Wolfgang's playlist

[greenilex]

I have been reading Mozart's letters home - fabulous stuff - and wondered if anyone would like to recommend an annotated edition? The ones I have looked at online don't seem to be what I need.
He mentions lots of contemporary musicians whose keyboard music he enjoys playing (e.g. Vanhall and Becke) and I should like to know more about them.

[french frank]

I have been reading Mozart's letters home - fabulous stuff - and wondered if anyone would like to recommend an annotated edition? The ones I have looked at online don't seem to be what I need.
He mentions lots of contemporary musicians whose keyboard music he enjoys playing (e.g. Vanhall and Becke) and I should like to know more about them.

What do you need?

I have Emily Anderson's edition. Quite old now but very readable. With a certain amount of annotation.

[greenilex]

Just idle curiosity, really. In letter 68, October 23rd 1777, he mentions music by Vanhall - actually a violin concerto in B - and it would be nice to know more about it.

Looking at the Becke reference again, he seems to have been a rival performer, not a composer.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Johann Baptist Vanhal, or Jan Krtitel Wanhal has just featured on Alphabet Associations! Who needs annotations when there's youTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_9C990tVxM

[greenilex]

Gorgeous. Thank you both for your help.

[french frank]

Just idle curiosity, really. In letter 68, October 23rd 1777, he mentions music by Vanhall

It's No. 228b in the Anderson edition! Very amusing where he holds an imaginary argument with his mother over whether he has or hasn't received a copy of some music (she expresses surprise that he hasn't received it, he says he has, she says he is wrong - he hasn't &c. …).

Johann Baptist Becke seems to have been a flautist - loads of references to him in the letters.

[greenilex]

And I see that Becke did compose for the flute.

Maybe look him up tomorrow .. thanks again.

[Beef Oven!]

I have a CD of his music, symphonies, but his name is spelled 'Beck' on the CD.

[Petrushka]

I have a 1938 reprint of the Emily Anderson edition picked up at a London book fair a couple of years ago. Aren't the letters considerably bowdlerised in this edition?

[rauschwerk]

I enthusiastically recommend Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life - selected letters edited and newly translated by Robert Spaethling (Faber, 2000). No bowdlerisation here.

[greenilex]

Sounds perfect. Shall try to find out more about Spaethling as well. Thanks.

[french frank]

I have a 1938 reprint of the Emily Anderson edition picked up at a London book fair a couple of years ago. Aren't the letters considerably bowdlerised in this edition?

I thought they were pretty racy for a pre-war publication.

A Telegraph article reports: "When Emily Anderson published her translation of Mozart's correspondence in 1938 she bravely decided to give the letters in unexpurgated versions …"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I thought they were pretty racy for a pre-war publication.
A Telegraph article reports: "When Emily Anderson published her translation of Mozart's correspondence in 1938 she bravely decided to give the letters in unexpurgated versions …"

Might there be two different publications involved here? The three-volume Letters of Mozart and His Family - chronologically arranged, translated and edited with an introduction, notes and indices by Emily Anderson, with extracts from the letters of Constanze Mozart to Johann Anton André translated and edited by C B Oldman published in 1938 by Macmillan & Co; AND Eric Blom's one-volume selection from Anderson, published by Pelican in 1956?

[gurnemanz]

As a student in about 1970 I picked up a Fischer paperback of a selection of Mozart's letters (180 pages) in a second hand bookshop in Germany, edited by Otto Erich Deutsch. It may not be complete and each letter has only a brief introduction, but it has served me well over the years. I see Deutsch's complete edition is available, but at 7 volumes and 4492 pages it is way beyond my scope.

The letters are published more or less exactly as written down, with original spelling and (lack of) punctuation, and I have found it fascinating by reading the German text to able to get very intimately into the mind of the man.

[aeolium]

I have Eric Blom's one-volume selection from Anderson and also a German selection by Willi Reich in a Manesse pocket-book, small but about 400 pages. I agree that it's helpful to read the German text for its idiosyncratic character. Particularly interesting is the lengthy correspondence with his father about the staging of Idomeneo showing how interested Mozart was in every aspect of the dramatic setting and the way the music was to heighten this. What a pity that there doesn't seem to be - at least in the selections I have - the same kind of discussion about any of the da Ponte operas.