The Continuing "Jeunehomme" Nonsense

In October 2014, Warner Classics released the following CD.

In the booklet of this recording, the musicologist Nicolas Southon let his stunning ignorance run wild as follows.

Did the composer originally intend to perform it himself or did he write it specifically for Miss Jeunehomme? It was certainly she who gave the work its first performance when she was in Salzburg at the end of January 1777. Little is known about this French pianist referred to in Mozart family correspondence as Jenomy or Jénomé. She came from Paris and, as such, probably embodied the broader horizons for which the composer was yearning.

No "Miss Jeunehomme" ever existed, the name being a deliberate early twentieth-century invention. The nickname of Mozart's piano concerto K. 271 has been corrected to "Jenamy" since my discovery in 2004 of the identity of the person for whom Mozart wrote it. Further discussion concerning the name has become pointless, as "Jeunehomme" is a fantasy appellation invented by Théodore Wyzewa and Georges de Saint-Foix, who simply transferred «le jeune homme», their favorite place-holder for «Mozart», to a pianist whose real identity they were unable to determine. Jenamy, on the other hand, is what the real woman who commissioned and premiered the work was actually called, and I think one can fairly expect musicians and record producers to replace a spurious name with that of the flesh-and-blood musician for whom the concerto K. 271 was actually written.

Victoire Jenamy's death certificate – she died on 5 September 1812 – issued by the City of Clermont-Ferrand for Joseph Jenamy who in 1813 wanted to marry again (A-Wstm, SP, VKA 11/1813). The deceased, who around 1776 had left her husband, had taken her maiden name again.

The transcription of Victoire Jenamy's death certificate (with thanks to Ian Allan)

I recently had a little discussion with the embarrassingly cocky deputy editor of the BBC Music Magazine Jeremy Pound who told me that "my work might enjoy a wider audience, if I made a greater effort to publish and disseminate it properly" – the word "properly" of course referring to publications in print which (at least in the world of some bemused journalists) will always be taken into consideration by other scholars, and eventually, by the public. But of course, this is not how things work in the real world where people cannot be made to read scholarly articles and accept scientifically proven facts as the truth. The continuing "Jeunehomme" nonsense, spread by ignorant musicologists and the recording industry, is a case in point. In 2010, one clueless producer even went so far as to tweak the fantasy name "Jeunehomme" into something entirely new.

My identification of the French pianist Victoire Jenamy (1749–1812) as dedicatee of Mozart's piano concerto K. 271 was published and disseminated (properly) as follows:

• Lorenz, Michael. "Altes Mozart-Rätsel gelöst". In Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, 3-4/2004, 78.
• Van Gelder, Lawrence. "Mozart by Its Rightful Name". The New York Times, 15 March 2004.
• Lorenz, Michael. Program note for Robert Levin's and Roger Norrington's concert with the RSO Stuttgart on 18 March 2004 at the Wiener Konzerthaus.
• Lorenz, Michael. An online publication of an English translation of this program note (March 2004).
• Lorenz, Michael. "The Jenamy Concerto". In Newsletter of the American Mozart Society, vol. IX (January 2005), 1-3.
• Lorenz, Michael. "»Mademoiselle Jeunehomme«. Zur Lösung eines Mozart-Rätsels". Mozart Experiment Aufklärung. Essays for the Mozart Exhibition 2006, (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, Da Ponte-Institut 2006), 423-29.
• Lorenz, Michael. "Wolfgang Amadé Mozart. Klavierkonzert Es-Dur KV 271 »Jenamy«. Program note for Alfred Brendel's final concert (with the VPO conducted by Charles Mackerras) at the Vienna Musikverein on 18 December 2008.
• Lorenz, Michael. "Alfred Brendel's Final Program Note" (English translation of the above program note, published online on 26 August 2012). 

The name "Jeunehomme concerto" did not originate in a misunderstanding or through "a corruption of a name" (as some ignoramuses claimed). The name is a total fabrication. Most authors, who dealt with this issue in the last decade, either did not read my publications, or simply did not understand this central point. Some Mozart handbooks, which were published in the Mozart Year 2006, included my discovery, some authors included it – for obvious reasons of jealousy – without giving my name (as if the truth had dawned on Mozart scholarship from a magical "collective wisdom"), and some of them ignored it altogether.

The "Jenamy" entry on p. 232 of The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (Cambridge University Press, 2006). The author does not provide a bibliographic source for the information, because he has obviously received his knowledge from a messenger that visited him in a dream.

Some renowned pianists have shown how to proceed honorably on the occasion of a new recording of K. 271. Before Paul Badura-Skoda in 2006 wrote the booklet for his new recording for ARCANA, he asked me to provide him with detailed information concerning my latest research and later sent me a copy of the recording.

In the booklet for her 2011 recording of K. 271, released on the Hyperion label, Angela Hewitt wrote the following.

On the occasion of the publication of his book Über Musik. Sämtliche Essays und Reden in 2005, Alfred Brendel, who of course is far above the pettiness of frustrated scholars, even updated his 1985 essay "Ermahnungen eines Mozartspielers an sich selbst" ("Admonitions of a Mozart performer to himself") to include my discovery. In this essay Brendel writes.

Wer die mysteriöse »Mlle Jeunehomme« war, ist dank der Nachforschungen von Michael Lorenz inzwischen geklärt: Sie hieß Victoire Jenamy, wurde in Straßburg 1749 geboren und war das älteste Kind des Tänzers Jean Georges Noverre. Mysteriös geblieben ist die plötzliche höchste Meisterschaft, die sich in dem für sie komponierten Werk entfaltet.

Thanks to the research of Michael Lorenz the identity of the mysterious »Mlle Jeunehomme« is now clarified: Her name was Victoire Jenamy. She was born in 1749 in Strasbourg and was the eldest child of the dancer Jean Georges Noverre. What remains mysterious however, is the sudden highest mastery that unfolds in the work composed for her.

Very soon, after on 9 May 2003 I had discovered the truth about K. 271 and Madame Jenamy, I decided not to become the "Jenamy police" who would call out all the uninformed musicians and recording producers who refuse to accept the historical facts. After all, I have more important things to do than to pursue this kind of propaganda work. But as time went by, I had to realize that the continuing use of the nonsensical fantasy name "Jeunehomme" is a grave injustice towards the artist who paid Mozart good money for composing one of the greatest masterpieces of classical music. We simply owe it to Victoire Jenamy to give her name together with the concerto that she commissioned.

The seals and signatures on Joseph Jenamy's and Victoire Noverre's 1768 marriage contract (A-Wsa, Merkantil- und Wechselgericht, Fasz. 3, 1. Reihe, J 2). The undersigned persons are: Joseph Jenamy (1747–1819), Victoire Noverre, the merchant and guardian of the groom Leopold Wührer (1712–1776), Noverre's landlord Franz Xaver von Stegnern (1704–1772), the jeweler and brother-in-law of the groom's stepmother Joseph Fleischhäckl (1700–1795), the state official and poet Franz von Heufeld (at that time not yet ennobled), and "comme pere de l’epousée“ Jean Georges Noverre. This document was first published in my article "»Mademoiselle Jeunehomme«. Zur Lösung eines Mozart-Rätsels". In: Mozart Experiment Aufklärung. Essays for the Mozart Exhibition 2006.

The entry concerning Joseph Jenamy's and Victoire Noverre's wedding on 11 September 1768 in St. Stephen's Cathedral (A-Wd, Tom. 64, fol. 206v)

dispensati in tribus
Denunc:[iationibus] et Sp[on]sa etiam
in def[ect]u domicilij
depos:[ito] lib:[ertatis] juram:[ento]
cop:[ulati] sunt 11. Sept:[embris] [1768]
a C[hori]m[a]g[i]stro.

Der Wohl Edle H:[err] Joseph Jenamÿ Bürg:[erlicher] Handels
Man led:[igen] St.[ands] geb: alhier des Hl: Franz Jenamÿ
Bürgl: Handelsmans et Franciscæ Ux:[oris] ehl: H:[err] Sohn
obtinuit veniam ætatis et declarationem fuit majorrenis
ab Aug[ustissi]mo teste Leopoldo Wirer. Cambij Judice
et ejus majore.
    Mit der Wohl Edlen J:[ungfer] Victoria Noverre geb:[ürtig]
Von Straßburg. durch 15. Monath allhir des Johan Georg
Noverre K K: Ballet M[ei]st[e]rs Ludovicæ Ux:[oris] ehl:[iche] T:[ochter]
P:P:[arentes] sponsæ ambo adfuerunt in copulatione.
Testes. H:[err] Joseph Fleischhackel K: K: Jubilir
Hl: Baron Xaverius Freÿher V. Stenger[sic]. H:[err]
Franz Heüfeld K: K: Rechnungs officir.

In 1784, the couple filed for a divorce. And, by the way, there is no proof that Victoire Jenamy ever visited Salzburg.

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Note to journalists: owing to lack of time and peers, this post was not peer-reviewed.

See also: Alfred Brendel's Final Program Note. Note to plagiarizers who regularly steal my material for their program notes: my text from 2008 is subject to copyright. If you plagiarize it, you should at least give my name, and, in any case, expect legal action to be taken.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2014. All rights reserved.

Updated: 26 December 2024

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Update (23 February 2019)

Nothing could be further from reality than to assume that in 2019 the reservoire of nonsense has already been exhausted. In a current announcement of a concert by the London Mozart Players on April 11, 2019, entitled "Mozart's Women", we are confronted with the surprising existence of a "French piano virtuoso Victoire Jeunehomme".

The author of this text is the conductor of this concert, Janet Glover who seems to base her expertise on the fact that in 2005 she published a book entitled Mozart's Women. Although this book received favorable reviews from a number of journalists, it is nothing but a flawed and rather lightweight summary of all stories related to women in Mozart's life that have already been published countless times. Although in her book Glover uses the pianist's correct name "Jenamy", she – quite unsurprisingly – fails to give my name. The new name "Victoire Jeunehomme", which Glover has now concocted, is truly bizarre. She uses the name "Victoire" that I discovered, but sticks to the old fictitious "Jeunehomme", just in case this Dr. Lorenz got it wrong after all. Glover's undecidedness leads to even worse nonsense, because the names "Victoire" and "Jeunehomme" cannot be used together. They are mutually exclusive.

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Update (January 2025)

In the new Köchel-Verzeichnis, which was presented with delay, but all the greater fanfare in 2024, in the commentary on K. 271 (p. 310), some nonsense concerning the topic was published, along with a wrong first name for Mrs. Jenamy. This disgrace will be discussed in more detail in a future blog post.

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

Note to plagiarizers who regularly steal my material for their program notes: the above text is subject to copyright. If you plagiarize it, you should at least give my name, and, in any case, expect legal action to be taken.