Alte Mozart-Ausgabe
Encyclopedia
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, is known nowadays, published by Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf . The catalogue currently contains over 1000 composers, 8000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on music. The name "Härtel" was added when Gottfried...
from January 1877 to December 1883, with supplements published until 1910. The name Alte Mozart-Ausgabe (abbreviated "AMA") is actually a modern invention to distinguish the edition from the second Mozart complete works edition, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe is the second complete works edition of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A longer and more formal title for the edition is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
; the publication title of Breitkopf & Härtel's edition was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Werke. Kritisch durchgesehene Gesammtausgabe. (It is therefore sometimes referred to as the "Mozart Gesammtausgabe".)
One of the guiding lights of the AMA was Ludwig Ritter von Köchel
Ludwig Ritter von Köchel
Ludwig Alois Ferdinand Ritter von Köchel was a musicologist, writer, composer, botanist and publisher. He is best known for cataloguing the works of Mozart and originating the 'K-numbers' by which they are known ....
, compiler of the still-standard Köchel-Verzeichnis
Köchel-Verzeichnis
The Köchel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which was originally created by Ludwig von Köchel. It is abbreviated K or KV. For example, Mozart's Requiem in D minor was, according to Köchel's counting, the 626th piece Mozart composed....
(thematic catalog) of Mozart's works. From behind the scenes, Köchel worked to have the edition completed, lending valuable scores to the publisher and editors for their work. Among those involved in the actual editing were Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
, Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...
, Carl Reinecke
Carl Reinecke
Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was a German composer, conductor, and pianist.-Biography:Reinecke was born in Altona, Hamburg, Germany; until 1864 the town was under Danish rule. He studied with his father, Johann Peter Rudolph Reinecke, a music teacher...
, Julius Rietz
Julius Rietz
August Wilhelm Julius Rietz was a German composer, conductor and cellist. He was a teacher among whose students were Woldemar Bargiel, Salomon Jadassohn and Arthur Sullivan. He also edited many works by Felix Mendelssohn for publication.-Biography:He studied the cello under Schmidt, Bernhard...
, and Philipp Spitta
Philipp Spitta
Julius August Philipp Spitta was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach.-Biography:...
(the noted biographer of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
).
While a notable achievement for its time, the AMA suffered from serious limitations. Frederick Neumann remarks that it "varies greatly in dependability, with some volumes remarkably trustworthy, others far less so". Alfred Einstein expressed dissatisfaction with its presentation of Mozart's "Coronation" Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 26 (Mozart)
The Piano Concerto No. 26 in D major, K. 537, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and completed on February 24, 1788. It is generally known as the "Coronation" Concerto.-Source of the nickname "Coronation":...
and Marriage of Figaro, and Friedrich Blume
Friedrich Blume
Friedrich Blume was professor of Musicology in Kiel University from 1938-1958. He was a student in Munich, Berlin and Leipzig, and taught in the last two of these for some years before being called to the chair in Kiel. His early studies were on Lutheran church music, including several books on...
was particularly severe on what he called the "astonishing frivolity and often complete irresponsibility" of the editors of this edition (specifically with regard to the handling of Mozart's piano concertos
Mozart piano concertos
The Mozart piano concertos refer to the 27 concertos for piano and orchestra written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. These works, many of which Mozart composed for himself to play in the Vienna concert series of 1784–86, held a special place for him; indeed, Mozart's father apparently interrupted him...
), asserting that "the Collected Edition [i.e., the AMA] of Mozart's works and the practical editions based on it offer no more than the skeleton of his compositions."
There are also certain authentic works of Mozart that were never published in this edition, some because they were not discovered until well after its completion (for instance, the Symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
in F, K. 19a, rediscovered in 1981), as well as a number of works once incorrectly attributed to Mozart which are now known to be doubtful or spurious (for instance, the piece published in AMA as Mozart's Symphony No. 2 in B flat, K. 17
Symphony No. 2 (Mozart)
The piece of music once known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, KV 17, is now considered to be not by him, but by possibly his father, Leopold Mozart...
, now considered to be by Leopold Mozart
Leopold Mozart
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...
).
Therefore, the AMA is no longer regarded as the definitive edition of Mozart's works, and it has been supplanted in this regard by the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe is the second complete works edition of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A longer and more formal title for the edition is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
for serious study of the composer's output. However, reprints of portions of the AMA remain widely available from Dover Publications
Dover Publications
Dover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
and other firms that specialize in republishing older editions. Parts of this edition are also sometimes encountered in electronic format from various websites that offer online sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
.
External links
- Piano sonatas scanned from volume 20 of the Alte Mozart-Ausgabe.