supply the lines, which today would be the equivalent of jotting a brilliant idea on a cocktail napkin. Also, Mozart wrote most of his works for specific events, but even very informed scholars couldn’t determine the purpose of this Allegro. Furthermore, even though he wrote it on the grand staff as a piano piece, in several ways it was not similar to his other piano works.

Joseph Lange: Wolfgang Amadé Mozart at the piano, 1789, oil painting (unfinished)

Internationale Siftung Mozarteum

When the U.S. premiere of the Allegro was arranged for 2021, many questions concerning it remained unanswered. Several U.S. organizations, including The Society for Eighteenth-Century Music and The Mozart Society of America, proposed a joint symposium for the premiere to encourage more research about the Allegro. Ulrich Leisinger, director of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation talked about how the piece was discovered. Uri Rom, a theorist at Tel Aviv University experienced in the dating of Mozart’s music, spoke about why Mozart could have composed the Allegro at a different time than had been tentatively proposed. I was honored to be invited to perform the Allegro, and to give a 10-minute talk that included why it might or might not be idiomatic for the keyboard.

The premiere began with the performance. The piece sounds a bit like Mozart, but certain things about it are very unusual. I addressed reasons for both in my comments, including certain places that made the Allegro awkward to play, but also how other places were almost identical to passages in later pieces, for example in his Sonata for Piano and Violin, K.376. My analysis was based on the particular sounds of notes that Mozart indicated in all of his music by expression markings. I am writing a book about this topic, which the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation Liana K. Sandin Grant-in-Aid supported in 2019, so you are reading what Mu Phi helped make possible — although the book is now three books and still in progress.

My analysis led to several conclusions, including: the Allegro concerned action more than emotional expression and Mozart wrote it in a way to generate excitement that was similar to the Figaro overture. Certain features seemed to resemble a processional, such as fanfares usually played by brasses, while leaping intervals suggested human acrobatics of some kind. In short, it seemed to me that this music was more a sketch for a work to come at the beginning of an event, and that it was ultimately destined for other instruments, rather than for solo piano.

Imagine my surprise when Rom presented his conclusions that the Allegro was indeed written for action: it was a sketch of ballet music for dancers! I had never known that before every opera there was a ballet. Rom also identified that Mozart had heard the tune, which had been composed by another composer, and scribbled it down in a short-hand (piano) notation. Mozart later fleshed out this little sketch of the Allegro into ballet music for the orchestra to play, to bring the audience to their seats, settle them down and get them ready to listen to an opera overture. Rom had even found an orchestra recording of K.128, containing parts of the Allegro, at exactly the same tempo I had played, showing that our different approaches to considering Mozart’s music had led to a similar conclusion.

Finally, Leisinger presentation described a world connected with Mozart’s music that I had not been aware of, which attempts to trace the whereabouts of a work from the time Mozart composed it. In the case of the Allegro there were such questions as who first owned this manuscript (usually either Mozart’s wife, Constanza, their sons or his sister Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl, were the first owners), and how they came to either gift or sell Mozart’s manuscripts. From there, Leisinger discussed what happens to manuscripts when there are wars, including how they become lost and many other possibilities that gave me a new and deep respect for the work of monks, nuns and others connected with monasteries and convents. Mozart manuscripts have been hidden in Polish monasteries, then shuttled to French convents (or vice versa), only to languish in rooms unprotected from the elements, without glass panes in windows, much less electricity. This is an important part of the world of music, and those who love it might wish to find a way to support those who — with purest altruism — devote their lives to the survival of Mozart’s art as well as that of others.

Leisinger also discussed how the Allegro was assigned its K. (Köchel) number of K.626b/16 as a result of its being a work that doesn’t belong in usual categories, such as the category of opera, or concertos, etc. Such works go into one of two drawers, labeled “a” or “b,” and this Allegro is the sixteenth work to land in drawer b! It was a wonderful experience to play the Allegro as well as to participate in the mystery sleuth to learn how it is a part of Mozart’s musical world — and our musical world today.

Pianist Mary Robbins (Mu Theta, Austin Alumni) has spent much of her life studying and performing Mozart’s music. For 18 years she performed his works of all genres with piano as principal pianist for A Mozart Fest concert series. She is writing a book on how listeners and performers can connect with, as Mozart said, his music’s force and meaning through his unique system of expression. She has shared this view in The International Journal of Musicology and in presentations to the Mozart Society of America as well as through performances and workshops through support of the Music Teachers National Association and Steinway Piano Gallery of Austin, and has also received support from the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation and the American Musicological Society. She spoke on Mozart’s cadenzas at the Mozart Bicentennial Congress in Salzburg, and has composed over thirty cadenzas and completions where Mozart’s are missing. She earned her DMA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with his sister, Maria Anna, and father, Leopold, on the wall a portrait of his dead mother, Anna Maria.

Johann Nepomuk Della Croce (c. 1780)

The Mozart Family

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came from a very musical family. At a very early age, he and his sister received music tuition from their father, himself a composer. The family was considered well-to-do.

Mozart’s elder sister Maria Anna Mozart (1719-1787) was a talented pianist who could master even the most difficult of her brother’s compositions. She was in demand as a piano teacher in Salzburg, and as an adult she still performed in public concerts. Although her father and brother tried to encourage her, she composed only little, and regrettably, none of these pieces has survived.

International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg

Discovery of the Allegro

Despite the large number of compositions that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote during his short lifetime, new discoveries are extremely rare. During the last decades, a few hitherto unknown original manuscripts by Mozart have come to light; these were, however, always incomplete pieces: sketches or drafts. It is more than 80 years ago that the re-discovery of an unknown complete composition in Mozart’s own handwriting was announced.

The Allegro in D major, K. 626b/16 fills the front and back of a single sheet of music paper in oblong format. The handwriting is hasty, but error-free. The undated composition stems in all likelihood from the first months of 1773, according to the Mozarteum Foundation; it thus originated either during Mozart’s third journey to Italy or immediately after his return to Salzburg. A trustworthy annotation of 1844 led to assume that the manuscript was once part of the estate of Mozart’s son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang. Franz Xaver, however, did not inherit it from his father, but rather from his aunt Maria Anna, Mozart’s sister, who apparently kept it as a memento. Peculiarities of style suggest that this three-part dance movement is not an original piano piece, but a keyboard arrangement in Mozart’s own hand of an unknown orchestral work.

Dr. Ulrich Leisinger, director of research of the Mozarteum Foundation, points out: “The Allegro in D major K. 626b/16 is a highly attractive and charming piano piece, that adds yet another facet to the affectionate relationship of Mozart to his sister. How wonderful, that we are now able to participate in this relationship after such a long period of time.”

—International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg

Herman Kaulbach, 1873

Mozart’s Death

The entry in the coroner’s report by his personal physician Dr. Closset stated that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5 December 1791 of “hitzigem Frieselfieber” [acute miliary fever]; this is not a precise medical diagnosis, but was in keeping with the official ordinance requiring a “brief notation of the manner of death” in the German language (i.e. not in Latin). For over 200 years, medical specialists have been attempting to determine the actual fatal illness, by means of contemporary accounts of the symptoms and the course of the disease (often written down much later) – with different results.

Also according to later reports, Mozart was consecrated in his coffin on 6 December 1791 at about 3:00 p.m. in front of the so-called Crucifix Chapel on the north side of St Stephen’s Cathedral. That same evening he was taken to St Marx cemetery, in a suburb of Vienna some 4 km away. An ordinance forbade mourners to follow the hearse beyond the town boundary.

Like many contemporaries of similar status, Mozart was given a third-class funeral, as entered in the register of deaths of the Cathedral Parish of St Stephen under 6 December 1791. The costs were fixed according to surplice fees. Mozart was buried in an unmarked shaft grave (usually a grave with four or five other bodies); this was common at the time, and was not (as sometimes asserted) a “pauper’s burial.”

St Marx Cemetery was closed in 1874 and is now a public park. The Mozart monument erected there in 1859 was moved in 1891 to the main cemetery (Zentralfriedhof) to join the group of Ehrengräber(graves of honour). Mozart’s grave in St Marx, a pilgrimage site for many visitors today, was later marked by a cemetery-keeper, who used materials left over from other graves, so that Mozart could be remembered at the abandoned site. It is located on the site of the former shaft graves.

—International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg