Thread: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 170xCD boxset question

This is my first post on this forum, so greetings to you all!

I undertake a role as a moderator/proof-reader on www.discogs.com, an on-line music database (the best you'll find) which entails checking and voting on submissions, giving instructions on corrections, to submission and answering member queries and playing an active role in decision-making on new features and guidelines on the website. So my job is making sure everything is correct on a user's submission, before accepting it and finally making it an official moderated entry. It's kind of a wikipedia, but with a two vote system supervised by moderators, thus it is a very accurate database. Anyway, I'm not trying to promote Discogs, so I'll get to my question now.

One classical unmoderated submission is really giving me a hard time! It's one of the 170 CDs of the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Box Set released on the label Brilliant Classics. I would gladly show you a direct link to the release in question on Discogs, but only moderated releases can be seen by unlogged users. Here's the tracklist:

1. Prelude (Original?) & Fugue (J.S. Bach BWV 853) In D Minor (8:03)
2. Prelude (Original?) & Fugue (J.S. Bach BWV 883) In G Minor (5:51)
3. Prelude (Original?) & Fugue (J.S. Bach BWV 882) In F Major (5:43)
4. Prelude (J.S. Bach BWV 527/II) & Fugue (J.S. Bach BWV 1080-8) In F Major (8:43)
5. Prelude & Fugue In E Flat Major (J.S. Bach BWV 526 II & III) (7:24)
6. Prelude (Original?) & Fugue (Wilhelm Friedemann Bach) In F Minor (7:50)

The submitter actually gave Mozart a "Composed By", but I thought it must be wrong. Why would J.S. Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach be mentionned if they didn't write the compositions? I subscribed to this site cause I'm sure many of you are classical music connoisseurs who'll know how to interpret this (I do love classical music though, while not being a connoisseur). So did Johann Sebastian Bach actually compose the 5 first songs and his son (?) the last one? What did Mozart do? Did he orchestrate, arrange, or adapt these musical pieces?

Thanks in advance for the replies and tips!

By the way, www.discogs.com is a really good way to keep track of your CD/Vinyl/Cassette/etc. collection. The classical genre was turned on 2 or 3 months ago, so the classical database is still quite small compared to the other genres, i.e. only 1893 classical releases compared to a total of 806,761 releases. Pay us a visit, we need the help of classical heads like ya'll to build a nice classical discography !

To answer your question shorty, Mozart arranged these pieces. It was a common thing, at his time, to take pieces from past or other composers and arrange them for anothing instrument as concert pieces. So yes, these preludes and fugues by Bach and his son are all arrangements of the originals by Mozart.

Actually, the first 4 of Mozart's piano concerti are arrangements of Bach's works too.

Piano Concerto Nos. 1-4 (KV 37, 39, 40, and 41), the "pastiche" concerti, are indeed arrangements, but of sonata movements by a variety of composers, not just the Bachs.

The three concerti that are all lumped under the heading KV 107 are also arrangements, of J.C. Bach sonatas. These concerti are not given a place in the numbered listing 1-27 of piano concerti.

The prelude/fugue arrangements of J.C. and W.F. Bach are given the headings KV 404a, 405 in the catalog.

Thanks a lot for the feedback guys! That was really helpful!

http://www.discogs.com/release/1046520
That's the CD in question, which I'm going to fix ASAP.

There are a few other CD's like that in the set...

look at the Keyboard Works Volume 6, disks 6, 7 & 8

with a bunch of variations on themes and melodies by assorted people. "Dezède/Mozart: 9 Variations On The Arietta 'Lison Dormait', "Gluck/Mozart: 10 Variations On The Aria "Unser Dummer Pöbel Meint" etc...