Mozart's Original No. 11 in A Major Score Found in Hungarian Library; How Different Is It from What We Know?

Every other day we've got some story about how the guitar played by John Lennon while recording "Paperback Writer" is selling for £600,000 at auction or something. Memorabilia is great but The Beatles are a relatively new band in the grand scheme of things so how exciting is it really? Now an original copy of a famous Mozart composition, that's something that would excite us.

The original score for the composer's No. 11 in A Major was confirmed late last month in a library in Hungary. Although the last page of the composition, containing the famous rondo alla turca movement, is safe and sound in Salzburg, the world had no idea where the rest of the score was. Balazs Mikusi, a musicologist and head of the music section at the National Szechenyi Library, has been working on cataloguing yet uncatalogued material for the last five years when he made the discovery earlier this year.

"When I first laid eyes upon the manuscript, the handwriting already looked suspiciously 'Mozartish'," said Mikusi, according to Classical-Music.com. "Then I started reading the notes and realized it is the famous A Major sonata...My heart rate shot up."

Thanks to the existing sheet in Salzburg, it was rather easily confirmed to be authentic. Late last month pianist Zoltán Kocsis took the original for a spin at the library. According to sources, the performance did feature some rhythms unique to the traditional understanding of the piece, and even a few new notes, but nothing that will radically transform the classic piece.

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Mozart