Seven unknown Mozart pieces for flute and harp discovered in Paris, set for first public hearing on Sunday

A manuscript of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, unknown to scholarship until February, has been authenticated as a genuine autograph and will receive its first public performance at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) on Sunday. The 44-page notebook, dated to 1778, contains a dozen daily composition exercises and seven pieces for flute and harp.

Discovery in the stacks

Curator François-Pierre Goy came across the anonymous notebook on 2 February while reclassifying a batch of manuscripts destined for the library's storage reserves. "I never imagined what I was about to find," he told AFP. He had recently studied Mozart's teaching materials and recognised the composer's distinctive handwriting: rounded treble clefs tilted forward, bass clefs drawn in reverse of the French convention, and final double bars with fermata marks above and below.

Goy consulted his colleague Laurence Decobert, who had curated a Mozart exhibition and knew the autograph style well. Later, Armin Brinzing, director of the Bibliotheca Mozartiana at the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, confirmed the attribution in late April. The notebook had been neither stamped with the library's mark nor catalogued, lying among uncatalogued anonymous documents from the late 18th century.

A tutor's daily lessons

Mozart gave the lessons between May and July 1778 to Marie-Louise-Philippine de Bonnières de Guînes, the daughter of the Duke of Guînes, a renowned flautist and patron who had commissioned the Concerto for Flute and Harp. The notebook records exercises that the young composer set for his harpist pupil. Seven finished pieces are included, the last one unfinished. The BnF describes a collaborative process: Mozart notated the harp part, the student contributed the flute line, and then the roles were reversed, "the hands of master and pupil intertwining in varying proportions".

Mozart's personal letters, cited by Goy, show little enthusiasm for his pupil, whom he called "stupid and lazy" in a note to his father. Yet the manuscript survived, confiscated from the Guînes residence in 1794 during the Terror and eventually absorbed into the national collections.

“According to the specialists, this discovery is without doubt one of the most important of recent decades.”

Sunday's premiere

The seven pieces, lasting about twenty minutes in total, will be performed for an invited audience at the BnF on 21 June by two musicians of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France: first flute soloist Mathilde Calderini and harpist Nicolas Tulliez. The event is part of France's nationwide Fête de la Musique. A recording made earlier this week will be broadcast on France Musique on Monday.

“Discoveries like this for such a famous composer are almost unheard of.”

The original manuscript will be on display during the concert.