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The composition reveals a possible unexpected friendship between Mozart and Antonio Salieri
Timo Jouko Herrmann was doing research on Salieri in Prague when he came across a poem that led him to the collaboration
It’s Mozart like we’ve never heard it before – precisely because we haven’t heard it before until today.
A long-lost composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was recently discovered by a musicologist in the archives of the National Museum in Prague and was performed Tuesday for the first time since being rediscovered.
Watch the performance on harpsichord on YouTube
Last month, Timo Jouko Herrmann was conducting research at the Czech Museum of Music on Antonio Salieri, a well-known colleague and competitor of Mozart’s.
He came across poem written by Viennese court poet Lorenzo Da Ponte that led him to the discovery, says the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation.
That 30-stanza poem was a part of a larger volume of work that included a long-lost composition written by Mozart, Salieri and relatively unknown composer Cornetti, the foundation said.
The rediscovered work of art indicates that Mozart-Salieri rivalry was not as bitter as was previously thought and which was popularly portrayed in the 1984 movie “Amadeus.”
The collaborated composition was written 1785 and shows that Mozart was indeed on friendly terms with Salieri – a revelation that puts into question the storyline that Salieri may have murdered Mozart.