KV 608 Mozarts Allegro und Andante (Fantasie in f) für eine Orgelwalze im "Laudon Mausoleum"

From 1791 on Count Deym presented in his art gallery a pompous, temple-like diorama showing life-sized wax figures, the so-called “Laudon’s tomb”. The music for this picture came from a barrel organ playing Mozart’s KV 608. This musical automaton and the original cylinder with Mozart’s piece pinned on it have been lost since 1821. But it seemed possible to restore the original sound and performance, thanks to quite a number of contemporary communications and treatises, other existing historical automata and the experience gained with mechanical music of that time (cf. the Phonogrammarchiv’s research project, established in 1980). With the help of these sources an attempt was made to reconstitute the articulation and tempo of the piece, based on the music published in the new complete edition of Mozart’s works. The authentic sound was derived from a real organ by choosing adequate ranks of pipes according to the descriptions mentioned in the historical messages. The resultant sound recording, then, tries to recreate the original sound character of a small barrel organ. Since the historical sources clearly do not allow us to achieve a definite version, the CD offers five different variants, which altogether will come very close to the original features of sound and performance. An extensive text explains the background and methodological aspects of this virtual reconstruction.