Mozart’s Letter in the Museum of Yerevan

A letter written by Mozart on the night of July 4, 1778, is now kept in the Museum of Yerevan. To whom and about what does the world famous composer write, and how did the letter appear in Armenia?

In Paris in 1778, several hours after the death of his mother, famous Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote a heart-rending letter to a close friend of the family, Abbé Bullinger.

“Mourn with me, my friend, this is the saddest day of my life. I am writing to you at two in the morning, but I have to inform you that my mother, my dear mother is no longer with us,” writes Mozart.

In the letter, he asked to mentally prepare his father for the news of his wife’s death. At the same time, he asked for financial support for the arrangement of the funeral.

The composer was forced to bury his mother in a foreign land because he could not transport her ashes to his homeland due to his penury. This historically confirmed fact also indicates that the letter may be authentic.

Nevertheless, the staff of the Yerevan Museum of Literature and Art named after Yeghishe Charents do not draw unequivocal conclusions. “I cannot say 100% that this is Mozart’s handwriting,” said the senior musical officer of the museum’s music fund Marina Musheghyan. She then added that the museum tried to send the letter for examination to Vienna but for some reason was refused.

“The letter got into the museum from the archive of Vasily Korganov, who was not only a famous musicologist but also a collector. He had a huge collection of documents that were passed to us for safekeeping,” said Musheghyan.

Hundreds of letters by famous artists and politicians gathered in the archives of Vasily Korganov were transferred after his death to the National Library of Armenia, and later, some of them were donated to the Museum of Literature and Art.