Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus.

comprising the first forty-five bars of Haydn's movement, scored for 2 oboes, 2 horns and strings, notated with an unusually fine and delicate nib in brown ink on one seven-stave system per page, with autograph movement designation ("Fugato:"), 3 pages, oblong 4to (21.2 x 28.4cm), 10-stave paper (Tyson Watermark 68), authentication by Georg Nikolaus von Nissen at the upper right-hand corner of fol. 1r ("Von Mozart und seiner Handschrift"), authentication by Aloys Fuchs, dated Vienna, 25 November 1845, and annotation by John Ella, on fol. 2v, some non-autograph pencil markings, no place or date [Steyr/Linz, November 1783?],  mounted at hinge on card, trimmed (probably for John Ella), slightly affecting Mozart's brace at the beginning of fol. 1v and Nissen's authentication on fol. 1r, paper excision, restored, affecting the first two, presumably blank, staves of fol. 2 and a small part of the inner margin of fol. 1, dust-staining, some light spotting, vertical and horizontal creases; together with original half roan gilt folder, with autograph label by Ella ("58 bars. Autograph - Fugue. unpublished...purchased at Vienna 1846 by J: Ella.") and original loose inner paper wrappers inscribed by Ella 

Otto Jahn, Life of Mozart...Translated from the German by Pauline D. Townsend, i (London, 1882), pp.236-238; The Symphony 1720-1840, Series B, vol. viii (New York and London, 1982), pp.288-306; NMA X/33/Abteilung 2 (Wasserzeichen-Katalog), pp.34 and xxiv (commentary).

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing where appropriate.
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From the collection of John Ella, and not offered for sale since 1846.

A manuscript of extraordinary resonance, one which points to many aspects of Mozart's creative life and his biography: namely the composer's relationship with counterpoint (Haydn's movement is a direct precursor of the finale of the "Jupiter" Symphony), with his great Viennese patron Baron Gottfried van Swieten, with Salzburg and the music of his contemporaries, to list only a few of these.

Written in 1783, the year of the C-minor mass, K.427, and the 'Linz' Symphony, K.425, it dates from the great period of Mozart's Viennese maturity. 

Of incalculable importance to Mozart and the development of his musical style were the Sunday musical gatherings in Vienna organised by van Swieten in his rooms at the Imperial Library, first referred to by the composer in a letter to his sister of 20 April 1782, and at which he became seriously acquainted with the music of Handel and Bach. It was possibly with a view to performance at these gatherings that Mozart began to copy out the contrapuntal finale of Haydn's D major Symphony MH 287 sometime, to judge from the paper, during the course of his return journey to Vienna after his final visit to Salzburg in the summer and autumn of 1783. Other works rich in counterpoint by Joseph Haydn's younger brother Michael (1737-1806), who had been appointed Konzertmeister in Salzburg in 1763 and who had succeeded Mozart as cathedral organist there in 1781, had been performed earlier in 1783 at van Swieten's with great success: for instance his fugue 'In te Domine speravi' and the 'Tenebrae' for four voices and organ. Two fugal 'Pignus futurae gloriae' movements from litanies by Haydn were probably copied out by Mozart around the time of the symphony transcription (see K.⁶ Anh. A 11 and 12). That Mozart held the older composer in some esteem is further borne out by his wonderful violin and viola duets K.423 and 424, supposedly composed to supplement a set of six Haydn had been unable to complete, and by his providing another symphony of Haydn's with a slow introduction of his own (K.444).

Haydn's exuberant finale - 310 bars in length and scored for strings, oboes, bassoons and horns - forms the crowning movement of a symphony which is reckoned to have been composed in Salzburg around 1780. The movement is remarkable not only for its 'learned' main theme comprising a five-note fugal motive in long notes, plus 'walking' bass (a similarly archaic thematic typus also forms, as it happens, the basis of a fugal trio movement by Mozart, K. 443, dating from his early Vienna years), but also for its fusion of contrapuntal, galant and sonata-form elements to create a movement of irresistible rhythmic, textural and melodic verve. Thus Haydn's movement contains not only a climactic stretto maestrale, a presentation of the fugal theme in four entries in the strings (bb.241ff.), but also a (truly Mozartian) pianissimo harmonised statement of the theme before the final forte tonic chords (bb.299ff.). Such a movement recalls at once the fugal finale of Mozart's great G-major string quartet, K.387, of 1782, but most particularly the ne plus ultra in Mozart's oeuvre of this kind of movement, the finale of the 1788 'Jupiter' Symphony, K.551. This latter movement, of course, contains divine fire, but it is surely no exaggeration to say that this was kindled by the example of Haydn's symphony movement and others like it.

Although we have not traced the actual source of Mozart's copy, it may be noted that the latter presents a very similar text to that of a copy of Haydn's finale in Lambach, dated 1781, differing only in a few minor details: it lacks, for example, Haydn's tempo marking 'Presto ma non troppo' and alters the rhythmic notation in bb.9-10 and 11-12, for example. In addition, Mozart's copy contains no music for the oboes and horns, which in Haydn's score enter for the first time in b. 27 (had the transcription of the movement's string parts been brought to close, these would no doubt have been added subsequently). The autograph diverges in a number of important points from the edition of the score in the old nineteenth-century collected edition, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Werke. Kritisch durchgesehene Gesamtausgabe, xxiv (Leipzig, 1886), p. 106: the latter includes no dynamic markings and omits the title. Mozart's copy remains unpublished in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. A completion of Haydn's movement, arranged for piano four hands and prefaced by an introduction, was made by Simon Sechter and published by Haslinger in 1835 (see K.⁶ Anh. C 24.02).