The Haydn Hamburger

On 26 November 1760, in the Eligius Chapel of Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral, Joseph Haydn married Maria Anna  Keller, third daughter of the wigmaker Johann Peter Keller.

The entry concerning Joseph Haydn's and Maria Anna Keller's wedding on 26 November 1760 at St. Stephen's Cathedral (A-Wd, Tom. 59, fol. 417v)

As a craftsman Keller was "hofbefreit", which means he had the permission to receive commissions as a master wigmaker directly from the Imperial Court. This special status lead to Keller's relative wealth which enabled him to purchase a house in the Viennese suburb Landstraße. As I already pointed out two years ago in my short essay "Einige Korrekturen und Ergänzungen zu Klaus Martin Kopitz' Aufsatz 'Anmerkungen und Korrekturen zu Haydns Wiener Wohnungen'", the Haydn literature is wrong as to where Johann Peter Keller's house was located, an error that was created by Albert Christoph Dies and Carl Ferdinand Pohl. This building, Landstraße No. 51 ("one half an acre of vinyard in front of the Stubentor on the Joÿsen", as it is described in the Domkapitel land register), was not located in the Ungargasse, as stated by Pohl, but in the Raaben Gasse (today Beatrixgasse 21). Keller and his wife owned this house from 10 September 1734 until 1766. It can be seen on the following clip from Joseph Daniel von Huber's 1778 map of Vienna.

Johann Peter Keller's house Landstraße No. 51 in the Raaben Gasse on Huber's map

Keller's house also appears on Joseph Anton Nagel's 1773 map of Vienna.

The house Landstraße 51, circled in red, on Joseph Anton Nagel's map of Vienna. The street at the bottom is the Landstraße, the diagonal street leading to the upper left is the Ungargasse. On the right is the glacis towards the Inner City (A-Wn, Kartensammlung, K I 111937)

The first two pages of the entry in a Domkapitel land register concerning the purchase of the house Landstraße 51 on 10 September 1734 by Johann Peter Keller and his wife Maria Elisabeth (A-Wsa, Patrimonialherrschaften B2/9, fol. 222v and 223r).

The above entry concerning the purchase of Keller's house in 1734 reads as follows: 

Herr Johann Peter Keller Kaÿl: Hofberfreÿter Peruquenmacher, und Maria Elisabeth desßen Fr: Ehe Consortin haben mit Eines WohlEdl Hochweißen Statt Raths über eingereichtes anbringen, und von dem Grundbuch erstatte[n] Bericht den 27t jüngst abgeruckhte[n] [fol. 223r] Monat Septembris ertheilt gegen Consens, zugleich Nuz und Gewöhr empfangen eines halben Joch Weingarttens vor dem Stubenthor auf der Joÿsen, worauf anjezo eine Behausung erbauet und das übrige zu einem Gartten zugerichtet worden ist, zwischen des Kaÿl: Seminarij, und Matthä Feigl Behausung und Gartten gelegen; darum dient man G[e]m[eine]r Statt Wienn Dombcapitl Grundbuch jährl: Michaelis Fünf Schilling, achtzehen Pfening zurechten Grunddienst und nicht mehr. Darumben hirvor in Lib: N° 1. fol: 180 Sebastian Glaßner, und Eva Maria desßen Ehewürthin zugleich an der Gewöhr beschriben gestanden, dise aber solches lauth eines den 10t Septemb: dis Jahrs gefertigten Kauf=Contracts anfangs ged:[achten] H: Johann Peter Keller, und dess[en] Fr: Ehe Consortin Maria Elisabeth umb eine gewisße Summam Gelds Käuflich [fol. 223v] hinumbgelasßen, und durch schriftl[iche] aufsandung aigenthuml: übergeben haben. Die mögen also darmit ihren nuz und frombe[n] schafen, und betrachten, wie gleicher Gewöhr und der Statt Wienn Grundbuchs Recht ist, jedoch des burgl: Mitleidens unvergrifen; Neben dißen Reservat und Vorbehalt, daß von solchen der burgl: Jurisdiction unterworfenen Grundstuckh alle burgl: onera willig getragen, die Steüer zu rechter Zeit entrichtet, und wann sich deßhalben Stritt oder jrrunge[n] eraignen solten, solche beÿ Einem löbl: Statt Magistrat angebracht, und beantwortet, auch beÿ einer Veralienirung dißes Keinem anderen als einem würckhl: burger oder burger Rechts: fähigen hinumbgelasßen werden solle, und wolle, wie es dann der ad off[ici]um des Grundbuchs erlegte Revers mit [fol. 224r] mit mehrern ausweißet. ohne Gevährde. Actum Wienn den 12t[en] Octob: 1734.
Nunc in Lib: N° 2. Fol: 74. Ihro Excell: H: Johann Michael FreÿH: v: Kleinholdt.

On 18 September 1766 Keller and his wife sold the house to Johann Wilhelm Baron von Kleinholt (A-Wsa, Patrimonialherrschaften B2/11, fol. 74).

Although we have absolutely no documentation as to how Haydn became acquainted with his father-in-law, Pohl assumed that Haydn was introduced to the wigmaker's family by Keller's alleged brother Georg Ignaz Keller, a musician at St. Stephen's, whom Haydn had supposedly known since his days as choirboy at the Cathedral. Georg Ignaz Keller was born around 1699 in the Bohemian town of Chlumec nad Cidlinou and came to Vienna before 1726 as an employee of the Bohemian Court Chancellor Leopold Count Kinsky for whom he served as chamberlain and violinist. Therefore Haydn scholars universally assumed that Haydn's father-in-law also hailed from Bohemia.

The entry concerning the wedding on 17 November 1726 of the (then) chamberlain Georg Ignatz Keller ("von Chlumetz aus Böhm[en]") and Barbara Antonia Scheiblauer (A-Wd, Tom. 45, 286). When on 7 January 1770 Keller got married for the second time, he was already a "K:K: Hof Musicus" (A-Wd, Tom. 65, fol. 132v)

In his article "Joseph Haydns Jugendliebe" (Festschrift Wilhelm Fischer zum 70. Geburtstag, Innsbruck: Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar der Universität Innsbruck, 1956) Ernst Fritz Schmid vividly describes Georg Ignaz Keller's progress as a musician in Vienna, and how in 1731 he rose from a simple servant to a violinist at St. Stephen's Cathedral, and a court musician in 1765. In spite of complete lack of evidence, Schmid presents the kinship between the "Keller brothers" as a fact.

Der kaiserliche Hofmusikus Georg Ignaz Keller ist es nun gewesen, der Haydn die Bekanntschaft mit der Familie seiner Jugendliebe und damit auch seiner späteren Frau vermittelte. Kellers älterer Bruder, der "hofbefreite" Perückenmacher Johann Peter Keller, der um 1691 ebenfalls in Chlumetz in Böhmen geboren war, besaß zu Wien in der Vorstadt Landstraße in der Ungargasse ein eigenes Haus und einigen Wohlstand [...] Georg Ignaz Keller brachte Haydn in das Haus des Bruders, wo mehrere Kinder, darunter anmutige Töchter heranwuchsen, deren Klavierunterricht der junge Meister übernahm.

[translation:]

It was the imperial court musician Georg Ignaz Keller who established Haydn's acquaintance with the family of his early love and also of his future wife. Keller's older brother, the wigmaker to the court Johann Peter Keller, who had been born around 1691 also in Chlumetz in Bohemia, was considerably wealthy and owned a house in Vienna in the suburb of Landstraße in the Ungargasse [...] Georg Ignaz Keller brought Haydn into his brother's house, where several children were growing up, among them lovely daughters whose piano lessons were taken over by Haydn.

Schmid did not let himself be distracted by the fact that archival sources do not support the presumption that the wigmaker Johann Peter and the violinist Georg Ignaz Keller were brothers or had any mutual family relation. Not once did both Kellers or their wives serve as godparents of each other's children: Johann Peter Keller chose (among others) the "Stiftsverwalter bei St. Joseph" Johann Heinrich Reischmann and his wife, a "k.k. Cammer-Fourier" Anton Joachim and the surgeon Johann Franz Schlegelhofer as godparents. Georg Ignaz Keller, on the other hand, relied (among others) on the services of his employer Count Kinsky, the merchant Leopold Wührer (Joseph Jenamy's best man at his wedding with Victoire Noverre in 1768), Maria Sophia Muffat (Georg Muffat's daughter-in-law) and the wealthy apothecary Georg Friedrich Eulenschenk and his wife (whose daughter in 1768 would marry Franz Anton Mesmer and in 1772 was still rich enough to eventually buy her husband his country estate on the Landstraße).

What do we know about Johann Peter Keller's origin? He was born around 1691, and on 12 November 1722, at St. Michael's in Vienna, got married to Maria Anna Seiller. As usual, the marriage records of this parish provide only meager information concerning the bridal couple, such as the date of the wedding, the names of the couple and their parents and the names of the witnesses. No places of birth of groom and bride are given.

The 1722 entry concerning the wedding of Haydn's parents-in-law: "Dominus Joannes Petrus Keller, Joannis Georgij, et Aloysiæ filius, cum Virg:[ine] Maria Elisabetha Seillerin, Georgij et Elisabethae filia, Tes:[tes] Do[min]us Ferdinandus Marher, et D:[ominus] Antonius Geissnhoff. 12. [November]" (A-Wstm, Tom. 4, 345).

This is the only known source on which Haydn scholarship in general, and Ernst Fritz Schmid in particular always relied. But the sparseness of the entries in the marriage records of St. Michael's has a special reason: there is an – unfortunately not complete – series of "Verkündbücher" which contain the basic personal information that the parish priests wrote down, when the engaged couple first appeared and announced their intention of getting married, and the banns were to be published. The entry concerning Johann Peter Keller's wedding is (as was regularly the case with these first and only provisional entries that were to be crossed out later) much more detailed. Among other information – such as the date of the first announcement and the couple's address – this entry gives Johann Peter Keller as being of German origin, namely having been born in Hamburg.

The entry concerning the publication of the banns on 31 October 1722 for the wedding of Haydn's parents-in-law (A-Wstm, Verkündbuch 15)

Den 31 October 1722 copulati sunt 12 9ber 1722 / Der Kunstreiche Herr Johann Peter Keller, ein Keÿ[serlich] Hofbefreiter Porakhenmacher, b in dem / 3 tauben in der unde[r]n Preinerstrasen wonhaft. / Zu Hamburg gebirtig, des H[errn] Johann Georg Keller, undt Frau Aloysiæ sel[ig] beder / ehlicher Sohnn. nimbt zur ehe die tugent / same Jungfrau Mariam Elisabetham / Seillerin, des H[errn] Georgij Seiller und Elisabethæ sel beeder eheliche tochtor / Zu Wacheram in Österreich gebürtig, / beÿ den 3 taube[n] in der under / Preinerstrass wonhaft. /     1 2 3     Ambo in parochia / per plures annos.

And there it is: a Haydn-trifle of world-shattering insignificance. Haydn's father-in-law, the wigmaker Johann Peter Keller and the musician Georg Ignaz Keller were not brothers, but came from very different regions in Europe. It remains to be investigated if Georg Ignaz Keller played any role at all in Haydn's life. Of course one could argue that in the above entry the priest actually referred to the Austrian town of Hainburg an der Donau. But the fact that the word definitely has an "m" and only Wagram bears the attribute "in Österreich" (as if to set it apart from the non-Austrian birthplace of the groom) makes it very clear that (apart from Brahms having written variations on a tune not written by Haydn) this Hansa City has finally gained a family relationship to the composer of the Deutschlandlied. (Since the baptismal register of the town of Hainburg from before 1700 is lost, the question whether Keller was born there cannot be answered).

During the 1750s, Johann Peter Keller enjoyed some wealth. On the occasion of the entry of his daughter Theresia into the convent of Poor Clares at St. Nikolai in 1755, he raised the necessary costs of 1,000 gulden and, in a contract, appointed the convent co-heir of his and his wife's estate.

Seals and signatures of Johann Peter Keller and his wife on the contract, dated 14 May 1755, concerning the donation on the occasion of their daughter's entry into the convent of Poor Clares at St. Nikolai (A-Wsa, Staatliche Verwaltung, Klosterrat, 2.2.6.15.A1/2, 100). This document was published in 1956 by Schmid, albeit with several transcription errors. The shelfmark of this document given by Schmid is now out-of-date.

Twenty years later, Johann Peter Keller's wealth was gone. Approaching the end of his life, he suffered hard times which in a fascinating way may reflect the demise of the wig as a social and economic factor in eighteenth-century Vienna. Keller died on 9 August 1771 absolutely destitute, in the "Klerfisches Haus" on the Hoher Markt and was buried on the following day in the new crypt of St. Stephen's. His relatively wealthy children (and maybe his son-in-law) made sure that his third-class obsequies cost 27 gulden 36 kreuzer and, for an expense of four additional gulden, included a "Music vors Miserere".

The entry concerning Johann Peter Keller's obsequies on 10 August 1771 at St. Stephen's (A-Wd, Bahrleihbuch 1771, fol. 227r). Keller was buried in the new crypt of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2012

Updated: 1 August 2020

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The information concerning Haydn's wife at the beginning of this post has been superseded by research which I published in September 2014 in a blogpost titled "Joseph Haydn's Real Wife".

Alfred Brendel's Final Program Note

On 17 and 18 December 2008, Alfred Brendel gave his two final public concerts at the Goldener Saal of the Vienna Musikverein. Since Brendel performed his favorite piano concerto, Mozart's concerto in E Flat Major, K. 271 (to which I happen to have a special relation), I was given the privilege to write the program note related to this part of the concerts. My text from 2008 is hereby published for the first time in English.

 

Mozart's Piano Concerto K. 271 "Jenamy" can be described as a miracle of musical originality. In the mastership of its orchestration, its stupendous innovative energy and its effect, despite limited instrumental means, this piece has absolutely no precedent. It is Mozart's first great composition, "his Eroica" as Alfred Einstein put it, "which he later would match, but never surpass". With a creative thrust beyond compare, a kind of musical fulguration (in the sense of the term as coined by Konrad Lorenz), Mozart broke all previous conventions and already in 1777 demonstrated the superior mastery that distinguishes his piano concertos of the Vienna years. Formal surprises are being combined with unbridled melodic exuberance: the absolutely unusual entry of the soloist in the second bar as well as several themes that are developed in a dramatic tension and in a balanced dialogue between piano and orchestra. Furthermore operatic effects and a tendency of cantabile pervade every single movement: for example, the long trill on the second "real" entry of the piano as a sort of "messa voce," a side theme, the inversion of which will reappear years later as Cherubino’s Voi che sapete, and not least the pseudo-recitative passages in the piano. The second movement, Andantino, with muted strings is Mozart's first concerto movement in a minor key. It culminates in a scene inspired by the opera seria, where Mozart puts the most exquisit vocal embellishments into the mouth of a tragic heroine embodied by the piano. The rondo theme of the final movement – the melody in the left hand anticipates Monostatos' aria "Jeder fühlt der Liebe Freuden” – lets us imagine the virtuosity of the pianist for whom the concerto was written. Here, too, Mozart is not done yet with his surprising ideas. After a cadenza a slow minuet begins in the subdominant A flat major, elegantly refining the cheerful mood of the finale. This very effective way of giving more musical weight to a final movement by a change of pace will turn up again in the piano concertos K. 415 and K. 482

The traditional name "Jeunehomme Concerto" is a pure figment of imagination, an arbitrary invention, to which the public has grown accustomed. Mozart gives the commissioner’s name in his letter: "I shall give 3 concertos, the one for jenomy [K. 271], the Litzau [K. 246] and the one in B [K. 238], to the engraver, who did the sonatas for me, for cash". In the 19th Century the name variants "jenomy", "jenomè" and "genomai", as used by Mozart and his father, posed no problem. In his 1856 Mozart biography Otto Jahn described the work as "Piano Concerto for Jenomy". Fiction and fact only got mingled in the 1912 study W.-A. Mozart: Sa vie musicale et son oeuvre by Théodor Wyzewa and Georges de Saint-Foix. Based on the assumption that with "Jenomy" Mozart had italianised the original French name, the authors declared this unknown musician "one of the great virtuosos of her time" and since "jeune homme" (young man) was their favorite epithet for Mozart, they simply came up with the curious and inexplicable idea of naming the pianist "Jeunehomme". Thus a legend was born and subsequently one author copied this invention from the other. The truth became known in 2003: Mozart's "Madame Jenomy" was the first child of dancer Jean Georges Noverre. She was born on 2 January 1749 in Strasbourg and baptized "Louise Victoire". In the summer of 1767 Victoire Noverre came to Vienna together with her father, who until 1774 was to work there as a ballet master. In 1768 at St. Stephen’s she married Joseph Jenamy (1747-1819). A meeting between Mozart and Noverre and his daughter during Mozart’s stay in Vienna in 1768 has not been proved, but five years later Victoire Jenamy must have made Mozart’s acquaintance in Vienna. Her pianistic skills are documented: on 17 February 1773 on the occasion of a ball at the Kärntnertortheater for the benefit of her father, she performed as a pianist. Before 1778 already, Jenamy left her husband and moved to her father in Paris. We do not know if she ever visited Salzburg. It is also possible that she had Mozart send her the concerto. In light of the recent discoveries the slow third movement minuet of K. 271 can be seen as an actual allusion to the dancer Noverre. Jenamy never returned to Vienna, but moved to her relatives in Clermont-Ferrand, where she died on 5 September 1812.

We know that K. 271 is very important to Alfred Brendel. In his 1985 essay "Ermahnungen eines Mozartspielers an sich selbst" ("Admonitions of a Mozart performer to himself") he called this concerto “a wonder of the world". Its artistic significance for Brendel is comparable to Haydn's Variations in F Minor (Sonata un piccolo divertimento Hob. XVII: 6) which he performed at his final solo concert in Vienna. The performance of Mozart's "Jenamy Concerto" is a worthy ending to the career of a great pianist.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2008. All rights reserved.

For the first time ever in the history of this piece the golden poster of this very special concert prominently featured the correct title "KV 271 »Jenamy«".

When the recording of this concert was released the following year, however, DECCA's obstinate ignoramuses made sure that the CD cover bore the false name again.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2008.

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See also: The Continuing "Jeunehomme" Nonsense

Mozart Documents "transcribed"

The probate file of Mozart's estate, the so-called Sperrs=Relation, drawn up by the civil court of the Vienna Magistrate right after the composer's death, is one of the most important of all Mozart documents. It gives an exact list of the close relatives of the deceased, his possessions and assets, together with his debts and receivables. It was legally obligatory to draw up the belongings of a deceased person to be able to put it under restraint (Sperr) to forstall any possible missappropriation of the estate. Every Sperrs=Relation had a two-folio cover sheet (the so-called Mantelbogen) with preprinted standard paragraphs that had to be filled out by the official of the court (the so-called Sperrskommissär). The first page of Mozart's probate file (A-Wsa, HA, Persönlichkeiten M14.1) looks as follows.

In 1961, Otto Erich Deutsch published his book Mozart. Die Dokumente seines Lebens, a voluminous 600-page collection of Mozart documents. The publication of this fundamental work was not just Deutsch's personal enterprise. The biggest collection of Mozart documents so far was published as Supplement, Werkgruppe 34 of Serie X of the "New Mozart Edition", i.e. a part of the project Mozart. Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke. Thus, on one of its title pages this book bears the following quality seal: "En coopération avec le Conseil international de la Musique. Editionsleitung: Wolfgang Plath Wolfgang Rehm". When we look at Deutsch's transcription of Mozart's probate file, however (and this is only one of countless examples in this collection), it soon becomes obvious that something is deeply amiss. Not only does Deutsch's edition not meet the basic standards of scholarship, because it fails to provide a description of the formal structure of the source and a usable shelf mark; we also realize that, having no palaeographic education at all, Deutsch was completely unfamiliar with the official terms in an eighteenth-century document of a Viennese court of law. His knowledge of the German vocabulary in legal documents of this kind was insufficient and his expertise in Latin and the frequently applied abbreviations of terms in this language was basically non-existent. Since Deutsch's transcription of the text on the cover sheet of the Sperrs=Relation alone contains about 25 mistakes, it is obvious that he never even saw the original document and blindly relied on the work of two archivists of the Vienna Municipal Archives, namely Rudolf Geyer and Hanns Jäger-Sunstenau, to whom he gives credit in a footnote "for their help with the transcription". Deutsch's aversion to all research for which he actually had to leave his apartment is legendary. In the course of his Mozart and Schubert research, he demonstrably never visited a Viennese parish archive or the Vienna City Archive which was the located at Vienna's city hall. Deutsch either ignores the abbreviation "mpia" (for manu propria) altogether, or mistranscribes it as "Mag.", and he actually mistakes the small title page of the twice-folded Mantelbogen on fol. 4v for a rubrum. Page two of Mozart's probate file contains the following preprinted paragraphs that were filled out by the Sperrskommissär.

Deutsch's transcription of the above text concerning Mozart's two minor children – note that Franz Xaver was already called "Wolfgang" as an infant – and the existence of a will or a comparable legal document (like a marriage contract) is a fine example of one of his countless palaeographical failures. Deutsch begins the transcription of the first handwritten passage as follows: "2[!] Bübl:[sic]  als: Karl 7. Jahr". The word "Bübl" (boys), which was never used by a Sperrskommissär, is of course complete nonsense. The entry reads "Leibl:[iche]" (legitimate [children]). The next entry is garbled by Deutsch in the following way: "Keines,[!] doch ein Heuraths Brief Act = 3 = Aug: 782." This is a true highpoint of ignorance. One could accept the missing semicolon, but any serious scholar, who has ever worked with eighteenth-century Viennese administrative documents, can recognize and transcribe the abbreviation "dd°" (with the small superscript "o" being doubly underlined) which means de dato (i.e. dating from). And the second one of Deutsch's absurd double dashes is simply the double underscore of the superscript abbreviation "t[er]", belonging to the "3" which is the date of Mozart's marriage contract. Mistakes of such grotesque scale in a volume of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, which is supposed to represent a final and authoritative edition of the sources, are simply breathtaking. And the situation becomes even more absurd, given the fact that this document had been published several times in a much less flawed (and "Bübl"-less) version, decades before Deutsch dealt with it. Arthur Schurig published part of the Sperrs=Relation in his book Constanze Mozart: Briefe, Aufzeichnungen, Dokumente 1782 bis 1842, (Dresden 1922), and published it a second time in the 2nd edition of his book Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Sein Leben, seine Persönlichkeit, sein Werk, (Leipzig 1923). Albert Leitzmann also published much less flawed excerpts from this document in his collection Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Berichte der Zeitgenossen und Briefe, (Leipzig 1926). The funniest detail is that Deutsch was fully aware of these earlier publications. He refers to them in his commentary at the end of his own transcription where he proudly points out that "contrary to all the earlier editions this one is complete" – which of course it is not.

The story does not end here. For several years now, the Salzburg Mozarteum has been working on a project titled "Briefe und Aufzeichnungen zu W. A. Mozart und seiner Familie aus den Beständen der Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg". The goal of this project, which is being funded by the Packard Humanities Institute in Los Altos/California, is the online publication of all letters and documents related to the Mozart family, as well as related letters and documents spanning from 1740 (when Leopold Mozart arrived in Salzburg) to 1881 (when the International Mozarteum Foundation was established). The list of hitherto published documents provides a fascinating glimps into the blissfully complacent world of the Mozarteum. The online publication of the documents is marred by several problems and a literal ocean of mistranscriptions awaits the interested reader. Many of these hidden howlers are true gems and the fun they provide almost lets one forget that this kind of dilettantism is draining huge amounts of money away from scholarship that could  put generous funding to a much better use. Note, for instance, the poor "Frau Schupfer", appearing in this document, who was recklessly turned into a "Frau Söhupfer", because none of the people in charge know how a small "c" is written in Kurrentschrift.

Frau Schupfer, turned into "Frau Söhupfer", in the transcription of anonymous notes from after 1836 concerning Salzburg citizens who could possibly own Mozart autographs (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Bibliotheca Mozartiana)

The transcriptions that are shown beside the pictures apply a ridiculously unpractical set of "Kürzel" signs (the Mozarteum calls them "Abbreviatur-Schleifen") instead of bracketed completions of the words which sometimes turn the reading of these transcriptions (such as Mozart's letter of 27 March 1770 from Bologna) into a mind-boggling experience. The fact that some transcriptions contain the term "unleserlich" (illegible) is all the more frustrating, considering the small size and the weak resolution of the pictures that make it impossible for the reader to decipher the document on his own.

On 7 December 1787, Joseph II appointed Mozart k.k. Kammermusikus. The decree signed by Johann Thorwart (who in 1782 had been Constanze Weber's witness at her wedding) looks as follows.

Aktenstück, 1787-12-07 (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Bibliotheca Mozartiana)

What kind of transcription of this document does David Woodley Packard get for his money? It turns out that the text of this decree, as presented on the Mozarteum website, is neither new nor is it flawless. The money was new and flawless alright, but the transcription is an exact copy right out of Deutsch's flawed 1961 edition of the Mozart-Dokumente. All the typical symptoms of Deutschian perplexity are still there: the Mozarteum's transcriber (or rather copyist) does not resolve the abbreviations (not even in the print version). Just like Deutsch, he still mistakes the "p." at the end of the headline for an "etc.", and the meaning of "Pr." at the beginning of the closing formula is still a mystery. Needless to say that this document has already been published several times by Jahn, Schurig, Tenschert and Mueller von Asow. Sometimes even in better readings.

See also: Mozart Documents "transcribed" (follow-up) 

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2012. All rights reserved.

Updated: 4 January 2022

Four More Months for Ignaz Schuppanzigh

Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Painting by Joseph Danhauser (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Inv. No. 4551). Curiously enough, the Belvedere's homepage merely lists this painting as "Portrait of a Man" and dates it at "around 1840".

According to music encyclopedias (The New Grove, MGG) and biographical standard works on Austrian musicians (ÖBL, ÖML), the legendary violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh was born on 20 November 1776. The origin of this incorrect date is shrouded in mystery. Wurzbach only gives Schuppanzigh's year of birth and it seems that Hans Jancik, who published this date in the old MGG (vol. 12, col. 327), either copied it from Frimmel's 1926 Beethoven-Handbuch or made it up, misinterpreting the sources on the Hofmusikkapelle in Vienna's Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. Documents in the estate of Hermann Ullrich (A-Wn, F67) show that, while doing research for his article "Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776-1830). Beethovens Freund und Geiger. Eine Studie" (Vienna 1973), Ullrich even copied Schuppanzigh's marriage entry at St. Stephen's parish which contains the violinist's correct date of birth. Ullrich, however, also noted down two wrong dates of birth: 20 November and even 10 November 1776. In 1997, Clemens Hellsberg, violinist and member of the VPO, submitted a dissertation titled Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776-1831). Leben und Wirken. Hellsberg gave tomus and folio number of Schuppanzigh's baptismal entry and referred to one of Schuppanzigh's birth certificates that he must have seen. But he obviously misread the baptismal entry, refused to accept the facts and described the date on the birth certificate as "obviously erroneous". Since then, the false date of birth has been carved in stone and it is high time to give Schuppanzigh back the four months that music historians cut from his life. Ignaz Anton Schuppanzigh was born on 20 July 1776 in the house Stadt 701 (today Fleischmarkt 11), seventh child of Franz Joseph Schuppanzigh, teacher of Italian at the k.k. Realakademie and his wife Maria Anna, née Menschl. Schuppanzigh's godparents were the belt maker Thomas Scharfenberger and his wife Barbara. Four documents related to Schuppanzigh's birth do exist:

1) The entry in the baptismal records of St. Stephen's Cathedral (A-Wd, Tom 93, fol. 46r).

2)  Schuppanzigh's birth certificate written out on 18 July 1800 which he submitted to the Vienna City Council, when on 4 August 1800 he applied for being granted the age of legal majority (A-Wsa, Mag. ZG, A3, 91/1800).

3) Two entries in the records of St. Stephen's concerning Schuppanzigh's wedding to Barbara Killitschky (b. 3 July 1781 [St. Ulrich 35, fol. 455r]) on 7 May 1807 that contain the groom's date of birth. (Schuppanzigh's brothers in law Franz Rzehaczek and Ignaz Martin served as best men). Here is a part of the earlier entry concerning the first and only publication of the banns on 5 May 1807 (A-Wd, Rapular 1805-07).

4) A second copy of Schuppanzigh's birth certificate that he submitted to the court, when on 2 March 1824, he applied for an "Expectanz Stelle als Violinspieler in der k.k. Hofkapelle" (a position of expectancy as violinist in the court chapel).

The copy of Schuppanzigh's birth certificate that in 1824 he submitted to the court (A-Whh, HMK, Karton 13)

Schuppanzigh wanted to succeed Zeno Menzl (1757–1823), but Leopold Jansa got the job, and Schuppanzigh had to wait three more years for a definite appointment which he only got after the death of Franz Pösinger on 19 August 1827.

In Phil Grabsky's film "In Search of Beethoven" Schuppanzigh's name appears several times. The nifty narrator pronounces it "Shoop-an-sigh".

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2012. All rights reserved.

Updated: 3 December 2023