W.A.Mozart as reflected in music journalism up to 1828/CMS

In the course of the project "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as reflected in music criticism up to 1830" (supported by FWF, project no. P16077-G06) it became evident that the exploration of the early reception of Mozart has to be expanded to sorts of texts other than music criticism. Especially from the confrontation of Mozart with other composers in treatises about history of music or music aesthetics, but also e. g. from anecdotes concerning Mozart or other composers, from poems, from advertisements of publishing houses, and from satires a more unsophisticated image of Mozart arises than from the restriction on reviews, on which musicology has focused up to now. The current project will be finished on schedule with an edition in the form of a book, but limitation on only a small part of the texts collected so far and abridgement of these texts is inevitable. In order to customize the extensive rest of the texts - partly already collected and transcribed, partly not evaluated in the current project due to lack of time - to the public, the preparation of a Content Management System (CMS) in the internet or on CD- ROM is projected. It is for this digital edition (additional collection and transcription of texts, development of a database, a search engine and a user interface for the CD, conversion of the texts in HTML/XML) a new project is applied for.

Already during his lifetime and, in particular, in the years after his death, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was medially a much noticed person. This can be illustrated especially on the basis of contemporary periodicals. Previous editions were mostly oriented towards his biography and did not reach beyond his death. Therefore we have examined important periodicals focusing on music, theatre, literature etc. as well as fashion magazines ("journals") for references to Mozart and collected them in a database according to different criteria (e. g., Mozart`s works mentioned, events, previous editions). The types of text relevant for Mozart include reviews of works and performances, reports of correspondents, treatises and essays, poems and odes, biographical notes and anecdotes; especially texts where his mention is only marginal prove to be of interest for the history of Mozart reception because they reveal the significance of Mozart more undistorted than explicit statements concerning his person. As a first result it becomes apparent that Mozart already in the years after his death until ca. 1801 turned from one composer among many others to the eminent importance which he occupies basically until today. For this change in awareness, among others, musical-aesthetical, patriotic-national and commercial interests can be hold responsible. Because of the considerable extent of the texts only a selection can appear in print, and overlong texts have to be cut. However, longer resp. usually complete texts are part of an online available Content Management System which provides much better possibilities for research than the indices of a printed edition resp. full text search in it. This collection presents new possibilities to the research on music journalism around 1800, even beyond the main topic Mozart.