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Some Problems in the Text of Le nozze di Figaro: Did Mozart Have a Hand in Them?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Alan Tyson
Alan Tyson*
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford
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Extract

A few puzzling features in the text of Figaro have been discussed for a very long time within the vast literature on this opera. Nevertheless there is little in the libretto that Lorenzo Da Ponte based on Beaumarchais's revolutionary play La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro, and in the music that Mozart then provided for it, which is really problematical. After all, almost the entirety of Mozart's long autograph score has come down to us, even though today Acts 1 and 2 are divided geographically from Acts 3 and 4 - the first two acts being in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (DDR), and the last two (which left the Berlin library in World War II) being at present in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska at Kraków in Poland. (The whole autograph is fortunately accessible today.) It would seem that the only portions that have not come down to us in Mozart's handwriting are a couple of passages for recitative, and some of the supplementary wind parts for the last act's finale; we have these merely in the handwriting of copyists, included inter alia in scores made for early performances, or for sale in Vienna and other cities. Several of these copyists' scores will shortly be discussed here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 112 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 99 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1987

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References

1 An up-to-date bibliography will be found in Rudolph Angermüller, Figaro (Munich, 1986), 140–53 Some of the publications most relevant to the matters that I shall be discussing here are the following: Anheisser, Siegfried, ‘Die unbekannte Urfassung von Mozarts Figaro’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 15 (1933), 301–17, Ludwig Finscher, ed, Le nozze di Figaro, Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (hereafter NMA), II/5/16, 2 parts (Kassel, 1973), with the Vorwort in the first part; Karl-Heinz Köhler, ‘Mozarts Kompositionsweise – Beobachtungen am Figaro-Autograph’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1967 (Salzburg, 1968), 31–45 and ‘Figaro-Miscellen: einige dramaturgische Mitteilungen zur Quellensituation’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1968/70 (Salzburg, 1970), 119–31; Charles Mackerras, ‘What Mozart Really Meant’, Opera, 16 (1965), 240–6; Michael and Christopher Raeburn, ‘Mozart Manuscripts in Florence’, Music and Letters, 40 (1959), 334–40; Stefan Strasser, ‘Susanna und die Gräfin’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 10 (1928), 208–16, and Alan Tyson ‘Le nozze di Figaro: Lessons from the Autograph Score’, The Musical Times, 122 (1981), 456–61.Google Scholar

2 Some aspects of this Abschrift are examined by Strasser, Anheisser, and Köhler (‘Figaro-Miscellen’)Google Scholar

3 Dénes Bartha and László Somfai, Haydn als Opernkapellmeister (Budapest and Mainz, 1960), 366–8, and (for the bill) 157Google Scholar

4 This Abschrift was apparently first discovered by Edward J. Dent, it is discussed in much detail by AnheisserGoogle Scholar

5 A few unusual features of this score are described by Michael and Christopher RaeburnGoogle Scholar

6 See Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Autographe und Abschriften (Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kataloge der Musikabteilung, herausgegeben von Rudolf Elvers, Erste Reihe Handschriften, Band 6), Katalog, ed. Hans-Günter Klein (Berlin, 1982), 172–3Google Scholar

7 Mozart Briefe und Aufzeichnungen Gesamtausgabe, herausgegeben von der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, gesammelt und erlautert von Wilhelm A Bauer und Otto Erich Deutsch, iv (Kassel, 1963), no 1022. The Letters of Mozart and his Family, trans and ed. Emily Anderson, 3rd edn (London, 1985), no. 544Google Scholar

8 See Tyson, Alan, ‘Notes on the Composition of Mozart's Cost fan tutte’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 386 The word turns up occasionally in the relations between Beethoven and his copyists in the 1820s. But at one time Beethoven apparently did not know its meaning In a note of about June 1823 to Anton Schindler he wrote ‘Here are the copies of the Gloria [of the Missa solemnis] The ternions are quite new instruments to me’ See Anderson, Emily, The Letters of Beethoven (London, 1961), iii, no. 1195.Google Scholar

9 New York Public Library (Library of the Performing Arts), Drexel 5933 and 5934, Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, Mus Hs. 16566.Google Scholar

10 In the autograph this has 54 bars, but in some Abschnften and editions, including the 1879 one in the ‘Alte Mozart-Ausgabe’ (AMA), it has been cut to 44 bars The cuts were even marked in the autograph by someone (The AMA, which included the 54-bar version in an Appendix, claimed that the cuts were probably made by Mozart)Google Scholar

11 “ Kohler, ‘Figaro-Miscellen’, 126–31Google Scholar

12 Ibid, 120, 126, Strasser, ‘Susanna und die Grafin’, 211–12Google Scholar

13 It is also to be found among the old leaves (from the 1780s) in Act 2 of the Vienna Nationalbibliothek's Abschrift, O A. 295Google Scholar

14 This is a rare paper-type, found almost nowhere else except in the last number of Act 1, ‘Non più andrai’, and in the G minor Piano Quartet, K 478, the autograph of which is dated ‘li 16 d’Ottobre 1785’Google Scholar

15 This is the New Type described in Tyson, ‘Le nozze di Figaro Lessons from the Autograph Score’, 458–9Google Scholar

16 These are reproduced in transcriptions in NMA 11/5/16, Part 2, pp 641 and 628Google Scholar

17 ff 1–4 = pp 167–74, four leaves from the same sheet, and ff 9–12 = pp 219–26, four leaves from the same sheet F 5 = pp 183/184, and ff 6–7 = pp 197–200, these three are from the same sheet, which suggests that the missing f 8 was the missing pp 217/218, the fourth leaf of the sheet, with a watermark depicting the upper half of the letters ‘PS’Google Scholar

18 See, for instance, Otto Jahn, W.A Mozart, iv (Leipzig, 1859), 229, n 30; Strasser, ‘Susanna und die Gräfin’, 208–16, Anheisser, ‘Die unbekannte Urfassung’, 305–10, Mackerras, ‘What Mozart Really Meant’, 241–3, and Kohler, ‘Figaro-Miscellen’, 123—5 There are several other places in which this problem is examinedGoogle Scholar

19 The Donaueschingen Abschrift, discussed belowGoogle Scholar

20 The autograph's version of the terzetto appears to have been first printed by Rudolf Gerber in his Eulenburg edition of the 1920s, today this version is readily accessible in Ludwig Finscher's NMA edition of 1973Google Scholar

21 The suggestion has been made that the role of the Countess was originally intended for Nancy Storace, and that Mozart started to write her part with that in mind.Google Scholar

22 In the version of bars 97–146 that appears to follow the autograph, there are only a couple of passages that deviate strikingly from it, these are bars 104–9 and 133–40 Yet there are lots of smaller divergences, several of which correspond to the conventional version.Google Scholar

23 In the conventional version the Countess's only note in bar 69 is d”, not f” In bar 102 Susanna's last note is a quaver (preceded by a quaver rest), not a crotchet, and in bar 111 she begins not with a crotchet g” followed by a crotchet c”, but with a dotted quaver g” followed by a semiquaver c” and a crotchet c” Several further deviations of this kind from the autograph's text (are they ‘refinements’ of it?) are to be found in almost every AbschriftGoogle Scholar

24 Einstein, Alfred, ‘Eine unbekannte Arie der Marcelline’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 13 (1931), 200–5Google Scholar

25 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Mus ms 15150/14Google Scholar

26 See Goerlipp, Georg, ‘Die Fürstenbergische Papiermühle an der Gauchach bei Döggingen -1751–1802’, in Fürstenberger Waldbote (1960), No. 6, pp 14–20, published by the F.F Forstdirektion, Donaueschingen The curious version of the terzetto No. 14 in the Donaueschingen Abschrift has just been mentioned; surprisingly enough, the 1787 performance parts for Susanna and the Countess do not follow it, but have instead the conventional version of this number, giving Susanna most of the upper notes But in the Act 2 finale they give the Countess the higher part, as in that Abschrift. 27 Memorie di Lorenzo Da Ponte, da Ceneda, 2nd edn, i/2 (New York, 1829), 81–4, Eng trans by Elizabeth Abbot, Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte (New York, 1967), pp. 159–61, see also Hodges, Sheila, Lorenzo Da Ponte The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist (London, 1985), 67–8Google Scholar

28 Da Ponte says ‘the second act’ this is obviously a slip on his partGoogle Scholar

29 Budapest, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Ms. mus. OK–11/b–5,Google Scholar

30 Bartha and Somfai, Haydn als Opernkapellmeister, 367Google Scholar

31 Bauer–Deutsch, iv, no. 1110, Anderson, no. 570Google Scholar

32 NMA, II/5/16, Part 2, p. 165Google Scholar

33 Not only are both these leaves of the same paper-type, with the same TS, but their watermark quadrants and mould are the right ones for a bifolium. It is true that no page numbers ‘83’ and ‘84’ are visible today on the Mozarteum leaf – but they could well have been erasedGoogle Scholar

34 Many scores were evidently made by teams of copyists, no doubt employed by a copying house, each copyist would write out several of the ternions from which a score was made up. Reference has often been made to the productions from the copying houses of Laurent Lausch and of Wenzel Sukowaty, both in Vienna, they may even have employed some of the same copyistsGoogle Scholar