Donaueschingen Harmoniemusik
of The Abduction from the Seraglio K.384

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had lived in Vienna as a free-lance composer for more than a year before he enjoyed his first great triumph, the premiere of his new German opera, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Vienna Court Theatre on 16 July 1782. The presence of Emperor Joseph II at the premiere and the long series of performances contributed to the success of the work. After the second performance of the opera, Mozart proudly wrote to his father and sent him his own (autograph) score. In the letter dated 20 July 1782, we read:

[...] it is no small task that lies aheadof me now, for by Sunday week I must have set my opera for Harmonie - otherwise someone else will beat me to it and collect the profit instead of me. I have also to make a new symphony – how will that be possible!- you cannot believe how difficult it is to set a work like this for Harmonie, so that it will fit the wind instruments and at the same time, not lose the effect. Well, I will have to work all night if I can’t finish it during the day-time - I shall make this sacrifice for you. You will receive something in all the mail deliveries- I shall work as fast as possible- and as much as speed permits – write well […]

What is an opera set for Harmonie? Why would Mozart want to set his opera for harmonie, and why did he think it would be difficult? What did he mean by “fit the wind instruments” and what was the “effect” he was afraid to lose? Which “new” symphony was he referring to?
As there was no trace of an “opera set for Harmonie”, the only question we could answer was the one about the new symphony. Here, we know that Mozart is referring to the Haffner Symphony (D major, K. 385), a commission he received from Salzburg via his father. The last section of the letter in which he refers to his sacrifice of having to work all night, which also contains his comment on the mail deliveries (so the Salzburg copyists could begin with the orchestral parts) and the quality of composing, clearly refers to this symphony. But the “opera set for Harmonie” appeared to have been lost.

A letter from Mozart’s widow to the publisher André in the year 1800 contains references to“things for winds,” that are with [Johann Nepomuk] Went and [Anton] Stadler, but does not mention any Harmoniemusik of The Abduction from the Seraglio specifically.It was therefore assumed that this music was lacking in the musical estate of her late husband. In the 1950s, the theory arose that Mozart had written the passage to give his father the impression that he was both busy and successful in Vienna. This theory implies that Mozart had been economical with the truth and that the work had never been written.

An “opera set for winds” does seem an odd idea, but it was a topical issue in the spring of 1782. Emperor Joseph II had just declared that his table music should be supplied by eight wind players from his Court Theatre Orchestra instead of by the usual military wind sextet. This meant that these performances were given by the k.k. Harmonie, first class vituoso musicians (the predecessors of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra). This gave rise to a practical problem, because although a considerable amount of music had been composed for the traditional combination of six winds, almost nothing existed for eight winds. In answer to the sudden demand for this music, many new works were composed and a large number of arrangements were made of music from operas and ballets. Mozart happily joined in the hype. In 1782 he enlarged his six part Serenade (E-flat, K. 375) into an eight part composition, he wrote his Abduction from the Seraglio Harmoniemusik, adapted an older work the Serenade in E-flat (K. 375) and composed a new work, the Serenade in c minor (K. 388).
Other courts followed the example set by Vienna, and by 1790 almost all had an eight-part Harmonie ensemble. The market for Harmonie music was extensive: adapting operas and ballets to fit these requirements soon became a welcome additional source of income for music arrangers, especially the wind players themselves, many of whom also produced original compositions.
The repertoire of original and arranged works was large. By the 1830s some 10,000 titles had been published. Almost all theatre music was adapted for wind instruments. The arrangements were usually quite literal - an aria for soprano and orchestra was played by an oboe or clarinet accompanied by the other wind instruments. If sections were felt unsuitable for wind instruments, they were drastically cut or left out. The compositions and arrangements for winds served exclusively as background music at banquets, garden fêtes, hunting parties and military occasions.

Interest in the Abduction from the Seraglio Harmoniemusik was first aroused in 1950, when an anonymous arrangement, filed solely under the name “Mozart”, was found in the Schwarzenberg Archives in ?esky Krumlov, Czeck Republic. It was initially assumed that Mozart had arranged the piece. However, the non-Viennese combination of instruments, viz. two English horns instead of two clarinets, some doubtful technical aspects and Mozart’s remark about the “no small task”, could not be explained. A few years later, the identical work for an authentic Viennese combination of instruments was discovered in Florence. Here both the composer and arranger were identified, Mozart and Johann Nepomuk Went respectively. An original bill for the work still existing in the ?esky Krumlov archives proves that Went had indeed had made an arrangement of The Abduction from the Seraglio in the summer of 1782.
Thus, Mozart’s competitor was identified but his own wind version had apparently been lost.

The next stage in this story begins in May 1983, when quite by chance, I visited the Fürstenberg Court Library in Donaueschingen. Here I came across a set of eight parts of an Abduction from the Seraglio Harmoniemusik, that -even after only superficial inspection- was intriguing in many respects. It contained a newly composed concert ending in the Ouverture (in the opera the Ouverture leads into the music of the first scene) and the Martern aria from the second act, originally for soprano, four concertante instruments and full orchestra (a tour-de-force for any arranger), had been completely arranged. In addition to this, a large number of stopped notes in the horn parts indicated a seasoned horn composer, and the extremely virtuoso first horn part suggested that a first class horn player had been available to perform the piece. The title page of all eight parts contained the inscription v: H: Mozart [b(y) M(r.) Mozart]. Did this information indicate the composer, the arranger or both?
Only one Court Inventory dated 1827 attributes the arrangement to a local musician. This information however did not make an impression, as according to the same inventory, two other wind versions of Mozart operas that were known had also been attributed to this person. I had even performed them (from other sources and by others arrangers),
In addition to this, so many other inconsistencies surrounded this local arranger that it was increasingly difficult to believe that he had arranged the Mozart piece. It turned out that nobody had yet studied the manuscript or made a score of the parts. As the work had been attributed to a local arranger, it had probably not been deemed worthy of further study.

It was a great surprise and extremely exciting to make a score out of the eight parts. It turned out that the arranger had handled the musical material of the opera in a sovereign way and had created independent music for wind instruments. New music had been added (which is extremely unusual and hardly exists in arranged Harmoniemusik). Obviously, the arranger knew the dramatic moments in the music, as all theatrical exaggeration had been eliminated.

All the characteristics of Mozart’s wind instrumentation, as known from the Serenades mentioned above and the table music from the second act of Don Giovanni, appeared to be present in this piece too, that consists of the Ouverture and 16 numbers with a total performance time of 62 minutes. The arrangement indeed was no small task and had obviously taken a considerable time to be completed.
Was it the one Mozart was referring to in his letter to his father? However this question could not be answered on the basis of these data alone.
In the absence of other sources, a comprehensive solution could only be reached if all other circumstances would point into the same direction (which initially was not the case).
The manuscript must have arrived in Donaueschingen somewhere between 1792 and 1804. There is no documentation on the acquisition of the manuscript but it was clear that the following had happened.
Three (unknown) copyists from southwest Germany had copied three Harmonie arrangements on local kind of paper, that is unique in the Donaueschingen collection. They had assisted and corrected each other. These three Harmonie arrangements are the Viennese Nozze di Figaro wind version (ca 1786) by Johann Nepomuk Went, Mozart’s competitor of 1782, the Viennese Zauberflöte wind version (1792) by Joseph Heydenreich and the “unknown” (and undated) Abduction from the Seraglio wind version. The arrangers are not mentioned in the three manuscripts and the only further information on this subject is to be found in the Court Inventory of 1827, where all three arrangements were attributed incorrectly to the local musician.

Another remarkable fact was that the dispersion of Harmoniemusik arranged from operas and ballets was always strongly linked to the popularity and topical value of the original music. It is most unusual to find three wind arrangements of music that had been composed over a period of at least ten years, in the same location, far from their place of origin, that have been copied at the same time. Someone must have had them at his or her disposal and probably made them available on payment.
However, the only conclusion that could be drawn from this was that, although it was most plausible that the manuscript of this Abduction from the Seraglio Harmoniemusik travelled to Donaueschingen in the company of the two Viennese arrangements, the direct connection with Mozart and/or Vienna could not be demonstrated fully.

Thus, I subsequently published the thesis only that the manuscript was a copy of the work Mozart had mentioned in his letter to his father.The academic world unanimously agreed that the work was exceptional in terms of quality and shared the views in general. Further discussion in specialist journals did not reveal any new facts or serious contradictory opinions. Also, there was no valid suggestion, who -if not Mozart- could have made this wind version.
So, although there was much in favour of the consideration that the work was by Mozart, on the basis of the combination of instruments (the wind octet existed only from 1782 to ca 1800), the instrumentation style and the fact that all this appeared in a Harmoniemusik of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the (very slight) possibility that the arrangement was by somebody else remained open. Moreover, some details in the manuscript (some dynamics and articulations) are definitely un-Mozartean and in the 1980s there was no explanation for the change of numerous melodical details.
During the 1990s it became clear that the un-Mozartean dynamics and articulations had not been applied in a consistent manner and were even absent in some numbers. They apparently came from annotations in the source and had obtained a quasi original guise during the
copyïng process. The melodical changes still could not be explained.

In 1992 on behalf of the Editorial Board of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe Wolfgang Rehm invited me to edit the Harmoniemusik of The Abduction from the Seraglio in their series.
At that time Rehm informed me, that back in the 1950s an appropriate place for the Harmoniemusik had not been reserved in the systematic Werkgruppen-plan. Not being a work for the stage, a Serenade or Divertimento nor an arrangement of music by somebody else, the work -still according to Rehm- could only be included in the Supplement/Werkgruppe 29 bearing the subtitle “works of doubtful origin.” What is more, the work was not suitable as an Appendix (Nachtrag) that was reserved for other things
I rejected this proposal, because I was not convinced that this “final stigma” was justified, the more so as in the 1980s several infringements (the unauthorized supply of performing material to the Salzburg Festival and two record companies) had been committed under the responsibility of the NMA and the Bärenreiter-Verlag and at those occasions the music had not been presented as “doubtful” or “not genuine” at all.
In 2000 curiously enough, Dietrich Berke announced on behalf of the NMA, that the Editorial Board had abandoned [sic] the idea of including the Donaueschingen Harmoniemusik in their edition. The two new arguments in his statement (that was out of date at the time of its publication anyhow) were remarkable: Mozart must have been too busy to make this work [sic] and the source of the work is anonymous, which is incorrect, as nobody can say, whether the indications v: H: Mozart refer to the composer, to the arranger or both.

Meanwhile in 1999, Cornell University had invited me to lead a symposium on the Donaueschingen Harmoniemusik of The Abduction from the Seraglio, which afforded the opportunity to again reconsider the genesis of this work. Although all the available information was present in my Ph.D.thesis of 1987, nobody including I myself, had thought to combine certain facts in a certain way. They can be resumed as follows.

Let us, for arguments sake, assume that Mozart did not arrange his opera. In that case somebody else must have made the Donaueschingen arrangement. To do so, this person would have needed to have access to a source in the form of a score or (less likely) a piano reduction. This source could have been one of the many copies in circulation at that time. As there was no copyright in those days anyone could copy a new opera and sell it. The musical text of the arrangement should indicate which source was used and especially from which stage in the composition or rehearsal process it was. The history of the genesis of the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio is long. At first Mozart composed enthusiastically. This information is confirmed in his letters (stage I – from autumn 1781). When rehearsals began at the beginning of June 1782, he had already made many cuts and trimmed his original score (stage II). Vienna was then infested by an influenza epidemic and the premiere had to be postponed until July 16. During this period of roughly five weeks, Mozart replaced some music and changed certain details (stage III). These last changes were only made in Vienna and were never published (except in a printed piano reduction of the Ouverture by the composer two years later).
A remarkable fact is that the Donaueschingen Harmonie arrangement contains exclusive musical aspects from all three stages. This means that the arrangement must have been made from three different sources, because no one of the copies of the score contained the music of all three stages after the premiere on 16 July 1782.

It is most unlikely and even inconceivable, that an arranger would or could have compared three sources (at all) and subsequently decided which to use.
As Mozart sent his own score of the opera, the autograph (Stage I) to his father, which means that Stage I was only available in Salzburg, while Stage III had remained in Vienna) nobody in or outside Vienna could have done the job. In other words, Mozart must have made the Donaueschingen Harmoniemusik of The Abduction from the Seraglio himself and his source must have been… his own musical memory!
This also explains the differences in many of the melodical details and the existence of an additional quotation (“a memory lapse”) from the Haffner Symphony in the Martern aria
(No 7). Perhaps, the absence of his own source may have been the reason that Mozart described his work as “difficult.” The music was de facto recomposed.

I published these and more findings in 2003 in: Mozart-Studien Band 12 (Hans Schneider Verlag, Tutzing, 2003;ISBN 3-7952-1125-5). Both the critical edition of the Donaueschingen Harmoniemusik (in: Denkmäler der Musik Baden-Württemberg, Strube Verlag München, Edition 9129, ISBN 3-89912-076-0) and the performing edition (Floricor Editions, The Hague F.E.0303, ISMN M-69400-012-70303) appeared in 2005.

Today, 2005, Mozart himself is widely acknowledged as the maker.

Bastiaan Blomhert

Bastiaan Blomhert (1944) studied musicology with Eduard Reeser at the University of Utrecht and viola and conducting with with Jürgen Kussmaul and Louis Stotijn in the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
He was professor of music history in the Conservatories of Utrecht and Arnhem, where he also coached chamber music and taught instrumentation.
His early activities as conductor include the musical directorship of one of the Leiden University Orchestras. Since the late 1970s, when he founded the Oktopus Wind Ensemble his field became the classical wind band music, both as conductor in the concert hall or the recording studio and as researching musicologist in (mostly central-european) musical archives. Blomhert earned his Ph. D. in 1987 with a dissertation about the Donaueschingen Harmoniemusik of The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart K. 384.

Bastiaan Blomhert has toured all over the world and his guest conducting activities range from leading the Wind Ensemble of the Academy of St. Martin’s in the Fields (with whom he has worked since 2000) to the Chamber Music Hawaï and from the Amadeus Winds (New York) to the Riga Municipal Band.
His editions and arrangements are published by Breitkopf & Härtel, Chester, Doblinger, Molenaar and others and are frequently performed all over the world. In the beginning of the year 2006 a large number of Harmoniemusik scores edited by Bastiaan Blomhert will be published by Floricor Editions in The Hague.

For detailed information:
www.bastiaanblomhert.com.