The FINANCIAL — According to Reuters report, two pieces of music betraying the precocious talent and boundless ambition of their youthful composer were performed in Salzburg for the first time since experts identified them as the childhood creations of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The two compositions — a concerto in G and a prelude in G — have long been in the files at the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, Austria, as anonymous works and were even published in the book "New Mozart Edition" in 1982, as CNN informs. Now Ulrich Leisinger, director of the foundation's research department, believes the works actually were composed by Mozart before he was old enough to write music, and that Mozart's father, Leopold, transcribed them.
Guardian reported that, the long-lost works, found scrawled at the back of a notebook belonging to Mozart's sister, shed new light on the inspirations of one of music's most famed child prodigies.
Leopold used the music notebook to give Nannerl, as his daughter Maria Anna was called, keyboard lessons. It contains some 60 pieces, many by contemporary composers and 18 recognized as by Mozart, according to The New York Times. Most of those are in Leopold’s handwriting, composed before Wolfgang had a firm grasp of writing out music, Leisinger said. After Mozart’s death, Nannerl ripped out pages with his handwriting and gave them away to friends and Mozart admirers.
Guardian reported that, Leisinger, who rescued the pieces from centuries of oblivion, said the pieces – written hurriedly with the unfettered enthusiasm of an inexperienced genius – could not possibly have been the work of Mozart senior and must have been dictated to him by his eager young son.
"[These pieces] are just so weird. A more experienced composer would compose something that was difficult enough to make sense but not so difficult as to make it dangerous," Leisinger said. "As a skilled composer Leopold would have been more refined and more economical with the presentation of his musical ideas than this daring young compose,» according to the same source.
CNN gives information that Jeffrey Kimpton, president of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, called the works "a remarkable historical find." He said Leopold Mozart transcribed his son's early works as a way of preserving them. "When parents go to a piano recital of an early student, a young student, who's playing for the first time, they get a video tape, they get a DVD, that's a way of recording it," Kimpton said. "I think what's exciting is that Mozart's father wanted to preserve this incredible genius. The young boy at this time didn't know how to write music, but he sure could play it. It's like a family photo or video album."
Reuters reported that, both pieces were played by pianist Florian Birsak on Mozart's own piano in the Salzburg house where he lived for several years as a young man, and that is now a museum.
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