La Jornada: Mozart’s notebook with seven unpublished compositions for harp and flute is found in Paris

Paris. A composition notebook by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an autograph manuscript that includes seven pieces for harp and flute, was found by a conservator at the National Library of France (BnF) in Paris, the institution announced yesterday to AFP.

This is a major discovery recognized by specialists, according to Gilles Pécout, director of the BnF, as the object provides information about Mozart when he was a young teacher and documents his last stay in Paris in 1778.

The notebook contains a dozen composition lessons from the Austrian musician who gave these classes daily “to Marie-Louise-Philippine de Bonnières de Guînes, daughter of the Duke of Guînes, an excellent harpist”, from May to July 1778 in Paris, explains François-Pierre Goy, curator of the music department of the BnF and author of the extraordinary discovery.

The notebook was found on February 2 at the BnF when Goy was examining a package of around twenty anonymous manuscripts, which the specialist intended to analyze before retiring.

Notes and staves

“I couldn’t even remotely imagine what I was going to find,” said the conservative. Looking at the notes and staves, certain characteristic elements of the writing caught his attention, such as “the fairly rounded treble clefs, slightly inclined forward or the bass clef done in the opposite direction, which is the way it is represented in France.”

When compared to other digitized autographs, the paper used is French and the fact that the notebook bears the same stamps as a French copy of the Concerto for flute and harp of Mozart, commissioned by the Duke of Guînes, reinforced the idea that it was the Austrian composer.

The document was subjected to expert examination and its attribution was validated at the end of April by the Mozart Library of the Mozarteum foundation in Salzburg, the musician’s hometown. Its 44 pages also include seven pieces for flute and harp, of which the last one is unfinished, Goy detailed when presenting the very well preserved notebook.

These pieces always start from an idea proposed by Mozart, according to the BnF. In the end, “the hands of the teacher and the student are mixed in them in varying proportions.” For example, “he writes the harp part and asks the duchess to write the flute part. Then they exchange,” says Goy.

Tomorrow, the day of the Music Festival in France, the seven unpublished pieces, with a total duration of about 20 minutes, will be performed for the first time by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra.