Note 60 — Chapter X

In the Fall of 1919, announcement was made by the newspapers that French investigators had discovered in the British Museum four thitherto unknown Beethoven autographs amongst manuscripts purchased by Julian Marshall. The editor of the second edition of Köchel’s “Thematic Catalogue of Mozart’s Works” had seen the manuscripts and included two of them as authentic Mozart compositions and two as probably such in the supplement to that work. They were a Trio in D, for pianoforte, violin and violoncello (two pages of the first Allegro missing, listed as K, No. 52a); three pieces for pianoforte, four hands, a Gavotte in F, an Allegro in B-flat, and a Marcia lugubre in C minor (six measures), No. 71a; a Rondo in B-flat, to which the editor assigned the year 1786, No. 511a; and a Menuet in C, for orchestra, the first of a set composed by Beethoven in 1795, which M. Chantavoine published in 1903 under the title “Douze Menuets inédits pour Orchestre. L. van Beethoven. Œuvres posthumes. Au Ménestrel.” Theodore Wyzewa and Georges de St. Foix made a study of the manuscripts and discussed them in “Le Guide Musical” of December, 1919, January and February, 1920. They were then set down as “pseudo-Mozarts.” M. Charles Malherbe declared that none of the compositions was in Mozart’s hand, and M. de St. Foix, after further consideration of the internal evidence, declared them all to be indubitably by Beethoven and gave his reasons in an essay published in “The Musical Quarterly” (New York and Boston, G. Schirmer) of April, 1920. He told the history of the manuscripts as follows: “They had been presented by the Emperor of Austria to the Sultan Abdul Aziz. The latter, who probably cared very little for these relics of the 18th century, presented them in turn to his musical director, Guatelli Pasha. An English collector, Julian Marshall, purchased them from the Pasha’s son, W. Guatelli Bey, and when, later on, the British Museum acquired the Marshall Collection these manuscripts went over into its possession.”

The Gavotte was played at a concert of the Beethoven Association in New York in January, 1920, by Madame Samaroff and Harold Bauer, being inserted as a movement in the Sonata in A major for four hands, Op. 6. Mr. Bauer also made an arrangement for two hands which has been published by G. Schirmer.