An attractively presented contemporary manuscript copy of the vocal score of Mozart’s Magic Flute
"Die Zauberflöte / Eine Oper / In Musik gesetzt / von W. A. Mozart / den 28 Wonnemonds 1794". Contemporary copyist manuscript: the vocal score of the Overture and Act I of Die Zauberflöte.
Oblong 4to (315 x 228 mm). 109 pp. Scored for voice and keyboard in brown ink by a single copyist on 2- to 5-stave systems. Contemporary pagination, hand-ruled 10-stave Leipzig paper (watermark: shield, above crown, wreath, within crossed swords and palm), title-page and libretto text throughout in German, title-page with watercolour of Papageno carrying his birdcage set within a border featuring flutes and pan-pipes. Marbled paper wrappers, sewn on three bands.
€ 18,500.00
Contemporary copyist manuscript of the vocal score of the Overture and Act I of Die Zauberflöte: an attractively presented contemporary manuscript copy of the vocal score of Mozart’s Magic Flute.
The Magic Flute received its premiere at Vienna on 30 September 1791. The first edition of the vocal score was published by Simrock at Bonn in 1793 and the full score in 1814. The formal layout of the title-page of our manuscript could indicate that it was copied from a printed edition, but no source has been conclusively identified: Papageno appears on the title-page of a number of editions of Die Zauberflöte, including the libretto published by Heinsius at Leipzig in 1794. An early edition of the vocal score was published in two volumes by Breitkopfischen Musikhandlung in the same city in the same year.
1. "Albrecht" (label in a 19th-century hand on upper cover).
2. Bernard Quaritch, acquired February 2011.
3. Schøyen Collection, MS 5481.
A few performance markings annotated in crayon.
Köchel-Verzeichnis 620. For the watermark cf. Piccard 123217; Gravell SLD.284.1.
