Tyson MS 16-17

MOZART: ‘Cosi fan tutte osia La Scuola degli amanti: Drama giocoso in due Atti Rappresentato nel Teatro di Corte a Vienna L’Anno 1790’ (libretto, Lorenzo da Ponte), K588; circa 1790-5. Copy, in Italian. Score, written in ink on paper ruled with ten or twelve staves to the page, with some pencil annotations in Tyson’s hand. The title page of Act 1 is inscribed ‘Si vende in Vienna presso Wencislao Sukowaty Editore di Musica, e Copista dell’ Imperial Teatro nella Piazza di St. Pietro Nro 554. in Terzo Piano’. Wenzel Sukowaty was chief copyist of the theatre from 1778 until at least 1796, and employed several music scribes to produce scores for sale in his shop. The score dates from before 1795, when his address on Petersplatz was renumbered as 614. D. Edge has identified two of the scribes of this manuscript as ‘Viennese Music-Copyist 4b’ and probably Jakob Klein, and at least one other hand is present (Mozart’s Viennese Copyists, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Southern California, 2001, ch. 9). In common with several early copies and printed editions of the opera, the following passages are omitted: overture, bars 81-8, 149-56, 194-201; Ferrando’s aria, no. 17, bars 50-7, 63-6; Act I finale, no. 18, bars 461-75; and Ferrando’s aria, no. 24, bars 57-91. Inscribed ‘La Novere’ (f. 1 in each volume). For a comparison of this manuscript with a copy made for the Hoftheater, MS O.A.146 in the Österreichischer Nationalbibliothek (from which the present score was probably copied), see A. Tyson, ‘Notes on the composition of Così fan tutte’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxxvii (1984), pp. 356-401, reprinted in Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 177-221, esp. pp. 205-10 and fig. 13.6. C. M. Zenck proposes that this copy may have been prepared by Sukowaty either for the composer or as a copy from which other copies may have been prepared (Così fan tutte. Dramma giocoso und deutsches Singspiel. Frühe Abschriften und frühe Aufführungen (Schliengen im Markgräferland: Edition Argus, 2007), pp. 39-42). Purchased by Tyson from Hans Schneider, Tutzing, in 1961 (cat. 72, no. 1675).

Two volumes. 221 x 307mm. Half-vellum on marbled boards, with spine labels reading ‘Mozart La Scuola Degli Amanti Atto I [II]’, numbered ‘86’ and ‘87’ on the front covers.