First editions of Mozart's Piano Sonatas

[John Ruggero]

It would be wonderful if someone had access to and could scan the first editions of Mozart's pianos sonatas K. 279 through 284 from the Breitkopf and Haertel Oeuvres complettes of 1799. I am not referring to the later Breitkopf and Haertel Complete Works which is already available at IMSLP.

There are also first editions of other of Mozart's piano sonatas missing from IMSLP that could added.

[coulonnus]

Does this do the job? Result #3 in https://gallica.bnf.fr/services/engine/ ... %20Amadeus
but not as simple as K. 279 through 284!

Did you check if all sonatas you want do not already have an edition earlier than 1799?

[John Ruggero]

Thank you very much, coulonnus. That indeed does the job. Great sleuthing!

This is the first edition of K 279-283, which apparently were not published during Mozart’s lifetime. K. 284 was however first published in 1784 along with K. 333 by Torricelli in Vienna. I haven’t found that one online either.

[coulonnus]

Question for you and perhaps for the admins: to split or not to split?

[John Ruggero]

If you mean to split it up and distribute the different sonatas among the different entries for each sonata, I think you should do that. As well, the complete Breitkopf and Haertel Oeuvres complettes, which was the first attempt to present all of Mozart's works, would be a great addition to IMSLP if all the volumes could be found. I believe they were issued staring around 1799 and then went on for quite a few years.

Thanks again for your help, coulonnus. Greatly appreciated.

[coulonnus]

I have begun the job, but be patient! The Koechels will be 309, 281, 279, 280, 282, 283, 533, 494.

[Sallen112]

I might suggest also uploading the non-processed versions in color because the black and white versions loses alot of details from the original sources, so having both would be a good idea since these kinds of editions are more for study than anything else.

[coulonnus]

The original versions are grayscale, duplex. I strive to find a conversion threshold that loses nothing. Feel free to compare e.g. K. 309 with the bnf link I provided. A grayscale version of K. 309 is 20-MB big.

[coulonnus]

The K. 284 is contained in another Breitkopf selection from 1798 https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin ... MDLOG_0001

[coulonnus]

I have uploaded a K. 284 Sonata from times when a harspichord was still correct for mozart

[Sallen112]

The point I was trying to make is that on these kinds of editions (but not every edition like modern editions if the ink is not too thin), because this is such an early edition, converting these to black and white because the ink doesn't always work so great as there is a loss of detail from the color/grayscale scans if say there isn't enough darker black pixels on the part of the image to be detected from the conversion and the ink is very thin, you have to REALLY increase the threshold a huge amount but it can ruin parts of the image that doesn't need the increase. Sometimes you get blobs that were in the original scan that converting over to black and white makes that part of the page. So like on K.309, the first measure is blobbed out on your conversion and the staving below it on the left side is also very blobby. If you use scantailor, you can lower the threshold below 0 on the output step into the negative range and you may lose a little bit of detail on some parts (which is why its a balancing act). On the title page, there is a severe loss of detail now because the threshold wasn't high enough on the italicized/cursive text, but if you make it more higher, you really lose the wonderful lady with the harp and the other person resting on here leg then. So the best thing I would do is do a mixed mode on this page (part of the image is black and white, the other part is in grayscale/color for the Picture Zone on the output step in which I crop out the area and keep that grayscale. This way you increase the threshold of the text parts, but keep the small image on that page intact.
You can crop out the duplex pages as well to be single pages too.

[coulonnus]

Not everything is possible with the bnf/gallica scans. Read e.g https://gallica.bnf.fr//iiif/ark:/12148 ... native.jpg to see the wonderful lady I worked with.

I chose a threshold with which staff lines and note stems do not show too many breaks, resulting in blobs elsewhere. Perhaps I can provide a second version without blobs but with missing portions of staff lines and note stems if you think it is useful.

I cropped all duplex pages in 2, which is rather time consuming.

I thing you've uncovered why I and many other enthousiasts typeset some scores

[John Ruggero]

Thank you for those additional sonatas, coulonnus!

[coulonnus]

Feel free to ask for a few other Köchels. Hope I'll find a library scan better than the post-2020 bnf ones (duplex, skewed, dark etc). "Oh, they have been microfilmed like this."

[John Ruggero]

That's very good of you, coulonnus. I'm now looking for the Andre edition of Mozarts K. 279, published by Offenbach in about 1841 (publication no. 6427).
It contains perhaps the earliest source of the first movement, since the autograph of this movement was lost in the 19th century.