Discovery gives Denmark pride in Mozart link

Press, 6 March 1985, Page 24

Discovery gives Denmark pride in Mozart link

NZPA-Reuter Copenhagen

Thanks to the discovery of a long-lost symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and new research into his short life, Denmark is basking in its connection with the eighteenth centur.v Austrian composer. The Danes have good reason to share in an upsurge in interest about Mozart in the West, a wave due in part to the film “Amadeus.” by a Czechoslovak director, Milos Forman, which is bringing the composer’s life to cinemas in western Europe. Denmark is not usually associated with Mozart, but a previously unknown early symphony, lost for almost 200 years, has been unearthed in the Danish provincial city of Odense, and was played there for the first time last month. In addition, a book by a Danish historian has cast light on a forgotten postscript to Mozart’s life: the second marriage of his widow, Constanze, to a Danish diplomat. Mozart’s lost symphony in A-minor, number 16A in the Koechel register of the composer’s complete works, received its world premiere in December, played by the Odense Symphony Orchestra and conducted by the Hungarian maestro, Tamas Veto.

Local and international musical experts are divided over the authenticity. Their research supports a theory that it is an original, if youthful. Mozart composition but there is no conclusive proof. The manuscript, which dates from about 1768, is marked as being by Mozart, and could have been written by the composer in Vienna when he was 12 years old. He was born in 1756 and died a pauper's death at the age of 35 in 1791. In 1793, the Odense Musical Society acquired the score, but lost it in its archives until 1982 when Gunnar Thygesen, the archivist of the Odense Symphony Orchestra, discovered it bj’ accident. The symphony lasts 15 minutes and is written for an orchestra of only 25 musicians. It is in three movements, a triple motif allegro moderato, followed by a serene andantino and a sprightly rondo. Mozart's other littleknown connection with Denmark was highlighted by a Danish historian, Viggo Sjoeqvist, when he researched the life of Constanze. An opera singer of some distinction, she was only 29 when Mozart died of kidney disease. During her nineyear marriage to him she

had six children, but onlytwo reached adulthood. Constanze met a Danish diplomat, Georg Nikolaus Nissen, charge de’affaires at Denmark’s legation in Vienna, in 1797. The couple married 11 years later at Bratislava Cathedral in Czechoslovakia, and Nissen was to devote much of his life to bringing Mozart's work to public attention. He was instrumental in getting the first major edition of Mozart’s works published, and the revenue from sales helped Constanze survive. Nissen was eventuallycalled home to Copenhagen after an illness and the couple lived there from 1812 to 1820. They spent their last years in Salzburg. Austria, where Nissen wrote a twovolume biography of Mozart, a pioneer research work. He died in 1826. aged 65. Constanze lived until 1842. She was buried beside her second husband in the churchyard of Saint Sebastian’s in Salzburg. In 1819. Mozart’s youngest son, Frans Xaver, a pianist and music teacher living in Lvov, Poland, visited Copenhagen and gave a concert at the Danish Royal Theatre, playing his own and his father’s works on the piano.