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The story that Mozart was commissioned to write three piano quartets for publication in Franz Anton Hoffmeister's subscription series has proved to be remarkably resilient in the Mozart literature. According to the account that first appeared in Georg Nikolaus von Nissen's biography (1828), Hoffmeister gave Mozart an advance payment for the works, but decided to withdraw after the first quartet, K.478, was poorly received. The article exposes a series of flaws in this narrative by locating Hoffmeister's edition of K.478 in a wider contextual and bibliographical framework than has been hitherto attempted. A revised chain of events, based on a new understanding of Hoffmeister's business, suggests a more complex narrative for Mozart's dealings with the publisher. It also prompts us to reconsider the circumstances surrounding Mozart's composition of his two completed piano quartets and the reception of his chamber music in Vienna before 1791.

The article charts the rise and fall in the dissemination of Boccherini's published music in Vienna before 1800 by examining two sets of documents that have previously attracted little scholarly attention. Artaria's sales catalogues shed light on the burgeoning international trade in printed music after 1779 and the extensive commercial contacts that allowed the firm to offer most of Boccherini's published output for sale during the 1780s. A set of the firm's inventory ledgers documents production of its own editions and allows us to measure the shelf-life of individual Artaria editions from 1784 to 1793. The evidence from these sources reflects a widespread demand for Boccherini's music until the late 1780s and a marked decline thereafter, a trend that led Artaria to withdraw the plates of all its Boccherini publications by 1793.

A previously unknown document witnessing a transaction between Mozart and his principal Viennese publisher, Artaria, appears in an inventory ledger compiled by the firm in 1787. The documentary, financial, and bibliographical contexts suggest that Mozart was paid in advance for six piano trios and twelve songs, but failed to complete the commissions in full. This conclusion casts light on the decline in Mozart's publishing output and the legends that surround his creativity and reception in Vienna between 1787 and 1791. Rather than neglecting the composer, Artaria may simply have been unwilling to offer him more commissions until the existing projects had been finished. iv. 110-11, letter 1130,11. 8-10: 'Nun bin ich gezwungen meine Quartetten (:diese miihsame Arbeit:) um ein Spottgeld herzugeben, nur um in meinen Umstanden Geld in die Hande zu bekommen.' 173 Artaria's edition was advertised in the Wiener Zeitung on 28 Dec. 1791. See Mozart: Dokumente, 376 and Weinmann, Artaria & Comp., 30 (PN 361). 174 Mozart: Letters, 945, letter 587; Mozart: Briefe, iv. 117, letter 1139, 1. 19: 'weil ich fiir H:Schreibe.' 175 According to a recent theory, Mozart planned to write a set of string quintets for Hoffmeister and John Bland, and completed only two before he died: the string quintets in D K. 593 and E flat K. 614. See Ian Woodfield, 'John Bland: London Retailer of the Music of Haydn and Mozart', Music & Letters, 81 (2000), 210-44 at 231.