Overview
- The Bibliothèque nationale de France said on Friday that a 44‑page autograph notebook by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was identified in its music holdings and formally attributed to the composer after expert review.
- Conservator François‑Pierre Goy discovered the uncatalogued manuscript during a February inventory of anonymous papers and flagged its handwriting and notation for further study.
- Mozarteum specialists in Salzburg completed a forensic review of the script and paper by late April and confirmed the attribution, using comparisons with digitized autographs and matching paper stamps.
- The notebook contains seven short pieces for flute and harp plus about a dozen exercises linked to lessons Mozart gave in Paris in 1778 to Marie‑Louise‑Philippine de Bonnières de Guînes, and the set was recorded in mid‑June ahead of its first public performance on Sunday.
- Cataloguing and provenance work continue, with BnF researchers proposing a working hypothesis that the manuscript entered the library among revolutionary confiscations from the Guînes family, a theory that remains under investigation and subject to archival confirmation.