Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Instrumental music
Chamber Music without a Keyboard Instrument
Background and overview
Discussions from the second half of the eighteenth century about the nature of the audiences for music almost inevitably make use of two terms: Kenner and Liebhaber in German, connoisseur and amateur in English or French. These words permeate musical discussions of the period. Amateurs passionately love music but have little technical knowledge of it; connoisseurs not only love music, they also understand it. It was Mozart’s proud claim that he could compose in a way that would satisfy both groups: a polite, entertaining surface for the amateurs along with elegant inner workings for the connoisseurs.
Mozart made this boast with regard to his piano concertos, K. 413-415. In general, however, whether a work was aimed primarily at amateurs or at connoisseurs depended on its genre. Lots of technically and conceptually easy songs and chamber music were written and published for home consumption, geared to the playing abilities and tastes of amateurs. Highly public genres – church music, opera, orchestral music – had to reach all kinds of people and, therefore, were often aimed at the same audience, although this time for the playing abilities of professionals and the tastes of amateurs. It was in the realm of “serious” chamber music, frequently in the form of sonatas, trios, quartets, and quintets, that composers most often provided more challenging fare for the connoisseurs.
Mozart’s much-loved string quartets and quintets, for instance, were not concert music. They were conceived for the pleasure of their performers and a tiny circle of intimates who might be invited to listen, in someone’s living room, parlor, or salon. Music-loving noblemen and -women who were connoisseurs would hire string quartets to play for their private enjoyment. (Many of them were also fully competent to play in such a group.) This is also what the musicians themselves did for recreation. For example, the Irish baritone Michael Kelly, who lived in Vienna from 1783 to 1786 and sang Basilio and Don Curzio in the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro, recorded such an evening in his Memoirs:
[The English composer Stephen] Storace gave a quartet party to his friends. The players were tolerable; not one of them excelled on the instrument he played, but there was a little science among them, which I dare say will be acknowledged when I name them:
| The First Violin | Haydn |
| The Second Violin | Baron Dittersdorf |
| The Violoncello | Vanhall |
| The Tenor [viola] | Mozart. |
The poet [Giovanni Battista] Casti and [the composer Giovanni] Paisiello formed part of the audience. I was there, and a greater treat, or a more remarkable one, cannot be imagined.
The four players, Joseph Haydn, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Johann Baptist Vanhal, and Mozart were the four leading Viennese composers in the 1780s.
N.Z.
Quintets
K. 174 String Quintet in B flat major
Origin: Salzburg, December 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, 2 violas, violoncello
Movements: Allegro moderato. Adagio. Menuetto ma allegretto. Allegro.
On March 13, 1773, Leopold Mozart and his son returned from their third Italian trip. It was then that Mozart must have heard the first String Quintet in C major by Michael Haydn, composed a few weeks before the Mozarts returned to Salzburg. Mozart often found in a composition by a contemporary the inspiration to write a similar work himself and, if possible, to improve on the original. Mozart’s first quintet, K. 174, is believed to have been composed in the late spring of 1773. In December of that year, Michael Haydn wrote his second quintet, in G major, a work that seems to have made an equally profound impression on the young Mozart, who immediately proceeded to rewrite his own quintet, providing it with a new Trio and recasting the thematic material of the Finale.
The style of the opening Allegro moderato is a curious mixture of the old Austrian cassation, or divertimento, as practiced by Joseph Haydn in his earliest works, and the modern quartet. The older type tended to set up the violins and the violas as “choirs” and play them off against each other, whereas the newer quartet integrated the four instruments more closely. The opening of the Adagio is magical. All the upper strings are muted and the cello is marked sempre piano (always softly). The sturdy Minuet has something very Haydnesque about it – both the Haydn brothers liked this kind of rustic approach to the minuet, with its strong forward movement.
The Finale, in its revised version, is a much longer and more complicated movement than the original. Mozart may have been seeking to equalize the weight of the four movements. His way of increasing the Finale’s importance was to pack contrapuntal weight into the development section.
Before undertaking his revision of this quintet. Mozart had paid a two-month visit to Vienna, where he had studied some of the latest music circulating in the capital city, and perhaps especially Haydn’s newest and revolutionary symphonies and quartets. It seems possible that the symphonic cast of the Quintet’s new Finale owes as much to these works as to the quintets of Michael Haydn.
H.C.R.L.
K. 407 Horn Quintet in E flat major (K6 386c)
Origin: Vienna, end of 1782
Scoring: horn, violin, 2 violas, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegro.
Mozart wrote his only horn quintet for Joseph Leutgeb, a man he had known since his earliest childhood. The series of horn concertos and this quintet bear vivid testimony as much to the exhilaration they experienced in each other’s company as to Mozart’s great admiration for Leutgeb’s abilities as a hand horn player. (The reason that the eighteenth-century orchestral horn, the ancestor of the modern French horn, is sometimes called the hand horn is that notes other than those of common fanfares could be obtained only by skillful placement of the player’s hand in the instrument’s bell.)
Mozart probably wrote the quintet in Vienna toward the end of 1782, but confirmation of this date is unlikely unless the autograph manuscript, lost sight of since being auctioned in London in March 1847, should resurface. It was a work for an unorthodox ensemble, like the Serenade in B flat, K. 361, which early publishers preferred to publish in arrangements rather than issuing the original. At least two versions appeared in which a second cello is substituted for the horn; yet another version is arranged for a sextet of clarinets, horns, and bassoons. Into these was interpolated a minuet-and-trio movement taken, in one instance, from the Serenade in E flat, K. 375, and, in another, from the string trio K. 563.
Many commentators have noted the concertante rather than the chamber-music characteristics of this quintet, particularly in its outer movements, though few would go so far as Alfred Einstein, who saw it as “a rudimentary concerto with chamber-music accompaniment”. Certainly the majority of the musical argument is between horn and violin, but each movement breaks away from this routine at least once.
R.H.
K. 515 String Quintet in C major
Origin: Vienna, April 19, 1787
Scoring: 2 violins, 2 violas, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Menuetto: Allegretto. Andante. Allegro.
Mozart may have written the next three quintets on speculation, hoping to sell manuscript copies of them to amateurs by subscription. The three works are: K. 515, dated Vienna, April 19, 1787, in Mozart’s own catalogue; K. 516, dated Vienna, May 16, 1787, and K. 406 (516b), which is Mozart’s arrangement of the Wind Band Serenade, K. 388, probably made in the winter of 1787-88. Mozart played them with his friends for a while and then decided to sell them in manuscript copies. He had done the same with three new piano concertos (K. 413-415) in January 1783. But times had changed. In 1783 Mozart was the darling of the Viennese public, and his concerts were filled by the nobility. In 1788 Mozart was no longer in favor, and he was finally obliged to sell two of the quintets (K. 515 and 516) outright to the publisher Artaria and Co. at much less profit to himself. K. 515 is by far the longest of Mozart’s chamber works for strings. The brilliant original opening theme uses an old device (the arpeggiated or broken chord) in a new way. The cello sweeps up two octaves on the notes of a C major chord and is answered by the first violin in a phrase of peculiar poignancy. This formula is repeated three times before the theme comes to fruition. But hardly has Mozart completed the theme when the music comes to a dead stop. After this bar of rest, the whole process is repeated in C minor and the roles of first violin and cello are reversed.
Among the many striking innovations of the Minuet we may mention the use of a crescendo leading to piano. This would become a stylistic “fingerprint” in Beethoven. The Andante is a civilized and highly intellectual conversation between two friends, first violin and first viola. The Finale is a tribute to Haydn’s famous sonata-rondo form. It is altogether a bold, assertive, and optimistic movement, as if Mozart had resolved firmly to conquer the troubles, financial and spiritual, that were beginning to darken his life.
H.C.R.L.
K. 516 String Quintet in G minor
Origin: Vienna, May 16, 1787
Scoring: 2 violins, 2 violas, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Menuetto: Allegretto. Adagio ma non troppo. Adagio – Allegro.
This is the most famous of the quintets. Its very special key, its dramatic power, its combination of tragedy and tenderness have assured it a unique place in the chamber-music repertoire. Together with the great G minor Symphony, K. 550 (completed July 25, 1788), it constitutes the most personal music, perhaps, that Mozart ever wrote. By May 1787, when he composed the quintet, it must have been obvious to Mozart that, at least with the Viennese, he had failed as a composer. Music’s greatest genius was misunderstood and spurned by the only segment of society on which he could count for financial support. And even though he was engaged by Emperor Joseph II as court chamber composer, the salary, 800 gulden, was little more than a token. In fact, Joseph II, while professing admiration for Mozart, much preferred the music of Giuseppe Sarti, Giovanni Paisiello, Domenico Cimarosa, and Florian Gassmann. The success of Mozart’s Figaro was not permanent, and he was beginning to sink into debt. To top it all, his father, Leopold, whom he loved and had rebelled against, was ill and, in fact, died less than two weeks after the Quintet was finished. The G minor Quintet is a mirror of Mozart’s personal tragedy.
The nervous desperation of the first movement’s opening subject is underlined by its understatement: it is all played softly and without a real stabilizing bass. In the Minuet the angry off-beat forte chords are like cries of protest. The Adagio ma non troppo is couched in an extraordinary atmosphere engendered by the use of mutes on all five instruments.
Haydn sometimes begins his finales with a slow introduction, but the procedure is rarer for Mozart. This introductory Adagio is like an accompanied recitative in an opera, with the first violin acting as soprano heroine. It is an increasingly restless introduction but perfectly suited to prepare the way for the sunny conclusion, a Rondo in which Mozart’s depression disappears as quickly as a single cloud in a summer sky.
H.C.R.L.
K. 406 String Quintet in C minor (K6 516b)
Origin: Vienna, winter 1787-88
Scoring: 2 violins, 2 violas, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto in canone. Allegro.
This quintet is Mozart’s own arrangement of his Serenade in C minor for Wind Octet, K. 388. (See the note for K. 388 on p. 246.) Wind-band serenades were, in the eighteenth century, among the most fragile of genres. When the occasion for which one was written had passed, the work lost its raison d’être. The desire to give permanence to this piece is no doubt why Mozart decided, quite against his usual practice, to reach back to an earlier work to make up the third of three quintets he was offering by subscription.
The bewildering profusion of intellectual forces with which Mozart crowds the opening theme of the Quintet in C minor is typical: there are no fewer than five separate components, all in marked dynamic and motivic contrast to each other. The Andante is in E flat. Its warmth and mellowness – so characteristic of Mozart when writing in E flat major – are tempered with a certain nostalgic loneliness, which will become more and more an integral part of the mature Mozart’s music, whether for chamber, opera house, or concert hall.
The severe canonic, or roundlike, Minuet with its Trio al rovescio, or inverse canon (one in which the theme’s intervals go up in one voice, then go down in the imitating voice, and vice versa), takes as its model the equally gaunt E minor Minuet in canone of Haydn’s Symphony No. 44 (“Mourning”), composed about a decade before the Serenade. The Finale, says American musicologist Alfred Einstein, “anticipates the spirit of the C minor Concerto (K. 491)”. Like its great successor, it is cast in the form of a theme and variations. For the last variation, in a sudden mercurial shift, there is a spring into C major, and in a hard, triumphant mood the music sweeps to an end.
H.C.R.L.
K. 581 Clarinet Quintet in A major
Origin: Vienna, September 29, 1789
Scoring: clarinet, 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Larghetto. Menuetto. Allegretto con variazioni.
Here is one of a group of masterpieces that Mozart wrote for Anton Stadler, a fellow Mason and one of several close friends among the fraternity of Viennese wind instrumentalists. The quintet seems immediately to evoke the same limpid and lyrical mood as Mozart’s other late works in A major, such as the piano concerto, K. 488, and the clarinet concerto, K. 622.
The presence of a Minuet movement makes this the only one of Mozart’s works for wind soloist and strings to be in four movements. The extra movement is entirely consistent with the strong chamber-music (as opposed to concertante) characteristics of the work, but for the composer to provide two Trios is indeed rare in any of his chamber music.
Mozart’s first thoughts on a Finale petered out after 89 measures, and he replaced them with this set of five variations and coda on a not-very-remarkable theme in march rhythm. It shows unmistakable signs of Mozartean genius, however, in the delightful imitation between violin and viola in its middle section, and in the imitative second violin part, which acts as a bass to the final phrase of the theme.
R.H.
K. 593 String Quintet in D major
Origin: Vienna, December 1790
Scoring: 2 violins, 2 violas, violoncello
Movements: Larghetto – Allegro. Adagio. Menuetto: Allegretto. Allegro.
Mozart composed this great work in December 1790, probably for Johann Tost, formerly the leader of the second violins in Haydn’s orchestra. That Haydn was intimately involved with the first performance of Mozart’s D major Quintet is attested by their mutual friend, Abbé Maximilian Stadler, whose memories were preserved in the travel diaries of the English music publisher Vincent Novello and his wife Mary in 1829. “Mozart and Haydn frequently played together with Stadler in Mozart’s Quintettos; particularly mentioned the 5th in D major, singing the Bass part, the one in C major and still more that in G minor.”
Mozart opens with a typically Haydnesque slow introduction. But he has further plans in store for this Larghetto: it is destined to return just before the end of the movement, which then concludes with a superbly rhetorical flourish – a final utterance of the Allegro’s main theme.
The Adagio marking for the slow movement is in itself a tribute to Haydn, whose adagios were famous. The most incredible passage in any of the quintets is in the middle of the development section, where the work’s central constructive device – the use of descending thirds – reaches a violent pitch of intensity. The Minuet, proceeding on the Adagio’s motif of the downward third, introduces a strict canon on its theme in the second part.
Mozart had second thoughts about the theme of the Finale. He originally wrote it as a chromatic scale, slithering down eight notes from A above the staff to D a fifth below. He then decided on a slight reshaping of these eight notes in a diatonic pattern and painstakingly corrected the passage every time it occurred in his manuscript. In either version, the Finale is fast, intensely involved, and distinguished by its contrapuntal complexity.
H.C.R.L.
K. 614 String Quintet in E flat major
Origin: Vienna, April 12, 1791
Scoring: 2 violins, 2 violas, violoncello
Movements: Allegro di molto. Andante. Menuetto: Allegretto. Allegro.
“The Quintet in E flat, K. 614, is a tribute to Haydn”, writes American pianist and writer Charles Rosen of this last piece of chamber music that Mozart ever wrote, pointing out the similarity of the Finale to that of Haydn’s String Quartet, Op. 64, No. 6, which was composed for Johann Tost, who may also have commissioned K. 593 and 614. The entry of the E flat Quintet in Mozart’s catalogue is dated Vienna, April 12, 1791. Haydn had left for England and immortality, and the two friends were never to see each other again.
So this is another tribute, in absentia, to Mozart’s best musical friend. “The work”, continues Rosen, “which – in its outer movements – combines a detailed treatment in Haydn’s fashion of the dynamic qualities of the tiniest motifs with a typically Mozartean sonorous and complex inner part-writing, makes a few musicians uncomfortable, perhaps because it lacks the expansive freedom of the other quintets, and seems to concentrate its richness”.
For opening movements 6/8 is not a customary meter, and Mozart may have borrowed the idea from Haydn’s Symphony No. 67 in F. The quick, nervous language is Haydn’s too, as is the massive concentration of motivic relationships and expansions. The Andante is of that late-period simplicity in Mozart that astonishes in The Magic Flute and in passages from La clemenza di Tito: it is supreme art, touching, direct, and of an autumnal beauty. The Minuet contains some details of consummate subtlety. In the second part, the main theme is suddenly turned around and played against itself. In size, scope, and developmental process, the Finale, with its Haydnesque tune, completes this great and touching act of friendship, one that rounds out Mozart’s tribute to the two Haydn brothers, Michael and Joseph.
H.C.R.L.
Quartets
K. 80 String Quartet in G major, No. 1 (K6 73f)
Origin: first three movements, Lodi, March 15, 1770; fourth movement, Salzburg or Vienna, 1773 to 1775
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Adagio. Allegro. Menuetto. Rondeau.
The fourteen-year-old Mozart dated this first and solitary early Quartet with unusual exactness: “Lodi, March 15, 1770, at 7 o’clock in the evening.” After a long visit to Milan, Lodi was the first stop on the return trip to Parma and Modena; Wolfgang and his father were on their first trip to Italy. Mozart seems to have been especially fond of this Quartet, for eight years later he took it with him on his trip to Mannheim and Paris, where he wrote to his father on March 24, 1778: “before my departure for Mannheim, I had Herr von Gemmingen copy the Quartet that I wrote that evening at the inn in Lodi.” The “Lodi” Quartet reflects clearly the musical impressions made on Mozart in Milan by Giuseppe Sammartini and his circle. The model of the trio sonata is particularly evident in the slow introductory movement. All four movements of the work are in the same key – an exceptional rarity in Mozart.
W.P.
K. 136 Divertimento in D major (K6 125a)
Origin: Salzburg, early 1772
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Presto.
K. 137 Divertimento in B flat major (K6 125b)
Origin: Salzburg, early 1772
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Andante. Allegro di molto. Allegro assai.
K. 138 Divertimento in F major (K6 125c)
Origin: Salzburg, early 1772
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Presto.
These three works for strings have enjoyed equal popularity as string quartets and as works for string orchestra. In both settings they sound good in modern concert halls and on recordings. The historical evidence suggests, however, that Mozart probably thought of them as composed for one player per part, and quite possibly to be played not by the normal string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello) but by the so-called “divertimento quartet” (two violins, viola, double bass). A performance by a “divertimento quartet” plus two horns was portrayed on the title page of the first edition of Mozart’s Musical Joke, K. 522, which is reproduced on p. 238.
N.Z.
The first movement of K. 136 assigns the first violin a self-sufficient, almost prima-donna-like role; the second movement is filled with tender, Italianate charm; the last, in sonata form, varies the ideas of the opening movement in its main theme, and displays an element of seriousness in the contrapuntal efforts of the development section. K. 137 puts its slow movement at the beginning, and stresses an alfresco mood in the following Allegro di molto, a mood that also characterizes the buffonesque final movement. The first and last movements of K. 138 also show a concertante simplicity: only the Andante with its pointed motives and independent countermelodies suggests something of the technique of an individual string quartet movement. The finale, with a minor episode à la Johann Christian Bach, looks forward – but it is surely a spot of tonal color, rather than a first step toward that curious melancholy that emerges ever more strongly in Mozart’s later works.
U.K.
K. 155 String Quartet in D major, No. 2 (K6 134a)
Origin: Bozen and Verona, October to November 1772
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Allegro molto.
K. 156 String Quartet in G major, No. 3 (K6 134b)
Origin: Milan, end of 1772
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Presto. Adagio. Tempo di Menuetto.
K. 157 String Quartet in C major, No. 4
Origin: Milan, late 1772 or early 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Presto.
K. 158 String Quartet in F major, No. 5
Origin: Milan, late 1772 or early 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Andante un poco allegretto. Tempo di Menuetto.
K. 159 String Quartet in B flat major, No. 6
Origin: Milan, early 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Andante. Allegro. Rondo: Allegro grazioso.
K. 160 String Quartet in E flat major, No. 7 (K6 159a)
Origin: Milan, early 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Un poco adagio. Presto.
The six works in this cycle are arranged according to the circle of fifths (D-G-C-F-Bb-Eb). The original manuscripts bear no dates, but from certain remarks in Leopold Mozart’s correspondence, and from an examination of the handwriting itself, one may deduce the origin with reasonable certainty: it was the period of the third trip to Italy, from late autumn 1772 to the beginning of 1773, the same time that Mozart composed the opera Lucio Silla for Milan.
All of these quartets have in common a three-movement format, in which the final movement is always either a rondo (though not so titled) or a tempo di menuetto. Only the first and last works of the cycle (K. 155 and 160) are completely in a major key; the four middle quartets outdo each other, in fact, in their emphasis of minor-key contrasts. Their middle movements, all in minor keys, are among the most extraordinary movements to be found in all of Mozart’s youthful works. From the novel give-and-take of the four strings, treated in principal on an equal basis, come musical panoramas of entirely original design and color, and with an expressive power that touches on highly personal, even remote feelings. Some have seen an indication of a “romantic crisis” for the young Mozart here; it is probably more accurate to speak of a protest against convention – a protest that is so very clearly articulated in so many other inner movements and minuets of Mozart’s symphonies of 1772-73, that German musicologist Hermann Abert calls it a “tendency toward the eccentric”. At any rate, one may surely call the B flat Quartet “eccentric”: instead of a slow middle movement, the work has a second main movement in the relative minor (G minor), an oversized structure full of aggressive energy that threatens to overthrow the tonal and structural coherence of the work as a whole. Next to the concentrated strength of such a monster of a movement, all the refinements of the opening movement pale – such as the playful use of a model Baroque bass line at the opening, where the listener waits in vain for a concluding cadence after the deceptive one in measure 4, or (one of the most striking effects in early Mozart) the provocative “wrong” – or seemingly premature – entrance of the first violin in measure 9.
W.P.
K. 168 String Quartet in F major, No. 8
Origin: Vienna, August 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
K. 169 String Quartet in A major, No. 9
Origin: Vienna, August 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Molto allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Rondeaux: Allegro.
K. 170 String Quartet in C major, No. 10
Origin: Vienna, August 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Andante. Menuetto. Un poco adagio. Rondo: Allegro.
K. 171 String Quartet in E flat major, No. 11
Origin: Vienna, August 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Adagio – Allegro assai. Menuetto. Andante. Allegro assai.
K. 172 String Quartet in B flat major, No. 12
Origin: Vienna, September? 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Adagio. Menuetto. Allegro assai.
K. 173 String Quartet in D minor, No. 13
Origin: Vienna, September 1773
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro, ma molto moderato. [Andante grazioso.] Menuetto . [Allegro.]
This second cycle of six quartets is likewise arranged in an orderly fashion, following a complicated scheme of third-related keys, mainly in ascending order: F-A-C-Eb-Bb-D. The works were composed in the summer and autumn of 1773 during Mozart’s visit to Vienna (from mid-July to the end of September), thus about nine months after his first series of quartets. Nevertheless one can see differences, and observe a further step along the path of progress. The quartets of the new series all have four movements, i.e., they have attained and established the regular form of the “Classical” string quartet. And their central concern is – simply speaking – no longer the exploration of new emotive and expressive regions in minor territory, far from the beaten path of convention, but consolidation of quartet writing in the no-man’s-land between “galant” and “academic” styles, i.e., between melodic and contrapuntal techniques. In this period Mozart came under the two-fold influence of Joseph Haydn, whose Quartets Op. 9, 17, and 20 he must have come to know in Vienna. The closing Fugues of the F major and D minor Quartets, which form the programmatic-schematic frame of Mozart’s cycle, are certainly unthinkable without Haydn’s model – and likewise so many other details, such as the theme of the variation movement of the C major Quartet, K. 170. But however one assesses the significance of such influences, one must fundamentally admit that in his compositional style Mozart let himself get sidetracked by Haydn to an amazingly small degree.
The closing Fugues of the first and last quartet of the cycle, showpieces of proper academic artfulness, mark only one extreme; the other – flowing melody with more or less simplified chordal accompaniment – is found in the slow movements of K. 170 and 172. Between these two extremes Mozart discloses an astonishing abundance of possibilities. He composes the F minor Andante of K. 168 “in the style of a canon”, the C minor Andante of K. 171 “in the style of a double fugue”; in the B flat Quartet, K. 172, he even carries the principle of canonic imitation to the Minuet movement. But the game of counterpoint, the “contrapuntal” style, is only one possibility in quartet writing. In the Andante of the A major Quartet, K. 169, Mozart created – probably for the first time in his music – a formal type that would occupy him up to his late Viennese period; one may compare the Andante of the Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467. No less prophetic is the opening movement of K. 173 (D minor). And the Minuet of this quartet – one of the grandest movements of the whole series – must surely be reckoned among the wonders of 1773.
W.P.
K. 285 Flute Quartet in D major, No. 1
Origin: Mannheim, December 25, 1777
Scoring: flute, violin, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Rondo: Allegretto.
Mozart wrote his first three flute quartets while in Mannheim in the winter of 1777-78. His patron was a Dutchman, nicknamed “the Indian” by Mozart, who spelled his name phonetically, “de Jean” or “Deschamps”. It has recently been demonstrated that this was Ferdinand de Jean (1731-97) a wealthy amateur flutist who worked for the Dutch East India Company. Mozart first referred to de Jean’s commission on December 10, 1777, as “three short, simple concertos and a couple of quartets for flute”, required within two months for a fee of 200 gulden. He evidently set about this work promptly and a week later was telling his father: “I shall soon have finished one quartet for the Indian Dutchman, that true friend of humanity.” But by the end of January 1778 Mozart was evidently far behind schedule and temporizing over a commission that was bigger than he first admitted. On the 15th of February, de Jean left for Paris, and Mozart was obviously somewhat hurt to receive only 96 gulden for the two concertos and three quartets he had finished by that date. He was in fact lucky to receive that much, since one of the concertos was merely a transcription of his earlier oboe concerto, and of the quartets one was only two movements, and another probably unfinished.
The opening allegro movement of the first flute quartet finds Mozart in a highly ebullient mood as he reveals a seemingly unending stream of melodies. Musicologist Alfred Einstein admires the “sweet melancholy” of the second movement, an Adagio in B minor, which he calls “perhaps the most beautiful accompanied solo ever written for the flute”. Mozart turns his second movement into an introduction to the Finale simply by interrupting the logical progress of its final cadence in a way that leaves the return to D major all but inevitable.
R.H.
K3 285a Flute Quartet in G major, No. 2
Origin: Mannheim, January or February 1777
Scoring: flute, violin, viola, violoncello
Movements: Andante. Menuetto.
This little quartet, being in two movements only, follows a pattern created by Johann Christian Bach, one of the composers Mozart most admired during his formative years. The quartet opens with a quietly relaxed and languorous Andante movement, its themes reflecting the gentle coloring of the instrumentation. The finale is a Minuet without a Trio, in simple ternary, or A-B-A form. It ends with a short codetta – quiet, simple, and utterly effective.
R.H.
K3 285b Flute Quartet in C major, No. 3 (K1 Anh 171)
Origin: Vienna? 1781 to 1782
Scoring: flute, violin, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Andantino.
The authenticity of this work has still not been entirely proved. Long-held doubts about the first movement were recently resolved by the discovery of a sketch of part of it in Mozart’s handwriting. The second movement, a theme and variations, is virtually identical with the sixth movement of the great Serenade in B flat, K. 361, but experts now believe that the version for flute and strings is not the prototype of the serenade but rather an anonymous arrangement probably commissioned by Heinrich Philipp Carl Bossler, who first published the Quartet in 1788. According to this theory, an otherwise incomplete quartet was turned into a saleable work. If the movement is an arrangement and if the arranger was not Mozart himself, the job was nonetheless expertly carried out. Given the simpler instrumentation, the six variations of the second movement are identical with those in the serenade, except that each half of the third is repeated conventionally, whereas in the serenade this is a double variation without repeats.
R.H.
K. 298 Flute Quartet in A major, No. 4
Origin: Vienna, 1786 to 1787
Scoring: flute, violin, viola, violoncello
Movements: [Andantino.] [Menuetto.] Rondeaux: Allegretto grazioso.
This flute quartet is a much later piece than the first three. It was written by Mozart in Vienna in 1786 or 1787, perhaps for performance in the musical circle of Mozart’s Viennese friend Gottfried von Jacquin.
Mozart used as the principal theme of the Finale an aria by the enormously popular Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello from his opera Le gare generose (The Generous Rivals), first performed in Vienna on September 1, 1786, and in Naples only a few months earlier. In fact, Mozart seems also to have based the opening movements on themes by other composers: the first movement is a set of variations based on a song by Franz Anton Hoffmeister, to Wilhelm Gottfried Becker’s poem An die Natur (To Nature), and the underlying theme of the second is an old French rondo, “Il a des bottes, des bottes Bastien” (He has some boots, has Bastien). This use of contemporary tunes supports Alfred Einstein’s suggestion that the quartet is a good-natured parody of the vacuous and perfunctory style characteristic of the many “quartets on popular airs” of that time.
Mozart reveals his jocular intent unmistakably in the last movement, which bears the Alice in Wonderland heading: “Rondieaoux/Allegretto grazioso, mà non troppo presto, però non troppo adagio. Così – così – con molto garbo ed espressione” (Rondo-meow/Allegretto grazioso but not too presto, but not too adagio, either. So-so – with much charm and expression). What follows is Paisiello’s perfunctory little theme, which in spite of its threadbare invention, dominates a movement of rather lavish proportions.
R.H.
K. 370 Oboe Quartet in F major (K6 368b)
Origin: Munich, early 1781
Scoring: oboe, violin, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Rondeau: Allegro.
Friedrich Ramm was unquestionably one of the great oboists of his age. He was about thirty-three when Mozart first met him in Mannheim in 1777, and had by then already been principal oboist there for fourteen years. He had joined the orchestra at the amazingly early age of fourteen and was soon placed above a senior colleague, the oboist Ludwig August Lebrun, because of the size and quality of his tone. He moved with the orchestra to Munich in 1778 when his patron, Karl Theodor, Elector of the Palatine, became also Elector of Bavaria, and was still performing there in 1806 and probably later. Ramm was permitted by the elector the luxury of pursing an active international career as a soloist, visiting places as far apart as Vienna, London, and Berlin.
Mozart could scarcely contain his enthusiasm for what he called Ramm’s “delightfully pure tone”. He presented him with the Oboe Concerto (K. 271k) he had earlier written for Giuseppe Ferlendis and reported that Ramm was “quite crazy with delight” with it and had adopted it as his cheval de bataille (war horse). It was for Ramm that Mozart wrote the oboe part in his (lost) Sinfonia Concertante for flute, oboe, bassoon, and horn (K. 297B). He also wrote at least two arias with obbligato oboe parts for him. And when he went to Munich in the winter of 1780-81 for the opening of his opera Idomeneo, he composed the present oboe quartet for the great player, though whether it was intended as a gift or written on commission we are not informed. The work is a masterpiece; its range of technical and musical demands reflect the utmost credit on Ramm’s artistry.
An aura of gentle intimacy pervades this quartet – the intimacy that resides supremely in chamber music. It is inevitable that the oboe plays the dominant part, inevitable too that Mozart should not even attempt to blend the accompanying string chords with an instrument so individual in tone.
R.H.
The “Haydn” Quartets
The six “Haydn” Quartets memorialize in tones an altogether extraordinary artistic friendship. In 1785, before the set had been published, Haydn paid a visit to Vienna and heard several of the new quartets performed by Mozart himself, with his father Leopold, and two friends. In a famous letter, Leopold reported Haydn’s comments to him afterward: “I tell you before God as an honest man that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation. He has taste, and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” The other side of the coin, so to speak, is Mozart’s dedicatory address to Haydn, which was printed with the six quartets and is worth quoting in full:
To my dear friend Haydn
A father who had decided to send his children into the world at large thought best to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a famous man who fortunately happened to be his best friend as well. Behold here, famous man and dearest friend, my six children. They are, to be sure, the fruit of long and arduous work, yet some friends have encouraged me to assume that I shall see this work rewarded to some extent at least, and this flatters me into believing that these children shall one day offer me some comfort. You yourself, dearest friend, have shown me your approval of them during your last sojourn in this capital. Your praise, above all, encourages me to recommend them to you, and makes me hope that they shall not be entirely unworthy of your good will. May it please you, therefore, to receive them kindly and to be their father, their guide, and their friend. From this moment I surrender to you all my rights in them, but beg you to regard with leniency the faults that may have remained hidden to the partial eye of their father, and notwithstanding their shortcomings to preserve your noble friendship for him who loves you so dearly. Meanwhile I am, with all my heart, etc.,
W. A. Mozart.
Mozart had begun to work on the “Haydn” Quartets the year following his move from Salzburg to Vienna. It was during this time that he came to know the music of Bach and Handel through Baron van Swieten’s musicales, an experience that had the force of revelation for him and had profound effects upon the manner of his polyphonic writing. Moreover, in 1781 Haydn brought out his six “Russian” Quartets, Op. 33, written, as the composer put it, “in an entirely new and special manner”. The crux of the new manner was a greatly increased democratization in part-writing; all the instruments of the quartet were now to participate in the thematic elaboration, and furthermore, that elaboration was no longer to be confined only to development sections, but would permeate the whole texture of an opus.
Mozart transplanted these principles to his own six new “children” in tribute to Haydn. As ever with Mozart in his inspired creations, the effort is transmuted in the final product into a surface of seemingly spontaneous fluency and grace.
A.M.K.
K. 387 String Quartet in G major, “First Haydn”, No. 14
Origin: Vienna, December 31, 1782
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro vivace assai. Menuetto: Allegretto. Andante cantabile. Molto allegro.
The first quartet in the series is a boundlessly effusive creation that, for all its spill of emotion, is yet contained within absolutely ideal proportions. The opening movement envelops one instantly in Mozart’s outpouring in its very first phrase, an octave-spanning upward spring, bold and memorable in outline. The Menuetto reverses the upsweep of the first movement’s initial theme in the gently falling phrases of its opening measures. The Andante is a fine outpouring of four successive themes. The melodies are not in themselves memorable, perhaps, but their setting is gemlike and the entire movement gives off a golden C major radiance all its own.
The four-note theme at the beginning of the Finale, and indeed, the whole movement, is celebrated because of its close resemblance to the finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony. The movement sounds like a fugue because of the way the string instruments imitate each other in close succession, but Mozart shuttles between the “learned” style (i.e., strictly contrapuntal) and the “galant” (i.e., prevailingly melodic) with quicksilver ease. In a final Haydnesque touch, after giving us a false ending of loud, declarative chords, Mozart makes his concluding cadence a quiet one – but it is still the same four-note germ that has dominated the whole movement.
A.M.K.
K. 421 String Quartet in D minor, “Second Haydn”, No. 15 (K6 417b)
Origin: Vienna, June 1783
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegretto ma non troppo.
If the fundamental progression of the preceding G major Quartet was a proud, upward burst, here it is descent, to the nether regions of austere pathos. The key is D minor – the key of the brooding Piano Concerto No. 20, K. 466; the death-interrupted Requiem, K. 626; and the fateful element in Don Giovanni.
The very first move in the opening Allegro moderato is the first violin’s blunt downward plunge of an octave, the lower D nailed home with a sixfold reiteration. The second theme, its pleading lyricism (despite the major key) reinforced by a palpitating accompaniment, accelerates on repetition into a nervous triplet figure that becomes almost a signature motive for the opus.
The Andante is, on the surface, more serene than the first movement. But beneath that surface are deep currents of sorrow and unrest. The theme has a stately 6/8 dance motion, almost like a slow minuet; it also has something of the cut of Austrian folksong – like those that Haydn often favored in his slow movements.
A slow, pained descent characterizes the Menuetto (how far Mozart has come from the rococo ballroom!).
The theme of the concluding variation movement commences with a taut siciliana tune, immediately followed in the first violin by a brusque little repeated-note figure. The coda has new tempo marking; più Allegro (faster). It is here that the repeated-note figure of the theme is transformed, by the addition of one note and a quickening of pulse, into the triplet motive of the first movement.
A.M.K.
K. 428 String Quartet in E flat major, “Third Haydn”, No. 16 (K6 421b)
Origin: Vienna, June or July 1783
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro ma non troppo. Andante con moto. Menuetto: Allegro. Allegro vivace.
This is the least troubled of the “Haydn” Quartets, and the one most closely approximating Haydn in its naïve affability of tone. The wonderful opening melody, announced in soft unison by all four instruments at the start of the Allegro ma non troppo, again covers the interval of an octave that we have seen play such a key role in both of the preceding quartets. But lyricism, rather than drama, pervades the exposition.
The lovely and remarkable Andante con moto is a one-of-a-kind movement. Though there is a long-drawn-out tender melody in the first violin at the start, it is the whole four-part texture supporting this melody with gently rocking triplets that is the “theme” of the movement. The sensuousness of this texture, its exquisite, hymnic quality, and its harmonic nuances evoke the spirit of Franz Schubert. The movement, moreover, is in one long, celestially sustained line. The form is sonata form, complete with genuine, if short, development section.
The rollicking Menuetto brings us to the Haydnesque realm of peasant merry-making. The final Allegro vivace, though it is a truncated sonata form (minus development section) rather than a rondo, is the most obvious instance of a Haydn-inspired movement in the six quartets. Arrogant jollity, tricky pauses, abrupt dynamic shifts, and a backslapping ending are among its genial and beautifully crafted features.
A.M.K.
K. 458 String Quartet in B flat major, “Fourth Haydn”, “Hunt”, No. 17
Origin: Vienna, September 9, 1784
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro vivace assai. Menuetto moderato. Adagio. Allegro assai.
Chronologically, the last three quartets form a kind of subset within the six. They are distinguished from their predecessors by an even more stringent economy of means, a greater application of contrapuntal techniques, a more intensified pursuit of the developmental principle and, in two of the slow movements (K. 458 and 465) at any rate, an emotional profundity that has been encountered heretofore only in the Andante con moto of the third “Haydn” Quartet, K. 428. These differences are at once in evidence in the B flat major Quartet, which bears the sobriquet “Hunt” from the horn-call character of its opening theme. All the subsequent material of the movement is derived directly from the thematic statement of the first twelve measures. Moreover, within those twelve measures, all the melodic and rhythmic gestures proceed from a much smaller number of brief motivic cells.
There is a seriousness, an earnest and even impassioned quality to the Minuet that was by now becoming the norm for Mozart in this genre. But for the seriousness and passion, nothing in the “Haydn” set quite matches the extraordinary movement that follows. It is marked Adagio – the only slow movement of six that is so labeled – and the designation, to Mozart as to all eighteenth-century composers, was as much an indication of expressive intent as of tempo. Portions of this great Adagio do not so much emulate Haydn as they forecast the mature Beethoven. The breakneck Finale is once more in the Haydn mold, a sonata with a rondo-like insistence on its opening tune that has, despite the Haydn overtones, an urgency and moments of lyrical expansiveness that are pure Mozart.
A.M.K.
K. 464 String Quartet in A major, “Fifth Haydn”, No. 18
Origin: Vienna, January 10, 1785
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Menuetto. Andante. Allegro.
In many respects the A major Quartet is the most stunning example of musical craftsmanship among the six “Haydn” Quartets. Mozart’s compositional technique has become refined here to a point of intellectual brilliance in almost every measure of the opus. No less ahead of its time is the prevalence of chromaticism. In the opening Allegro, the principal theme itself already betrays chromatic inflections, and the movement as a whole is drenched in them. It is also a highly polyphonic movement: both the first and second themes are immediately developed in contrapuntal fashion as soon as they are announced.
The same is only slightly less true of the Minuet movement, where the successive and contrasting motifs of the opening theme are immediately thereafter combined contrapuntally. Another noteworthy feature of this Minuet is the dramatic and structural use of silence. The Andante is a splendid set of variations on one of those utterly natural-sounding arietta themes so typical of Mozart.
The concluding Allegro, whose main subject is a chromatically transformed version of the principal theme of the first movement, is the contrapuntal ne plus ultra of the “Haydn” Quartets, and one of the most consummate examples of the “learned” style in all of chamber music. With the exception of a sunny closing tune to round off the exposition, and one other surprising intrusion, the entire movement evolves with invincible contrapuntal logic from the opening motive of the principal theme and its answering phrase – a mere handful of notes, but what Mozart makes of them!
A.M.K.
K. 465 String Quartet in C major, “Sixth Haydn”, “Dissonance”, No. 19
Origin: Vienna, January 14, 1785
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Adagio – Allegro. Andante cantabile. Menuetto: Allegro. Allegro.
The C major Quartet is not only the last of the “Haydn” Quartets but also in large measure a summation of the artistic evolution that had taken place in the set. There is, moreover, an instrumental brilliance about K. 465, a kind of concert-hall grandeur, that exceeds anything in this direction among its predecessors.
This quartet has come to be known as the “Dissonance” because of its daring slow introduction, filled with startling cross-relations (A natural against A flat, for example, in the second measure), insistently chromatic voice-leading that presages much to come later in the quartet, and a disturbing harmonic ambiguity (what key are we actually in, for the first dozen measures?). By the end of the Adagio the ambiguity has been fully resolved, but after all the disorientation of the opening measures, it still comes as a sort of relief to land squarely in bright, unclouded C major with the start of the Allegro. The profile of the forward-thrusting first theme implies a self-perpetuating, restless momentum. The steady drive of this first movement relents only with the final, surprisingly quiet measures of the coda, in itself a variant of the Allegro’s opening theme.
The endearing Andante cantabile begins with a sustained, ardent cantilena of operatic character, worthy of Figaro’s Countess. The movement is on a par in poignant eloquence with the comparable movements of the E flat and B flat Quartets. The brusque energy of the Minuet suggests almost the roughhewn tumble of a Beethoven scherzo. The Finale, marked Allegro molto, returns to a Haydnesque vein, as befits the last movement of the last quartet in the set, except that there is a sort of rhapsodic frenzy and melodic profusion here that are peculiar to Mozart.
A.M.K.
K. 499 String Quartet in D major, “Hoffmeister”, No. 20
Origin: Vienna, August 19, 1786
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegretto. Menuetto: Allegretto. Adagio. Allegro.
Mozart composed this piece for Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754-1812), a minor composer who early in 1785, founded a music publishing shop that specialized in providing the music-loving Viennese with chamber music. Almost immediately he asked Mozart to provide him with three piano quartets. Mozart eventually produced the emotionally charged Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478, in November 1785. Hoffmeister later complained “the public found the work too difficult and would not buy it”. After launching The Marriage of Figaro in 1786, Mozart wrote his second, and last, piano quartet (K. 493). Although it is somewhat easier than the first to perform, Hoffmeister did not publish it. Then, in August 1786, Mozart composed the string quartet, K. 499, which must have pleased Hoffmeister, since he published it soon thereafter.
The opening Allegretto follows sonata form and is monothematic: instead of presenting contrasting themes, it gives the same theme in contrasting ways. The quartet’s bid for popularity shows most clearly in the Minuet, a lusty movement that verges on a German dance like those Mozart wrote for the Redoutensaal, Vienna’s famous ballroom. Canonic imitations enter right after the theme, but are so brief they may be difficult for the listener to detect.
The Adagio provides a marked change of mood, as well as pace. Mozart never takes the term “adagio” lightly. This is a discursive, introspective interlude spinning out its melody fragment by fragment. Mozart returns to a brightly sunlit Vienna in the Finale. The violin takes the lead throughout, opening with running, detached phrases that hark back to the Minuet’s Trio. A brief, lightly scored coda closes the quartet.
C.S.
K. 546 Adagio and Fugue in C minor
Origin: Vienna, June 26, 1788
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, basso
Mozart transcribed the Fugue in this work from the two-piano fugue, K. 426. To it he added a short Adagio introduction in dotted rhythms, in which, as the American pianist and writer Robert D. Levin put it, “angular outbursts alternate with unearthly hush; its suggestions of violence and mysticism make the ensuing geometry of the fugue seem a relief”. The occasion for the arrangement is unknown, but perhaps it was at the suggestion of F. A. Hoffmeister, who published the work. Moreover, Mozart made it at a time when he was immersed in the composition of his final three symphonies, K. 543, 550, and 551, the last of which concludes with an elaborate fugue in C major.
The original manuscript of the Adagio is not extant, but that of the Fugue has a divided bass line for “Violoncelli” (plural) and “Contra Basso”, implying an orchestral conception rather than one for chamber forces. The work is more frequently played today as a string quartet, however, than an orchestral piece.
W.C.
The “Prussian” Quartets
Like his pianist-composer cousin, Prince Louis Ferdinand, and his flutist-composer uncle, Frederick the Great, whom he followed to the Prussian throne, King Frederick William II (1744-97) was a well-trained practicing musician. His instrument was the cello. He also was an enthusiastic patron of music, with the power and the purse to attract the leading composers of his age.
Mozart was constantly dogged by financial worries. His pupil, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, later to become one of Beethoven’s patrons, offered to take him to meet Frederick William, and on April 8, 1789, the prince and the pauper left Vienna for the royal seat at Potsdam. Mozart’s stay there was a very disheartening time. On May 26 he played at the Prussian Court and returned to Vienna. All told, the journey netted Mozart a modest 500 gulden and a commission to compose “six easy clavier sonatas for Princess Frederike and six quartets for the King”.
Once home, he composed the quartet, K. 575, and the Piano Sonata in D Major, K. 576. His wife Constanze fell seriously ill, however, and he postponed further work on the “Prussian” Quartets for eleven months, and even then managed to add only two more to the projected six. (Mozart never completed the set of sonatas for the Princess, either.)
Since it would not do to have a chamber music-loving king inconspicuously hew to a modest bass line, composing for the royal cellist presented a problem. Mozart’s solution was resourceful, especially in K. 575. Instead of just highlighting the cello, he gave all four instruments featured roles; they shift constantly between playing the melody and collaborating in the accompaniment. His complete rethinking of a quartet’s instrumental balance has led some critics to call these works the “Solo Quartets”.
C.S.
K. 575 String Quartet in D major, “First Prussian”, No. 21
Origin: Vienna, June 1789
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegretto. Andante. Menuetto: Allegretto. Allegretto.
Mozart’s new approach and the richly varied sound it produces comes through right at the start of the first “Prussian” Quartet. The first violin sings the expansive main theme; then the viola repeats the theme. In the second theme the cello takes the spotlight, playing high in its register.
The lovely, tranquil Andante recalls the melody of Das Veilchen (The Violet), K. 476, a song Mozart wrote in 1785, and the quartet itself is sometimes known by that title. The Minuet hovers between traditional dance music and the fanciful scherzos of later composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn. The Finale is a monothematic sonata-rondo. The spacious theme resembles the first movement’s principal theme so strongly that the Finale becomes, in effect, an eighteenth-century anticipation of the nineteenth-century cyclic principle of returning themes.
C.S.
K. 589 String Quartet in B flat major, “Second Prussian”, No. 22
Origin: Vienna, May 1790
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Larghetto. Menuetto: Moderato. Allegro assai.
In the first movement of the B flat Quartet, the triple meter and the elegant contours of the principal theme set an especially lyric tone for the opening Allegro. The lead violin, backed by viola, muses over the theme and the cello repeats it. Eventually the cello sounds an arching, sinuous second theme and the violin extends it. With the return of the opening, the themes pass in review but, as in the earlier quartets, changes in instrumentation impart new color to them.
The Larghetto presents a simple yet shapely instrumental song. To the accompaniment of the middle strings, the cello opens in its rich upper register with a sensuous theme beautifully suited to the instrument. Having spotlighted the cello in the Larghetto, Mozart gives it a more modest role as an ensemble instrument in the Minuet, which – like the Minuet in K. 575 – suggests a scherzo in its contrast between brief bold gestures and equally short running phrases. A brief and ebullient sonata-rondo, the Finale bubbles along in 6/8 meter.
C.S.
K. 590 String Quartet in F major, “Third Prussian”, No. 23
Origin: Vienna, June 1790
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro moderato, Andante. Menuetto: Allegretto. Allegro.
The last “Prussian” Quartet is the most extroverted and brilliant of the three. The cello reassumes a featured role, but only in the first movement. As in K. 499, all the strings in unison anticipate the principal theme of the opening movement – a sonata form with matched rather than contrasting themes. The first violin states the arched opening theme. Swooping up almost three octaves, the cello then sounds a second theme that closely resembles the opening. In the recapitulation the viola takes over the solo passages the cello had played earlier.
As Mozart scholar Alec Hyatt King has observed, “The Andante is a meditation on a simple rhythmical phrase”. Heard at the start, the phrase recurs over and over again with a tenacity that is quite unusual for Mozart. The Minuet’s exceptionally light and transparent scoring focuses on the first violin playing high in its register.
In the Finale, Mozart takes a different approach to a problem that underlay much of the Classical period: that of shifting the emotional weight of a piece from the first movement to the last. Here, he caps the work with a perpetual motion, in contrapuntal style, that combines rondo and sonata form. The Finale’s ebullient theme anticipates the popular “Gypsy” Rondo from Haydn’s Piano Trio in G major, written a few years later.
C.S.
Duos and trios
K3 46d Sonata in C major
Origin: Vienna, September 1, 1768
Scoring: violin, basso (or solo keyboard)
Movements: Allegro. Menuet 1. Menuet 2.
K3 46e Sonata in F major
Origin: Vienna, September 1, 1768
Scoring: violin, basso (or solo keyboard)
Movements: Allegro. Menuet 1. Menuet 2.
In September 1768 Leopold Mozart drew up a document which he entitled “List of everything that this twelve-year-old boy has composed since his seventh year, and can be exhibited in the originals”. On this impressive list of dozens of works there appears an entry that has long puzzled music historians: “Various solos ... for the violin”. In the mid-eighteenth century “solo” meant a multi-movement work for a melody instrument and figured or unfigured bass; in this kind of music, “solo” was interchangeable with “sonata” on title pages. Certainly among the works Leopold had in mind were these two tiny sonatas, K. 46d and 46e.
Both works are brief (two-movement) works for violin and unfigured bass: a binary sonata movement followed by a pair of minuets. They are found together in an autograph manuscript dated September 1, 1768, or just a few days before Leopold Mozart drew up his “List”. They represent that kind of charming, slight music much in demand for domestic music-making. We should probably imagine Nannerl realizing the unfigured bass at the harpsichord and Wolfgangl playing the melody on his violin, to admiring friends and relatives.
N.Z.
K. 292 Sonata in B flat major (K6 196c)
Origin: Munich? early 1775?
Scoring: bassoon, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Rondo: Allegro.
Mozart is reported to have composed this sonata, along with three bassoon concertos (not including K. 191), for a certain Munich bassoon enthusiast, Baron Thaddäus von Dürnitz, who commissioned bassoon works from various composers. Presumably Mozart wrote these pieces in early 1775 while he was staying in Munich for the production of La finta giardiniera, but no concrete proof of this exists, nor does the original manuscript survive. The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe has suggested that the violoncello part may have originally been intended as a second bassoon part, to judge from the style of the voice-leading.
The attractive and generously proportioned composition gives more weight to the bassoon (the upper part) than to the cello, which plays a relatively accompanimental role. Indeed, the demands on the upper part approach the virtuosic in terms of range, agility, and, in the Andante, expressivity. Several opportunities arise for Eingänge, or ornamental passages improvised to decorate pauses at half-cadences; these would presumably be supplied by the upper part. Despite the work’s unusual scoring, it is rich in melodic and rhetorical character.
W.C.
K. 266 Adagio and Menuetto in B flat major (K6 271f)
Origin: Salzburg, early 1777?
Scoring: 2 violins, basso
This endearing little work has been dated solely on the basis of the handwriting and paper-type of the original manuscript. No occasion for its composition is known. Although Leopold Mozart composed and published many trio sonatas for two violins and violoncello, this is the only such work of Wolfgang’s extant (except for a very brief sketch from his Viennese years).
Notably, Mozart endows the two upper parts with equal importance, with the first violin dominant in the Adagio, and the second in the Menuetto. The Adagio opens with a prefatory announcement, then continues with a binary-form movement in a warmly lyrical vein; the music unfolds continuously without the expected recapitulation of the opening themes. The Minuet moves robustly in a dotted rhythm; its trio imitates horn calls with double-stopped chords.
W.C.
K. 423 Duo in G major
Origin: Salzburg? summer 1783
Scoring: violin, viola
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Rondeau: Allegro.
In 1806, Joseph Haydn’s brother, Johann Michael, died in Salzburg, where he had been in the service of the prince-archbishop since 1763. Two years later a Biographical Sketch of Haydn was issued in Salzburg “for the benefit of his widow”. Written by two of Michael’s pupils and published anonymously, this interesting little book relates that Michael Haydn was ordered by high authority (i.e., Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo)
to compose duets for violin and viola. He could not, however, deliver them at the appointed time because he became seriously ill and the convalescence lasted longer than had been expected, rendering him incapable of doing any work at all; the great man was unable to find a quid pro quo. He was threatened with the cancellation of his salary on account of the delay, probably because his patron was too little informed about Haydn’s circumstances, or had been deliberately misinformed.
Mozart, who visited him daily, found out about this, sat down and wrote for his upset friend with such uninterrupted speed that in a few days the duets were finished and delivered under Michael’s name. In later years, we reminded ourselves with delight of this wonderful example of brotherly love; our master kept the original manuscripts as a sacred relic, honorable to the memory of the immortal Mozart.
Writing these two works for his Salzburg colleague was not only a deed of kindness but an act of homage. Mozart thought highly of Michael Haydn’s music, which is just now, in the latter part of the twentieth century, beginning to receive its due; he studied and performed a number of Haydn’s symphonies and church works, even composing a slow introduction (K. 444) for one of Haydn’s G major symphonies.
Michael Haydn had apparently intended to compose a series of six violin and viola duets for the archbishop; the Berlin State Library owns copies of four such duets (in C, D, E, and F major). When we examine these four works it seems possible that Mozart’s two, in G and B flat, were carefully designed to complete the set by the choice of two keys not employed in the four already composed by Michael Haydn. Mozart also apparently took pains to compose in Michael Haydn’s style, since he did not want to compromise Haydn by possible detection. Among the devices Mozart uses to camouflage his authorship are the chirping grace notes and trills in the opening movement of K. 424 and the popular tunes in the Finale of K. 423.
The opening Allegro of K. 423 is a densely packed movement in the usual sonata form. The songful Adagio is, by its very use of a genuinely slow tempo, another of Mozart’s camouflaging tactics. He usually wrote andantes rather than adagios as slow movements, whereas in the bona fide Michael Haydn duets, three of the slow movements are marked “adagio” and the fourth “adagietto”.
H.C.R.L.
K. 424 Duo in B flat major
Origin: Salzburg? summer 1783
Scoring: violin, viola
Movements: Adagio – Allegro. Andante cantabile. Thema con variazioni: Andante grazioso.
The Mozartean chromaticism of the introductory Adagio of the second of these Michael Haydn “forgeries” (see the previous note) gives way to the opening theme of the following Allegro, equally Mozartean in its great poise and in the seamless flow of the music. It is quite possible that Mozart also knew and had carefully studied Joseph Haydn’s six duets for violin and viola – they were called “Sonatas” – which had started to circulate within Austria in the 1770s. Some of Haydn’s learned developmental technique, the closely packed working with small motivic fragments, can be heard in the first movement of K. 424.
The yearning aspirations of the Andante cantabile again seem to be close to the Mozartean spirit. Despite its eloquent late-Classical expression, the movement is cast in the form of an antique siciliano, a slow dance in 6/8 time popular throughout the eighteenth century. The Finale is a theme and variations of the type brought to a rare perfection by Joseph Haydn in his 1770s chamber music; the form was also used in his duets. Noticeable in these vivacious Mozart variations is the difficulty of the viola part, which requires a real virtuoso.
H.C.R.L.
K. 563 Divertimento in E flat major
Origin: Vienna, September 27, 1788
Scoring: violin, viola, violoncello
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Menuetto: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto: Allegretto. Allegro.
Mozart wrote this divertimento in the summer of 1788, shortly after the composition of his last three great symphonies. It was written for his friend the Viennese merchant Michael Puchberg, the man who so often helped Mozart when he was in desperate need of money during the last years of his life. This work was probably intended for private musical evenings at Puchberg’s house. Mozart’s use here of the description “Divertimento” is explained by the sequence of movements, which is typical of works of that nature: two rapid outer movements, and two slow movements alternating with two minuets.
It is Mozart’s only string trio for violin, viola, and cello, and indeed the first ever written, viewed from the standpoint of the concept of mature Classical chamber music. With incredible assurance Mozart at once exploited all the possibilities inherent in the scoring for these three strings: he treated the instruments as absolute equals, even sometimes writing for them in strict counterpoint, as in the minor variation of the Andante; the viola, especially, joins the violin as a melody instrument, for example in the first Trio of the second Minuet. Within its class this work could scarcely be excelled, and it belongs, with Mozart’s string quintets, among his most mature chamber works.
The first movement (Allegro), which is in the customary sonata form, opens with a descending triad figure. The two themes and a concluding motif are not merely presented in the exposition, but are already treated there as in a development section, the concluding motif with its countermelody being passed between cello and violin in double counterpoint. The development of this movement is notable for its bold modulations.
The descending triad figure of the first movement recurs in ascending form in the second movement (Adagio), thus creating a certain thematic connection between the first two movements. The Adagio is also written in sonata form, but instead of a second subject appearing, the violin transforms the cello’s triad motive, and the recapitulation is a variant of the exposition.
In the four variations which make up the fourth movement (Andante), Mozart, unusually, varied even the repetitions of the individual sections. He treated the simple melody on which the variations are based with such freedom – especially in the third, minor variation – that the effect is of hearing completely different melodies. Two Minuets frame this Andante; the second of them has two trios (as was customary in serenades).
The Finale is a freely constructed rondo on a folklike theme; at the center of this rondo, as in the first movement, Mozart introduced audacious modulations in the minor.
H-C.M.