Moscheles, Ignaz

the original, untitled and undated score notated in brown ink on one 15-stave system per page, scored for flute and oboe solo, strings, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets and drums, with autograph movement headings ("Adagio. patetico....Allegretto grazioso. Rondo"), extensively corrected and revised by the composer, the alterations either entered directly in the score or written on separate leaves of manuscript paper and affixed to the score; the manuscript bearing a later autograph note to the originally blank first page ("diese Partitur, welche sich in der Königl. Theater Bibliothek in Stut[t]gart befand, und mir durch den Hofkapellisten G. Ferling zukam, bearbeitete ich in neuer Form und sandte eine Copie davon an H. Ferling am 27.^tenJanuar 1868"), containing extensive deletions, emendations and alterations, with some additions in pencil 

the original score comprising 50 leaves, the revised score 42 leaves, oblong 4to (c.22 x 31cm), 16-stave paper, six leaves, whose contents were intended to be cut, tied together at the corners, library stamp to first page, nineteenth-century marbled wrappers, the original score possibly Vienna, c.1808-1815?, the later revisions before 27 January 1868, spine and upper cover lacking, gatherings loose, some dust-staining

Emil F. Smidak, Isaak-Ignaz Moscheles (Aldershot, 1989), p.213; Dieter Förster, Concertante für Flöte und Oboe mit Begleitung des Orchesters in F-Dur (1868) (Adliswil: Edition Kunzelmann, 1983)

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate.
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This is a remarkable early score, of a major instrumental work, revised extensively by the composer near the end of his life.

As a note on the first page, in Moscheles's hand, explains, this score of this fine two-movement Romantic concertante work once resided in the Königliche Theater-Bibliothek in Stuttgart, from whence it was returned by G. Ferling to the composer, who duly revised it, sending a copy of the new score back to Stuttgart on 27 January 1868. That copy is apparently now preserved in the manuscript collections of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart (HB XVII 452), together with a set of incomplete parts (without the solo parts) evidently relating to the original version. The present score appears thus to be the only known complete source for the original version of the work. A note in the Stuttgart library manuscript catalogue records that the work was often performed by the wind players Krüger and Ferling at the subscription concerts of the Stuttgart Hofkapelle.

The north-Italian paper of the original score points possibly to the work's having originated during Moscheles's time as a young musician in Vienna, i.e. from c.1808-1815. Strangely, the work is not mentioned in the two-volume biography of Moscheles by his wife Charlotte Embden (1805-1889), Aus Moscheles' Leben (Leipzig, 1872). Although the score was probably revised on more than one occasion, Moscheles's final and most significant refashioning, which does much more than just reduce in size the length of the second-movement rondo, dates from over half a century later, from two years in fact before the composer's death in 1870. An edition of the revised score was prepared by Dieter Förster in 1983.