Morgan Library & Museum. New York, NY. "Late Spring." 2024.
Museum curator, composer, and scholar, Robinson McClellan, stumbles upon an inconspicuous piece of postcard-sized paper. Item No. 147. McClellan looks closer. It is a never before seen Chopin waltz, composed sometime between 1830 and 1835 for piano.
But wait. A new Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin leak in 2024? Didn't we just...
Leipzig Stadtbibliothek. Leipzig, Germany. September 19. 2024.
While working on the new edition of the Köchel Catalogue, compilers from the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg come across an inconspicuous bound manuscript in the Carl Ferdinand Becker collection. KV 648. They look closer. It is a never before seen Mozart serenade, composed sometime in the mid to late 1760s for string trio.
What fortuitous circumstances have led the Western sphere to not one but two major archival discoveries within the span of one year - just a couple months from each other. That, too, is subject to speculation, as it is unclear to me when the Mozart manuscript was actually discovered - it was released to the public in September. The discovery of the new Chopin waltz, discovered in "late Spring" - according to the New York Times - coincides miraculously with that of the new Mozart serenade.
Both compositions have been identified and attributed by scholars to their respective authors.
The Mozart manuscript, according to the Leipziger Städtische Bibliotheken official statement from 9.19.24 states that the manuscript is either a direct copy or transcription of Mozart's "Serenade in C," made around 1780 -- about 20 years after the suggested composition date by Ulrich Leisinger.
Sie stammt also nicht von Mozart selbst. Es wurde dunkelbraune Tinte und mittelweißes Büttenpapier verwendet, die Stimmen liegen einzeln gebunden vor, die Handschrift wurde nicht signiert (see n. 1).
They determined that the manuscript - individually bound parts with no visible signature - was not copied by Mozart himself. On 9.21.24, the piece was performed for the second time in the 21st-century at the Leipzig opera following the first performance on the day the statement was released. This was also the day the New Köchel edition was released as well.
The New Köchel edition was a highly anticipated release (See n.2 for full statement). David Nutt wrote on the Cornell Chronicle - just three days before the groundbreaking discovery was announced -- that the editor of this new edition, Neal Zaslaw, is potentially the last editor to take on a new edition of the Köchel and the "maze of manuscripts and editions"(n.3) Mozart left behind. Did Nutt and Zaslaw know about the manuscript discovery at this point? You can buy it for six hundred and seventy five dollars here. ($500 at the time I initially wrote this article)
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| Beethoven’s Hair. Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies San Jose Stat University: April, 2025. Photographed by author. |
Archival discoveries may not always be on the frontlines of breaking news reports, but they are frequent when the thirst for old music is satiated by familiar names from the past. After all, we are consumers and consumers crave to consume. We also crave to preserve, especially that which objectifies value for us when the over-saturation of human-created art mixed with artificial intelligence serves as a relentless reminder that humankind, eventually, will be rendered obsolete, even its art(see n.4).
These apocryphal findings offer glimpses of hope: perhaps, despite the fact that Sweden no longer requires cellists, we can still treasure and preserve remnants of the glorious, European past through compositions from composers long gone but, nonetheless, new and exciting to the 21st-century ear.
The New York Times admits that such close proximity between the two discoveries could potentially warrant skepticism. I propose a solution to this skepticism. A Beethoven piano sonata. All we need is a patron to sponsor the project and someone to actually compose the music.
This is satire, leave me alone
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