Classical Music Discoveries

Cataloging the Mozart Symphonies and determining the difference between a symphony by Amadeus and his father Leopold can lead to some unusual investigations by modern musicologists.

Here we offer our listeners a case worthy of the best detectives found in any mystery novel. So, put on you sleuthing hat and let’s see what thoughts you may have on this specific case, which we will call “The Lambach Mystery.”

The date is January 1769 and the Mozart family began their journey between Salzburg and Vienna. As was customary, they stopped at the Lambach Abbey in Upper Austria for room and meals. Monasteries, at this time, offered rooms and meals for travelers and maintained a chapel for the liturgy and entertainment. This stop over is not mentioned in the correspondence of the Mozart family and is only known through two manuscripts left in the monastery as a gift, or as payment, for room and board for the night.

These two manuscripts were found at the beginning of the 20th century in the archives in the Lambach Abbey.

One manuscript, the Old Lambach Symphony, was shown to be composed by Amadeus.

The other manuscript, the New Lambach Symphony, was shown to be composed by Leopold.

For many years, this was naturally assumed to be correct and was entered into the Mozart catalog as such.

However, in 1964 Anna Abert published a new hypothesis that the title pages of the two Lambach Symphonies were either accidentally or purposefully reversed.

She noted that the “New Lambach Symhony” was rather archaic in style and thus “less good” than the “Old Lambach Symphony” which was full of multiple themes and youthful inventiveness.

So, dear listener, we put it to you. Do you think Leopold may have switched the title pages in order to take claim for a much better symphony? Perhaps while at the monastery, Leopold did his usual amount of bragging and couldn’t let the monks think that the lesser of the two symphonies was his. Or maybe the title switch was purely accidental during the coming years? Maybe the two manuscripts were dropped and pages became mixed by an unknowing monk only trying to rectify a brief mistake? Or maybe the confusion of trying to save the manuscripts during the Nazi occupation of Austria was to blame?

We will let our listeners decide on which symphony belongs to which composer. Is the “New Lambach Symphony” really Leopold’s or does it belong to Amadeus?

First, we will listen to the “Old Lambach Symphony” which was originally attributed to Amadeus.

Now, we will listen to the “New Lambach Symphony” which is attributed to Leopold Mozart. After you have heard both symphonies, please leave a comment about this broadcast letting us know your thoughts as to who wrote which symphony. We will give the results in a later broadcast.

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