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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

A new Mozart for Canberra

CANBERRA pianist, director and entrepreneur Carl Rafferty has circulated a fascinating letter about his forthcoming presentation of a previously unperformed work by Mozart.

Rafferty writes: “The work I’m presenting is in Mozart’s hand, and is authenticated and catalogued. The reason it has gathered dust for over two centuries is that to date no one has figured out how to perform it.

“During my most pleasant sojourn in Paris in 2010 I sought access to some ephemera in the Malherbe collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale. I was particularly seeking material relating to the ‘Musikalisches Würfelspiel’, a novelty work ascribed to Mozart which I had attempted to reconstruct and perform in 1991.

“At the library I was shown and allowed to transcribe (but not touch or handle) a fragment in Mozart’s hand catalogued as K6.516f. This fragment provides the material for the reconstructed work I will present in concert this weekend.

“The reconstruction has taken me the better part of two years, and required me to solve some practical problems. There was also the much greater challenge of analysing the myriad combinations that this fragment offers, with a view to finding the ‘code’ that unlocks this piece, allowing me to perform a genuine and original work by Mozart.

“The fragment held in Paris comprises a much handled single sheet densely covered on both faces in Mozart’s hand. The first material is apparently the beginning of a piano arrangement of his G minor string quintet from 1787. That quintet has consistently been numbered in all catalogues as K516, so the scrap is considered to be related to that work, hence it is recorded as an appendix with the suffix ‘f’.

“The piano transcription of the quintet concludes after a single line of six bars. The rest of that page is taken up by six lines of seemingly unrelated fragments, and the reverse page comprises seven more lines of the same.

“That these fragments are intended as a musical game with a view to creating a piece of music by applying a ‘code’ is not in doubt. What is uncertain is the intended process of selection and reconstruction, and how this was to be accomplished in any practical and performable way.

“It took me many months to find the hints embedded in these messy fragments, but eventually I was able to use a few clues to find a relationship to other works from the same period (1787) and I began to see if any of these works contained the harmonic code that would unlock the secret of the game.

“A combination of instinct, trial and error, and good luck led me to the most likely ‘key’ to this code, and I prepared to offer this piece to the public last spring. I had failed, however, to test enough permutations, and only a month or so before the scheduled performance I accepted that my solution was incomplete.”

Now at last Rafferty has come up with a solution, but he won’t reveal how it’s to be done until the performance. He plans to show this piece to colleagues in Vienna in April.

“Mozartmania”, is at the Street Theatre, 7pm, Friday, March 30, Saturday, March 31 and Sunday April 1 at 5pm. Bookings to www.thestreet.org.au or 6247 1223.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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