Mozart's personal catalog of works is a hand-written document that the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart created over the years 1784 to 1791. In it, he attempted to provide a clear description, with both verbal annotation and musical incipit, of every work he wrote during that time. The catalog survives today (in both original and published form) and serves as a standard basis for dating and authenticating Mozart's works.
Mozart entitled the document "Verzeichnüss aller meiner Werke vom Monath Febraio 1784 bis Monath _____ 1 _______", meaning "Catalog of all my works from the month of February 1784 to the month of _____ 1 _______" (underscores designate blank space). As Dexter Edge notes, "He has left both the month and year blank for the closing date of the catalogue, poignantly writing a single âÂÂ1â instead of âÂÂ17" in the expectation that the catalogue might serve him into the 1800s." (Mozart died in 1791, at age 35.)
The spelling "Verzeichnüss" is an oddity, occasionally found in earlier 18th century sources; modern Standard German has "Verzeichnis". Scholars sometimes echo Mozart's spelling simply to indicate which catalog they are referring to, since any other catalog (e.g., the Köchel catalogue) would bear the standard spelling "Verzeichnis".
Mozart used the verso (left-side) page of each opening (i.e., page-pair) for verbal descriptions, and the recto (right-side) page for the corresponding incipits. There are five works recorded on each opening.
The five works on this particular opening are as follows (Mozart's identifications):
Mozart's combination of German and Italian may be translated thus:
In modern terminology, these works might referred to as follows:
The consecutive numbers in the Köchel catalogue (the primary compilation by scholars of Mozart's works) attest the importance of Mozart's personal catalogue in establishing dates.
Alan Tyson writes, "For his entries Mozart uses two styles of handwriting, with different forms for many letters: 'German script' and 'Roman script'. He used the former for most of the German-language entries, and the latter for most of the Italian words." The difference in handwriting can be seen in the detail image below, which represents the entry given above for the piano concerto K. 456.
Hermann Abert treats the origin of the catalog as part of his assessment of Mozart's personality: "It is entirely typical of Mozart that from time to time he made a sincere effort to put his affairs in order." Abert notes that at the same time Mozart began to keep his musical catalog, he also made a catalog of all household expenditures (in which, for instance, he recorded his purchase of a pet starling). The expenditures catalog, unlike the musical one, was soon abandoned.
The first entry in the musical catalog was on 9 February 1784 for the Piano Concerto No. 14, K. 449. It was continued up to the last possible moment: Mozart recorded his last completed work, the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, on 15 November 1791, and took to (what turned out to be) his deathbed five days later.
The catalog was retained for a time after Mozart's death (5 December 1791) by his widow Constanze, who used it as a resource for her campaign of publishing her husband's works. Constanze first revealed the existence of the catalog in a 1798 letter to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, then in 1800 sold the catalog (along with many musical works) to a different publisher, Johann Anton André, who published it in 1805. The original was kept first by André's heirs, then made its way into the prodigious autograph collection of Stefan Zweig; according to Rosenthal Zweig "regarded it as the most precious of all his musical treasures." Zweig's heirs first lent his collection (1956) to the British Museum, then finally donated it in 1986 to the British Library (the successor institution of the British Museum for its purpose as national library). It remains in the British Library today.
The work is currently available in published form, both as a facsimile (photographs of what Mozart wrote) and in versions (such as André's) that convert Mozart's handwriting into more legible printed form. Both are provided, along with commentary, in the facsimile edition of Rosenthal and Tyson (1990).
The catalog is evidently not a perfect characterization of what Mozart wrote during the period, as there are attested works that have no entry. Further, there are entries for which the piece described had been lost.
The catalog, which the music critic Nicholas Kenyon called "priceless," serves as a major source for the dating and authentication of Mozart's works. It provides facts that are sometimes encountered in commentary about various works by Mozart:
The catalog also sometimes gives a glimpse into how Mozart himself felt about his works or compositional practice.
point out some datings in the catalog that fail to make sense in light of other facts known about Mozart's career.
Leeson and Whitwell have a theory of these anomalies: that Mozart decided to start his catalog in late, not early 1784, and, choosing to begin at the beginning of the current year, did some sloppy guessing about the dates of the works he had already finished. In support of their hypothesis, Leeson and Whitwell suggest that the anomalies cease after 1784; which makes sense assuming that Mozart thereafter entered every work promptly on completion. Moreover, Leeson and Whitwell were able to access to the original manuscript, and from their inspection concluded that that the inks and handwriting are uniform for 1784 but vary work-by-work afterwards, as would be expected under their scenario. Tyson (1990:14-15) is however skeptical of their proposal and offers alternative accounts of the anomalies.
A more radical proposal concerning the preparation of the catalog was put forth by the Mozart scholar Ulrich Konrad, and summarized on the British Library website thus: "[Konrad suggests], on the basis of the inks used, that a much larger group of entries occupying the first ten leaves of the Verzeichnüss may have been taken from an earlier catalogue and transferred to the present book in 1786." Tyson (1990:15) acknowledges, without further discussion, a long sequence of entries (far more than the first ten) that "look as if they have been made with the same ink and the same writing instrument."