Mozart and Beethoven arranged for guitar flute and strings: newly discovered chamber repertoire from Victorian England

An edition of five newly discovered chamber pieces for the highly unusual combination of guitar, flute and strings, made by the London violinist George Pigott (1795-1853) edited by Christopher Page.

This edition of newly discovered septets, together with an unpublished sextet, presents five accomplished chamber arrangements for guitar, flute and strings of music by Mozart and Beethoven. They were all made by the London professional violinist George Pigott (1798-1853). Such large chamber scorings involving a guitar are a great rarity in the instrument’s nineteenth-century repertoire. Four of the pieces, all septets, are taken here from a manuscript in Cambridge University Library, while the fifth, a sextet, is from a manuscript in the Library of Congress. A historical introduction, to be published in due course, will demonstrate that all five arrangements were created for Alexander George Fraser, sixteenth Lord Saltoun and a keen guitar-player, for use with his friends in his London mansion.

The material is free of charge and available on Apollo, the institutional repository of the University of Cambridge.