Händel's Oratorium Der Messias nach W. A. Mozart's Bearbeitung.

Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, [1803]. First printing. Used; Like New/Used; Like New. Three parts bound as one: Erster Theil (108 pp); Zweyter Theil (96 pp); Dritter Theil (48 pp). Oblong quarto, contemporary marbled boards with manuscript title plate on front board. Boards and spine heavily worn, with one corner chipped from front cover. Internally in very fine condition with scattered foxing and a few pencil notations. First edition of the full score of Mozart's re-orchestration of Handel's Messiah, fully engraved. Köchel 572. RISM H 723; cf. Hoboken, v 104; Hoboken, xi 394.
In the last years of his short life, Mozart turned his gaze on music of the past. Through the influence of his friend Baron van Swieten, he rediscovered the riches of the music of J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel. There were opportunities to perform the works by the earlier masters in Vienna, and in 1788 and 1789 Mozart arranged several large works for performance, including Acis and Galatea, Messiah and Alexander's Feast. In Messiah, Mozart updated and expanded the orchestration to modern tastes, adding trombones, altering trumpet parts and classicising the orchestra with flutes, clarinets, horns and bassoons. The oratorio was advertised for publication in this form in Germany by Breitkopf in 1802 and issued the following year.


"In 1789, at the request of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, Mozart, by all accounts a profound admirer of Handel, also re-orchestrated Messiah. It is often said that the subject of the re-orchestration was to compensate for the absence of an organ in the hall, but this is not borne out by what Mozart does, which seems more of a translation into terms suggested by the ordinary forces for these concerts; these included flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trombones. The trumpets were demoted from melodic to harmonic instruments. 'The trumpet shall sound' and 'If God be for us,' which van Swieten called the 'cold aria,' were rewritten, the latter as a recitative" (Luckett, Handel's Messiah: A Celebration, 214).