seems like more of a minor discovery to me
Seven previously unknown compositions for flute and harp is not minor
22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
61–70 of 104 posts
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is simply not true. Look at Beethoven's manuscripts for instance. https://guides.loc.gov/beethoven/manuscripts
Wow. Can we even be sure we're listening to the right thing? Is it actually possible to read this unambiguously or is there an element of context when reading music, similar to how if you're reading prose the next word is probably grammatically correct and makes sense?
Exactly. The context makes it all pretty clear. Music has its own grammar, and particularly music of the common practice era from about 1650-1930.
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#63There is not a single citation in this article, even though it uses quotations. Here is a more reputable article for this news story: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/arts/music/mozart-music-f...
At least they didn't use quotation marks for "emphasis".
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#64If you like a discovered manuscript story, you should see "In the Hands of Dante", great movie. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/ This review doesn't spoil the movie https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/19/in-the-hand-of-... Side note, imdb's per country rating histograms are mesmerizing https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/ratings/ how different the Iranian ratings are vs the UK.
That looks pretty engaging - all the right people hate it.
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any time something of popular historical interest like this pops up I think about that. If you've not read it then Robert Harris's (factual) book about the affair is entertaining, not least because such a broad sweep of dislikeable characters were undone by greed and folly!
The whole affair was bizarre. At one point Kujau, the author of the fake diaries, ran out of ideas and let Hitler complain about his flatulence. There is also a very funny German movie about it ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schtonk !) The director later said that he intentionally omitted some facts about the real scandal because the audience would find it too far fetched.
I think my favourite aspect of the tale (at least as Harris tells it) is that Kujau was such a bad forger, and the recipients wanted it all to be true so badly that they skipped several opportunities to actually check!
I shall see if I can find Schtonk! with subtitles, sounds up my alley.
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#66seems like more of a minor discovery to me
don't fret over dark keys
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
More than you can possibly imagine. There are warehouses full of unread papers. Any one of which could contain a reference to somebody or something important. There was a recently discovered letter, possibly to Shakespeare's wife, which would completely change our understanding of their marriage, and even the way his plays depict women. The only way to find such things is by hordes of grad students trudging their way…
I hate to say it, but might LLMs transform archival work? Not by replacing researchers, but by inputting everything (or orders of magnitude more than we could previously) and outputting to the researcher a prioritized list of documents / etc to examine?
Oh, wow, that is actually an interesting application of ai
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#68If you like a discovered manuscript story, you should see "In the Hands of Dante", great movie. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/ This review doesn't spoil the movie https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/19/in-the-hand-of-... Side note, imdb's per country rating histograms are mesmerizing https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/ratings/ how different the Iranian ratings are vs the UK.
First step for a great features: movies hated by people you despise
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#69If you like a discovered manuscript story, you should see "In the Hands of Dante", great movie. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/ This review doesn't spoil the movie https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/19/in-the-hand-of-... Side note, imdb's per country rating histograms are mesmerizing https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333644/ratings/ how different the Iranian ratings are vs the UK.
That looks pretty engaging - all the right people hate it.
I do jump directly to the 1-star reviews, so there is that.
Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is simply not true. Look at Beethoven's manuscripts for instance. https://guides.loc.gov/beethoven/manuscripts
Wow. Can we even be sure we're listening to the right thing? Is it actually possible to read this unambiguously or is there an element of context when reading music, similar to how if you're reading prose the next word is probably grammatically correct and makes sense?
The publisher was generally familiar with Beethoven’s writing and conventions. He’d prepare galleys that Beethoven would proof (and frequently edit). A substantial part of Beethoven’s known correspondence concerns corrections to galleys (and managing payments).