Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Instrumental music
Chamber Music with a Keyboard Instrument
Background and overview
Mozart’s earliest recorded musical experience was with the clavichord or harpsichord. The following anecdote, related by his sister Nannerl after his death, is well known:
The son was three years old when the father began to instruct his seven-year-old daughter in the clavier. The boy at once showed his God-given, extraordinary talent. He often spent much time at the keyboard, picking out thirds, which he was always striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the keyboard. It was so easy for this child and for his father that he learned a piece in an hour and a minuet in half an hour, so that he could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, keeping exactly in time. He made such progress that at the age of five he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.
Reports from many corners of Europe during Mozart’s childhood tours tell of his extraordinary technical accomplishments – that at an early age he could sight-read, improvise, and play with a brilliance perhaps unsurpassed by any other keyboard player of his time. But what kind of performer was he in his maturity? Some idea of what Mozart valued can be gleaned from letters in which he criticized performers who grimaced while playing, whose rhythm was weak, who rushed, who played in a choppy or heavy manner, or whose use of rubato destroyed rather than affirmed the tempo. When he felt a performance had gone well, he wrote that it “flowed forth like oil”, and he once urged his sister to play with “plenty of expression, taste, and fire”. Unfortunately, however, descriptions of Mozart’s playing from the last decade of his life, while making clear that it was unsurpassed, generally either are vague or lapse into hagiology.
Mozart composed keyboard music in all periods of his life. He wrote for himself and his sister, for his own, his sister’s, and his father’s pupils, for friends who were amateur or professional musicians, and for the commercial market of amateur keyboard players. Mozart’s organ compositions were apparently improvised, and virtually nothing remains, aside from a few tantalizing descriptions. His early keyboard music reckoned with the harpsichord and the clavichord. (The Mozarts owned a folding clavichord, which they took with them on journeys for practice purposes.) Then, at some unknown point in the 1770s the fortepiano, ancestor of the modern piano, entered the picture, becoming Mozart’s favorite instrument, even though in the homes of many of his friends, colleagues, and patrons only a harpsichord could be counted on.
The large harpsichords and the fortepianos for which Mozart composed had a range of five octaves, from F to f'''. Many of his early pieces use a narrower range, suitable for clavichords and smaller harpsichords.
Accompanied Keyboard Music
In Mozart’s time the works now called violin sonatas, cello sonatas, and piano trios, quartets, or quintets were conceived as domestic music for keyboard, accompanied by one or more (usually) stringed instruments. The origin of this practice lies in certain social circumstances: in middle- and upper-class families, the daughters were frequently keyboard players and the sons violinists or cellists. The daughters, whose musical skills helped to snare a husband, were commonly more accomplished than the sons, who were also expected to advance further in their formal education and to master such manly arts as fencing and horsemanship. Hence, for an evening’s private music-making, a repertory was required that assigned greater responsibility to the women.
In Mozart’s earliest such works, the juvenile Opuses 1-4 from 1763-65, the technical and conceptual demands on both players are modest. But from recurring remarks in the press during the second half of the 1780s, it seems that later on Mozart showed blithe disregard for the limitations of many musical amateurs. In an essay entitled “Concerning the Latest Favorite Music at Grand Concerts, especially in regard to Ladies’ Predilections in Pianoforte Dilettantism”, for instance, a piano quartet is discussed:
Some time ago, a single quartet by [Mozart] (for fortepiano, one violin, one viola, and violoncello) was engraved and published, which is very artistically composed and in performance needs the utmost precision in all the four parts, but even when well played, or so it seems, is able and intended to delight only connoisseurs of music in a musica di camera. The cry soon made itself heard: “Mozart has written a very special new quartet, and such-and-such a princess or countess possesses and plays it!”, and this excited curiosity and led to the rash resolve to produce this original composition at grand and noisy concerts and to make a parade with it invita Minerva. Many another piece keeps some countenance, even when indifferently performed; but in truth one can hardly bear listening to this product of Mozart’s when it falls into mediocre amateurish hands and is negligently played.
Now this is what happened innumerable times last winter; at nearly every place to which my travels led me and where I was taken to a concert, some young lady or pretentious middle-class demoiselle, or some other pert dilettante in a noisy gathering, came up with this engraved quartet and fancied that it would be enjoyed. But it could not please: everybody yawned with boredom over the incomprehensible tintamarre of four instruments which did not keep together for four bars on end, and whose senseless concentus never allowed any unity of feeling; but it had to please, it had to be praised! It is difficult for me to describe to you the persistence with which attempts were nearly everywhere made to enforce this. It were too little merely to rail at an ephemeral manie du jour, for it went on almost throughout a whole winter... .
What a difference when this much-advertised work of art is performed with the highest degree of accuracy by four skilled musicians who have studied it carefully, in a quiet room where the sound of every note cannot escape the listening ear, and in the presence of only two or three attentive persons! But, of course, in this case no éclat, no brilliant, modish success is to be thought of, nor is conventional praise to be obtained! Here political ambition can have no part to play, nothing to gain, nothing to bestow, nothing to give and nothing to take – in contrast to public concerts of the modern kind, where such factors exert an almost constant influence (Journal des Luxus und der Moden, June 1788; translation by E. Blom, P. Branscombe, J. Noble).
Our anonymous critic makes a number of points: Mozart’s late accompanied keyboard music is technically and conceptually difficult compared to the repertory most amateurs played; music of such difficulty could not be adequate1y performed in the salons, as long as playing at sight was the norm. Even if the music were properly prepared, any noise and lack of seriousness would make comprehension difficult; and in any case, this is music for connoisseurs, not the general public.
Certainly Mozart never lowered his standards, despite his father’s urging him in 1778 to mimic J. C. Bach by writing something short and easy, and despite Mozart’s own assertion in 1782 that his music was designed to please both learned and naive listeners. In the later 1780s, however, for all his considerable fame and his declarations of moderation and accessibility, Mozart’s career went seriously wrong; the reception of his piano quartets is just one symptom of this. And although it took only a few more years for professional musicians, patrons, and audiences generally to catch up with Mozart’s conceptual and technical complexities and his flights of genius (his “speculations”, Leopold would have called them), by then it was too late for him to benefit financially or emotionally.
N.Z.
Quintets, quartets, and trios
K. 254 Divertimento in B flat, (Piano Trio) No. 1
Origin: Salzburg, August, 1776
Scoring: violin, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro assai. Adagio. Rondeaux: Tempo di menuetto.
Mozart saw the piano trio medium essentially as an accompanied piano sonata (the view taken by Haydn and other contemporaries). Nonetheless, in his six works in the genre (as well as a seventh, K. 442, which was completed by Maximilian Stadler), piano and violin share in melody and accompaniment as almost equal partners, and the cello serves both as bass, and, more rarely, as a melodist of some significance. And increasingly in his trios, from the development of the first movement of K. 496 onward, Mozart uses what the musicologist Karl Geiringer has termed a new “quartet-style”, in which he writes four equally weighted contrapuntal lines for the violin, the cello, and the treble and bass of the piano. But for all that, the piano, with its ability to sustain both melody and accompaniment, remains first among equals in these works. We are even visually reminded of the piano’s centrality in the trios as we look at Mozart’s autograph manuscripts: the violin is written above and the cello below the piano staves.
The first piano trio is modestly entitled “divertimento”. The first movement is a fast-moving and high-spirited Allegro, full of strong, dynamic contrasts. The string parts are merely supplementary and could be eliminated without serious musical loss. For the Finale Mozart chooses a type of movement to which he constantly returned in his early years, a Rondo in the style of a graceful minuet. Its leisurely pace and abundance of melodic invention belie its formal strength.
R.H.
K. 452 Quintet for Piano and Winds in E flat major
Origin: Vienna, March 30, 1784
Scoring: oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, piano
Movements: Largo – Allegro moderato. [Larghetto.] Rondo: Allegretto.
Although Mozart entered this quintet into his personal catalogue on March 30, 1784, he may in fact have completed it nearly two weeks earlier, since he originally planned its first performance at his benefit concert in the Burgtheater in Vienna on March 21. But Prince Alois Liechtenstein had chosen that night to give an opera performance at his palace, which would perforce have lured Mozart’s noble patrons away from his concert, so he postponed it until April 1. Writing to his father nine days later he reported that the new quintet “called forth the very greatest applause”.
The quintet is unique in the corpus of Mozart’s concerted writing for wind instruments in that he was here dealing with a group of four dissimilar voices pitted against a common background, the piano. He realized that there was a world of difference between composing Harmoniemusik, involving pairs of wind instruments, and this quintet, with only one of each type. Therefore he kept brief chord passages unsupported by the piano and contrasted the instruments in various permutations against the piano, endeavoring never to make any one of them disproportionately prominent.
The composer was delighted with the results: “I myself consider it to be the best work I have ever composed”, he told his father in an excess of enthusiasm. “How I wish you could have heard it! And how beautifully it was performed!” In this quintet Mozart decided to build up fairly long themes by a sort of patch-work method – that is, by stitching together short motifs. The constantly changing instrumentation suggests a superficial instability. But as the quintet unfolds before us, its fundamental unity becomes clear.
R.H.
K. 478 Piano Quartet in G minor
Origin: Vienna, October 16, 1785
Scoring: violin, viola, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Rondo.
K. 493 Piano Quartet in E flat major
Origin: Vienna, June 3, 1786
Scoring: violin, viola, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Larghetto. Allegretto.
Mozart seems virtually to have invented the piano quartet. His interest in it may have arisen from a preference in his Viennese years for participating in chamber music as a violist: thus we have the so-called “Kegelstatt” Trio for piano, clarinet, and viola, K. 498; the string quintets with two violas, rather than Luigi Boccherini’s familiar configuration involving two cellos; and we have also, perhaps, the addition of a viola to the ubiquitous piano trio to form a piano quartet.
Although never as popular a genre as the piano trio or string quartet, the piano quartet was later taken up by Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Dvorák, Brahms, and others. By the time of Dvorák and Brahms, piano quartets were intended for four equally virtuosic partners in a concert hall.
In Mozart’s catalogue of his own works the Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478, is assigned to July 1785, about the same time as the first version of the Masonic Funeral Music, K. 477. The completion of the quartet is usually given as October 16, 1785, however, because that date is found on the autograph manuscript (now in Warsaw). Perhaps these dates mark off the period from Mozart’s first draft of the piece to his putting the final touches on the manuscript. On December 1, in any case, Leopold Mozart received a packet from his son which contained, among other music, a manuscript score of K. 478 (perhaps the autograph) and the engraved violin and viola parts from the first edition by the Viennese publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister.
According to Georg Nikolaus Nissen (Constanze Mozart’s second husband), the G minor Piano Quartet was the first of three piano quartets commissioned from Mozart by Hoffmeister, but as the public found the work too difficult, the publisher withdrew from the venture. Before that, Mozart had entered a second (and final) piano quartet, in E flat major (K. 493), in his catalogue, under the date June 3, 1786. This quartet was issued in 1787 by Artaria and Co., who purchased the engraved but subsequently abandoned plates for the piano, viola, and cello parts from Hoffmeister. Apparently, the autograph for K. 493 was already missing in Mozart’s lifetime, although two sketches for the Finale do survive.
Both piano quartets are in three movements: a large-scale sonata form first movement with coda; a lyrical, slower movement in sonatina form (K. 478) or in full-blown sonata form (K. 493); and a rondo-finale, in which high spirits abound. In Mozart’s piano trios the most common textures arise either from the strings accompanying or doubling the piano, or from the thematic material being passed among the three participants. Antiphonal exchanges between the strings as a group and the piano are infrequent, and rarer still is “piano-concerto” writing with the two strings acting as the “orchestra”. In the piano quartets, on the contrary, the weight that the addition of a viola imparts to the strings seems to have influenced Mozart’s general artistic conception: sonorous antiphonal exchanges and (especially in K. 493) brilliant “concerto” writing are much in evidence.
N.Z.
K. 442 Piano Trio in D minor (completed by Maximilian Stadler)
Origin: Vienna, 1785 to 1788?
Scoring: violin, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Andantino. Allegro.
This work incorporates three fragmentary movements of independent origin, completed and assembled after Mozart’s death by the Abbé Maximilian Stadler. Stadler also completed several fragmentary works for piano and violin (K. 372, 403, 402, and 396), all perhaps at the request of Mozart’s widow Constanze. Approximately the first quarter of movement one, and slightly more than half each of movements two and three are original.
The usual dating of 1783 for all three fragments has been recently contested by German musicologists Wolfgang Plath and Wolfgang Rehm in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. According to them, the first movement appears to date from 1785 or 1786, about the time Mozart commenced work on a sequence of completed piano trios, K. 496, 502, 542, 548, and 564. The second movement, originally entitled “Tempo di Menuetto”, appears to come from about the same time, and may originally have been intended as a finale rather than a middle movement. The third movement appears to date from 1788 or later, and was most likely intended as an opening movement rather than a finale; it is presumably Mozart’s last extant essay in the piano trio genre.
W.C.
K. 496 Piano Trio in G major, No. 2
Origin: Vienna, July 8, 1786
Scoring: violin, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegretto.
After K. 254 Mozart did not complete another piano trio for ten years. Then, between 1786 and 1788, he composed five more, probably for his own use. Such was the growing popularity of the genre, particularly among amateur music makers, that the first four were very soon published – K. 496 in 1786 by Franz Anton Hoffmeister, and K. 502, 542, and 548 as a set in 1788 by Artaria and Co. Mozart was still somewhat unsure as to what to call K. 496: he wrote “Sonata” on the title page, but entered “Terzett” into his personal catalogue of compositions on July 8, 1786. By the time K. 502 was completed on November 18, 1786, “Terzett” had become the standard title.
For seventeen long measures at the start of K. 496, the piano alone unravels one of Mozart’s most sinuous opening themes. It constantly seems to turn away from any conclusion. The second movement is one of Mozart’s great slow movements, intricate, refined, and majestic. His genius for counterpoint blossoms throughout. The theme and six variations that constitute the Finale are in general a lighthearted relief after the intensity of the slow movement.
R.H.
K. 498 Clarinet Trio in E flat major, “Kegelstatt”
Origin: Vienna, August 5, 1786
Scoring: clarinet, viola, piano
Movements: Andante. Menuetto. Rondeaux: Allegretto.
For this trio Mozart chose the members of the keyboard, string, and wind instrument families that he loved best, and one can well visualize his savoring their qualities and potential.
History has awarded the clarinet trio the nickname “Kegelstatt” (which, loosely translated, means “bowling alley”). According to a questionable tale, it was written during a game of skittles. (See also the discussion of the twelve Duos for two horns.) He entered the work into his personal catalogue on August 5, 1786, and, according to his friend Caroline Pichler, he wrote it for Franziska von Jacquin, one of the best of his piano pupils. It was probably originally played in the intimacy of the Jacquin family circle by Franziska, with Mozart himself playing viola and Anton Stadler, clarinet.
The first slow movement offers totally new evidence of Mozart’s uncanny mastery of sonata form. Its unity arises from one principal source, namely the gruppetto (or ornamental turn in fast notes), which dominates every musical idea in the movement from the first measure on. With the Minuet and Trio that follows, Mozart shows how far behind he has left the simple dance structure. The Minuet has a grandeur that would do no disservice to a symphony. The Finale is a spacious, timeless Rondo that sings from beginning to end.
R.H.
K. 502 Piano Trio in B flat major, No. 3
Origin: Vienna, November 18, 1786
Scoring: violin, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Larghetto. Allegretto.
Almost all the material in the first movement of this masterly trio evolves from a single theme. Even the codetta theme, which completes both the exposition and the movement, where one would normally expect Mozart to write a new and germinal motive, is in fact a further development of this principal idea, this time demonstrating the imitative potential of his new quartet style.
The glorious beauties of the Larghetto betray that Mozart was a true romantic at heart. Its radiant melody, as long and as spacious as some of Schubert’s, would not be out of place in one of the late piano concertos.
The Finale vividly shows Mozart’s eagerness for developing his material at every available opportunity. In the coda Mozart’s contrapuntal genius takes over and sets motive against motive in a dazzling display of virtuosity. This is a Finale of impressive unity and strength and one of Mozart’s greatest achievements in the sonata-rondo form that he had virtually invented and made so much his own.
R.H.
K. 542 Piano Trio in E major, No. 4
Origin: Vienna, June 22, 1788
Scoring: violin, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Andante grazioso. Finale: Allegro.
The last three trios were composed over a four-month period in 1788. Mozart entered K. 542 in his catalogue on June 22, having announced its completion a few days earlier in a letter to his fellow Mason and benefactor Michael Puchberg, suggesting at the same time that they try it out at a musical party at Puchberg’s house in the near future. He also sent a copy of the Trio to his sister, Nannerl, urging her to play it to Michael Haydn, who he was certain would enjoy it.
As with other opening statements in these piano trios, the principal theme is offered here by piano alone before being enriched and enlarged by all three instruments. The somewhat melancholy Rondo that is the second movement is dominated by its principal theme, which is one of those transparently simple Mozartean melodies that can have such uncannily moving properties. Mozart’s original Finale for this work grew to sixty-five measures before he finally rejected it in favor of the present one, a Rondo of almost concerto-like glitter, with episodic passages of considerable virtuosity for both violin and piano.
R.H.
K. 548 Piano Trio in C major, No. 5
Origin: Vienna, July 14, 1788
Scoring: violin, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Andante cantabile. Allegro.
Musicologist Alfred Einstein considers this trio “classic in its mastery”. One can perhaps see what he means in the simplicity of its structure; in the triadic nature of its principal theme, employing for once all three instruments in unison; and in its classical diatonic harmony, in stark contrast to the rich romantic hues that so often imbued its E major predecessor. For the slow movement Mozart finds a much more relaxed mood with a succession of beautiful, warm melodies enlivened by an occasional measure of sixteenth notes from the piano. Mozart is irrepressibly abandoned in the Rondo Finale, adroitly interweaving his many closely related themes into a virtual nonstop welter of activity. The Finale ends as the trio began, with all three instruments in unison voicing the chord of C major.
R.H.
K. 564 Piano Trio in G major, No. 6
Origin: Vienna, October 27, 1788
Scoring: violin, violoncello, piano
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegretto.
It was Otto Jahn, Mozart’s great nineteenth-century biographer, who first suggested that the last trio may have started life as a piano sonata, and that the trio version was hastily assembled, perhaps to fulfill some now-unknown commission. While this opinion is no longer given much credence, the peculiar state of the autograph manuscript (which has been examined and described by Alfred Einstein) does seem to bear out Jahn’s contention. Only the string parts were in Mozart’s handwriting, the keyboard part having been copied out by someone else. There was also a solo key board part in Mozart’s hand, which survives as a fragment only. Whatever the reason for this odd situation, it is a fact that this trio seems but a pale imitation of its great predecessors. There is little conversation between the three instruments; the violin and cello play together in parallel motion for much of the time, with little imitation or use of the new quartet style that had become a feature of Mozart’s language. But for all that, it is a work of considerable skill and many beauties. The Andante is an uncomplicated theme-and-variations movement with a theme of charming simplicity that is played in turn by piano, violin, and cello. The Finale is as usual a Rondo.
R.H.
K. 617 Adagio in C minor and Rondo in C major (Glass Harmonica Quintet)
Origin: Vienna, May 23, 1791
Scoring: flute, oboe, viola, violoncello, glass harmonica
Movements: Adagio – Rondo: Allegretto.
In 1761 Benjamin Franklin devised a primitive “musical glasses” instrument, called a (h)armonica, consisting of a series of tuned glass bowls or discs mounted concentrically on a horizontal axle that is rotated by a treadle. As the bowls rotate, they are moistened in a trough of water placed below, and played by one’s fingers from above, just as one induces vibrations in a crystal dinner glass. The invention was improved in Europe by Joseph Aloys Schmittbaur, who expanded its range to four octaves, from tenor c to high c'''. The instrument enjoyed a modicum of domestic popularity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Mozart composed this work, along with the solo Adagio, K. 356, for Marianne Kirchgessner who, blind from early youth, had studied with Schmittbaur and attained a noted level of virtuosity. Kirchgessner premiered K. 617 in a recital at the Kärntnerthor Theater, Vienna, on August 19, 1791. It was to be Mozart’s last piece of chamber music.
The quintet possesses a hauntingly attractive quality that results from its uncanny combination of timbres: the harmonica and winds engage in colorful melodic dialogue, while the low strings provide a soft accompanimental cushion. As in the contemporaneous works for mechanical organ, the sheer simplicity of formal and harmonic procedures gives the work an aspect of piercing clarity, free of extraneous decoration. A product of Mozart’s most mature style, the quintet is a thoroughly distilled, captivating creation.
W.C.
Sonatas, sonata movements, and variations with violin
K. 6 Sonata in C major
Origin: Salzburg or Paris, 1762 to 1764
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto I / Menuetto II. Allegro molto.
K. 7 Sonata in D major
Origin: Salzburg or Paris, 1762 to 1764
Movements: Allegro molto. Adagio. Menuetto I / Menuetto II.
K. 8 Sonata in B flat major
Origin: Paris, 1763 or 1764
Movements: Allegro. Andante grazioso. Menuetto I / Menuetto II.
K. 9 Sonata in G major
Origin: Salzburg or Paris, 1763 or 1764
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Andante. Menuetto I / Menuetto II.
K. 10 Sonata in B flat major
Origin: London, 1764
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto I / Menuetto II.
K. 11 Sonata in G major
Origin: London, 1764
Movements: Andante. Allegro. Menuetto.
K. 12 Sonata in A major
Origin: London, 1764
Movements: Andante. Allegro.
K. 13 Sonata in F major
Origin: London, 1764
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto I / Menuetto II.
K. 14 Sonata in C major
Origin: London, 1764
Movements: Allegro. Allegro. Menuetto I / Menuetto II (en carillon).
K. 15 Sonata in B flat major
Origin: London, 1764
Movements: Andante maestoso. Allegro grazioso.
K. 26 Sonata in E flat major
Origin: The Hague, February 1765
Movements: Molto allegro. Adagio poco andante. Rondo: Allegro.
K. 27 Sonata in G major
Origin: The Hague, February 1765
Movements: Andante poco adagio. Allegro.
K. 28 Sonata in C major
Origin: The Hague, 1765
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Allegro grazioso.
K. 29 Sonata in D major
Origin: The Hague, 1765
Movements: Allegro molto. Menuetto.
K. 30 Sonata in F major
Origin: The Hague, 1765
Movements: Adagio. Rondo: Tempo di menuetto.
K.31 Sonata in B flat major
Origin: The Hague, 1765
Movements: Allegro. Tempo di menuetto.
For three-and-a-half years – from June 9, 1763, to November 29, 1766 – Leopold Mozart took a leave of absence from his post as vice kapellmeister in Salzburg, and, accompanied by Wolfgang, NannerI, and his wife, traveled around western Europe. The goals of this extraordinary journey were to make money by buying and selling music and other items and by giving private and public concerts with his two child prodigies, to publicize the miracle of Wolfgang’s precocious talents, and to educate his son by exposing him at first hand to the music and opinions of some of Europe’s distinguished musicians. The three principal stopping points were Paris (November 18, 1763-April 19, 1764; May 10-July 9, 1766), London (April 23, 1764-July 24, 1765), and the Low Countries (September 4, 1765-May 9, 1766). In each of these places, Leopold Mozart contrived to publish his son’s first sonatas.
Acting as Wolfgang’s teacher, amanuensis, editor, and business manager, Leopold observed that in Paris, London, and Holland (unlike in central Europe) there was a large amateur market for engraved editions of sonatas for keyboard accompanied by violin. Hundreds of such volumes were published in the mid-eighteenth century. He therefore supervised Wolfgang’s creation of sixteen diminutive sonatas, found the necessary noble patrons to whom to dedicate each volume, and saw the works through the press. He also sent and carried copies to Salzburg, later on selling them himself and through the firm of Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf in Leipzig.
The sonatas were assembled as follows. Some of the single-movement keyboard pieces that Wolfgang had composed in his study notebooks (for instance, Nannerl’s Notebook, K. 1a-5b, and the London Notebook, K. 15a-ss) were grouped in twos, threes, fours, or fives, according to keys and tempos, to form “sonatas”. Where necessary, new movements were created, and at least one of the little “source” pieces was probably by Leopold himself. These movements were then reworked to improve them, and the optional violin (or flute) and (in the case of Op. 3) cello parts were created to accompany them. The results are entirely acceptable galant sonatas, not very different in style, length, or difficulty from many others published in the same cities around that time. The title pages of the four publications read in part as follows.
(K. 6-7)
Sonatas for Harpsichord, Which can be Played with Violin Accompaniment. Dedicated to Louise-Marie-Thérèse de Bourbon, Madame Victoire de France [Louis XV’s second daughter]. Opus 1. [Published in Paris, February 1764.]
(K. 8-9)
Sonatas for Harpsichord, Which can be Played with Violin Accompaniment. Dedicated to Madame la Comtesse de Tesse, [Lady-in-Waiting to the wife of the Dauphin]. Opus 2. [Published in Paris, April 1764.]
(K. 10-15)
Six Sonatas for the Harpsichord, Which can be Played with the Accompaniment of a Violin or Transverse Flute, and a Violoncello. Dedicated to her Majesty Queen [Sophie] Charlotte of Great Britain. Opus 3. [Published in London, January 1765.]
(K. 26-31)
Six Sonatas for the Harpsichord with the Accompaniment of a Violin. Dedicated to the Princess [Caroline] of Nassau-Weilburg, née Princess of Orange. Opus 4. [Published in The Hague, March 1766.]
N.Z.
The “Palatine” Sonatas
From Mannheim on October 6, 1777, Mozart wrote to his father, “I send my sister herewith six duets for clavicembalo and violin by [Joseph] Schuster, which I have often played here. They are not bad. If I stay on I shall write six myself in the same style, as they are very popular here”.
Mozart carried out his intention of rivaling these works by composing four violin sonatas in Mannheim and another three when he reached Paris. One of the Mannheim group (K. 296) was saved for later publication in 1781. The remaining six were brought out by the Paris firm of Jean-Georges Sieber in November of 1778 with a meaningless “Opus 1” designation and a dedication to the Electress of the Palatine. Their published sequence is the same as their order in the first Köchel catalogue: 301-306.
With these “Palatine” Sonatas Mozart reached the first stage on the way to equal partnership of the two instruments as it was to be supremely achieved in the sonatas K. 454, 481, and 526. The accent is still on the keyboard, but there is no movement that could dispense with the cooperation of the violin. Besides the influence of Schuster, the sonatas for clavier with violin accompaniment by Johann Schobert also proved helpful models; and finally there was the inspiration of Johann Christian Bach, whom Mozart esteemed highly and had met again in Paris for the first time since his childhood visit to London. Five out of the six “Palatine” Sonatas consist of only two movements, a structure found fairly frequently in J. C. Bach and Joseph Haydn, but rarely in Mozart.
M.F.
K. 301 Violin Sonata in G major (K6 293a)
Origin: Mannheim, early 1778
Movements: Allegro con spirito. Allegro.
Although the first movement of K. 301 is in a regular sonata form, there is no true development of the exposition’s thematic material. The movement is held together in a very peculiar way, by a kind of ritornello, or refrain, which appears frequently in various guises. The second movement, thematically related to the first, is in gentle 3/8 rhythm despite its Allegro designation. It is an amalgamation of French formal principles with the rhythm of the German dance and consists of three sections, the third of which is an exact repeat of the first, whereas the contrasting second is in the minor key. The three sections have basically the same structure; a short coda concludes the movement.
M.F.
K. 302 Violin Sonata in E flat major (K6 293b)
Origin: Mannheim, early 1778
Movements: Allegro. Rondo: Andante grazioso.
Unlike the G major Sonata, K. 301, which begins so lyrically, the second “Palatine” Sonata starts in a more typically Mozartean way, an example of which can be found as early as the Symphony in E flat, K. 16: the main theme begins with a sounding of the chord of E flat major, followed by an enthusiastic downward progression on each of the separate notes of that chord. The development section is powerful and largely in minor tonalities. It is also entirely thematic – an important step forward, as compared with the “fantasy” development in K. 301.
Once more, Johann Christian Bach has put his mark on a Mozart work: the rondo is inscribed Andante grazioso and recalls several movements in the same vein in the piano sonatas by the London master. It does not mean, however, that this movement is impersonal or merely derivative. It has, in fact, an affecting, almost hymnlike solemnity.
M.F.
K. 303 Violin Sonata in C major (K6 293c)
Origin: Mannheim, early 1778
Movements: Adagio – Allegro molto. Tempo di menuetto.
This, the third of the “Palatine” Sonatas, is certainly one of the most unusual sonatas Mozart ever wrote. It begins with a leisurely Adagio, followed by a glowing and passionate Allegro. The Adagio is actually the main theme and the Allegro the second theme (it even begins in the dominant key, a sure sign of a second theme). However, the movement is not really in sonata form, or is at best only an aborted sonata. After the Allegro, the Adagio returns in an elaborately decorated form that shows Mozart’s art of expressive ornamentation at its highest level. Then the Allegro “resumes its heroic ride” (to quote Alfred Einstein), bringing this strange movement to a close.
The second, and last, movement, although it is inscribed Tempo di Menuetto, is really not in minuet form but in sonata form – perhaps to make up for the abortive sonata of the first movement. But the term “minuet” is amply justified by the dignified dance rhythm and charming grace of the piece.
M.F.
K. 305 Violin Sonata in A major (K6 293d)
Origin: Mannheim, early 1778
Movements: Allegro molto. Tema con variazioni: Andante grazioso.
A piece of music in the key of A major sounds particularly brilliant when it is played on a stringed instrument, and this A major Sonata is certainly brilliant, if a little superficial. More than any of the other sonatas in the Palatine set this one betrays its Mannheim background in the frequency of its crescendos and in the unison writing for both instruments.
Despite its galant leanings, however, the first movement has a strikingly ingenious development section. The concluding movement is a set of variations, the first of its kind since the variations Mozart wrote in his early Violin Sonata, K. 31.
M.F.
K. 296 Violin Sonata in C major
Origin: Mannheim, March 11, 1778
Movements: Allegro vivace. Andante sostenuto. Rondo: Allegro.
Mozart composed this sonata as a parting thank-you gift for Therese Pierron Serrarius, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a court chamberlain in Mannheim; Mozart and his mother stayed in the Serrarius household free of charge during the latter part of their visit to the city. Therese, whom Mozart referred to as the “house nymph”, was a pianist of modest endowments; he probably gave her a few piano lessons as well as a copy of this Violin Sonata, which he completed on March 11, 1778. The work was published late in 1781 as the second of the Auernhammer group (see p. 291), and may well be looked upon as the link between those works and the Palatine set, most of which were slightly earlier in date of composition.
The first movement opens with vigor and élan, very much in keeping with its bright C major tonality, and retains that mood throughout. The Andante is tender and dreamlike.
The final Rondo contains a wealth of themes arranged in a highly original way: instead of the more usual three appearances of the Rondo theme, with two contrasting episodes sandwiched between them – schematized as A-B-A-C-A – the final repeat of the Rondo theme is delayed while the C major episode is greatly expanded, with a central episode of its own. When the rondo tune at last reappears, it is only to serve as a brief coda or leave-taking. This lively movement was to form the starting point for the Finale of the Concerto for Flute and Harp, K. 299, written a few weeks later in Paris.
M.F.
K. 304 Violin Sonata in E minor (K6 300c)
Origin: Paris, early summer 1778
Movements: Allegro. Tempo di menuetto.
Generally considered the greatest of the “Palatine” Sonatas, K. 304, in the very unusual key (for Mozart) of E minor, was composed in Paris in May 1778, immediately before the similarly intense Piano Sonata in A minor, K. 310. Mozart’s loneliness, indeed his feelings of despair in the great city, where he was largely neglected and where his mother fell ill and died, leave their mark on this work. “It springs from the most profound depths of emotion”, remarks Alfred Einstein, “and goes beyond the alternating dialogue style to knock at those gates of the great world of drama that Beethoven was to fling wide open”.
The first movement is one of the most dramatic Mozart ever wrote and certainly the first of its kind in his whole output. Every note counts in this superbly organized movement; each theme is related to all the others. The second movement, like that of K. 303, is in the rhythm of a minuet, but this time it takes the form of a rondo. The main theme, which is never repeated literally, is based on the descending bass line, a procedure characteristic of the Baroque era. This theme imparts an elegaic mood to the entire movement. Only at the end, when the coda brings us back to the drama of the first movement, do we become aware that this elegy is indeed a song of lamentation for the dead.
M.F.
K. 306 Violin Sonata in D major (K6 300l)
Origin: Paris, summer 1778
Movements: Allegro con spirito. Andante cantabile. Allegretto.
This is the last of the “Palatine” Sonatas. The words with which Beethoven characterized his “Kreutzer” Sonata, Op. 47, “written in a concertante style”, would apply just as well to this work, the most brilliant of the whole set and a worthy crowning of the cycle. It is the only one in three movements and the only one with a true slow movement.
The playfulness of this sonata makes it understandable that the development section in the first movement is of the “fantasy” type – that is, it is connected with the exposition not by the themes but only by a secondary motif. The second movement maintains the normal organization of the sonata form; the development section brings a logical continuation of the ideas of the exposition without ever quoting them literally. The extensive cadenza in the Finale certainly stresses the concertante character of the entire work, and the continuous alternation of a French-sounding Allegretto in 2/4 time and an Italian Allegro in 6/8 time brings to mind Mozart’s own Violin Concerto in D major, K. 218, written only a few years before.
M.F.
K. 378 Violin Sonata in B flat major (K6 317d)
Origin: Salzburg or Vienna, early 1779 or 1781
Movements: Allegro moderato. Andantino sostenuto e cantabile. Rondeau: Allegro.
Mozart included this work among the six “Auernhammer” Sonatas, published in 1781 (see below). Although musicologists are divided in their dating of this work, it must have been written earlier than the other works in the Auernhammer set, except for K. 296, since Mozart, in sending the complete set of six sonatas to his sister, remarked that she was already familiar with those in C major (K. 296) and in B flat (K. 378). Probably it was Mozart’s first composition on his return to Salzburg from his Paris journey in the early days of 1779.
With the first movement, a new world opens up. The brilliance of the D major Sonata (K. 306) is here combined with thematic material of great melodic intensity. Besides, it is one of the early instances of a sonata form with three themes – a device that is more characteristic of Anton Bruckner than of Mozart.
The deeply expressive slow movement has struck more than one critic as a blood relative to the more lyrical passages in the soon-to-be-written opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, although it also looks backward to the mellifluous slow movements of Johann Christian Bach.
The concluding Rondeau uses the lively dance rhythm (3/8) we know from the G major Sonata, K. 301, but with more brillance; as a great surprise, Mozart brings in a second episode in the main key but in a new meter, 4/4. Almost every work of the Auernhammer set has surprises – they are indeed “rich in new ideas”, as the anonymous Hamburg reviewer of 1783 said.
M.F.
K. 372 Allegro in B flat major (completed by Maximilian Stadler)
Origin: Vienna, March 24, 1781
This fragmentary movement would appear to be an abandoned forerunner of Mozart’s series of completed violin sonatas from 1781. The autograph manuscript bears the inscription, “Sonata I. Vienna Ii 24 di Marzo 1781”. Thus the work is Mozart’s first known piece of chamber music composed after his move to Vienna, albeit still during his service to Archbishop Colloredo. The heading suggests that he had already decided to bring out a series of piano and violin sonatas. Perhaps, as in the case of K. 379 (see below), Mozart planned to perform the work with the archbishop’s concertmaster Antonio Brunetti, who had come with him to Vienna in the court’s entourage. Like several of Mozart’s later violin sonata fragments (see K. 403, 402, and 396 below), K. 372 was completed after his death by Maximilian Stadler.
W.C.
The “Auernhammer” Sonatas
In the summer of 1781, more than two years after the publication of the six “Palatine” Sonatas, Mozart gathered together a second series of six, the so-called Auernhammer set. Two of them, K. 296 and 378, had already been completed – the first in Mannheim, the second in Salzburg. Now, taking up residence permanently in Vienna, he quickly wrote four more: K. 379, 376, 377, and 380. All six were published as “Opus 2” by Artaria and Co.
Although Josepha von Auernhammer (1758-1820), the dedicatee of this set of violin sonatas, was something more than a gifted amateur, she would nowadays probably be forgotten had she not been closely associated with Mozart. In spite of sarcastic remarks Mozart made about her, he must have appreciated her talent: he entrusted her with one of the parts of his brilliant Sonata for Two Pianos in D, K. 448, and asked his father to send him the parts of his two concertos for two pianos, which he wanted to play with her. It should not be overlooked that the dedication of this second set of six sonatas is not to a violinist but to a pianist; and also that it is no longer to a noble patron but to a musician and a burgher, just as, three years later, Mozart was to dedicate six string quartets to his colleague Joseph Haydn.
K. 379, 376, 377, and 380 are works of great historic significance: They are the first important chamber works Mozart wrote after his decision to stay in Vienna as a free artist; they constitute his visiting card as a composer. The grand style of Idomeneo is still ringing in them, and at other moments they foreshadow The Abduction from the Seraglio, the first act of which was completed by August 22, 1781.
An astute, anonymous review of the “Auernhammer” Sonatas appeared in a Hamburg publication, Magazin der Musik, (edited by Carl Friedrich Cramer), on April 4, 1783: “These sonatas are the only ones of their kind. They are rich in new ideas, showing traces of the great musical genius of their author. Very brilliant, and well suited to the instrument. Moreover, the violin accompaniment is so ingeniously combined with the piano part that both instruments are continuously employed; and thus these sonatas demand a violinist as accomplished as the pianist.”
M.F.
K. 379 Violin Sonata in G major (K6 373a)
Origin: Vienna, April 1781
Movements: Adagio – Allegro. Andantino cantabile.
The creation of this work is documented in Mozart’s letter of April 8, 1781, to his father. Mozart and a few other Salzburg court musicians had been abruptly summoned to Vienna in the entourage of the archbishop. A chamber music concert was ordered on short notice. Mozart had brought little music with him, so he quickly wrote a concerto movement for the violinist Antonio Brunetti, an aria for the castrato Francesco Ceccarelli, and for himself and Brunetti “a sonata with accompaniment for a violin, which I composed last night between 11 o’clock and midnight, but to be ready in time, I wrote out only Brunetti’s accompanying part, keeping my own part in my head”. The condition of the autograph manuscript, in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., confirms Mozart’s claims about the work’s genesis.
N.Z.
Musicologist Hermann Abert’s classic appreciation of this G major Violin Sonata, which appeared in Walter Willson Cobbett’s Cyclopaedia of Chamber Music, deserves quotation in full:
The G major Sonata, K. 379, is a masterpiece of its kind. Here two G major movements enclose one in G minor which is spiritually the essence of the whole. It is like a thunderstorm sweeping suddenly over a smiling landscape. The Adagio, of the type of the older Italian sonata, is nothing but one continuous song, full of peace and bliss – undimmed until the very last bars. The close on the dominant is of thrilling effect. Then, in the Allegro the storm of passion bursts forth with its grinding mordents and its questioning close – which pulls up suddenly in the Beethoven way before a grand pause. There is no tarrying; even the development is taken at a stride with a few pregnant bars of sequence, and we are hurried breathless through the recapitulation, in which the expression is heightened by the retention of the key of G minor throughout, in Mozart’s typical manner, and by certain striking alterations.
But the storm vanishes as quickly as it came, and the childlike theme of the variations brings us once more into brightest sunlight. Not until the variations begin do we learn that the spirit of agitation is not yet expelled. Regard, for instance, the modulation to D minor at the beginning of the second part; it was not there in the theme itself. Here too there is growing agitation up to the G minor variation, but the tide turns in the fifth with its gorgeous, elaborated melody, and at the end the theme returns in its original form followed by a sentimental and soothing coda.
M.F.
K. 359 12 Variations on “La Bergère Célimène” in G major (K6 374a)
Origin: Vienna, June 1781
Mozart probably wrote this set of variations, along with a second set (K. 360) for one of his aristocratic piano pupils, Countess Maria Karoline Thiennes de Rumbeke. Both are in a popular, easy vein that the countess and her violin partner could master without difficulty. K. 359 was brought out by no fewer than three music publishers in Mozart’s lifetime.
The theme of the variations is an anonymous French chanson. Its words, as naive as its music, can be translated thus: “The shepherdess Célimène goes singing through the woods, ‘Gods! What pain one suffers with an inconstant lover! If he wants to break his vows, I can do nothing to prevent it’.”
M.F.
K. 360 6 Variations on “Hélas, j’ai perdu mon amant” (K6 374b)
Origin: Vienna, June 1781
Like K. 359, this set of variations was probably written for Mozart’s piano student Countess Thiennes de Rumbeke, and employs another eighteenth-century French tune as its theme. The author of the tune (whose title translates “Alas, I have lost my lover”) is Egidio Giuseppe Ignazio Antonio Albanese, an Italian-born singer and composer who made his career in Versailles and Paris, as a musician at the French court, and a popular soloist at the Concert spirituel. The theme has the sophisticated design of a French operatic air.
M.F.
K. 376 Violin Sonata in F major (K6 374d)
Origin: Vienna, summer 1781
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Rondo: Allegro grazioso.
K. 376 is the first “Auernhammer” Sonata in the published sequence. Its lively, energetic, and concise first movement seems very close to Joseph Haydn; the development section uses material that is only very loosely connected with the preceding exposition. The second movement too is Haydnesque: it is a very simple three-part form, with a middle section that is thematically only a variant of the first. This deliberate absence of contrasts creates an almost idyllic atmosphere, heightened by the dialogue-like give-and-take of the two instruments.
The full weight of the sonata is contained in the extensive Rondo. A typical Mozartean feature, which he was to work out even more ingeniously in later compositions, is the juxtaposition of elements from the main theme and from the first episode in the coda: a kind of summing up of what we have heard previously.
M.F.
K. 377 Violin Sonata in F major (K6 374e)
Origin: Vienna, summer 1781
Movements: Allegro. [Andante.] Tempo di menuetto.
This work was published as No. 3 of the six violin sonatas brought out in Vienna by Artaria and Co. in November of 1781. Since Mozart produced two F major sonatas in close succession (K. 376 and 377), he or his publisher decided to separate them in the printed edition by placing the considerably earlier C major Sonata, K. 296, between them.
Although it shares the same key, K. 377 is a strikingly different work from K. 376. Its first movement overflows with energy. The continuous rush of triplets so dominates the discourse that the second theme, shapely and memorable though it is, hardly has a chance to make itself felt. The recapitulation is full of surprises, including some recall of the preceding development section.
The slow movement is a set of six variations in D minor, foreshadowing the Finale of the great String Quartet in D minor, K. 421. For Hermann Abert these variations “suggest gloomy resignation; and the development of a syncopated figure has a goading effect”.
Whenever we see Tempo di Menuetto as the title of a final movement, we expect either a rondo or a rather extended minuet with trio. Here, two sections of the Minuet have repeats that are written out, as they are slightly varied, and the violin joins in only at these repeats. At the end this whole complex is repeated and followed by a coda. In between, we hear two different sections – one might say two trios, but the traditional repeat of the minuet after the first trio is left out.
M.F.
K. 380 Violin Sonata in E flat major (K6 374f)
Origin: Vienna, summer 1781
Movements: Allegro. Andante [con moto]. Rondeau: [Allegro.]
As in the “Palatine” Sonatas, Mozart places the most interesting and most brilliant work at the end of the Auernhammer set. Here also we notice the broad, theatrical gestures of Idomeneo, especially in the powerful first movements of K. 380. Its development section is partly “fantasy” (it begins and ends with an entirely new subject), partly thematic; the manner in which these two principles are freely combined once more shows Mozart’s growing mastery.
The second movement is in Mozart’s grandly tragic key of G minor, a third above the key of the first movement. This “thirds-relationship” (Terzverwandtschaft), so typical of High Romanticism, was still rather rare in Mozart’s time. This chromatic and highly expressive slow movement is Haydnesque insofar as it is almost entirely built upon one theme.
The final Rondo starts with an ingenuous melody, sounding almost like a folk tune. But its second episode, in C minor, is, for that reason, all the more impressive: it introduces a kind of drama that counterbalances the weight of the first movement. The whole Rondo resembles the Finale of the Concerto for Two Pianos (K. 365), but in its fine balance between the two instruments it respects the criteria of true chamber music – a worthy conclusion of a most exciting series of sonatas.
M.F.
K. 403 Violin Sonata in C major (K6 385c) (completed by Maximilian Stadler)
Origin: Vienna, c. 1784?
Movements: Allegro moderato. Andante. Allegretto.
This is one of a series of incomplete sonatas for piano and violin, K. 403, 402, 396, and 404. Three of the fragments, K. 403, 402, and 396, were completed after Mozart’s death by the Abbé Maximilian Stadler, perhaps at Constanze’s request.
Mozart’s manuscript of K. 403 bears the inscription, “Sonata Premiere. Par moi W. A. Mozart pour ma très chère Epouse” (Sonata No. 1, by myself, W. A. Mozart, for my dearest wife). From this one may deduce that Mozart intended to compose a series of sonatas, perhaps three or six in all, of which this was to be the first. One may also conclude that Mozart began the sonata sometime after August 4, 1782, the date of his marriage. The manuscript is written on a kind of paper used by Mozart almost exclusively in 1784. Of the work’s three movements, the first two were completed by Mozart, while the last was only begun with a passage of twenty measures.
W.C.
K. 402 Violin Sonata in A major (K6 385e) (completed by Maximilian Stadler)
Origin: Vienna, c. 1784?
Movements: Andante, ma un poco adagio. Fuga: Allegro moderato.
Like K. 403 (see above), this sonata was left unfinished by Mozart, and was later completed by Stadler. The manuscript bears the inscription, “Sonata IIda”, referring apparently to the series of sonatas that Mozart had begun with K. 403. The opening Andante is complete in Mozart’s manuscript but approximately the second half of the Fugue was appended by Stadler.
The theme of the opening Andante is strikingly similar to the famous Minuet in the Act I Finale of Don Giovanni. While this fact might suggest a later date, the presence of a fugue strongly supports a date closer to 1782, the year in which Mozart and his wife discovered the fugues of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel. On April 20 Wolfgang wrote to his sister, “Baron van Swieten, whom I visit every Sunday, gave me all the works of Handel and Bach to take home ... when Constanze heard the fugues she was completely enraptured. … She would listen to nothing but fugues, and for that matter none but those specifically by Handel and Bach; – and then whenever she heard me playing fugues off the cuff, she would ask whether I had written any of them down – and when I answered ‘no’ – she would accuse me bitterly of not wanting to compose the things that are the most beautiful and artful in music; and she would not stop begging until I wrote her a fugue. ...“ Indeed, in the following months a stream of fugues poured forth, including several arrangements of works by J. S. Bach and W. F. Bach (K. 404a, 405), several fragments (K. Anh 45, 401, 153, Anh 41, Anh 40, Anh 39, 154, 443, Anh 77), and one completed original work (K. 394).
There exists a thirty-four measure fragment of a sonato-allegro movement for piano and violin in A major, K. Anh 48 (K3 480, K6 385E), which could conceivably have arisen in connection with K. 402 – perhaps as a projected opening movement for the sonata.
W.C.
K. 396 Sonata Movement in C minor (K6 385f) (completed by Maximilian Stadler)
Origin: Vienna, c. 1784?
This astonishing fragment appears to constitute the complete exposition of a sonata movement in the stylus fantasticus (“fantastic style”, that is, freely improvisatory) of C. P. E. Bach, to whose C minor Fantasia in the Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the True Art of Keyboard Playing) it bears a certain resemblance. Unfortunately, Mozart’s manuscript contains a violin part only for the last few measures. Perhaps it is for this reason that Stadler “completed” K. 396 as a piano solo; he also gave it the unauthentic title “Fantasia” and tempo marking of “adagio”. (See the note on p. 323.)
A copy of this work in Stadler’s hand bears a dedication to Constanze Mozart. Assuming this is not of Stadler’s own invention, it would appear that Mozart intended K. 396 as part of the sonata series that he had begun with K. 403 and 402. As in the case of K. 402, it seems likely that Wolfgang and Constanze’s recent discovery of the music of the Bach family, at the hands of the Baron van Swieten, might have played a role in determining the musical substance of the piece.
W.C.
K. 404 Andante and Allegretto in C major (K6 385d) (incomplete)
Origin: Vienna, c. 1784?
Movements: Andante. Allegretto.
These two miniature movements may have arisen either together or independently. They were published posthumously by J. A. André as “Andante et Allegretto faciles”. The manuscript of the Andante yields no clue as to its origin; that of the Allegretto is not extant.
The last few measures of the eighteen-measure Andante were reportedly appended by André himself. The Allegretto is a self-sufficient twenty-four measure piece in binary form, and was perhaps originally conceived as a theme for a set of variations. It is tempting to wonder whether these fragments might have been the beginnings of projected second and third movements of a sonata whose first movement was to have been K. 396 (see above).
W.C.
K. 454 Violin Sonata in B flat major, “Strinasacchi”
Origin: Vienna, April 21, 1784
Movements: Largo – Andante. Allegretto.
The four final violin sonatas (K. 454, 481, 526, and 547), dating from the years 1784 to 1788, do not form a set but have in common that they were composed in Vienna in the period of Mozart’s greatest mastery. The first, K. 454, in B flat major, was published by Christoph Torricella of Vienna in a group of three sonatas, two of which were for piano alone (K. 284 and 333).
The first of these four works constituting Mozart’s final thoughts on the subject of the sonata for violin and piano was written for a violin virtuosa, Regina Strinasacchi of Mantua. Mozart was not alone in admiring the art of this remarkable performer. When his father, Leopold, heard her in Salzburg, he described her playing enthusiastically in a letter to his daughter, adding “In general, I think that a woman who has talent plays with more expression than a man”. High praise indeed, coming from a man who was the leading authority on violin playing. Strinasacchi was twenty-three when Mozart composed the B flat Sonata, K. 454, to be performed by them jointly at a concert in the Kärntnerthor Theater in Vienna on April 29, 1784.
As with the sonata (K. 379) that he had written for a concert with the violinist Antonio Brunetti, Mozart did not give himself enough time to write out his piano part, although he had it pretty securely in his head. He performed with a sheet of blank music open before him to fool the audience, but – according to a story told by his widow – the Emperor Joseph II, who was attending the performance, saw the empty sheet through his opera glasses and summoned the composer and his manuscript. Mozart had to confess his ruse, which surely must have amused and impressed the monarch rather than annoying him. The story is well substantiated by the state of the finished autograph manuscript. The piano part is written in ink of a different color, and Mozart, miscalculating his space, has a difficult time squeezing it all in.
The B flat Sonata was composed in the midst of an intense period of creativity. Immediately preceding it were the piano concertos K. 449, 450, 451, and 453, as well as the piano quintet K. 452; immediately following it were two further Piano Concertos, K. 456 and 459. Little wonder, then, that this violin sonata at times takes on a concerto-like brilliance. It differs from all the other violin sonatas in that is has an extremely slow introduction, which immediately stresses the equality of the two instruments, an equality that does not change throughout the whole sonata. The middle movement, marked Andante but with the melodic intensity of an adagio (this was the tempo indication Mozart wrote down at first but then crossed out), is certainly the peak of the work. Mozart uses his boldest chromatic modulations in the development section. The concluding movement returns to the playful mood of the first. It is an extremely elaborate Rondo.
M.F.
K. 481 Violin Sonata in E flat major
Origin: Vienna, December 12, 1785
Movements: Molto allegro. Adagio. Allegretto.
We do not know much about the history of this work apart from the bare facts as they appear in Mozart’s own catalogue, in which he listed it under December 12, 1785. It was published separately by Franz Anton Hoffmeister, just like the Sonata in A major, K. 526, and the String Quartet in D major, K. 499.
The Sonata in E flat major is certainly one of the most mature works in Mozart’s whole chamber music output. The three movements are in complete balance with one another, each having its own structural principle and each starting with an individual interpretation of one of the oldest and commonest thematic principles: the major triad. The exposition of the first movement contains three clearly outlined subjects.
The Adagio, in A flat major, is a rondo with two episodes and varied repeats of the principal subject; it is full of romantic modulations. The Finale, a set of variations on a leisurely theme twenty measures in length, brings the desirable relaxation after the emotional tension of the Adagio.
M.F.
K. 526 Violin Sonata in A major
Origin: Vienna, August 24, 1787
Movements: Molto allegro. Andante. Presto.
A number of critics consider this work to be the greatest of the Mozart violin sonatas. It was finished while Mozart was in the midst of composing Don Giovanni. But the work to which it is more spiritually akin is the Piano Concerto in A major, K. 488. Both of them have quick finales in alla breve, or cut time, and both have a marvelous richness of texture and generosity of melody. Throughout the sonata an easy and fluent use of counterpoint recalls the mastery of J. S. Bach, although the musical language is unmistakably that of Mozart.
The brilliant opening Molto Allegro is in 6/8, a prancing meter Mozart usually reserved for finales. The exposition impresses one by its straightforward concision, although it contains no fewer than five melodic or thematic ideas. Like the first movement, the Andante is in sonata form. It is dominated by a very regular, very solemn bass theme, first heard in the piano. Sudden alternations of major and minor characterize the entire movement, giving us a strong foretaste of the world of Franz Schubert.
The alla breve Finale is one of the longest rondos that Mozart ever wrote in a chamber work; its wealth of themes is handled with that combination of freedom and logic that is the mark of true mastery. Its high spirits go a long way toward assuaging the tragic implications of the Andante.
M.F.
Mozart’s Finale is based upon that of Carl Friedrich Abel’s Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 5, No. 5 – perhaps as a memorial tribute, since Abel died on June 20, 1787.
N.Z.
K. 547 Violin Sonata in F major, “For Beginners”
Origin: Vienna, July 10, 1788
Movements: Andante cantabile. Allegro. Andante con variazioni.
Mozart called his last violin sonata, finished on July 10, 1788, “a small piano sonata for beginners, with a violin”. Both this sonata and the famous “little” Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545, which was composed just two weeks earlier, came into being while Mozart was creating his last three symphonies and must have served him as pure relaxation amid those mighty works. Except for the first movement, where the two instruments engage in genuine give-and-take, the violin plays an almost humiliatingly supernumerary role. This throwback to Mozart’s earliest compositional procedures is further emphasized by the fact that all three movements are in the same key.
Despite these drawbacks, there is much to admire and love in this sonata. First, Mozart’s sense of effective sequencing is evident in his reversing the order of the first two movements, so that the work begins with a rather terse slow movement and continues with a more expansive fast movement. “Slow” is perhaps an overstatement in describing the opening Andante cantabile (in rondo form), which moves at a fairly lively clip. Humor and tenderness predominate.
The Allegro (in sonata form) is by no means an easy piece, even if it was designed for beginners: it requires clean, fleet fingerwork by both hands. The Finale is a set of six variations on a theme of childlike simplicity. Until Variation Four arrives, the violin is virtually undetectable (it plays a total of ten notes in each half of Variation Two, for instance). Variation Five, in F minor, is for piano alone and lightly flirts with the possibilities of counterpoint. An exquisite coda bids us adieu. Mozart himself made a solo piano arrangement of these variations. (See note for K. 54).
M.F.
Sonatas, sonata movements, and variations for piano duet
K3 19d Sonata in C major
Origin: London, May 1765
Scoring: piano four-hands
Movements: [Allegro moderato.] Menuetto. Rondeau: Allegretto.
This work of questionable authenticity is first found in two published editions that were brought out independently in London and Paris, both c. 1789. Its relative naïveté suggests that if it is indeed by Mozart, it might be a very early work. The fact that it was published in London and Paris suggests that its origin might date from Mozart’s youthful tour to those cities from 1763 to 1765, but why such a work would have lain dormant for a quarter of a century, suddenly to be published in both cities, is yet to be explained.
To be sure, Mozart is known to have performed four-hand music with his sister Nannerl in London during the last few months of their stay there. On May 13, 1765, they reportedly performed an original composition of Wolfgang’s together on a two-manual harpsichord in Hickford’s Great Room, Brewer Street. On July 11 a notice in the Public Advertiser mentioned that “The two children will play also together upon the same harpsichord. ...” Moreover, in a letter of Leopold Mozart’s dated July 9 (as published in the biography of Mozart by Constanze Mozart and her second husband G. N. Nissen) a sentence was inserted that is not in the original manuscript of that letter (in the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Salzburg): “Wolfgang composed his first piece for four hands in London. No such four-hand sonata had ever been composed before that time.” This information, which could have come from Mozart’s sister Nannerl, may in fact be correct, but the attempt to predate it to Leopold’s letter of 1765 was blatant forgery.
An interesting feature of K. 19d is an occasional colliding of the left hand of the primo with the right hand of the secondo. This suggests an original conception for a two-manual harpsichord such as the London reports mention. Both of the original editions alike state that the work is for either “Piano Forte or Harpsichord” (“Pour le Piano Forte, ou le Clavecin”).
W.C.
K. 381 Sonata in D major (K6 123a)
Origin: Salzburg, mid-1772
Scoring: piano four-hands
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegro molto.
The date of composition of K. 381 is uncertain. (The individual pages of the autograph have long been separated and some of them have been lost.) In the sixth edition of the Köchel catalogue of Mozart’s works, the sonata is dated the beginning of 1772. But Wolfgang Plath, the world’s leading authority on Mozart’s handwriting, dates the sonata a half-year later. It is orchestral in texture, rhetoric, and character, and evokes the Italian symphonies and opera overtures of this period. The outer movements are typically boisterous, while the slow movement presents another Italian set piece, the uninterrupted cantilena with graceful accompaniment. The sixteen-year-old Mozart adapts these to the keyboard with aplomb, and the work sounds equally effective on fortepiano and harpsichord.
R.D.L.
K. 358 Sonata in B flat major (K6 186c)
Origin: Salzburg, late 1773 to early 1774
Scoring: piano four-hands
Movements: [Allegro.] [Adagio.] Molto presto.
In many ways K. 358 is a sister sonata to K. 381 (see above), with which it shares the orchestral vigor of the Italian sinfonia. Both works use sonata form for all three movements, although in K. 358 each movement has a short coda. Also, K. 358 goes considerably beyond the earlier work both in the amount of dialogue between primo and secondo, and in the richness of counterpoint and motivic structure. Curiously, the second movement uses the opening theme of Mozart’s last Milan quartet, K. 160, recast in triple meter rather than duple.
Mozart’s manuscript was preserved in the estate of his sister Nannerl, for whom he presumably composed the work. It seems to have been a favorite of his, for he mentions it several times in his correspondence. He had his father send him copies of it both at Mannheim in 1777, for two of his students, and at Vienna in 1781, perhaps to play with Josepha von Auernhammer, for whom he was soon to compose the two-piano sonata, K. 448.
W.C.
K. 448 Sonata in D major (K6 375a)
Origin: Vienna, September 1781
Scoring: 2 pianos
Movements: Allegro con spirito. Andante. Allegro molto.
Mozart met Josepha von Auernhammer in 1781. He started teaching her that summer and reported his impressions of her with characteristic mercilessness:
I dine almost daily at Herr von Auernhammer’s. The young lady is a monster! But plays enchantingly; only the true, fine, singing taste in cantabile [passages] is missing; she chops up everything. She revealed to me (as a secret) her plan, which is to study righteously for two or three more years, and then go to Paris and pursue her career. “For”, she says, “I am not beautiful”, au contraire, [she is] ugly. ...
In the early 1780s she and Mozart played as many as six times together in public. Mozart dedicated his six Violin Sonatas, K. 296 and 376-380, to her and she supervised the engraving of a number of Mozart’s works for publication. He reported the performance of his new “Sonata for Two” (K. 448) at a concert (“accademie”) at the Auernhammer residence on November 23, 1781, and refers to the work in his letters numerous times over the ensuing six weeks.
The music is a tour de force in every way. Its outer movements are audaciously virtuosic within a structure of remarkable economy: flamboyance is never allowed to triumph over musical substance. The Andante presents a seamless dialogue between the players; while the first piano presents the principal theme, the second player opens the second half with an eight-measure solo passage. Beyond the undeniable exhilaration the work affords to performers and listeners alike, it displays a rhetorical suavity and a perfect equilibrium of content and form that the twenty-five-year-old Mozart had long since made his hallmark.
Mozart wrote the first piano part for Fräulein von Auernhammer and the second for himself; we know this because he said so in a letter dated January 9, 1782. Moreover, the first piano part contains a high F sharp in the third movement – a note otherwise never used by Mozart in a keyboard work. The normal range of the fortepiano at that time was the five octaves from low F to high f'''. It would appear that she had a newer instrument that had the high F sharp on it (and thus a high G as well) and Mozart amused himself by writing one for her.
R.D.L.
K. deest Larghetto and Allegro in E flat major (completed by Maximilian Stadler)
Origin: Vienna? 1782 to 1783
Scoring: 2 pianos
Movements: Larghetto; Allegro.
This work was discovered in the early 1960s, in the castle of Kromeríz in South Moravia (Czechoslovakia). It therefore does not appear in any edition of the Köchel catalogue. Kromeríz was a residence of the Archduke Johann Joseph Ranier Rudolf of Austria, to whom Beethoven dedicated several of his most important works. Mozart’s manuscript was found in Rudolf’s archives there. Its existence had long been ignored due to a misidentification: a penciled note, in Rudolf’s own hand, attributed the work to Christoph Willibald Gluck.
The Kromeríz autograph consists of an incomplete score, together with a carefully copied first page of the first piano part. (It would seem unprecedented for Mozart to have started copying out parts for a work he had not yet completed.) Perhaps the last pages of the sketch once existed and were lost. In any case, Constanze Mozart seems to have given the fragment to Maximilian Stadler, who completed it as he did many other unfinished Mozart pieces.
The work consists of a completed thirty-five-measure introductory Larghetto, which leads directly into an Allegro in sonata form. The first piano part is indicated for the entire exposition, whereas the second part appears only from time to time. The movement breaks off just after the exposition ends. Stadler’s completion is extremely mechanical, quite inferior to his excellent completion of the Fantasy in C Minor for piano, K. 396. In modern times, other completions have been composed by pianists Paul Badura-Skoda and Robert Levin.
R.D.L.
K. 426 Fugue in C minor
Origin: Vienna, December 29, 1782 or 1783
Scoring: 2 pianos
This work has a precise dating in Mozart’s hand (December 29, 1783), but the “3” has been changed from a “2”. Were the Fugue composed in 1782, it would be appropriate to link its composition with Josepha von Auernhammer, for whom Mozart wrote the two-piano sonata, K. 448. A 1783 dating suggests a different instigation – Mozart’s contact with Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Van Swieten introduced Mozart to the music of Bach and Handel and provoked Mozart’s “Bach crisis”. During that time Mozart instrumented a number of Bach’s fugues, providing preludes of his own composition for some of them. He wrote several fugues and many more fugal fragments in an attempt to reconcile Bach’s powerfully expressive counterpoint with his own abilities.
The C minor Fugue is as different from Mozart’s other piano duet music as one could imagine. Instead of brilliance and wit contrasted with cantabile passages, we are here confronted with obsessive counterpoint of a relentless willfulness rare in Mozart’s oeuvre. His decision to write such a piece for two pianos may have been made in order to allow each voice maximum freedom without creating any resultant physical problems in performance. The Fugue subject is systematically worked out, with canon, stretto, and inversion. Only at the very end does Mozart momentarily allow the Alberti bass of the Classical period to give this otherwise archaic work a hint of his normal language.
R.D.L.
K. 497 Sonata in F major
Origin: Vienna, August 1, 1786
Scoring: piano four-hands
Movements: Adagio – Allegro di molto. Andante. [Allegro.]
The Sonata in F major is Mozart’s most serious work for piano four-hands. In its inspiration, imagination, and dramatic intensity it is on a level with the string quintets, the “Haydn” Quartets, and the piano concertos. The very presence of a slow introduction to the first movement, brooding and turbulent, announces at once the scale of Mozart’s undertaking. The development of the first movement is unusually spacious. The second movement is a veritable operatic scene featuring a dialogue between the registers of the keyboard, and the Finale combines irresistible cheerfulness with fiery outbursts that remind us again of the overall seriousness of the work.
R.D.L.
K. 501 5 Variations on an Original Andante in G major
Origin: Vienna, November 4, 1786
Scoring: Piano four-hands
This brief but wonderful set of variations dates from late 1786 and was published within a year by Franz Anton Hoffmeister of Vienna. Hoffmeister had previously invited Mozart to compose various chamber works for his publishing house, beginning with the G minor Piano Quartet, K. 478, of October 1785. It seems likely that these variations might have resulted from a similar invitation.
The work overflows with intricate imitative dialogue for the two performers. In the final variation the primo and secondo take turns embellishing the repeated phrases with ever fleeter figuration. All subsides into a graceful return of the opening theme at the conclusion.
Mozart abandoned another four-hand work based on nearly the same theme: a rather perfunctory rondo fragment, K. 500a, that his widow Constanze mistook for an extra variation to K. 501. The rondo might, however, have arisen in connection with a very fine four-hand sonata movement in G major, K. 497a, that was also unfortunately abandoned just after the beginning of the development section was composed. Perhaps K. 497a and 500a constituted Mozart’s first thoughts on a four-hand project for Hoffmeister that he eventually fulfilled with the present variations.
W.C.
K. 521 Sonata in C major
Origin: Vienna, May 29, 1787
Scoring: piano four-hands
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegretto.
Mozart composed this work during the period of the great quintets, K. 515 and 516, a period overshadowed by the impending death of his father; in fact, news of Leopold’s death reached Wolfgang on the day he completed the sonata. On the same day, he sent the piece off to his close friend and student Gottfried von Jacquin, instructing him to “have the goodness to give the sonata to my lady, your sister, with my compliments – but she might have a go at it immediately, for it is a bit difficult”.
Its difficulty lies perhaps less in its technical demands than in its character, which is subtle and elusive, especially in comparison with Mozart’s flamboyantly dramatic previous four-hand sonata, K. 497, which was composed only ten months earlier (see above). Its affinities, both structural and thematic, lie rather in the direction of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525, of two months later, a work that shares the sonata’s grace and understatement. Particularly the last movement, a Rondo with a bagpipe-like the me, maintains a self-effacing shyness in the face of much flattering technical display, and thereby achieves a complexity and depth of character rarely matched in Mozart’s keyboard works.
When Mozart published the sonata about a year later, he dedicated the work not to Franziska von Jacquin, but rather to two gifted young Viennese sisters, Babette and Nanette Natorp, friends of the Jacquins. Babette (Maria Barbara) was later to marry Gottfried’s older brother, Josef Franz von Jacquin, and in time to become a reknowned pianist in Viennese circles. For Miss Jacquin Mozart is believed to have composed one of his finest chamber works, the “Kegelstatt” Trio, K. 498.
W.C.