The Transcriptions for Harmonie of Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Abstract

In the year 1954, two great Mozart scholars, Schmid and Giegling, brought to light a transcription for Harmonie of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the archive of Prince Schwarzenberg at Ceský Krumlov in southern Bohemia. Their reports caused no small excitement, even though they merely suggested the possibility that this was the long lost Harmonie transcription of the opera made by Mozart himself. They reported that the manuscript was in the hand of Haydn's copyist, Johann Elssler. It is the only anonymous Harmonie transcription of a Mozart opera in a group of five scored for pairs of oboes, English horns, bassoons and horns; all the others bear the name of Johann Went. Went is known to have made a transcription of Die Entfuhrung for pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns; this was advertised in the Wiener Zeitung in 1784 by Lorenz Lausch, and the Entfuhrung transcription now in Florence probably represents a copy of this version. Schmid and Giegling mentioned obvious similarities between the Florence and Krumlov transcriptions, and noted the possibility that Went had copied Mozart's transcription.