allegroamabile wrote:I don't think it is quite plausible for someone to give Mozart credit for the ingenious Sinfonia Concertante for Winds and not himself.
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In order to understand this, you have to understand that the concept of copyright and beyond-lifetime royalty payments that support a composer and his family is -- well, not quite 20th C, but just about. In the 18th century, if your family was hungry and you weren't famous enough to make lots of sales under your own name, you would quite happily put Haydn's or Mozart's name on your work, because that's how you fed yourself. The Haydn oboe concerto wasn't written by Haydn, though we don't know yet who did write it.
In the clarinet repertoire, the famous Wagner Adagio was by Baermann, and this list goes on and on and on. Some truly horrible music by "Mozart" are some (I will qualify that, since I haven't heard all of them) of the Cassations, but then, they weren't really by Mozart. I remember a very mediocre piece by CPE Bach that Grove's listed as "spurious", and probably written by one of his lesser brothers.
Vivaldi's Il Pastor Fido was written by Nicolas Chedeville. We could probably start another list for famous frauds.
My sentence on the beautiful slow movement wasn't clear (typing too fast). I mean the string Sinfonia Concertante -- I find that movement absolutely sublime.