Completions of Mozart Aria Fragments

Abstract

Stanley Sadie. Completions of Mozart Aria Fragments. Edited by Dorothea Link with a Foreword by Julie Anne Sadie. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 88.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2012. [Contents, p. v; foreword, p. vii; acknowledgments, p. viii; introd., p. ix-xiv; texts and trans., p. xv-xix; score, p. 3--190; crit. report, p. 191-96. ISBN 978-0-89579-760-5. $160.] This volume usefully brings together a number of completions by the late Stanley Sadie of arias Mozart left unfinished. As such, it not only allows us to imagine what these works might have been like had Mozart completed them, but also--and perhaps most importantly--the volume represents a fitting tribute to one of the great Mozarteans of recent times. There was never any doubting Sadie's devotion to Mozart. And there was never any doubting his willingness both to share his enthusiasm and knowledge, and to encourage and promote future generations of Mozart scholars. The arias in the volume include Se di lauri il crine adorno; Lungi da te, mio bene; and Nel grave tormento, all originally intended for Mitridate, re di Panto, K. 87; and the arias Der Liebe himmlisches Gefuhl K. 119; In te spero, o sposo amato K. 440; Musst ich durch tausend Drachen K. 435; Ah! spiegarti, oh Dio, vorrei K. 178; Schon lacht der holde Fruhling K. 580; and a rejected from Le nozze di Figaro; Giunse il momenta alfine--Non tardar, amato bene. The completions are, on the whole, both well-informed and attractive. In several instances, Mozart left enough music to provide linking material for missing transitions, ritornellos, or recapitulations, and he occasionally left clues concerning orchestration. In other cases, Sadie relied on his fertile and impressive imagination. The most surprising decision, perhaps, is Sadie's adaptation of the finale of the Piano Quartet in E-Hat Major K. 493 to serve as the otherwise entirely missing fast section of Giunse il momenta alfine. It strikes our ears as curious to hear such a well-known work in such a different context. But Sadie gives a reasonable justification for his decision--the apparent need for a reasonably fast gavotte rhythm in the missing section--and in any case, parallels with either Mozart's direct quotation of vocal music in an instrumental work (such as the finale of K. 551, the Jupiter symphony) or the evocation of vocal music in an instrumental work (as in the finale of the Piano Concerto no. 22 in E-flat Major K. 482) suggest it is not such an outrageous idea. What is more, although the use of the material from K. 493 is more extensive than in any Mozart example, the words fit the melodic material surprisingly well. The volume is edited by Dorothea Link, whose admiration for Sadie is clear in both what she says and how she says it. from the musical texts, she contributes an introduction that includes extensive quotations from Sadie's own writings, notes on the texts, and a critical report. Some additional comments on the introduction are perhaps in order. K. 119, Die Liebe himmlisches Gefuhl, is assumed without question to be by Mozart, yet there is no unequivocal evidence for his authorship: no autograph survives, nor any other authentic source or document; it is known only, as Link acknowledges, as a vocal score published by Breitkopf & Hartel in 1814. Similarly, the date of K. 435, Musst ich auch durch tausend Drachen, is far from certain: the surviving autograph fragment is on a type of paper Mozart used as early as 1781 and as late as 1787. Accordingly, there is no reason to think it must date from 1783. In any case, Link is a bit equivocal: in the introduction she states Aside from the year of its composition, nothing is known about this unfinished aria (p. …