Early editions and copies

The continued popularity of Mozart's quartets after his death is confirmed to some extent by the number of new editions (or reissues of older ones) that appeared until well into the nineteenth century before the inauguration of the Breitkopf and Härtel Gesamtausgabe W. A. Mozarts Werke in 1877. Many editions or reissues appeared between 1791 and c. 1830 in Vienna, Paris, London, Offenbach-am-Main, Cologne and Leipzig. Most of these were issued in playing parts, although scores were also made available by Johann Traeg (Vienna) in 1804 and Ignaz Pleyel (Paris) in 1807–8. Typically these were printed in two volumes, each containing three quartets, though the order of pieces does not always follow that of the Artaria first edition. Frequently some special authority was claimed for a particular edition: Imbault, for example, noted on the title-page of his ‘Nouvelle Edition’ of c. 1809 that it was ‘Faite d'aprés l'Edition Originale de Vienne’, whereas André, who had purchased many of Mozart's autographs from Constanze in November 1799, proudly announced that his text was ‘faite d'après le manuscrit original de l'auteur’.

The fact that some publishers issued the works more than once (Sieber and Pleyel in Paris, André in Offenbach, Lavenu in London) shows that, for publishers, Mozart's quartets continued to be valuable commodities. The proliferation of published arrangements of the quartets for other instruments reinforces this: versions for woodwind and strings, piano solo, piano duet, two pianos and even full orchestra appeared in the early nineteenth century.