Hofmann, Leopold (1738-1793)

The present work was advertised in Supplement II (1767) of the Breitkopf Catalogue and was probably composed several years earlier. Breitkopf styles the work a 'divertimento' although all of the extant sources use the term 'sinfonia'. Two copies of the work - one of them attributed to Vanhal - omit the Minuet & Trio; a further copy adds a pair of almost certainly spurious horn parts. This edition is based on two sources: the primary source is a set of contemporary manuscript parts now located in Pcs Cathedral, Hungary under the signature H143. The wrapper reads: ' / Sinfonia / a / Due Violini / Viola / e / Basso / Del Sigl: Leopoldo de Hoffmann / M.d.Cla. di Santo Steffano'. The designation of Hofmann as Maestro di Capella at St Stephen's establishes a date for the source of not earlier than 1772, the year of his appointment as Kapellmeister. As the Pcs source omits the Minuet & Trio it has been supplied from a secondary source, a set of parts in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena (D182). In the absence of both the autograph score and an authentic set of parts this edition sets out to reflect as faithfully as possible the intentions of the composer as transmitted in the two manuscript sources. The style and notation of articulation and dynamic markings have been standardised throughout, and, where missing from the sources, reconstructed from parallel passages. These are indicated by the use of dotted slurs or brackets. Like most eighteenth-century sources, the present manuscript, are inconsistent in their notation of appoggiature; these too have been standardised to minimise confusion. Obvious wrong notes have been corrected without comment; editorial emendations with no authority from the sources are placed within brackets. Allan Badley