By Jack Malvern [Times Online, 12 January 2006]

SOME 170 years ago Mozart’s widow stood in her Salzburg residence with a knife poised over one of her late husband’s manuscripts. Slowly, and with a slight wobble, Constanze sliced through a sheet containing music for a string quartet and parts of a piano concerto.

The two pieces, given to men from whom Constanze wanted favours, drifted their separate ways for the better part of two centuries before they were reunited yesterday for an exhibition at the British Library.