Posted on: Friday, November 1, 2002

A long-lost octet by the hand of Mozart ... or maybe not

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Chamber Music Hawaii rehearses the wind octet from Mozart's "Abduction From the Seraglio" for tomorrow night's premiere. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser . . . 'Most Likely Mozart?' • With Chamber Music Hawaii, conducted by Bastiaan Blomhert • 7:30 p.m. Saturday • Diamond Head Theatre • $15-$35 • 524-0815, ext. 245 • Also: Dinner and concert package is available for $100. Dinner starts at 6 p.m.

Think of it as one of the earliest forms of music piracy.

Transcribing, that is.

In the 18th and 19th centuries — and way before the existence of such songwriter protection as copyright laws — composers would struggle to quickly complete revisions of their popular operas and symphonic works to gain more financial mileage out of them before others could. Take Mozart, for example.

With his operas primarily written for the enjoyment of the aristocracy and limited audiences, a transcription of one of his works for, say, the then-popular mainstream style of harmoniemusik (wind band) could be lucrative, considering the number of wind octets eager to purchase versions they could perform. In that sense, transcribing was also one of the earliest inventions of the remix (sorry, P. Diddy.)

It was common practice, therefore, for composers to try to beat outside transcribers to the financial punch.

"After Mozart finished writing the opera 'The Abduction From the Seraglio,' he wrote a famous letter to his father ... that he had to quickly make a wind arrangement of music from (the opera) or somebody else was going to do it and get money for it," said James Moffitt, a clarinetist with Chamber Music Hawaii. "And the feeling for 200 years was that the music was either never really arranged by Mozart, or was lost, as were a lot of his autographed scores."

That changed in 1983, when musicologist Bastiaan Blomhert found a transcription of "Abduction" for wind octet in a German library. After much research, Blomhert declared — to vocal dissension that continues to this day in some international classical music circles — that the composition was the work of Mozart himself.

Blomhert will conduct Chamber Music Hawaii's premiere of the "Abduction" wind octet in an evening appropriately themed "Most Likely Mozart?" tomorrow at Diamond Head Theatre. In addition to Blomhert's defense of the authenticity of his find, the evening will offer readings of correspondence between Mozart and his father (read by Wolfie scholar and KHON news anchor Joe Moore, no less) as proof. The rest will be left to the audience to decide.

After rehearsing for weeks, who does Moffitt believe composed the much-debated piece?

"I think I'll just remain neutral until after the concert," he said, laughing.