Lost Mozart score has been found in Budapest. Balazs Mikusi who is the head of the music collection at the Budapest’s National Szechenyi Library, accidentally stumbled on a long-lost score belonging to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The score of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310/300d had been missing for more than 200 years.
Lost Mozart score found by a man who was hoping to find Joseph Haydn’s manuscripts. In 2009, Balazs Mikusi was hired as the head of the music collection at Budapest’s National Szechenyi Library and his job consisted of searching through hundreds of old folders of miscellaneous manuscripts with no names and no dates.
Mikusi was hoping to land on a manuscript left behind by composer Joseph Haydn, but instead he landed on a lost treasure left behind by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The employee fell on the original score for Mozart’s famous Piano Sonata No. 8. Mikusi did not give the exact date of the discovery, but did say that he found the score in early 2014.
According to Mikusi, he stumbled on yellow pages scribbled by Mozart that were sitting in a dark corner of the library. The lost Mozart score includes three music sheets and few sketches drawn by the master.
The music expert said that he started trembling when he finally understood what he was holding in his hands. He said that he recognized the handwriting right away and was amazed by the amount of description noted on the pages.
Talking about Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310/300d, Mr Mikusi, said, “This is one of the best known Mozart pieces, every child knows it.”
The National Szechenyi Library contacted several experts all over the world who were able to authenticate the lost Mozart score.
Among them was well known Mozart researcher and Cornell University professor Neal Zaslaw who has published several books on the works of Mozart.
Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310/300d, was composed in 1778 and consists of three movements: Allegro maestoso, common time; Andante cantabile con espressione, F major, 3/4; and Presto, 2/4.
The genius wrote the soothing yet chilling piece after the passing of his mother Anna Maria, née Pertl and his father, Leopold Mozart blamed him for the death.
It was always believed that the rest of the manuscript was lost with only one page preserved in Salzburg, where Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born.
No one can explain how the score landed in Budapest because Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart never traveled to Hungary.
Some people believe that Mozart tore off the three pages and gave them to an Aristocrat who visited him in Austria after the death of his mother.
The lost Mozart score, which has been digitized, was presented to the public last Friday, where Hungarian pianist and conductor Zoltan Kocsis played the sonata.
Mikusi explained what the newly discovered score will bring to the music world:
“It won’t change our view on Mozart, and it doesn’t change the character of the music, but we get a lot better sense of what Mozart wanted to achieve.”
The lost Mozart score will be exposed at the National Szechenyi Library, next month.
It will eventually travel the world for Mozart enthusiasts to get a glimpse of the master’s work before being permanently retired at the Salzburg’s Mozarteum Foundation with the missing page.
