[Found Poem]
portraits of Mozart
a keyboard instrument
none showing him
playing
a leaf of music paper
the concerto idea
on the empty top staff
red notation
Mozart’s second thoughts.
later hands appear
top margin
“By Mozart and in his hand.”
left margin
“NB / Beginning of an
8-voice fugue.”
upper right margin
an unknown hand
the piano concerto finale.
Mozart’s pitches and
rhythms
unchanged but
an overlay—
an incomplete set of instructions
for realizing
two hundred year old music—
instructions for
tempo,
fingering,
phrasing,
articulation,
dynamics,
pedaling,
representing the
taste,
technique,
opinions of
performer,
pedagogue,
scholar.
her late husband’s musical
manuscripts: sketches or
drafts of unrealized works
kept
for possible completion
by others
sketches or drafts of
completed works
discarded
Words borrowed from:
“Mozart and the keyboard culture of his time”: https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/mozart/credits.htm
Photo credit: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Sketch of the beginning of the Finale of K. 450. Neue Mozart Ausgabe, vol. X/30/3, ed. Ulrich Konrad.
Gessy Alvarez 