Alan Tyson, Note Sul "Così Fan Tutte"

American Musicological Society

Notes on the Composition of Mozart's "Cos fan tutte"

Author(s): Alan Tyson
Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp.
356-401
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831177
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Notes on the
Composition
of Mozart's
Cosi
fan
tutte
By ALAN TYSON
ANSWERS
TO THE QUESTION how did Mozart set about writing an
opera
do not lie
wholly
within the realm of
speculation.
For two
of his mature
operas,
Idomeneo
(17
8o-8
)
and Die
Entfiihrung
aus dem
Serail
(1782-83),
we have a detailed and
exceedingly interesting
correspondence
between Mozart and his
father;
the
subjects
discussed
range
over the
strengths
and weaknesses of the
singers engaged by
the
theater,
the
possibilities
and
potential
limitations of the
libretto,
and-perhaps
most
enlightening
of all-the
composer's
own inten-
tions in
particular
ensembles and solo
numbers,
and his
way
of
realizing
them. Such a valuable source has
naturally
attracted a
good
deal of
scholarly
attention.' And some of the same
topics
are raised in
other letters that concern themselves with
operatic projects
never
completed,
for
instance,
the
1783 plan
to tackle an
opera buffa
on the
subject
of
L'oca
del Cairo
(K.
422).
For his other
operas
of the Vienna
years,
our evidence is much less
copious.
But for Le nozze di
Figaro (1785-86)
we have at least the
reminiscences of Michael
Kelly,
and with Don Giovanni
(x
787)
and Die
Zauberflote
( 791)
something,
albeit of
very
uncertain
value,
has been
contributed
by
anecdote or
legend,
to which Mozart's rather
sparse
letters have contributed a framework. It seems that of all his mature
operas
it is
Cosifan
tutte
(first
produced
on 26
January 1790)
that is-so
far as its
composition
is concerned-the most obscure. There is
very
little in Mozart's
correspondence
and no reminiscences from
any
of
the
singers;
even the librettist Da Ponte's
memoirs,
always disappoint-
ing
where his collaboration with Mozart is
concerned,
are
particularly
I
For Idomeneo
see,
for
instance,
Daniel
Heartz,
"The Genesis of Mozart's
'Idomeneo,'
"
Mozart-Jahrbuch
b967 (1968),
pp.
15o-64;
the same
essay
with minor
alterations and with illustrations in The Musical
Quarterly,
LV
(1969),
I-I9;
and
idem,
"Raaffs
Last Aria: A Mozartian
Idyll
in the
Spirit
of
Hasse,"
The Musical
Quarterly,
LX
(i974),
517-43.
MOZART'S COSI FAN TUTTE 357
unforthcoming
about
Cosifan
tutte,
"dramma che tiene il terzo loco tra
le tre Sorelle nate da
quel
celeberrimo Padre
dell'armonia."2
Thus we are
left,
in the
main,
to draw such inferences as are
possible
from the
autograph
score
itself,
from a few sketches and
drafts that have also
survived,
and
perhaps
from the
printed
libretto of
1790.
But here there have been difficulties
throughout
much of the
last
half-century. Although
the
autograph
of the
opera's
second act is
easily
accessible in West Berlin
(Staatsbibliothek
Preussischer Kultur-
besitz),
the first act was for
long
unavailable to
scholarship, having
disappeared
at the end of World War
II;
it has
only lately
come to
light
in Poland
(Krak6w,
Biblioteka
Jagielloniska).
The
report
that
follows takes
advantage
of the recent
accessibility
of the first act's
autograph
score.
Today,
when one asks to see the
autograph
of a Mozart
opera,
one
will
perhaps
be
presented
with
one, two,
or three bound volumes. But
their
bindings
are
likely
to date from the nineteenth
century.
What
would one have seen
immediately
after the
opera
had been
completed?
By
then the score
might already
have been contained in a
simple paper
binding
or
wrapper.
Or it
might
have consisted
merely
of a
large
number of
fascicles,
no doubt
provided
with a
simple numbering
sequence
to enable them to be
kept
in the correct order.
(Some
shorter
scores were
strung together by
ribbon or
twine.)
In
considering
the
collection of
papers
that make
up
the
autograph
score of
Cosifan
tutte,
it is
helpful
to visualize its condition
just
as Mozart was
completing
the
opera,
for that will serve to
explain
certain features in the score
that are to be discussed.
The'
normal unit of
paper
used
by
Mozart in
writing
out almost
any
score is the
bifolium,
or
pair
of
conjugate
leaves. This is half a
sheet
(the
sheet
being
the unit in which the
paper
was
manufactured):
either its
upper
or its lower half. In most of his scores of the
Salzburg
years,
and in
many
of the earlier Viennese ones as
well,
the two bifolia
from the same sheet were left to form a
gathering
of four
leaves;
but in
the
years
after
Figaro,
Mozart
usually separated
the two bifolia before
beginning
to
write,
and filled all four sides of the one before
moving
on to the other.
2
Memorie di
Lorenzo Da
Ponte,
2nd ed.
(New York,
1829-30), p.
I
I.
The same
author's earlier short tract in
English,
An Extract
from
the
Life of
Lorenzo Da Ponte
(New
York,
1819),
likewise has almost
nothing
to
say
about the
opera.
358
JOURNAL
OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Thus in a late score such as
Cosifan
tutte,
one will
frequently
find a
bifolium
directly
followed
by
its
"pair"
from the same sheet-the
pair
being
identified
by
the
matching profile
of its
upper edge
and
by
the
complementary portions
of the watermark.
Frequently,
but no more
than
that;
for if leaves have been discarded for
any
reason,
the
tidy
pattern
is
broken,
and a bifolium will be followed
by
a bifolium from
another sheet. When such a
sequence
is
detected,
it will
suggest
that
Mozart
may
have thrown a bifolium
away
at that
point, although
usually nothing
remains to show the nature of the
change
in
plan
or
the correction involved. In
spite
of the
binding,
it is almost
always
possible
to
identify
the individual bifolia and to see whether
they
are
paired
with their
neighbors.
From time to
time, too,
single
leaves will
be
found;
their
presence
needs to be accounted for.
(Most
of them will
be seen to contain
recitatives.)
So much for the basic
makeup
of a late
operatic
score
by
Mozart.
How were its individual units
placed
and
kept
in their
proper
sequence?
When Mozart started to work on an
opera,
the libretto would have
been no more than a handwritten
text,
possibly incomplete
at some
points. Passages
with short lines and
rhymes
would show where an
aria or an ensemble was intended. And these would be what Mozart
first
began
to set to
music,
not without
considering
whether
they
were
too
frequent
or too
few,
too undramatic or too
muddled,
in which case
alterations in the text
might
be
requested
and made. Almost
always
he
would
begin
each of these numbers with a new
bifolium,
every
number
being
written
separately
and
by
no means in the order in
which
they
were to stand in the
completed
score. When he had
finished several
numbers,
he
might try
to
place
them in their
proper
sequence, fixing
their
positions by writing
"No.
I," "No. 2," etc.,
at
the
beginning
of each number. He could also start to write
"I," "2,"
"3,"
etc.,
on the individual bifolia and the occasional
single
leaves
throughout
the
portions
of the
opera
that he
regarded
as
already
finished.
(In
some
opera
scores
every
leaf was
individually
foliated
from the
beginning
to the
end.)
When most of the numbers
(arias
and
ensembles)
had been
written, it was time for Mozart to turn his attention to the linking
recitatives. A
long
one would have its own
bifolium, but shorter ones
might
be entered on the blank
pages
at the end of the number that
they
followed.
If, however, there were no blank
pages there,
or not
enough
of them to accommodate the whole
recitative,
Mozart would
be
obliged
to insert a
single
leaf at that
point.
The location of such
leaves
(or bifolia)
containing
recitatives was almost
always
confirmed
by
a few words
linking
them with the numbers that
preceded
and
followed them: at the
beginning,
a
phrase
like
"Dopo
il
Sestetto,"
and
at the end some words such as
"segue
l'aria di Ferrando No.
.. ."
(The
figure
was often added somewhat
later.)
All of this will be familiar
enough
to
anyone
who has worked with
the scores of Mozart's late
operas.
But it will serve as an introduction
to the information
displayed
in Table 2
(end
of this
essay),
which
depicts
the
autograph
of Cosi
fan
tutte,
Act
I.
The evidence that a
finished score
provides
for the
genesis
of a work is
hardly
ever
straightforward
and is
unlikely
to take us as far as we desire. We
may
have to
rely
on minimal clues and to follow them farther than is
comfortable.
Still,
in the case of this
opera,
we are
likely
to be
grateful
for
any
hints that we can
gain
as to the
way
in which Mozart set about
writing
it.
It is
certainly
from the
newly
accessible score of Act I that the
most
promising
clues can be
gained.
This consists of
174
leaves of
twelve-staff
paper.
The
paper
is not
uniform; apart
from two
leaves,3
all of it is of one or the other of two
types distinguishable
both
by
watermark and
by
the
span
of the twelve staves. The
paper
called here
Type
I has a sheet-watermark
depicting
a crown over the letter W in
an ornamental frame
(with
a countermark of three moons over the
word
REAL)
and a staff
span
of
187.5-188 mm;
Type
II
has a sheet-
watermark
showing
the letters CS over C
(a
countermark
again
of
three moons over the word
REAL,
but different in size from the
elements in
Type
I)
and a staff
span
of
182-83
mm
(Figs.
Ia
and
Ib).
The distinction between the two
paper types
is an
important
one,
for it can be shown that
Type
I is the
earlier;
thus the distribution of
the two
papers
within Act I
might
well
suggest
to us
something
about
the order in which it was
composed.
Mozart was
already using Type
I
in October
1789,
when he wrote the two
soprano
arias
K.
582
and K.
583
for Louise
Villeneuve,
the future Dorabella. It is also found in the
bass aria
"Rivolgete
a lui
lo
sguardo,"
K.
584,
originally
written for
the role of
Guilelmo
in
Cosifan
tutte
and intended
as No.
I5
of the first
3
Folios 88 and
89.
This
bifolium
is of a rare
paper type,
which otherwise has been
found so far
only
in the
autograph
of Die
Zauberflite.
360 JOURNAL
01234 5
Scale in centimeters: I I I I I
Figure
ia. Watermark on
Type
I
paper,
mold A
(mold
B is a mirror
image)
act. Mozart entered this
long D-major
aria in his
Verzeichniiss
("Eine
arie
welche
in die
Oper Cosi
fan tutte
bestirit
war.
fiir
Benucci")
under the date of December
I789.
Its
autograph
is
today
bound
up
in
Act
I,
of which it forms folios
Io5-I6,
directly
before the short
G-
major
aria written to
replace
it,
the new No.
15
("Non siate ritrosi").4
Almost half of Act
I
(78
out of the
174
leaves)
is on
Type
I
paper,
but
not a
single
leaf of Act
II,
which
suggests
that Mozart's stock of that
type
had
already
been exhausted
during
his work on the first act.
This is
likely
to have been the
point
at which he turned to
Type
II,
using
it for
94
of the
174
leaves in Act
I.
He continued to use it almost
exclusively
in Act
II
(228
of the
238
leaves)
as well as in the next two
works that he
completed
after the
opera,
the
string quartets
K.
589
and K.
590.
But
just
as
Type
I is not found in
any
Mozart
autograph
after the first act of
Cosifan
tutte,
so
Type
II
is not found
anywhere
before it. All of this is
persuasive
evidence that he started to use
paper
4
The
D-major
aria and its
G-major replacement
will be referred to here as No.
I5a
and No.
I5b respectively.
MOZART'S COSI FAN TUTTE
361
i
012345
Scale in centimeters: I IIL I
I
Figure
Ib.
Watermark on
Type
II
paper,
mold A
(mold
B is
similar).
The watermark
drawings
are
schematic,
and for
clarity
the chain-lines have been omitted.
of
Type
II
only
after
Type
I was
exhausted,
that
is,
halfway through
his work on Act I.
Table 2 shows the distribution of the two
paper types
within Act
I.
Although
at first
sight
the
picture may
seem somewhat
confused,
the
separate
numbers of the first act can be classified as follows:
A.
Wholly
on
Type
I
paper:
Nos.
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7,
io,
I,
1
3,
15a,
and
i6.
B. On a mixture of
Type
I and
Type
II:
quintetto
after No.
8,
and No.
17.
C.
Wholly
on
Type
II
paper:
overture,
and Nos.
5,
8,
I2,
14, i5b,
and
(except
for two
leaves) I8.
One can
argue
that this classification
represents
more than one
chronological layer.
In
Layer
A,
Mozart starts at the
beginning
of the
libretto and works his
way through
much of the first
act,
stopping
362 JOURNAL
short
only
of the finale
(No. 18).
It
is, however,
noticeable that none
of the numbers in this first
layer, apart
from No. ii
(Dorabella's aria)
and
No.
I5a
(Guilelmo's
rejected
aria),
is a solo
aria;
instead
they
are
all
duetti, terzetti,
quintetti,
and sestetti. The solos come
only
in
Layers
B and C: No.
5
for Don
Alfonso,
No. 12 for
Despina,
No.
14
for
Fiordiligi,
No.
15b
for Guilelmo
(replacing
No.
I5a),
and No.
17
for
Ferrando. Even No.
II
for Dorabella
belongs
to
Layer
B rather than
Layer
A,
if one includes the recitativo
accompagnato
that introduces it.
It
appears,
then,
that as a matter of deliberate
policy
Mozart first
tackled the ensembles in the first act and left the solo numbers until
later. It has been
possible
to detect him
doing
the same
thing
elsewhere as
well,
e.g.,
in La clemenza di Tito.5 The
explanation
usually
offered,
that Mozart wished to familiarize himself with the
special
features of the
singers'
voices before
writing
their solo
numbers,
does not seem
wholly applicable
to the situation in
Cosifan
tutte,
where all the
singers
were known to
him,
and for all of whom
(except
the tenor Vincenzo
Calvesi)
he had
already
written several
arias in the
past.
Adriana Gabrieli del Bene
(known
as "la
Ferrarese"),
who
sang Fiordiligi,
had been Susanna in the Viennese revival of
Figaro
in
August 1789,
and Mozart had written the rondb "Al
desio,
di
chi
t'adora," K.
577,
and the aria "Un moto di
gioia,"
K.
579,
for her.
For Louise
Villeneuve,
who is sometimes said to have been her
sister,6
and who
sang
the role of
Dorabella,
Fiordiligi's
sister,
in the
opera,
he
had
recently composed
the concert arias
K.
578, 582,
and
583
in
August
and October
1789.
Dorotea Sardi
Bussani,
who
sang Despina,
had been Mozart's
original
Cherubino;
her
husband,
Francesco
Bussani,
had been the
original
Don Bartolo and
Antonio,
as well as
the Commendatore and Masetto in the Viennese Don
Giovanni;
Francesco
Benucci,
the
Guilelmo,
had
sung
the role of
Figaro
himself,
and
Leporello
in the Viennese Don Giovanni.
Only
the tenor
Calvesi,
who
sang
Ferrando,
was
comparatively
untested
by
Mozart,
although
he had been included in a terzetto and a
quartetto
(K.
480
and
K.
479)
written at the end of
1785
for insertion in Bianchi's La villanella
rapita.
Although
Mozart therefore knew the
capabilities
of these
voices,
he
may
nevertheless have wished to
complete
the
principal
arias in
5
Alan
Tyson,
"
'La clemenza di Tito' and Its
Chronology,"
The Musical
Times,
CXVI
(1975), 221-27.
6
See,
for
instance,
C. F.
Pohl,
Joseph Haydn,
II
(Leipzig,
1882),
12
3-24.
Pohl
cites
her first name there as
"Aloisia,"
but the two names were
apparently interchangeable.
Mozart's
sister-in-law,
Aloysia Lange
(nee Weber),
sometimes
signed
herself "Louise
Lange,"
as is shown
by
a letter of
I
November
1797,
illustrated in Ursula
Mauthe,
"Briefe der 'Weberin'
entdeckt,"
Acta
Mozartiana,
XXIX
(1982), 77.
consultation with the individual
singers,
at a time when most of the
ensembles were behind him.
Perhaps
we should be
asking why
certain numbers such as No.
8,
the
very straightforward
soldiers'
chorus,
or "Di scrivermi
ogni
giorno,"
a
quintetto
that comes
shortly
after No. 8 and was not
given
a
separate
number
by Mozart,7
are not in
Layer
A. That the overture
and the finale of the first act are in
Layer
C is
only
to be
expected.
Are there
any
other
ways
in which we can detect
chronological
layers
within Act I? An examination of the
autograph suggests
three
possible
leads:
i. There are two bass voices in the
opera-those
of Guilelmo and
of Don Alfonso.
(I
write
"bass,"
although
in some modern scores Don
Alfonso is described as a
"baritone.")
In
eight
of the
eighteen
first-act
numbers
they appear together, always
with the
tenor, Ferrando,
and
in four of them with female
singers
as well. But there is some
inconsistency
on Mozart's
part
as to which of the two bass voices he
writes lowest in the score.
In the first three numbers-all terzetti for male voices-Guilelmo's
part
is at the bottom. This is also the case with the sestetto No.
13
and
with the first
finale,
No.
I8.
But in the unnumbered
quintetto
after
No. 8 and in the terzetto No.
15,
Don Alfonso's
part
is written lowest.
And in No.
6,
the first
quintetto,
we have a still more
confusing
situation: Don Alfonso's
part
is written at the bottom until bar
46,
at
which
point
Guilelmo's
part
takes the lowest staff.
Further reflection
suggests
that no
chronological significance
should be attached to
any
of this: Guilelmo has the lowest staff both in
what are
probably
the earliest and in some of the latest first-act
numbers. And that
corresponds
to his
range
relative to Don Alfonso's
when
they sing together.
(In
the
quintetto
No.
6,
bar
63
and the first
half of bar
64,
for
instance,
Don Alfonso
originally
had the same notes
as
Guilelmo,
until Mozart crossed them out and
put
them
up
an
octave.)
The numbers in which Guilelmo's
part
is written on a staff
7 This will be referred to here as "the unnumbered
quintetto." Although
most
editions follow
Breitkopf
&
Hirtel's
full score of
ca.
I 809/Io
in
identifying
it as "No.
9,"
Mozart called it
merely
"Recitativo,"
his own "No.
9" being
the
reprise
of the
soldiers'
chorus,
No. 8
(with
the
opening twenty-four
bars for orchestra
omitted).
It is
clear from the
autograph
that the
quintetto originally
had a
string accompaniment
only;
the clarinets at the
top
of the score and the bassoons at the bottom were later
additions.
364
JOURNAL
above Don Alfonso's are ones in which the voices on the whole
sing
not
together
but in
alternation,
so that the
question
of
registral
inversion does not arise.
This line of
inquiry,
then,
has not led
anywhere.
2. A
possible
clue to the internal
chronology
of the first act also lies
in a certain confusion on Mozart's
part
over the names of the two
sisters. Or is it rather a confusion over their voices? As the
1883
Revisionsbericht
to the old
Gesamtausgabe8 explains (pp. o101-102):
Up
to the finale of the first
act,
the first voice
originally
has Dorabella's
name and the second voice
Fiordiligi's.
Later on the names are ex-
changed, probably merely
for the sake of the
names,
since the well-
known
individuality
of the
singers
mentioned above leaves no doubt
which one was chosen as the first
singer
and which as the second. In
Guglielmo's
aria,
too
(Appendix
i
[=
K.
584]),
their names were at first
written down the other
way
around and altered
only
later.
An examination of the
autograph
more or less bears out that account.
In the duetto No.
4,
the
quintetto
No.
6,
the terzettino No.
io,
and the
sestetto No.
13,
the
soprano
staff that stands
higher
in the score
originally
bore the name
Dorabella,
and the lower one
Fiordiligi,
but a
correction reversed the names in each case. These four
numbers,
we
may
care to
note,
as well as the
rejected
bass aria No.
15a-in
which
the sisters do not
sing
but are addressed in turn
by
Guilelmo,
their
names in the
stage
directions
needing subsequently
to be
changed-
are all written on
paper
of
Type
I.
The
finale,
No.
18,
on the other
hand,
where the names are
right
from the
first,
is
(apart
from a
couple
of
leaves)
entirely
on
paper
of
Type
II.
Nor did the names need to be
changed
in the unnumbered
quintetto--this,
too,
ends on
Type
II
paper (although
it starts on
Type
I).
It is worth
observing
that in the recitative between Nos.
5
and
6,
which
begins
"Stelle!
per
carita" and is on a
single
leaf of
Type
I
paper,
there is a
very
short
passage
in which the sisters
sing together:
"Ohim&!
Che sento!"
(fol. 38r).
Here
Fiordiligi
has the
higher part.
And the same is true on
folio
54r-v
at the end of the secco recitative and
the
beginning
of the recitativo
accompagnato
that forms the unnumbered
8
The first critical edition of the
opera
was edited
by Julius
Rietz
(1812-77)
and
published by Breitkopf
&
Hartel,
Leipzig,
in
i871.
The
plates
of this edition were
later used for the
opera
in the
Gesamtausgabe
(i88i);
and the
Revisionsbericht
to the latter
(i883)
is based almost word for word on Rietz's
1871
Foreword. References are
given
here to the more accessible
Gesamtausgabe
rather than to the
1871
edition.
quintetto;
this is on the first leaf of a bifolium of
Type
I
paper.
A
possible implication
here is that these
passages
of
recitative,
although
on the earlier
paper type,
were nevertheless written rather late.
3. Scrutiny
of the text of the Act I
autograph exposes
a third clue
to its internal
chronology,
one of a rather
unexpected
kind. Who was
Ferrando's fellow student at the scuola
degli
amanti?
Today
he is
always
referred to as
"Guglielmo"-the
form of the name found in the first
published
full score
(Breitkopf
&
Hartel,
Leipzig,
ca.
18o9/io).
But
the
1790
libretto writes
"Guilelmo"-a
more literal
rendering
of
"Wilhelm?"-throughout,
and so do the vocal scores
published
in the
1790s,
such as those of
Breitkopf (Leipzig, 1794)
and Simrock
(Bonn,
1799).
(The
vocal score of Schott
[Mainz,
1795]
has "Wilhelm" and
German
words.) Furthermore,
this is the
spelling
that Mozart uses
throughout
Act
II
and in those
parts
of Act I
that,
for reasons
already
discussed,
we believe to have been written later: in
general,
the
parts
on
Type
II
paper.
But what of the
parts
on
Type
I
paper?
Here Mozart seems almost
always
to have written "Guillelmo" with three
Is
in all. The
picture
would be a clearer one if Mozart had
always
written the name in full.
He
nearly always
does so at the
beginning
of a
number,
and
sometimes at the head of a recitative. But the full name is not
usually
to be found
within
a number or a recitative
(unless
it is
actually sung
by
one of the
characters);
there it is
normally
abbreviated to
"Guil.,"
which
may
stand for either form of the full name that Mozart used.
It is "Guillelmo" with three
Is
at the start of
Nos.
2, 3,
6,
7, I3,
15a,
and
i6,
as well as in the middle of No.
6;
and at the head of the
recitative on folio
18r
and within the recitative on folio 22V. All these
passages
are on
Type
I
paper.
The first
place
in the score where we
find "Guilelmo" with
only
two
Is
is at the start of No. i. For those
who have followed
my
line of
argument,
this
is,
of
course,
a
puzzle.
Were the names of the characters added here somewhat later? Or was
Mozart
checking
his
spelling
of the name
against
the
manuscript
of the
libretto at the
very
start of the
work-something
that from then on he
felt he had no need to
do,
until a
stage
was reached at which he
realized he was
repeatedly
in error? One can do no more than
speculate.
The other
places
in Act I where the
supposedly
later
spelling
is to
be found are: on folio
35'
within the recitative
(which
was
probably
added
late,
although
it comes at the end of a number on
Type
I
paper);
on folio
54'
at the start of the unnumbered
quintetto (this we have
already guessed
to be a later
piece,
even
though
it starts on
Type
I
paper,
because
Fiordiligi's
name stands above Dorabella's from the
366
JOURNAL
start,
and in
any
case it ends on
Type
II
paper);9
in the recitative
on
folio
7or-v (Type
II
paper);
in a cue at the end of the recitative on folio
104r (Type
II
paper);
near the end of No.
15a
on folio
116r,
where
there is a
stage
direction "ferrando e
guilelmo
cor-ninciano
'
ridere"
(probably
a late addition to this
early Type
I
number-suggesting,
incidentally,
that it was a late decision to
replace
this
long
aria with
the short No.
i5b);'0
at the start of No.
i5b
and No.
i8
(both
Type
II);
and on folios
136r, I5or,
and
163r
within that
number,
which is the
first finale.
Three of these methods of
inquiry-a chronological
division of the
first act
according
to which of two
paper types
was
being
used
by
Mozart,
whether Dorabella or
Fiordiligi
was
originally assigned
the
higher part,
and whether "Guilelmo" was
spelled
with three or two
Is-all
yield
much the same results. Mozart tackled the ensembles first
and then the solo
arias;
the recitatives were written at a
fairly
late
stage;
and No.
15a
was
eventually replaced by
No.
15b
(although
No.
I5a
remained in the
opera
at least until he had settled on the
spelling
"Guilelmo,"
if we
interpret
the
stage
direction
rightly).
The ensemble
on folios
54-56
(the
unnumbered
quintetto)
seems to have been
late,
as
also the
finale,
No.
18;
Dorabella's aria No. 1
I,
the
only
one on
Type
I
paper (apart
from Guilelmo's
rejected
aria),
may
have been
early.
There is
nothing
to contradict one's
guess
that the overture was
written last of all.
Some further
chronological
clues can
probably
be extracted from
Mozart's continuous
numbering
of the bifolia
(and
the occasional
single
leaf)
that make
up
the first
act;
this is shown in the
right-hand
column of Table 2 and will be referred to here as the "bifoliation."
Since this
numbering
will not have been
begun
before the
general
sequence
of the incidents in the act was believed to have been
settled,
any
arias or ensembles not included in it would
appear
to be late
arrivals. And
by
this test we
find,
once
again,
that the solo arias and
9
One can extend the line of
reasoning
to cover
No. 12,
Despina's
aria,
as well.
Since this recitative extends on to the
top
two staves
of
folio
71',
it must have been
written down
before
the
aria,
the score of which
occupies
staves
4-11
on this
page
(instead
of
being placed
more
centrally
on staves
3-Io,
as it is on the
subsequent
pages).
10
The direction "attacca No. 16" at the end of No.
i5a
(called
"No.
i5")
also
suggests
that the aria remained in the
opera
until it and the
following
terzetto
had
received their final
numbering. By
an
oversight,
its first line and a
stage
direction,
"Revolgete
a lui lo
sguardo
(a Fiord.),"
even remained in the
published
libretto.
367
the overture are
late;
and the same is true of the soldiers'
chorus,
No.
8.
Almost all of these are on
Type
II
paper;
but not even Dorabella's
aria No.
ii,
wholly
on
Type
I
paper,
or Ferrando's aria No.
17,
partly
on
Type
I,
are included in the bifoliation.
1
Thus the
suspicion
arises that
perhaps
the
presence
of
Type
I
paper
in, these two arias
may
not commit them after all to a
comparatively early
date. Two or
three sheets of
Type
I
may
still have been left when Mozart made his
large purchase
of
Type
II,
and
may
have been mixed in with the new
sheets.
(The
Type
I bifolium that forms the
pair
with folios
125-26
at
the
beginning
of No.
17
turns
up
in the middle of a
sequence
of
Type
II
paper
in the finale of the
act,
No.
i8,
where it is folios
140-4
1.)
But
it remains true that there is no
Type
I
paper
in Act
II,
or in
any
later
Mozart
autographs.
One small
irregularity
in the bifoliation calls for a different
explanation.
Folio
27
and folio
28,
it can be
seen,
both
carry
the
number 8. When Mozart wrote out the terzetto No.
3
in short
score,
he
probably required only
four
leaves, folios
23-26;
these received the
bifoliation numbers 6 and
7,
and the duetto No.
4
that followed on
folios
28-35
was bifoliated
8,
9,
io,
and
II.
Subsequently,
however,
Mozart decided to enrich No.
3
with a
postlude
of fourteen
bars,
in
which the men march
off,
bringing
scene
I
to an end
(and
perhaps
creating
a break for the scene
change?).12
But this necessitated the
insertion of a new leaf for its
completion
(the
ink of this
postlude
is
different from that of the
preceding
part).'3
It seems that this
leaf,
the
fifth of No.
3,
was at first
given
a
5,
but this was then
changed
to a
bifoliation number
8-resulting
in two 8s in succession.
I" No.
i5a,
also on
Type
I
paper,
was
presumably
not included in the bifoliation
because it was
being dropped.
12
Mozart
was sensitive to the need for
providing
music to enable
performers
to
enter or to leave the
stage,
and he sometimes wrote it at the last minute:
e.g.,
the
Priests' March at the
beginning
of Act
II
of Die
Zauberfl6te,
a
very
late addition to the
score,
or the
newly
discovered
Janissaries'
March added to Act I of Die
Entfiihrung,
for
which see Gerhard
Croll, "Ein
Janitscharen-Marsch
zur
'Entffihrung,'
"
Mitteilungen
der
Internationalen
Stiftung
Mozarteum,
XXVIII
(1980), 2-5, 3'.
1" Something
similar
evidently happened
at the end of Zerlina's aria
"Vedrai,
carino" in Act II of Don Giovanni. When
completing
the
scoring
of this
aria,
Mozart
seems to have felt that the
concluding
orchestral
bars,
which
probably
consisted
only
of the material now found in bars
85-92
on folio 168' of the
autograph,
needed to be
extended a
little-perhaps
to allow for the characters' exit and the scene
change.
This
necessitated the insertion of a new
leaf,
folio
169,
which is
Prague paper
(unlike
the
rest of the
aria)
and therefore a late addition to the score. The elimination of a bar
between the
present
measures
84
and
85 probably happened
at the same time.
368 JOURNAL
Inscriptions
at the
top
of one or two leaves
may
also contain hints
as to the
chronology
of individual arias. Number
14
and No.
15b
both
have "Atto
Im."
on their first
pages;
this
suggests
that when
they
were written
out,
Act
II
was
already
well under
way.
Number
5
and
the march No. 8 have cues
(the
last words of the
preceding
recitatives)
written
by
a
copyist
at the
top
of their first
pages.
(Number
5
has the
same cue in Mozart's hand as
well.) This, too,
is a
sign
that
they
were
written
late;
the Hoftheater's
copyist,
who will have had the
responsi-
bility
of
producing
a correct version of the finished
opera
from the bits
of Mozart's
autograph,
needed to record the
places
at which these two
numbers were to be inserted.14 More
mysterious
are the words "ist
ganz
instrumentirt" at the
top
of the first
page
of No.
ii.
It seems
unlikely
that when those words were written the aria was still in short
score. Was it
perhaps ready
to be
copied,
but was the almost total
absence of melodic
phrases
in the woodwinds
creating
the
impression
that the
scoring
had not
yet
been
completed?
There would seem to
be.
something
of a
chronological
clue
here,
if one knew how to
interpret
it.
More
interesting, perhaps,
than evidence that bears
merely
on the
sequence
in which the various Act I numbers were written-for
Mozart had to write
something
first and
something
later-are
any
hints of
changes
of
plan
within the act.
Although
there were
undoubtedly
some
changes,
little of the evidence has remained within
the
score,
except
for Guilelmo's
rejected
aria No.
I5a.
But there are
traces at least of another abandoned solo number.
At the
top
left-hand corner of folio
62r,
the
present beginning
of
scene
8,
an
amusing
recitative in which
Despina
introduces herself
and an
aspect
of her
personality
to us
by tasting
the chocolate she has
prepared
for her
mistresses,
there are
(as
Otto
Jahn pointed
out
long
ago)15
some deleted words:
"dopo
la Cavatina di
Despina
/ Scena 8'?:a
14
In the
autograph
score of Le nozze di
Figaro
(Acts
I-II,
East
Berlin,
Deutsche
Staatsbibliothek;
Acts
III-IV, Krak6w,
Biblioteka
Jagielloriska),
there are similar
cues for No.
13
(Susanna's "Venite,
inginocchiatevi"),
for No. 26
(Basilio's aria),
and
for the recitativo
accompagnato
before No.
29
(Susanna's
"Deh
vieni").
All these are
written on the "New
Type"
of
paper
that Mozart
adopted
about
halfway through
his
work on
Figaro:
see Alan
Tyson,
"Le nozze di
Figaro:
Lessons from the
Autograph
Score,"
The Musical
Times,
CXXII
(1981),
456-6
1. In other
words,
they
are
among
the
later-written
parts
of that
opera.
5
Otto
Jahn, W.
A.
Mozart,
IV
(Leipzig, 1859), 490;
ibid.,
5th
ed.,
rev. Hermann
Abert, II
(Leipzig, 192 1), 640.
369
'
i
.J",
.o..7
mp
: ?
?
* t?e1~~,%U #j4 *
Figure
2. Folio
62r
of the Act I
autograph
(Krak6w, Biblioteka
Jagielloriska)
(Fig.
2). Furthermore,
at the end of the
preceding
recitative of Don
Alfonso's on folio
6Ir,
one can make out:
"Segue
scena / VIII.
/
Cavatina di /
Despina,"
the last three words
having
been crossed out.
So
Despina
was
originally
intended to make her
entry
with a solo
number,
of which no trace
survives;
it
could,
of
course,
be the case
that it was never written. And since folio 62 is of
Type
II
paper,
it
must have been at
quite
a late
stage
in the construction of the act that
the idea of
Despina's
cavatina was
dropped.
It must be assumed that
the aria that she
sings
a little
later,
No.
12 ("In uomini,
in
soldati"),
is
a
replacement
for
it;
dramatically
it is
very
effective,
since it is a
riposte
to Dorabella's aria and the
exaggerated grief
of the two
sisters,
not
merely
a
buffa autobiographical
statement.
The sestetto that follows
it,
No.
13
("Alla
bella
Despinetta"),
is 2
19
bars
long.
It was written
early;
was it ever
planned
as a finale?
Possibly
it could once have been intended as the Act I finale in a three-
act
opera,
with Guilelmo's
long
aria No.
ISa easily
accommodated
within the middle
act;
but there is
nothing
in the
autograph today
to
lend
support
to this. What can
probably
be excluded is
the
possibility
that it was
originally
written as the first finale for a two-act
opera.
It is
in C
major,
the tonic
key
of
Cosifan
tutte,
and in Mozart's mature two-
act
operas-Don
Giovanni,
La
clemenza
di
Tito,
and Die
Zauberfl6te-the
370 JOURNAL
first-act finale is
always
in another
key.16
But in Die
Entfiibrung,
which
is in three
acts,
the first act concludes in the tonic.
When we come to consider the
composition
of Act
II,
the clues
provided by
its
autograph
score are
very
different from those that
were of
help
in Act I. Here there is no
Type
I
paper; except
for a few
leaves of miscellaneous
papers containing only
recitatives,
it is all
Type
II.
Fiordiligi's part
is
always placed
above
Dorabella's
in the
score. And the
spelling
"Guilelmo" is found
throughout.
Some of the
problems
of Act II are
probably
insoluble,
in the
way
that a
jigsaw puzzle,
several of the
pieces
of which are
missing,
cannot
be
completely
solved. Yet it is
interesting
at least to examine the
problems.
Some consist of an
apparent
mismatch between the end of a
recitative and the
beginning
of an aria that follows. The mismatch lies
in the
key relationship.
And since there are
good
reasons for
assuming
that the recitatives were
composed
later than the numbers that
they
were intended to
precede, any
such mismatch
suggests
that a different
aria was substituted for the
original one--one
in a different
key-and
that the
join
was not rewritten. But what
happened
to the
original
aria?
Here,
as I have
said,
some
pieces
of the
jigsaw puzzle'
are
missing.
More than that: not even the final version of Act
II
is
fully
represented by
its
autograph
in Berlin. The duetto and chorus No.
21,
Fiordiligi's
recitativo
accompagnato
before her
rond6
No.
25,
and Don
Alfonso's
No.
3o,
as well as the
immediately preceding
recitative,
are
all
missing
from
it;
and the recitative between Nos. 28 and
29
is not in
Mozart's hand but in that of a
copyist.
Luckily
one of these
missing
sections has been
recovered;
in
1970
Wolfgang
Plath announced that he had found a bifolium
containing
No.
30
and its
preceding
recitative
among
some
uncatalogued papers
from the
Opernsammlung
in the Stadt- und
Universititsbibliothek,
Frankfurt am Main.
"7
The bifolium is of
Type
II
paper; according
to
Plath it is uncut and
unfoliated,
and has no trace of a
previous
stitching
or
binding. Only
the
18
in
Ri'tel
(red
crayon)
on the first
page
'6 Le nozze di
Figaro
is in four
acts;
none of its first three acts ends in the tonic.
17 Wolfgang
Plath, "Mozartiana
in
Fulda
und
Frankfurt,"
Mozart-Jahrbuch 1968/70
(1970),
pp. 333-86,
with illustrations of the bifolium's first and last
pages.
The
manuscript
has been
given
the call mark Mus. Hs.
2350.
Its first
page
includes the
bizarre
(and
unique) spelling
"Guilemo."
links it in
any way
with the rest of the Act
II
autograph,
since that
figure
is
part
of a bifoliation
sequence running throughout
the act.
Is there
something
to be learned from these
gaps
in the Berlin
score? Are these numbers
missing
because
they
were written at the
very
last
moment,
possibly
even after the
long
second
finale,
so that
their scores had to be rushed to the theater
copyist
and never found
their
way
back to the rest of the Act
II
autograph?
That can be no more than
speculation, although
No.
30
contains
the words that
may
have led
(as
we shall
see)
to a last-minute
change
in
the
opera's
title. It is
noticeable, too,
that
Fiordiligi's
recitativo
accompagnato, ending
with "e
tradimento,"
omits six further lines
that follow in the
libretto,
beginning
"Guilelmo,
anima mia!" and
concluding
"e il tuo tormento." Were those words
perhaps
set
by
Mozart in an earlier version of the
scene,
which was then rewritten?
The matter is
unlikely
to be resolved unless an earlier draft of this
kind turns
up.
There
are,
in
fact,
only
two
surviving manuscripts
that could be
described as
drafts-passages
laid out in score and in
ordinary
writing-for any parts
of the
opera.
These are both
fragments
that
relate to Guilelmo's aria No.
26,
and
both,
as one
might
have
expected,
are on
Type
II
paper.
One is a bifolium
(East Berlin,
Deutsche
Staatsbibliothek);
it contains the first
twenty
bars in
score,
although only
the bass line and
voice,
and from time to time a few
other
parts,
are entered-as was usual before a number was
"ganz
instrumentirt."
Although
the meter is
?
rather than
4, and the
tempo
not
Allegretto
but
Allegro,
most of the music
(the
first fifteen
bars)
corresponds
almost
exactly
to the final version. The other
fragment
(Stanford,
Memorial
Library
of
Music)
consists of eleven bars on one
side of a
single
leaf;
once
again
the meter is
4,
but the music is
quite
different
from
anything
in the final version. The words found
here,
"...
a
voi lo
mostro,
vi do marche
d'amista,"
represent
a
slightly
different version from the
ones
finally
set, ". .. ve
lo
mostro,
vi do
segno d'amista."
But even in the
autograph,
Mozart retains marche
instead of
segno
at one
place
(bar
46);
and
segno
is not found at all in the
libretto,
which
gives
a somewhat
confusing
text and
manages
to leave
out a line
("che credibile non
6").
All that one can
really
conclude from this is that these were earlier
attempts
to
produce
a score of No.
26,
and that
they
must have been
along
lines rather different from the final version.
372
JOURNAL
Two leaves are also known that contain
sketches
for
parts
of the
opera,
both for sections of the Act
II
finale. As is often the
case,
the
sketches-in a hard-to-read
"private" style
of
writing-were
entered
on the backs of
autograph
score
fragments
(drafts),
and there is
good
reason to
suppose
that this is
why they
were
preserved:
such leaves
were saved from destruction because of the draft score in
"public"
writing,
not for the sake of the sketches.
One
group
of
sketches,
for the
Ab
canon
quartet
(bars
173-204
of
the second
finale),
is on the back of the
string quartet fragment
K.
587a
(Anh.
74).
This
fragment (Salzburg,
Internationale
Stiftung
Mozarteum)
is
twenty-four
bars of a
quartet
in G
minor;'"
it is on a
paper type
that Mozart could have used at
any
time after the
beginning
of
1786.19
I
have
argued
elsewhere that the
presence
of
these sketches on its verso
probably
shows that when Mozart was
working
on the second
finale,
the
fragment
had been under consider-
ation as a
possible
start to a minor-mode
quartet
for the "Prussian" set.
(As
was
pointed
out
earlier,
the second and third "Prussian"
quartets,
K.
589
and K.
590,
were the first two works that he
completed
after
Cosifan
tutte.)
But the use of the leaf for
sketching
will have marked
the abandonment of that
plan.20
The sketches for the canon never
give
its
melody
to more than
three
voices;
at an
early stage
Mozart seems to have decided that it
would be best for Guilelmo to come in last with different material
(indicated
in one
sketch).
The whereabouts of the other leaf with sketches for a
passage
in
the second finale are not known
today,
but
photographs
of both sides
are in the Hoboken
Photogramm-Archiv,
Osterreichische National-
bibliothek,
Vienna. The leaf has on its recto the
fragmentary
Piano
Fantasy
in F
minor, K.
383C
(Anh.
32);
the verso contains a sketch for
bars
545-58
on staves
i-3,
and for bars
559-74
on staves
4-6
(Fig.
3).21
Although
the leaf has been trimmed and consists
only
of the
upper eight
staves,
it is
possible
to make an
attempt
at
determining
its
paper type by
features of its
rastrology;
and this
yields
a somewhat
's
For its
text,
see
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart: Neue
Ausgabe
samtlicher
Werke
(henceforth NMA),
VIII/2o/I,
Bd.
3
(Kassel,
i96i),
147-48.
19
It is the "New
Type" adopted during
the work on
Figaro;
see n.
14.
20
See Alan
Tyson,
"The Mozart
Fragments
in the
Mozarteum,
Salzburg:
A
Preliminary Study
of Their
Chronology
and Their
Significance,"
this
JOURNAL,
XXXIV
(1981), 487.
21
The sketches were first identified
by Wolfgang
Plath in
1964.
For the
leaf,
see
Plath's edition of the
Fantasy
in
NMA,
IX/27/2
(Kassel,
1982), xxiv-xxv,
and
literature cited there.
I
L 1 LI I-
44
II
L
,
,
Ai0
-
1&1 A
I N I
k
ka- U--Fv-k
Figure 3.
Sketches of Act
II,
No.
3
1,
mm.
545-75
(Vienna,
Hoboken
Photogramm-Archiv,
Osterreichische
Nationalbibliothek)
0
N
0
374
JOURNAL
unexpected
result. It is
not,
as one
might
have
anticipated,
on
Type
II
paper,
but
apparently
on a
paper type
found in the finales of the
string
quartets
K.
589
and K.
590, completed shortly
after the
opera,22
and
also used
by
Mozart in
writing
out a
simpler
substitute for the canon
quartet
to be discussed below
(pp. 381-84).
Since this last
passage,
and the finales of the
quartets,
were no doubt written after the
opera
had been
completed,
the fact that
they
are not on
Type
II
paper
is no
surprise;
but one
might
have
expected
a sketch for the
finale,
like the
autograph
score of the
finale,
to be on
Type
II.
Could this
by any
chance be a sketch for a
rewriting
of the
passage?
That seems a forced
explanation-until
one finds that at a later
stage
Mozart
apparently
proposed
to cut bars
545-58,
the
very
same bars that are sketched on
staves
1-3
of this leaf.
(This
cut is discussed
below,
p. 387.)
I
am
tempted,
therefore,
to conclude that this sketch is in fact later than the
autograph
score of the same
passage;
but it is a matter on which
everyone
will have to make
up
his own mind.
Changes
of
plan
in the
composition
of Act
II
are from time to time
exposed,
as has
already
been
pointed
out,
by
curious mismatches
between a recitative and the aria that follows it in the
autograph.
The recitative of Act
II,
scene 8
(which
follows
Fiordiligi's
"Per
pieta,"
No.
25),
is a
dialogue
between Ferrando and
Guilelmo;
this
takes on the
greater intensity
of a recitativo
accompagnato
at the moment
when Ferrando learns that his Dorabella has been
persuaded
to
yield
the locket
containing
his
portrait
to the
disguised
Guilelmo.
Original-
ly
it came to an end on
folio
231
with Ferrando's words: "Abbi di me
pieta,
dammi
consiglio,"
and a cadence in C minor. This was followed
by
the link:
"segue
L'aria di Guilelmo"
(with
the number 26 added
later in red
crayon
or
Ro'tel).
That this had
originally
been the
ending
of the recitative would in
any
case have been clear from its
layout:
only
one
system
on the twelve-staff
page,
on staves
4-8,
whereas the
preceding pages
had two
systems,
on staves
1-5
and
7-I
1.
But Mozart chose later to extend the scene a little. So he deleted
the last two bars and the
linking
words,
inserted a new leaf
(fol.
232),
and on the recto wrote
eight
new bars with the
following
extra
dialogue:
22
See Alan
Tyson,
"New
Light
on Mozart's 'Prussian'
Quartets,"
The Musical
Times,
CXVI
(1975), I26-30.
Guil:
Amico,
non
saprei
Qual
consiglio
a te dar
Ferr:
Barbara,
ingrata,
In un
giorno!
in
poch'
ore!
Guil: Certo un caso
quest'
e da far
stupore.
The last chord this time is the dominant of
D,
and the link is "attacca
l'aria di
Guilelmo, No.
26." This
aria,
"Donne
mie,
la fate a
tanti,"
is
in
G,
but
begins
with four bars on the
dominant,
D.
The
puzzle
here is
what,
in its
original
form,
was the recitative
intended to
precede,
after Ferrando's
plea
"Dammi
consiglio"
and a
firm cadence in C minor.
Could
it have been Ferrando's
despairing
cavatina
"Tradito, schernito," No.
27,
which starts in C minor? It is
certainly
the case that the
singer
who concludes a recitative-
especially
a recitativo
accompagnato-and
remains on
stage
would
expect
to
sing
a solo aria that follows. But when Ferrando has asked
for
advice,
it
may
have struck Mozart that it would be undramatic for
him to
prevent
such advice
being given by singing
a
cavatina;
it would
be more effective for Guilelmo to tender his counsel at this
point
in an
aria on the
subject
of woman's nature. In this case he will have written
"segue
L'aria di Guilelmo" after the C-minor
cadence,
so that the aria
he was about to write would be inserted at the
right place;
Ferrando's
cavatina was
simply postponed
to a later
position
(and
given
a new
recitativo
accompagnato
to
precede
it).
He will then have
gone
back later
to build a better
bridge
to Guilelmo's
aria,
inserting folio 232
with
eight
bars
giving
Guilelmo the last words of the
recitative,
and a
correct cadence.
This, then,
was a mismatch that Mozart corrected. But another
one was not corrected in the
autograph.
The recitative that starts
scene io of Act
II
ends on
folio 249v
with Dorabella's
words, "Credi,
sorella,
e
meglio
che tu
ceda,"
and a cadence in E
(major);
the
linking
words are
"Segue
l'aria
di Dorabella" and the number 28 in
Rotel.
But
Dorabella's No.
28,
"E amore un
ladroncello,"
which
follows,
is in
B
b.
The
suspicion
must arise that Dorabella
originally
had a different
aria here-and one in a different
key.
The awkward
juncture
of E and
B
,
was soon
eliminated;
in the version
given by
the
early copyists'
scores
(Abschriften)
the last six bars of the recitative are rewritten so
that the cadence is not on E but on F. It seems
likely
that this
emendation was sanctioned
by
Mozart
himself,
although
that cannot
be
proved.
One further
example
of this kind is
scarcely
a mismatch but invites
an
explanation.
The recitative of scenes
ix
and
12
of Act
II,
mainly
376
JOURNAL
for
Fiordiligi by
herself,
on
folios
258r-6or
of the
autograph,
is in
a
copyist's
hand;
it ends with a cadence in E
major.
But
curiously
enough
the
early copyists'
scores of the
opera
have a different version
of the whole
recitative,
with a final cadence in A. The number
that
follows,
the duetto No.
29,
is also in A. Either version of the
preceding
recitative is therefore
"acceptable";
the one
cadencing
in A is found
in
all editions of the
opera.
At
present
the reason for the existence of
two
versions,
like their
authorship,
is
unexplained.
A final
puzzle
of the Act
II
autograph,
which is discussed from
time to
time,
is
perhaps
best
explained by
a lacuna in the Act I
autograph.
When,
in the second
finale,
Ferrando and Guilelmo make their
entry
in
military
uniform and
totally
confound the two
sisters,
they
gradually
reveal that
they
are no
strangers
to what the Albanian
suitors
experienced:
Ferrando
sings
four bars of an
Allegretto
in D
minor,
Guilelmo
eight
bars of an Andante in
F,
which we
recognize
as
a
quotation
from the duetto No.
23;
and both
join
in the
C-major
music
that
accompanied Despina's
miraculous cure with the
magnet
in the
Act I finale.
From the context it would
appear
that Ferrando's four
bars,
to the
words "A voi
s'inchina,
bella
damina,
il cavaliere dell'Albania"
(addressed
to
Fiordiligi
and,
as the libretto
says, accompanied by
extravagant compliments)
are also a
quotation
from an earlier scene.
But neither the music nor the words occur
anywhere
else in the
opera.
Thus it looks as
though
this is a
quotation
from an aria that was
ultimately cut-perhaps
one in D minor
(for
the other two citations
retain the
keys
of their
originals).
Where could that aria have been
placed?
It cannot have been in the first
part
of Act
I,
since Ferrando
must be in
disguise;
and even the
beginning
of Act
II
is too late. The
best
place
would seem to be near the recitative that follows the sestetto
No.
1
3,
i.e.,
about folios
92-95
of the
autograph.
If Ferrando
sang
an
aria
introducing
himself
there,
Fiordiligi's
"Come
scoglio,"
No.
14,
would be her
reply.
Another
possible place might
be
just
after "Come
scoglio,"
where both sisters start to leave and
(according
to the
stage
direction in the
libretto)
Ferrando calls back one while Guilelmo calls
back the other. Guilelmo
gets
his aria of
introduction;
in No.
15b
he,
in
fact,
speaks
on behalf of both
men,
as he had also done in the
rejected
No.
I1a.
But was there
perhaps
a time after No.
1
a
had been
abandoned
(but before No.
I5b
was
written) when an aria was drafted
in which Ferrando introduced himself?
Unfortunately
Mozart has left no clues in this
part
of the Act I
autograph. Apart
from Guilelmo's
rejected
aria,
everything
from folio
92
to
folio
I 20
is
on
Type
II
paper;
and if the cancellation of an aria for
Ferrando here once left
any
scars,
they
must have been eliminated
by
rewriting
(or
recopying).
The
printed
libretto has
already
been referred to several times as a
source,
and it deserves a few further
comments,
which will serve to
remind us of Mozart's collaborator.
Apart
from a few
oversights
(such
as the retention of the first line
of the canceled aria No.
I5a),
it
appears
to accord well with the final
version of the music. No doubt it was
printed directly
from the final
version of Da Ponte's much-revised
manuscript.
One
might
see a hint
of this in the
spelling
of Mozart's name at the
beginning:
"La musica e
del
Signor
WOLFGANGO MOZZART." For the form "Mozzart" is
also found in the Don Giovanni libretto
(Prague, 1787)23
and
through-
out Da Ponte's
Memorie,
so that it
may
have been the librettist's own
spelling
of it.
It is noticeable that in his Memorie and elsewhere Da Ponte
always
refers to the
opera
as La scola
[sic]
degli
amanti. One
gains
the
impression
that this was the
original
name of the
opera
as he conceived
it and that the title Cosi
fan
tutte was Mozart's
inspiration,
the new title
perhaps being adopted only
after No.
30o,
the second-act number
preceding
the
finale,
had been set to music. The
possibility
that No.
30
(which
is not in the Berlin
autograph
of Act
II)
was written
very
late--like
the
overture,
where the musical
setting
of the words is cited
as a kind of
motto--has already
been raised
(p.
37
1).
And we shall find
that what is
apparently
the earliest
Abschrift
at one time had on its title
page
no more than the words La Scuola
degli
Amanti. It would
probably
be a
mistake, however,
to see
any ideological
difference between Da
Ponte and Mozart in their choice of
titles;
for the
principal
lesson in
the "school for lovers" was
obviously
that
"cosi
fan tutte."
Yet
personal
allusions have not
unreasonably
been
sought
from
time to time within the libretto. When it was
being
written,
Adriana
Gabrieli del
Bene,
who took the role of
Fiordiligi,
was Da Ponte's
mistress; she was known as "la
Ferrarese,"
which
probably explains
23
"Mozzart"
is also found in the
early (and
incomplete)
edition of the
1787
libretto
(with Vienna,
not
Prague,
on the title
page
as its
place
of
publication),
in the libretto
for the
1788
Vienna
revival,
and on the
playbill
for that
production.
378 JOURNAL
lowim ~ b~;"'_9
46NYS~~
N -EW .'?- ~ r
-----ql ft~m;
ZOLII
pow
VAa
go -M.?lr ? MI?IH?4
Figure 4.
Folio
7or
of the Act I
autograph
(Krak6w,
Biblioteka
Jagiellofiska)
why
the two sisters were from
Ferrara,
"dame
ferraresi,"
in the
opera.
But another
geographical point
still calls for an
explanation.
As
Jahn
pointed
out
long ago,24
the recitative of Act
I,
scene
9, originally
included the
words,
"da Trieste
partiti
sono
gli
amanti
nostri";
but
Mozart
changed
this to "da
Napoli
. . ." in the
autograph, altering
the
note values to fit
(Fig. 4).
Was there
any personal
allusion behind the
change
from Trieste to
Naples?
Or had Trieste-a more
likely place
than
Naples
to encounter rich Albanians-become to the Viennese in
1789
a
city
not all that distant from an
unpopular
war zone? The
libretto,
as one
might
have
expected,
states: "La Scena si
finge
in
Napoli";
a further
surprise,
however,
is encountered in the earliest
Abschriften
and the first
published
full
score,
where there is a return to
the
Adriatic,
with the
reading
"da
Venezia,"
and a reversion to the
original
note values.
One minor
discrepancy
between the libretto and the
autograph
version of a
passage
in a recitative has
recently
been attributed to
Mozart's
inventiveness.25
It comes in the
dialogue
between Don
Alfonso and
Despina
in scene
io
of Act
I.
In the libretto the
passage
runs:
24 Jahn, W. A. Mozart, IV, 488; ibid., 5th ed., rev. Abert, II, 639.
25
Wolfgang Hildesheimer,
Mozart
(Frankfurt
am
Main,
1977), PP. 300-301;
ibid.,
trans. Marion Faber
(New York, 1982), p. 290.
MOZART'S COSi FAN TUTTE 379
D. Al.
Despina
mia,
Di te
bisogno
avrei.
Desp.
Ed io niente di lei.
D. Al. Ti vo fare del ben:
Desp.
Non n'ho
bisogno
Un uomo come lei non
pu6
far nulla.
But in the
autograph, Despina's
last lines are a bit more tart:
A una fanciulla
Un vecchio come lei non
pu6
far nulla.
It would seem more
likely
that the
softening
of this
sharp reply
in the
libretto was due rather to a wish not to
get
into trouble with the
censor.
Later in the same scene Mozart
appears
to have omitted a line of
the
libretto,
but to have tried
subsequently
to insert it. The
passage
runs:
Desp.
Hanno una buona borsa
I vostri concorrenti?
(Per
me
questa
mi
preme:)
It was the last line that was omitted. Mozart
squeezed
the
necessary
seven notes into the recitative on folio
79r
but did not add the
words;
the
early
Abschriften,
on the other
hand,
inserted the words without
the notes
(Figs. 5
and
6).
It should be
possible
to include both words
and music in a modern
performance.
The
changes
that a
composer
makes in his
opera
as it
goes
into
production,
or
during
its initial
run,
or
perhaps
even in the course of
preparations
for its revival at a later
date, could,
on a
generous
interpretation
of the
word,
still be
regarded
as
part
of the work's
"composition"-even
if this
activity
were to be
expressed largely
in
the form of cuts. I
propose
to conclude these notes on the
composition
of
Cosi
fan
tutte
by considering
what later
changes
Mozart
may
have
tried to make in his score.
My
first
example
is of a short but
significant
revision that was
certainly
carried out
by Mozart,
although
I cannot find it discussed in
the literature. This
newly composed
music is never heard
today.
It
will soon be
clear, however,
that there is little
surprising
in that.
380
JOURNAL
.4a
';'
Imp
W-
N'l9 M-"
W%
.........
vi
"
e.. . J
...v
"I
-glow
....
C
.
..
. . . . . . . .. -
..
- -
.. ...p
Figure 5.
Folio
79r
of the Act I
autograph
(Krak6w,
Biblioteka
Jagielloniska)
"
r rr.
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en a
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14
Figure
6. A
page
of
Abschrift
S,
copied by
the firm of Wenzel
Sukowaty
MOZART'S
COSI FAN TUTTE
381
For at some
stage
Mozart decided to eliminate the
Alb
canon
quartet
in the Act
II
finale. The reason
may
have been that it was
proving
difficult in
performance,
as well as
holding up
the action with
a
Larghetto
section. To
replace
it,
he extended the
preceding
Andante
by adding
thirteen new measures after bar
172;
these ended with a
modulation to E
major
and a
change
of the
tempo
to
Allegro, leading
into bar 208. Thus bars
173-207, thirty-one
measures of
Larghetto
plus
four of
Allegro,
were
replaced by
thirteen bars of Andante. The
new music is based on the music of bars
153
ff. ("Tutto,
tutto o
vita
mia"),
but the words are those of the canon
quartet
("E
nel
tuo,
nel
mio
bicchiero"):
see
Figures 7-9.
It
goes
without
saying
that it is a
clever revision. But even if the music were
readily
accessible-it
seems to be
reproduced
here for the first
time-today's performers
and audiences would
probably
be
unwilling
to forfeit the celebrated
canon
quartet.
The
autograph
of this
revision,
neatly
written on the first three
sides of a
bifolium,
is in the Deutsche
Staatsbibliothek,
East Berlin.
Since its last bar ends with
"attacca,"
"Vi-,"
and "Volti"
(only
the first
in Mozart's
hand),
it was no doubt at first inserted in a score of the
opera-although
not in the Act
II
autograph,
since that score has no
corresponding
"-de" or similar
marking
at the
appropriate passage.
One must
presume
that it was inserted in a
copyist's
score
(Abschrift),
from which it later became detached.26
The
precise stage
at which this
replacement
for the canon
quartet
was
composed
cannot now be determined. The bifolium on which it is
written is of the
paper type
discussed above on
p. 374
and found in the
finales of the
string quartets
K.
589
and
K.
590, completed shortly
after the
opera.
What
may
be a more
helpful
clue is the fact that the
early
Abschriften
(with
one
apparent exception, shortly
to be
described)
and
printed
versions seem to know
nothing
of this substitute
passage;
this would
suggest
that the traditional text had
already
been
widely
dispersed
before Mozart
produced
his revision.
(It is,
of
course,
possible
that the revised version was intended for a
particular
performance
or
production,
but not as a
permanent
substitute.)
26
A note attached to it reads: "Eine
Abkiirzung
zu Cosi fann
tutte, um
das
Larghetto
im 2n
Finale zu
ersparen,
von Mozarts
eigener
Handschrift,
fiir
die kais:
Hoftheater. / Sie ist in keine anderen
Hinde gekori-en.
/
gefunden
am 29 August 1804
/ Fr. Treitschke."
_ I -Y~ tt7~fi~
le
i
i 5f ~
r --di g--
F1
Iff
'17i
_ _ _
__
_ _ _i __
I2_N.
'o.
I
h
iti
Figure 7.
Mozart's
autograph replacement
for the canon
quartet
(East Berlin,
Deutsche
Staatsbibliothek),
mm.
1-6
%AJ
00
0
t-
O
0
071
0
C)
Ht
r)
om-
rr
2p
1
IL_
r\ .....
_
_-
~ u~~-~~--?- -? - - ?-- ?-i-- - i--? ?-- --- -?---?--- ???- ??-?------- ??----OR
0 4Ahoc-
.u9711-4-
Figure
8. Mozart's
replacement
for the canon
quartet,
mm.
7-
I
Cj
1/1
N
0
ML A
- -------- -
---- -- -- - ??----~ ?-~
K Ila
-WY---A
-
----
---- -
- - -
A* llk~
IL
-
? -ffiJL
Figure 9.
Mozart's
replacement
for the canon
quartet,
mm.
12-13
00
W
z
oi
tV
0
'II
O
0
0
C
t-
O
t-
?ao
o=
-q
MOZART'S
COSI FAN TUTTE
385
If we were in search of further evidence that Mozart was under
pressure
to shorten his
opera,
we
might
feel that we had found it in
virtually
all the
Vervielf6ltigungen,
or
duplicated copies,
in which the
text of the
opera
first circulated. For in these
Abschriften
a number of
passages
(some
admittedly very
short)
are
missing;
and the same is
true of the
eighteenth-century
vocal
scores,
such as those
published
by Breitkopf
in
1794
and
by
Simrock in
1799,
as well as of the first full
score of the
opera,
issued
by Breitkopf
& Hartel
ca.
I809/1o.
The
passages usually
omitted include the
following:
(a)
Overture: bars
81-88,
149-56, 194-201.
(b)
Soldiers'
chorus,
No. 8: the first
twenty-four
bars,
for orchestra alone.
(c)
Ferrando's aria No.
17:
bars
50-57, 63-66.
(d)
Act I
finale,
No. 18: bars
46 1-75.
(e)
Ferrando's aria No.
24:
bars
57-91.
(Some
of the omissions led to minor
adjustments
to the text at the new
joins.)
The
problem posed by
these
widely
distributed cuts was
briefly
discussed in the Revisionsbericht to the
Gesamtausgabe, pp. 99-ioo.
There is
nothing
in the
autograph
score that
corresponds
to
them,
except
in the case of
(d),
where there are a
couple
of
markings
at the
appropriate place
in
Rotel-although
these are
probably
not in Mo-
zart's hand. It was thus a matter of
speculation
whether
any
of the
cuts
corresponded
to Mozart's
wishes,
whether he
accepted
them
only
with
reluctance,
or whether
they
were
arbitrarily
introduced
by
others without his
knowledge, perhaps
even after his death. The
triviality
of the cuts in the
overture,
for
instance,
suggested
that at
least in those Mozart could have had no hand.
Some
parts
of this
problem may
remain insoluble
today,
for a
deletion that Mozart made
contentedly
in a score is
unlikely
to be
distinguishable
from one to which he assented
reluctantly.
But in
my
view,
a
great
deal of
light
can be thrown on the cuts
by
a source that
appears
to have
escaped scrutiny up
to now. This is an
Abschrift
in
Vienna
(Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, O.A. 146), described in
the sixth edition of Kochel as the
"Direktionsexemplar
der k. k.
Hoftheater." Since its
singular
features can best be described
by
comparing
it with one of the more usual
Abschriften,
I shall discuss it
together
with a score made
by
the firm of the court
copyist
Wenzel
386 JOURNAL
Sukowaty,27 referring
to the Hoftheater score as "H" and to Sukowa-
ty's
as "S." Each of the scores is in two
volumes,
the title
pages
of
which
carry
the same
wording (except
that
Sukowaty
added his name
and address to the first
volume).28
At first
glance
the two
Abschriften
appear
almost identical. No
doubt the
explanation
is that both were
produced by Sukowaty's
team
of
copyists.
It is not
merely
that the
handwriting
in both scores is
extremely
similar
(although
the
copyists
are not in fact the
same):
both
are made
up
from more or less the same "ternions"
(gatherings),29
and
the
layout
of almost
every
number is the
same,
with identical line
breaks and
page
turns. Is it
possible
to establish a connection between
the two? At the end of the recitative before
No.
12 ("In uomini,
in
soldati")
H has "attacca subito
/
L'Aria di
Des,"
the
trimming
of the
margin having
removed the rest of
Despina's
name. At the same
place
in S one finds the identical
words,
with
Despina's
name
similarly
truncated,
but
ending
this time an inch from the
margin.
It is a
reasonable
deduction, then,
that S was
copied directly
from H.
It is when one makes a
page-by-page comparison
between H and S
that
significant
differences are detected. Four of the five
passages
listed above as cuts are indeed
missing
from S
(which
retains the
orchestral introduction to the soldiers'
chorus).
But in H
they
were
first
copied
out in the full form seen in the
autograph
and were then
crossed
out,
although
not so
vigorously
as to obscure the
text;
in the
overture alone the bars were obliterated
by being pasted
over. It
seems clear that the deletions made in H formed the basis of the cuts
to be found in the
Vervielfdltigungen, including
S. Where there are cuts
marked in
H,
the
layout
of
pages
in
S,
which otherwise follows H
faithfully,
is
modified,
the reduced number of bars
being
distributed
over a
slightly
reduced number of
pages.
Thus the
problem
of the cuts can be restated: Who authorized the
deletions that were made in H? One
difficulty
is that
by
no means all
the
markings
in this score date from Mozart's time: as the official
Hoftheater
copy,
it continued to be of service for several decades after
his
death,
reflecting productions
of the
early
nineteenth
century,
in
27 In the
present
writer's
possession
since
1961;
formerly
Hans
Schneider,
Tutzing (Catalogue 72,
No.
1675).
28
The second-volume title
pages
of both H and S read: "La Scuola
degli
Amanti."
And that was the
original wording
of H's first-volume title
page,
"Cosi fan tutte
/
osia" and "Dramma
giocoso
/ in due Atti
...," etc.,
being
added a little later.
29
The
word,
used in annotations in
H,
seems to
imply
a
gathering
made
up
of the
bifolia from three sheets
(i.e.,
twelve
leaves,
the
average
size of the
gatherings
within
H and
S).
which arias were often
cut,
transferred to different
positions,
or even
assigned
to other characters.30
Moreover,
the score is
incomplete:
although
Kochel6
says
that H contains "numbers
1-3
,"
ternion
21
from Act I
(Ferrando's
aria No.
I7
and the recitative that follows
it)
and ternions Io and ii from Act
II
(Guilelmo's
aria No. 26 and the
preceding
recitative)
are
missing.
But since the cuts that concern us here were made
very early,
we
cannot
escape
the
question:
Did Mozart at one time hold H in his
hands and
give
instructions as to where he was
prepared
for cuts to be
made? I think that on the basis of the
following
evidence our answer
must be
yes.
I.
The
passage
of thirteen bars
replacing
the canon
quartet
is also
found in
H,
where it is in a
copyist's
hand. It is
placed
in the score
just
before the canon
quartet
(which
is also written out in
full).
At one
time,
as one can
see,
the
pages containing
the canon were stitched
together,
so that
they
would be
omitted;
and
bars
206-207,
which
could not be concealed in this
way
because of the bars on the same
page following
them that needed to be
seen,
were eliminated
by being
pasted
over: see
Figure io.
Scrutiny
reveals, however,
that the leaves with the
replacement
for the canon are not
contemporary
with the rest of
H,
but are a later
insertion,
probably
from
ca.
I804-1805
(to
judge by
the
watermark).
Why
were
they
inserted in H at that time? Treitschke's handwritten
note of
1804,
cited in footnote
26,
springs
to mind. It looks as
though
the two
autograph
leaves with the thirteen bars were
originally placed
in H
by
Mozart himself and remained there until Treitschke discov-
ered them in
1804,
at which time
they
were removed and
replaced by
the two leaves in a
copyist's
hand
(with
the same
music)
that now
stand there. In that case the "-de" at bar 208 in H would have matched
the "Vi-" at the end of the
autograph
of the thirteen bars
(compare
Figures
Io
and
9).
Moreover,
the
tempo marking
"All
o"
at bar 208 in
H is
surely
in Mozart's hand.
2. More of Mozart's
handwriting
is found in H in connection with
a cut of fourteen bars toward the end of the second finale. The cut
starts with bar
545
and extends to bar
558;
but some
changes
in the
30
Two numbers bear the names of "Neumann" and "Mad.
Fodor";
these were
probably
Friedrich
Neumann,
who
appears
to have
sung
Ferrando in the
8oos,
and
Mme
Josephine
Mainvielle-Fodor,
who
sang Fiordiligi
in the
I820os
(a
role
that,
for
her,
included Dorabella's aria No.
28).
Several arias have been
given
a German
text;
and
Fiordiligi's
first aria
(No.
14)
carries the cue "e
tradimento,"
which
rightly
belongs
to her second
(No.
25).
;,4'4
~pl~r?L~t~LaILL 1-1I
,
"
. ..
.
.,.
,
.-
- 0
m=
, I!
boa
? ,
"
.
?I . ? -.
C I'
i-
,
-,-
.
/ -\,
." ," .
. ;
"o
," ,
?" "
.
,"'
,,
,
'
.
-
"
. .
:ii ii,
2'
;!
?~
,, ,:?. .,,;,,
.,
., ,.
. -
,,,. -. .
.
.
,
s,,
: .,
. .
;
.
..
. . ., .,
.
.
,.
Figure
io.
Act
II,
No.
3 1, mm.
208
ff.,
in the Hoftheater
Direktionsexemplar,
Abschrift
H
(Vienna,
Osterreichische
Nationalbibliothek,
O.A.
146)
%AJ
00
00
z
t"I
C3
z
%-0
0
ci
0
Cr3
c)
0
Z
r") 0
389
words and the deletion of a few notes in bars
559, 560,
and
561
were
also called
for,
in order to
patch up
broken
phrases:
see
Figure
ii.
Mozart himself entered these
changes directly
into
H;31 yet
the cut
and the alterations are not included in the
Vervielfiltigungen.
The
reason cannot be that those
copies
were all made
before
Mozart altered
H,
for in bar
561
of S the
copyist
first wrote the three notes for the
new word
bella
before
erasing
them and
writing
a
single quarter
note
for the
original
word
vo.
Thus when S was
copied
from
H,
the
changes
at this
place
in H had
already
been
made,
but the
copyist
of S
decided
(or
was
instructed)
to
ignore
them.
3.
It is
likely (although probably impossible
to
prove)
that Mozart's
handwriting appears
at two other
places
in
H,
again
in connection
with cuts. The more
interesting
of these cuts is the deletion of fifteen
bars from Act
I,
No. 18
(the
first
finale),
listed above as
(d),
the
only
one for which there are
any corresponding markings
in the
autograph.
But the
markings
in the
autograph
here,
probably
not
by
Mozart,
are
very
discreet-a
couple
of circled crosses made in
R6tel
above the score
at the
beginnings
of bars
461
and
476
(and
"NB" before the
former).
No notes and no words within the score have been
altered,
leaving
it
unclear
precisely
how the new
join
is to be effected.
As with the cut in the second finale
just
discussed,
the
problem
here is that the removal of bars
461-75
leaves lacunae in the
text,
for at
the
beginning
of bar
461 Despina
and Don Alfonso lose two
eighth
notes with the
necessary
word tosco
(the
faulty
form in which the word
appears
in this
passage
in the
autograph),
and at the
beginning
of bar
476
Fiordiligi
and Dorabella would
appear
to enter with a
meaningless
io. The
necessary changes
were made in H: the sisters'
superfluous
io
was
replaced by
a
rest;
and
tosco,
with its two
eighth
notes,
was
I'
Figure
I I
shows,
at the
top
and the bottom of the score in bar
558
of
H,
a
pair
of
Mozart's characteristic
signs,
used
by
him to show the
place
where a new
passage
or a
correction should be
inserted,
or where the music should resume after an
interrup-
tion.
(Both
signs
here have been
cropped by
the
binder.)
Other
examples
of these
Mozartian
signs-stylized
forms of NB?-can be found:
(I)
before bar
545
in
H,
to
mark the
beginning
of the
cut; (2)
on folios
154v
and
155r
of the Act I
autograph
of Cosi
fan
tutte,
to show where six bars with a
repetition
of the
"magnet"
music
(bars
385-
90),
a last-minute addition to the score-it was not
yet
in the
autograph
when H was
first
copied-should
be
inserted; (3)
on
folios
201v and
202V
of the
autograph
of Don
Giovanni,
in the recitativo
accompagnato preceding
Donna Elvira's "Mi
tradi" (written
for the
1788
Vienna
revival),
to
indicate where an alternative
passage,
devised to lead
to the aria
transposed
down a
semitone,
could be
accommodated; (4)
on folio
4'
of the
autograph
of
the
string quartet
K.
575,
at bar
190
of the first movement
(four
bars
from
the
end),
to show where a corrected version of the second violin
part
should be
inserted;
and
(5)
on
folio
3v
of the
autograph
of the
piano
concerto
K.
595:
see the
illustration in
NMA,
V/15/8
(Kassel,
1960),
xxxiv.
Eli
dmk-
101V
rixr
Cal MOTT5 ~ tb-
00% ^~
t~c
og=:k
-Ile J a000S
'JIMi
i nar
ow-
.
-1
drop
Ali
lp
lor
Figure
i i. Act
II,
No.
3
I1,
mm.
556-61
in H: end of a
cut,
with Mozart's alterations
o
O
z
C t"
-]
C-)
HC
39
I
restored to
Despina
and Don Alfonso at the
beginning
of this same
bar
(Fig. 12).
A little
later, however,
someone-was this Mozart?-seems
to have realized that the word for
poison
was
tossico,
the
three-syllable
form found in the libretto and used
by
Mozart elsewhere in the
autograph.
So in bar
476
tosco was
changed
to tosico
(the
right
number
of
syllables
even if not
yet
the correct
spelling),
and the first
eighth
note was
changed
to a dotted sixteenth followed
by
a
thirty-second
note.
The other
place
where Mozart's hand
perhaps
makes a brief
appearance
is in connection with the cut listed above as
(e),
the
deletion of bars
57-91
in Ferrando's aria in Act
II,
No.
24.
This cut
deprived
the word
pietd
of its final
syllable
in bar
57,
so
that
"-ta"
has
been
added,
perhaps by
Mozart,
at the
beginning
of bar
92.
By
now there can be little doubt that Mozart himself collaborated
in
cutting
certain
passages
in the
opera
and
helped
to
repair
some
of
the
jagged edges.32
But the reasons that led to the
cuts,
and the frame
of mind in which he made
them,
must remain matters for
speculation.
After this
lengthy
review of the cuts in the
opera,
it is
pleasant
to
be able to add a few bars to
Cosifan
tutte.
Julius
Rietz,
the editor of the
opera
for the
Gesamtausgabe, wisely
chose to
disregard
the cuts
preserved
in the full score of
ca.
I809/io
and to
print
the full text of
the work
according
to the
autograph. Only
in the case of those few
numbers
missing
from the
autograph-the
duetto con coro No.
21,
Fiordiligi's
recitativo
accompagnato
before No.
25,
and the short
No.
30
just
before the second
finale--was
it
necessary
to
supplement
it
by
turning
to
secondary
sources.
(He
used an
Abschrift
from the Dresden
Hoftheater.)
The texts of the recitativo
accompagnato
before No.
25
and of No.
30
are more or less identical in H and S
(not
unexpectedly,
if S was
copied
from
H).
But a
surprise
awaits one when
comparing
No. 2 in
the two scores. For S has the
seventy-one
bars of this number that are
found not
only
in the
Gesamtausgabe
and in all modern
scores,
but in all
the
early
scores as well. But in
H,
No. 21
originally
consisted of
eighty-four
measures;
after bar
24,
but before the voices
enter,
there
are thirteen extra bars for winds alone: see
Figures 13-15.
These bars
are, however,
crossed out
(and
the measure count at the end of the
32
From
this
point
of view it is
regrettable
that ternion 21 from Act
I,
which
included Ferrando's aria No.
17, is
missing
from
H;
for the
"tailoring"
of the two cuts
found in S and the other
Vervielfiltigungen may possibly
have included
interesting
entries in Mozart's hand.
"
:.; ..
....
,~ ,
." -
'
-
?' -"r"
Ilk
c ?c
?
; o
.
"
SIR-
I
IF'
;i?
....

....
4j
1XIM IrI
tic,
UF ff
X
.?"Mir
Ar -AW
i rt~a~
1
:1 i;
I AV Ar R
ifK- "0
F6r
Figure
12. Act
I,
No.
I8, mm.
473-76
in H: end of a cut
0
z
z
0
0-
0
\-
rTI
H
?
Cj
100
I'm
lo,
101.
.-AV
-
I
,A
lw w-b f I r -
i
,'5
I o
F ft I ac Ar
1f~
%jr - 1 .0
.... . .~
."
i
.
I - Ar I ?

AV AW
_
ff -.
,
PtIL
le
Figure 13.
Act
II,
No.
21, mm.
23-24
in
H,
and the first three of the thirteen deleted bars
0
N
CA
NO
:-o
C?
I qk
I1
1% VV
I I "
IFI
. ,.
'3b
M."
i
4i
i
!
?
?,
.
:
,)
i
I-..
Figure 14.
Measures
4-8
of
the thirteen deleted measures in
H,
Act
II,
No. 21
V
t-
O
0
H
crj
z
t"
t"
0
H
na
?
is?
I
r'
I
L?
- -r- --
-,..
I,
M-L
-A
r-
?
-~
t
.
-"
_1
..
.
I
Am 1 9
Figure
15.
Measures
9-13
of the thirteen deleted measures in
H,
Act
II,
No. 21
(m. 25
of No.
21 follows)
0
N
Cj
0
VO
396
JOURNAL
number reads
"71,,"
not
"84"),
so that
they
were not
copied by
S and
are not to be found in the
Vervielfdltigungen-or
for that matter in
any
printed
score,
old or new.
(They
are
reproduced
here for the first
time.)
Yet
they
were
surely
not invented
by
the
copyists
of
H,
who
elsewhere
carefully
followed the
autograph,
even
though
some of the
measures within the
opera
that
they copied
were later
dropped
from
performance
and so were struck out in the
Abschrift.
Rather it seems
clear that the thirteen bars must have been in the
long-lost autograph
score of No. 2 . And since all the other
passages
crossed out in H and
omitted from the scores
subsequently
made from it were
ultimately
restored in the
Gesamtausgabe,
it would seem
logical
to restore these
thirteen bars as well.33 From a
practical point
of view
they present
no
problem; they
are the same as bars
59-71,
but without the two flutes
(and
without the
chorus).
Example I
Mozart,
Cost
fan
tutte,
Act
I,
No.
14,
bars
76-77
(a)
autograph
(b) Abscbrift
H, Vienna, Osterreichische, Nationalbibliothek, O.A.
146
(a)
(Wb)
Vln. 1
crese
cres
Vln.
2=1'
Cmas
33
Curiously enough,
one or two of the
autograph's readings, preserved by
H and
S and
by
the first
published
full
score,
were overlooked or falsified in the
Gesamtausgabe.
The start of No.
18,
the Act I
finale,
for
instance,
was marked "con
sordini"
by Mozart;
and at the
beginning
of No. 16 Ferrando and Guilelmo
laugh
"smoderatamente,"
immoderately,
not
"moderamente"
("mit unterdriicktem
La-
chen"),
moderately.
At bar
76
of No.
14,
"Come
scoglio,"
H
originally
had the
autograph's
version of the first and second violin
parts.
But these were then
changed
in an unknown
hand,
as shown in
Example
I;
the new version is found
throughout
the
Vervielfdltigungen, indicating
that the
change
was made at a
very early
date. The same
is true of
changes
made in H to the first bassoon
part
of the same
number,
in bars
I6,
18, 67, 69,
and
71.
At first there were
only quarter
notes in these
bars,
as in the
autograph;
but the
part
was altered at a
very early
date-1790?-in
order to double
the
trumpets.
Could these
changes
have been authorized
by
Mozart,
perhaps
at a
rehearsal? For even the entries made in H
long
after Mozart's
death,
referred to on
pp.
386-87 above,
do not
appear
to have resulted in
any
deliberate alteration of the notes
that Mozart had written.
It seems
quite
clear that these measures should be included in
all
modern
performances
that
aspire
to be
complete.
The
only way
to
guarantee
that is to have them
printed
in modern editions of the
opera,
as the other excised material has been for more than a
century. Any
bars of Mozart must
surely
be worth
rescuing,
even if in at least some
of these cases one
may
be
rescuing
them from Mozart himself.
All Souls
College,
Oxford
TABLE I
Cosi
fan
tutte
Sequence, numbering,
and
keys
Overture
C
Act I
No.
I
Terzetto: "La mia Dorabella"
(Ferr., Guil.,
Don
Alf.)
G
No. 2 Terzetto: "E la fede delle
femine" (Don Alf., Ferr., Guil.) E
No.
3
Terzetto: "Una bella serenata"
(Ferr., Guil.,
Don
Alf.)
C
No. 4
Duetto:
"Ah,
guarda,
sorella"
(Fior., Dor.)
A
No.
5
Aria: "Vorrei
dir,
e cor non ho"
(Don Alf.)
F minor
No. 6
Quintetto:
"Sento oddio"
(all
except
Desp.)
Eb
No.
7
Duettino: "Al fato dan
legge"
(Ferr., Guil.)
Bb
No. 8 Coro: "Bella vita militar! D
(-)
Quintetto:
"Di scrivermi"
(all
except Desp.)
F
No.
9
=
Da
capo
of No. 8 D
No.
Io
Terzettino: "Soave sia il vento"
(Fior., Dor.,
Don
Alf.) E
No.
Ii
Aria: "Smanie
implacabili"
(Dor.) Eb
No. 12 Aria: "In
uomini,
in soldati"
(Desp.)
F
No.
I3
Sestetto: "Alla bella
Despinetta" (all)
C
No.
I4
Aria: "Come
scoglio" (Fior.) B6
No.
I5a
Aria:
"Rivolgete
a lui lo
sguardo"
(Guil.) (cut)
D
No.
I5b
Aria: "Non siate ritrosi"
(uil.) (its
replacement)
G
No. 16 Terzetto: "E voi ridete?"
(Don Alf., Ferr., Guil.)
G
No.
17
Aria: "Un' aura amorosa"
(Ferr.)
A
No.
I8
First
finale:
"Ah che tutta in un momento"
(all)
D
Act II
No.
19
Aria: "Una donna a
quindici
anni"
(Desp.)
G
No. 20 Duetto: "Prender6
quel
brunettino"
(Dor., Fior.) Bb
No.
21
Duetto con coro: "Secondate
aurette
amiche"
(Ferr., Guil.)
Eb
No. 22
Quartetto:
"La mano a me date"
(Don Alf., Ferr., Guil.,
Desp.)
D
No.
23
Duetto:
"I1 core vi dono"
(Guil., Dor.)
F
No.
24
Aria: "Ah!
lo
veggio
quell'
anima bella"
(Ferr.)
Bb
No.
25
Rondb: "Per
pieta'
(Fior.) E
No. 26 Aria: "Donne
mie, la fate a tanti"
(Guil.) G
No.
27
Cavatina: "Tradito,
schernito"
(Ferr.) C minor
No. 28 Aria: "E amore un ladroncello"
(Dor.) Bb
No.
29
Duetto: "Fra
gli amplessi"
(Fior., Ferr.)
A
No.
30
Andante: "Tutti accusan le donne"
(Don Alf., Ferr., Guil.)
C
No. 31
Second
finale:
"Fate
presto
o
cari
amici"
(all) C
Ferr. =
Ferrando;
Guil. =
Guilelmo;
Don
Alf.
=
Don Alfonso
Fior. =
Fiordiligi;
Dor.
= Dorabella;
Desp.
=
Despina
398
JOURNAL
TABLE 2
The structure of Mozart's
autograph
for
Cosifan
tutte,
Act I
Watermark
Mozart's
Present "bifolia-
foliation
type quadrant
tion"
Overture
I
II
3b
I
2 2b
3 4b2
4 Ib
5
2b
3
6
3b
7
Ib
4
8
4b
[9
2a
5
0o
3a
[i'
ia 6
12
4a 12'
blank
No.
i,
Terzetto: "La mia
r3
4b
I
Dorabella"
(= 14
Ib
scene
I) 15 3b
2
16 2b
Recit.
(18r-v):
"Fuor la
17 4b 3
spada" 18
ib
No.
2,
Terzetto: "E la fede
19
I ia
4
delle femine" 20
4a
Recit.
(bottom of 2"1';
2 2b
5
22r-v):
"Scioccherie
[22 3b
di
poeti!"
No.
3,
Terzetto: "Una bella
23
I
ia
6
serenata"
[24
4a
[265
2b
7
263b
-27 4a 27v
blank 8
(5?)
No. 4,
Duetto:
"Ah,
28 I
3a
8
guarda,
sorella"
(= 29
2
scene
2)
[30
4a 9
L3'
ia
32 4b
ao
[33
ib
r34 3b
II
Recit.
(35V, 36r):
"Mi
par
35
2b
che stammatina'
-36
ia
36'
blank
12
(scene
3
= bottom
of
35")
No.
5,
Aria: "Vorrei
dir,
e
-37
II
4a
cor non ho"
Recit.: "Stelle!
per
car-
-38
I
2a
38"
blank
13
ita"
No.
6, Quintetto:
"Sento
39
I
4b 14
oddio"
(=
scene
4)
40
ib
[41
3b
I5
42
2b
TABLE 2
autograph
for
Cosifan
tutte,
Act I
Watermark Mozart's
Present "bifolia-
foliation
type quadrant
tion"
[43
3a
16
44
2a
r45 4a
17
Recit. (46'): "Non
146
ia
pianger,
idol mio"
No.
7,
Duettino: "Al fato
47
I
za
18
dan
legge"
[48 I
3a
Recit.
(49):
"La comedia
-49
3I
a
49V
blank
19
e
graziosa"
No.
8,
Coro: "Bella vita
50
II
2a
I
militar!"
(=
scene
51
3a
2
5)
[52 Ia
3
53 4a 53r-v
blank
4
Recit.: "Non
v'e
piu 54
I
Ib
20
tempo";
then
Quin- 55
I
4b
tetto
(54'):
"Di scri-
-56
II
I
2
vermi
ogni giorno"
(No.
9
=
repetition
of
"Bella vita militar!"
not
scored)
Recit.: "Dove son?"
(= -57
3II
a
57V
blank 22
scene
6)
No.
1o,
Terzettino: "Soave
58
I
i
23
sia il vento"
L59 4
Recit.
(6o'):
"Non son 6o 2
24
cattivo comico"
(= [61
3 61'
blank
scene
7)
Recit.: "Che vita male- 62 II
4a 25
detta"
(=
scene 8
[63
I
ia
--
scene
9)
--
re-
cit.
accomp.
No. i
,
Aria: "Smanie im-
r64
I 2 1
placabili" [65 3
66 2 2
[67 3
168
I
3
[69 4
Recit.:
"Signora
Dora-
7
II
3b
26
bella"
71
2b
No.
12,
Aria: "In
uomini,
r72
3a (Rotel)
2
in soldati"
(7
Ir,
be-
7 3
2a
low end of the re-
[74
3a
(Rotel)
3
cit.)
[75
2a
[76
3a 76
,
(Rote)
4
77
2a
77rv
blank
400
JOURNAL
TABLE 2
autograph
for
Cosifan
tutte,
Act I
Watermark
Mozart's
Present "bifolia-
foliation
type quadrant
tion"
Recit.: "Che
silenzio!"
78
II
4 27
(=
scene
io) 79
I I
79V
blank
No.
I3,
Sestetto: "Alla bella
80
I 28
Despinetta" (=
[81
4
scene
ii)
82
2
29
[83 3
84 3 30
[85
2
86
4 31
[87
I
88
III
3a 32
[89
III 2a
90
I
33
91 1
2
Recit.: "Che susurro!"
r92 I 3 34
--
recit.
accomp. [93
2
[94
1
35
95 4 95V
blank
No.
I4,
Aria: "Come
scog- r96 II 3b
lio" 97
2b
[98
ib 2
00o Ib 3
IoI
4b
102
2b 4
10o 3 3b o3
blank
Recit.:
"Ah,
non
par-
-1o4
II 2
Io4'
blank
36
tite!"
No.
I5a,
Aria di
Guilelmo,
r
105
I
3a
"Rivolgete
a lui lo
1io6
2a
sguardo"
(=
K.
107 4a
2
584,
December
[i8
ia
1789)
lo9
2b
3
11o
3b
[III
Ib 4
112
4b
[II3 Ia
5
I14
4a
I15
2a 6
116
3a
No.
15b,
Aria: "Non siate
I i7
II
3
(Rotel)
ritrosi"
[
I
18
2
i119I
(Rotel)
2
1 20
4 120V
blank
No.
16,
Terzetto: "E voi ri- 21 I 2
37
dete?"
(=
scene
12)
122
3
Recit.
(Iz2):
"Si
pu
sa-
[I2
384
pere
MOZART'S
COSI FAN TUTTE
40 I
TABLE 2
autograph
for
Cosifan
tutte,
Act I
Watermark Mozart's
Present "bifolia-
foliation
type quadrant
tion"
No.
17,
Aria: "Un' aura
125
I 2b
amorosa" I26 I 3b
127 II
Ibb2
128
4b
(bound in
wrong way) -1 29 4a 129'
blank
Recit.:
"Oh,
la saria da
130
II
4 39
ridere!"
(=
scene
131
I
i 131'
blank
13)
No.
I8,
Finale I(=
scene
rI32
1
3 40
14)
[133
2
[34
4 4'
[135
I
Scene
15:
"Si mora si, si
136
3 42
mora" [137
2
[I38
4 43
139
I
[140
I
ib}
44
141
4bJ
[42
II
4 45
143
I
[144
3 46
1'45
2
[46
3 47
1[472
[48
4 48
149
I
Scene 16:
"Eccovi il medi-
[150
4 49
COe "
I5I I
[152
2
50
153 3
154I 5'
155 (copyist)
155v
blank
-
156 4
[157
3 52
158
2
[159
3 53
16
1
54
[Ii6I
I
54
162
4
[163
2
55
164 3
[165
2
56
166
3
[167
I
57
168
4
[I69
4 58
170
1
[17I
3 59
172
2
[173
2 60
174 3
End of Act I

Alan Tyson, Note Sul "Così Fan Tutte"

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American Musicological Society

Notes on the Composition of Mozart's "Cos fan tutte"

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