On 12 Jan 2007 at 6:56, dhbailey wrote: > dc wrote: > > John Howell écrit: > >> In the very good Arts & Entertainment Mozart biography, someone (it > >> may have been Robert Marshall) played a little minuet that's > >> supposed to be the earliest piece by Wolfie and said that whenever > >> he played it for anyone and asked them to identify it, they > >> hazarded that it might be something from a late opera but had no > >> question but that it was by Mozart. Sort of puts the "early music > >> was childish" argument in perspective. > > > > Really? As everyone knows, Mozart's earliest pieces are by Leopold. > > But then, why are there so many attribution problems if "anyone" can > > identify Mozart so easily? Instead of having scholars spend so much > > time on studying the papers, the manuscript, the style, the > > handwriting, etc., why not have your fellow simply play the music > > for "anyone"? The above anecdote is typical of ignorant people > > taking pride in their ignorance. > > > > Aw, Dennis, tell us how you really feel about this, don't hold back so > much. ;-) > > How do we know that all the earliest pieces attributed to Wolfgang are > by Leopold? When did this change? What was the first piece > confirmable as being actually written by Mozart? Perhaps Leopold > simply left a huge library of manuscripts and Wolfgang merely copied > them all his life.
Er, I don't believe Dennis meant that seriously -- he was being sarcastic/ironic. The fact is, it's quite clear that the first pieces of Mozart were not &written down* by the young Mozart but by his father. It's unclear the degree to which the process of the father writing it down resulted in alterations to the child's original inspiration. This is an example of compositional process guided by a teacher, and there's nothing wrong with this. But that didn't continue much beyond the age of 10 or so in Mozart's case. Yes, there are later MSS where the earliest authentic source is actually in Leopold's hand, but there's no question of the authorship -- the son's style transcended his father rather early on. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
