Studies for Thomas Attwood (Vienna, 1785)
von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Studies for Thomas Attwood are a small body of pedagogical keyboard-and-theory materials written for (and partly preserved through) his English pupil Thomas Attwood during the Vienna years, beginning in 1785. Surviving in Attwood’s lesson-book with Mozart’s corrections and model solutions, they illuminate Mozart at 29 not as public virtuoso-composer, but as a working teacher of harmony, counterpoint, and keyboard realization.
Background and Context
In Vienna in 1785, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was at the height of his public career—writing piano concertos for his own performances and cultivating an affluent circle of patrons—yet he also taught privately, and the young English musician Thomas Attwood (1765–1838) became one of his most significant pupils. The principal documentary trace of this teaching is Attwood’s surviving study manuscript, which preserves exercises in harmony, counterpoint, and “free composition,” with numerous annotations in Mozart’s hand (often brief evaluative remarks and corrections). These materials are transmitted today through the British Library manuscript (Add MS 58437) and the modern scholarly edition in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA X/30/1). [1] [2]
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Musical Character
Because the Attwood materials function as lesson work rather than a single “finished” piece, they tend to present music in short, task-oriented spans: basses to be figured at the keyboard (thoroughbass), harmonizations with increasingly active or chromatic bass motion, and contrapuntal drills that aim at correct voice-leading rather than concert rhetoric. The manuscript (and its NMA presentation) shows Mozart moving from straightforward foundational patterns toward more searching progressions and modulations, using the keyboard as a practical laboratory for harmony and part-writing. [1]
[1] Digital Mozart Edition (Mozarteum Salzburg), Neue Mozart-Ausgabe table of contents: NMA X/30/1 “Thomas Attwood’s Studies on Theory and Composition with Mozart” (overview and access point).
[2] MozartDocuments.org: discussion of Mozart’s annotations in Attwood’s studies, including reference to British Library Add MS 58437 and NMA X/30/1.