Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Instrumental music
Concertos and Concerto Movements
Concertos for Piano
Background and overview
The birth of the genre
The piano concerto as a significant genre can almost be said to have been invented by Mozart. Before him, concertos for harpsichord or fortepiano and orchestra were few in number and seldom of the highest artistic quality. Exceptions are the few harpsichord concerto s of the genre’s putative inventor, J. S. Bach, which Mozart almost certainly did not know, and the more-than-fifty concertos of his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, some of which Mozart may have known, but which are different enough from his own concertos that they can hardly have been his principal models. The handful of keyboard concertos by Joseph Haydn are minor works, as are the many by Johann Georg Lang and Johann Christian Bach, and the few of Johann Christoph Friedrich and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Franz and Georg Benda, Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, Carl Heinrich and Johann Gottlieb Graun, Johann Wilhelm Hertel, Leontzi Honauer, Johann Gottfield Müthel, Johann Schobert, Johann Samuel Schröter, Georg Christoph Wagenseil, et al. (It is noteworthy that, although they worked in many parts of Europe, these composers all were German-speaking.) Italian music also profoundly influenced the young Mozart, but the same points can be made – that styles are distant from Mozart’s and artistic content is modest – concerning the twenty-three extant Italian harpsichord concertos of the mid-eighteenth century, by Domenico Auletta the elder, Francesco Durante, Giovanni Battista Martini, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Giovanni Benedetto Platti, and Giuseppe Sammartini. Yet in spite of the fact that Mozart lent the genre an entirely new stature, and in spite of repeated performances of his concertos by himself, his pupils, his sister, and his admirers, there was nothing written about them in the press or elsewhere, making it difficult to divine their contemporary significance. This silence has recently been explained:
The difficulty in do cum en ting the reception of a Mozart work results – as with Bach – from the eighteenth century’s point of view, the consideration of compositions less as individual “works” than as constituent parts of a complete oeuvre or as specimens of a genre, which were dedicated not to the constituting of a repertory but to the carrying on of musical “daily business”. If one disregards a few operas, which were already “repertory pieces” in his lifetime, hardly one contemporary text is devoted to a single, unique, completely determined work by Mozart (W. Kluppelholz and H. Busch [eds.], Musik gedeutet und gewertet, 1983, p. 36).
Thus, for Mozart’s immediate contemporaries, his concertos were not “classics” but “popular music”, to be enjoyed, used up, and replaced by newer works. Nonetheless, by the 1780s western Europe already had its connoisseurs and collectors of “art for art’s sake”, who must have recognized the extraordinary qualities of Mozart’s music, as is suggested by the outpourings of editions of his music in the decade following his death. A sort of tacit approval of Mozart’s piano concerto s even by his contemporaries can perhaps be detected in the fact that, whereas only three of his more-than-fifty symphonies were published during his lifetime, some seven of his twenty-one original concertos for solo piano attained that distinction.
Mozart’s heyday
The period from approximately 1782 to 1785 was the most prosperous and perhaps also the happiest of Mozart’s life. He was much in demand in Vienna as a composer, performer, and teacher, and he managed to make a handsome living from his freelance activities. In the early- and mid-1780s Vienna experienced a boom in public and private concert-giving, which lasted until war and recession, and the death of Emperor Joseph II in 1790, caused a decline. Mozart not only participated in this development but was himself partly responsible for it. He seems to have been the first, for instance, to give Lenten subscription concerts, which immediately became a local custom. Indeed, his activities during Lent are scarcely to be believed, for he played somewhere every evening for many weeks running. His father, visiting him during Lent 1785, wrote to his sister Nannerl about this frenetic activity:
On the same Friday [February 11] around 6 o’clock, we drove to his first subscription concert, at which a great many members of the aristocracy were present. ... [For the rest of this passage, see K. 466.] On Saturday evening Joseph Haydn and the two Barons Tinti came to see us and the [three] new quartets were performed. ... On Sunday the Italian singer, Madame Laschi, who is leaving for Italy, gave a concert in the theater, at which she sang two arias. A cello concerto was performed, a tenor and a bass each sang an aria, and your brother played a glorious concerto. ... When your brother left [the stage] the Emperor tipped his hat and called out “Bravo, Mozart!” And when he came on to play, there was a great deal of clapping. We were not at the theater yesterday, for every day there is a concert. ... This evening there is again a concert in the theater, at which your brother is again playing a concerto. ... Yesterday, the 15th, there was again a recital in the theater given by a girl who sings charmingly.
Your brother played his great new concerto in D [minor] most magnificently. Today we are going to a concert given at the house of the Salzburg agent von Ployer. ...
This evening your brother is performing at a grand concert at Count Zichy’s ... but your sister-in-law and Marchand have gone to the concert at Herr von Ployer’s. ... As usual, it will probably be one o’clock before we get to bed. ... On Friday, the 18th ... we drove to your brother’s second concert at the Mehlgrube at seven o’clock. This concert too was a splendid success. ... The two concerts which Herr Le Brun and his wife are giving in the theater are on Wednesday, the 23rd, and Monday the 28th. By the 18th boxes for the first concert were no longer to be had. These people are going to make an enormous amount of money. ...
In three concerts Herr Le Brun and his wife made, astonishingly, at the first 1,100 gulden, at the second 900 gulden, and at the third 500 gulden. Your brother made 559 gulden at his [benefit] concert, which we never expected, as he is giving six subscription concerts at the Mehlgrube to over 150 people, each of whom pays a souverain d’or for the six. Besides, as a favor he has been playing frequently at other concerts in the theater. ... We never get to bed before one o’clock and I never get up before nine. We lunch at two or half past. ... Every day there are concerts; and constant teaching, performing, composing, etc. I feel rather out of it all. If only the concerts were over! It is impossible for me to describe the rush and bustle. Since my arrival your brother’s fortepiano has been taken at least a dozen times from the house to the theater or to some other house. ... It is taken to the Mehlgrube every Friday and has also been taken to Count Zichy’s and to Prince Kaunitz’s. ... Now it is dark, and I must finish and drive to the concert in the theater. ... Tomorrow, and on Sunday, the 2nd, is the [benefit] concert for the widows [of musicians]. ...
Leopold Mozart’s letters reveal the circumstances in which, between 1782 and 1785, Wolfgang completed twelve piano concertos (along with two additional piano-concerto finales) and began two others, as well as the fact that these difficult works were usually performed without a rehearsal or, at best, with but a single run-through beforehand. From this and other evidence, we know that the orchestral musicians of Vienna must have been particularly accomplished – Leopold’s and Wolfgang’s standards were high.
Mozart’s decline
Between 1767 and 1791 Mozart composed twenty-eight solo keyboard concertos, two additional rondo-finales, and 2 concertos for two or three keyboard soloists. However, these thirty-two works, far from appearing at a steady rate of one or two a year, were irregularly produced: seven in the first five years (all pastiches of works by other composers), four in the next five, in the next five only two, but then seventeen in the period from the end of 1782 to 1786. By contrast, in his last five years Mozart wrote only two piano concertos. Conditions in Vienna were probably responsible both for the exceptional number of concertos in the first half of the 1780s and for his loss of interest in the genre during the latter part of that decade.
As the capital of the Austrian Empire, Vienna was the economic, political, and cultural center not just of Austria and Hungary, but for substantial portions of present-day Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Poland, Russia, and Rumania. Many noble families from those regions maintained homes in Vienna, where they lived during the “season”. A surprising number of the members of these families were musically literate and demanded a steady supply of good music. The intensity of this patronage helps to explain why Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven – none of them natives – preferred Vienna to all other cities.
The early 1780s in Vienna saw the first serious flourishings of firms devoted to music publishing (especially Artaria and Co.) and to commercial music-copying (especially Johann Traeg), who dealt widely in central Europe; public concerts (especially benefit concerts and subscription series) also flourished. At the same time, the number of private concerts reached an unprecedented level, and, during Lent, Mozart performed at one noble home or another on almost every evening not already taken up with public performances. Most of these were orchestral concerts, with symphonies, arias, and concertos; and Mozart’s piano concertos became their mainstays and the principal means by which he appeared before his admiring patrons.
An advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung for February 25, 1784, captures something of the spirit of this vigorous activity:
Johann Traeg, on the first floor of the Pilate House by Saint Peter’s, has the honor to certify to the highly esteemed public that, encouraged by the success thus far granted him, he has drawn up a plan that will be most welcome to music lovers, by means of which they will be enabled at little cost to entertain themselves with the best pieces by the greatest masters. There are many families of this very city that amuse themselves with large or small musical gatherings. Many of them do not wish to be overloaded with sheet music, or at very least to have an introductory hearing of the things that they have a mind to buy. Inasmuch as I now possess a fine stock, which I endeavor daily to enlarge further, of the best and newest music of all types, I therefore offer to hire out weekly either three symphonies or six quintets, six quartets, six trios, etc. for a quarterly payment in advance of three florin. If anyone wishes to give concerts twice a week and, accordingly, requires six symphonies or twelve other pieces for that purpose, he likewise can subscribe that way and pay quarterly only five florin. However, because I must strive to serve everyone fairly, no-one should have misgivings at returning the pieces received directly the following day. Because of my broad acquaintanceship with the best local musicians, I can also provide skilled musicians for large and small concerts at a very reasonable price. In order best to be able to execute these commissions, I request that people place their orders at my establishment any time before midday.
Traeg’s stock included an up-to-date selection of Mozart’s chamber music, arias, symphonies, and concertos.
Mozart’s patrons – who usually did not have to acquire his music from Traeg or Artaria and Co. but dealt directly with him, employing him to lead their concerts – came from Viennese high society. To this class belonged both the homes in which he played and the subscribers to his concerts. The subscription list survives for a series of Lenten concerts that Mozart gave on three consecutive Wednesdays in March 1784, in the hall of the casino owned by his friend Johann von Trattner. For these subscription concerts Mozart composed three concertos (K. 449, 450, 451) and also gave their premieres. A recent study shows that, of the 174 names on the list, fifty percent came from the highest nobility, forty-two percent from the lesser nobility or from wealthy commoners with purchased titles, and a mere eight percent from the bourgeoisie (H. Schuler, Die Subskribenten der Mozart’schen Mittwochskonzerte im Trattnersaal zu Wien anno 1784, Neustadt a. d. Aisch, 1983). Some eighty-three percent on the list were men, in striking contrast with Parisian salon concerts of the period, which were dominated by women. Braun, Esterházy, Fries, Galitzin (Golitsïn), Harrach, Lichnowsky, Lobkowitz, Schwarzenberg, Swieten, Waldstein: what resonance these names from Mozart’s list of subscribers have as patrons of the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven!
In the late 1780s this demand for new concertos diminished as Austria experienced rebellion in its Netherlands territory and a war with Turkey, the resulting economic strain causing a severe recession. Then, terrified by the political developments in France, the Emperors Joseph II and Leopold II rescinded various liberalizing reforms and instituted repressive measures. The combination of these factors led to a stifling of cultural life and a decline both of public concerts and of private patronage. Many noblemen let go their private bands, opportunities for performances were drastically curtailed, and Mozart virtually stopped composing piano concertos.
N.Z.
K. 37 Piano Concerto in F major, No. 1
Origin: Salzburg, April 1767
Scoring: keyboard solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro (Raupach). Andante (anonymous). [Allegro] (Honauer).
K. 39 Piano Concerto in B-flat major, No. 2
Origin: Salzburg, June 1767
Scoring: keyboard solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro spiritoso (Raupach). Andante (Schobert). Molto allegro (Raupach).
K. 40 Piano Concerto in D major, No. 3
Origin: Salzburg, July 1767
Scoring: keyboard solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso (Honauer). Andante (Eckard). Presto (C. P. E. Bach).
K. 41 Piano Concerto in G major, No. 4
Origin: Salzburg, July 1767
Scoring: keyboard solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro (Honauer). Andante (Raupach). Molto allegro (Honauer).
K. 107/1 Piano Concerto in D major (K3 21b/1)
Origin: Salzburg, c. 1771
Scoring: keyboard solo, 2 violins, basso continuo
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Tempo di Menuetto.
K. 107/2 Piano Concerto in G major (K3 21b/2)
Origin: Salzburg, c. 1771
Scoring: keyboard solo, 2 violins, basso continuo
Movements: Allegro. Allegretto.
K. 107/3 Piano Concerto in E flat major (K3 21b/3)
Origin: Salzburg, c. 1771
Scoring: keyboard solo, 2 violins, basso continuo
Movements: Allegro. Allegretto.
These seven key board concertos are apparently the result of an ingenious series of assignments given Mozart by his father: to take the materials of some up-to-date galant keyboard-sonata movements by Hermann Friedrich Raupach, Leontzi Honauer, Johann Schobert, Johann Gottfried Eckard, C. P. E. Bach (K. 37-41) and, especially, J. C. Bach (K. 107) and tum them into concerto movements. Such a pastiche technique would not only have familiarized the ten-year-old composer with potential compositional models, but would also have taught him the difference between the sonata and concerto genres.
On their own terms these miniature concertos work well. Their contribution to the apparent miracle of K. 175 (Mozart’s first original piano concerto), which is sometimes portrayed as Athena springing fully armed from the head of Zeus, has probably not yet been properly explained.
The scorn or indifference sometimes heaped upon the seven pastiche concertos is a vestigial residue of a Romantic attitude to art, which values originality above craft, stormy affect above galant airiness, complexity above simplicity. Without making exaggerated claims for the seven earliest concertos, we should perhaps throw off such unhelpful notions and accept the works for what they are.
N.Z.
K. 175 Piano Concerto in D major, No. 5
Origin: Salzburg, December 1773
Scoring: solo piano or harpsichord, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante ma un poco adagio. Allegro.
K. 382 Rondo in D major
Origin: Vienna, March 1782
Scoring: solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
The Köchel Catalogue calls the Concerto in D major, K. 175, “Mozart’s first piano concerto”; and this it is, aside from the seven early pastiche works just discussed. But it would be mistaken to infer from this that K. 175, completed when its composer was a month shy of his eighteenth birthday, is in any sense an apprentice work, for there is nothing halting or tentative about it. Its style is clearly Mozart’s, its ideas attractive and skillfully organized, and its formal outlines similar to those of its better-known successors. Mozart himself seems to have recognized the success of his first attempt, and kept K. 175 in his repertory for a decade.
This ground-breaking work was composed in Salzburg in December 1773, probably for the use of Mozart and his sister in house and court concerts during Carnival and Lent. (During Advent no concerts took place in Salzburg.) Mozart took his “first” concerto on tour to Munich in 1774 and to Mannheim and Paris in 1777-78, writing home to his father of a concert at the house of the composer and concertmaster (leader) of the Mannheim orchestra, Christian Cannabich, “I played my old concerto in D major, because it is such a favorite here”. In Mannheim the twenty-two-year-old Mozart fell in love with the singer Aloysia Weber, the older sister of his future wife Constanze; for Aloysia he composed the Metastasian scena “Alcandro, lo confesso ... Non sò d’onde viene” (K. 294), which contains a (possibly unconscious) amorous allusion in the form of two passages quoted from the Andante of K. 175 at the words “I know not whence comes ... that unfamiliar motion from within my breast”.
K. 175 was published in Paris and Mainz around 1785, probably signaling the end of its usefulness to Mozart as a personal display piece. Before that, however, the concerto had undergone a transformation: the wind orchestration in all three movements was reworked and then, in preparation for a busy Lenten concert season in Vienna in 1782, the entirely new Finale (K. 382) found in the editions of 1785 was composed. In February 1783 Mozart sent his sister cadenzas for the first two movements of K. 175 along with an Eingang (“lead-in” – a brief cadenza) for its new Finale.
Despite its undeniable charm, K. 175 may reveal certain signs of Mozart’s inexperience, in particular an apparent fear of emptiness manifested, for instance, in his doubling the first solo entry of the piano with the violins (something he never again did), in his occasionally accompanying the soloist’s right-hand melody with tremolos in the orchestra plus a busy Alberti bass in the left hand, or in his repeating too often the Finale’s opening theme. While these modern asthetic judgments are open to dispute, Mozart’s own view of the work’s viability can probably be inferred from the existence of the second Finale and reworked wind parts.
The two Finales show him grappling with problems of evolving taste, seeking – as Bernd Sponheuer has suggested in a recent article (Archiv for Musikwissenschaft, 1985) – a new synthesis of the “learned” and “galant” styles. Posterity’s verdict seems to be that a “rigorous sonata-form movement with rich contrapuntal content” (German musicologist Hermann Abert) was replaced by a rondo with “a series of insipid variations which are a poor substitute for the beautiful original” movement (English writer Cuthbert Girdlestone). But this opinion was held neither by Mozart nor by his contemporaries. He reported with delight to his father in 1782 that the Rondo – which he called “a gem” – was “making such a great furor in Vienna” and, a year later, that the success of the new Finale was such that during one of his public Lenten concerts he had had to repeat it; then, to his sister and to the publishers he sent the version of the concerto with the Rondo, not with the sonata-form movement.
N.Z.
K. 238 Piano Concerto in B flat major, No. 6
Origin: Salzburg, January 1776
Scoring: piano solo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro aperto. [Andante un poco adagio]. Rondeau: Allegro.
This, Mozart’s second piano concerto (not counting the seven early pastiche concertos) was written presumably to show off the brilliant keyboard skills of the twenty-year-old composer at court and in local salons during the traditional carnival and Lent concerts. His sister, Nannerl, who was an accomplished pianist, also performed her brother’s concerto sin Salzburg. In 1777 Mozart took K. 238 with him on tour, performing it at concerts in Augsburg and Mannheim. The cadenzas for the first two movements and the Eingang for the third surviving in a manuscript in Leopold Mozart’s hand are presumed to be Wolfgang’s. The concerto remained unpublished until the year after Mozart’s death.
N.Z.
K. 242 Triple Piano Concerto in F major, “Lodron”, No. 7
Origin: Salzburg, February 1776
Scoring: 3 pianos soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Rondeau: Tempo di Menuetto.
K. 242 also exists in a version for two pianos, probably made for use by the Mozart siblings, but in its original conception it was a concerto for three pianos or harpsichords. A presentation copy of the first version bore the inscription: “Dedicated to the incomparable merit of Her Excellency, Her Ladyship the Countess Lodron, née Countess d’Arco, and her daughters, their Ladyships the Countesses Aloisia and Giuseppa ... by their most devoted servant, Wolfgango Mozart.” Mozart tailor-made the solo parts to fit the abilities of the dedicatees, providing two solo parts of moderate difficulty, and a third – for the younger daughter – of modest requirements. The Lodron family figures elsewhere in Mozart’s creative life: the Divertimento in F, K. 247, was written for the Countess’s name day in 1776 and the Divertimento in B flat, K. 287, was probably written for the same occasion a year later.
N.Z.
K. 246 Piano Concerto in C major, “Lützow”, No. 8
Origin: Salzburg, April 1776
Scoring: piano solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro aperto. Andante. Rondeau: Tempo di Menuetto.
The Concerto in C major, K. 246, was written for the twenty-six-year-old Countess Antonie Lützow, wife of the commander of the Hohensalzburg Fortress and, it is thought, a pupil of Leopold Mozart’s. The circumstances of its first performance are unknown, although it has been speculated that the Countess may have performed her concerto at the Salzburg court during Whitsuntide 1776, when members of her family visited from Prague. Some notion of the sort of occasion (besides court concerts) at which the Kenner und Liebhaber (connoisseurs and amateurs) of Salzburg heard Mozart’s works may perhaps be gleaned from a wry letter from Leopold Mozart in 1778 – even if, on this occasion, the planned piano-concerto performance came to nought:
Count Czernin is not content with fiddling at Court, and as he would like to direct, he has collected an amateur ensemble that is to meet in Count Lodron’s hall every Sunday from three o’clock. Count Sigmund Lodron came by to invite Nannerl (as an amateur) to play the keyboard instrument and to ask me [as a professional] to keep the second violins in order. A week ago today, on the 5th [April], we had our first concert. There was Count Czernin, the primo violino, then Baron Babbius, Sigmund Lodron, young Wienrother, Kolb, Kolb’s student from the Nonnberg [Monastery], and a couple of young students whom I did not know. The second violins were myself, Sigmund Robinig, Cusetti, Count Altham, Cajetan Andretter, a student, and [the castrato] Ceccarelli, la coda dei secondi [the tail of the seconds]. The two violas were the two ex-Jesuits, Bullinger and Wishofer; the two oboes were the lackey Weiser and Schulze’s son, who acted in the Linz play. Two apprentice waits [town musicians] played the horns. The double basses were Cassl and Count Wolfegg, with Ranftl doing duty occasionally. The cellos were the new young canons, Count Zeill and Count Spaur, Court Councillor Mölk, Sigmund Andretter, and Ranftl. Nannerl accompanied all the symphonies and she also accompanied Ceccarelli, who sang an aria per l’apertura della accademia di dilettanti [for the opening of the amateur concert]. After the symphony Count Czernin played a beautifully written concerto by [Magdalena] Sirmen alla Brunetti, and dopo una altra sinfonia [after another symphony] Count Altham played a horrible trio, no-one being able to say whether it was scraped or fiddled – whether it was in 3/4 or common time, or perhaps even in some newly invented and hitherto unknown time. Nannerl was to have played a concerto, but as the Countess [Lodron] wouldn’t deliver up her good concert keyboard-instrument (which is solely Casus reservatus pro summo Pontifice [reserved for Her Holiness]), and only the Egedacher one with gilt legs was there, she didn’t perform.
This description must not be taken as wholly typical, for other letters suggest that some Salzburg domestic concerts, especially those under the Mozarts’ direct supervision, attained a high artistic level.
If the Countess Lützow was capable of giving a reasonable account of K. 246, then she must have been exceptionally talented for a noble dilettante. Although the work is in the “easy” key of C major, eschews the technical brilliance of such works as K. 175 and 271, and seems to project a certain ingenuousness, it nevertheless embraces a wide range of musical thought, calls for considerable digital virtuosity in the solo part, and presumes the sophistication of performers and audience alike. The Finale, in particular, is a marvelously ironic commentary on the dance that was the very symbol of the ancien régime. Indeed, by presenting an archetypal minuet and then subtly undermining it, Mozart’s treatment brings to mind Parisian commentaries written on the eve of the Revolution, one of which reports that at balls a few minuets were played at the beginning for grandfather and grandmother, after which nothing but contredanses were heard; another of which states: “Nowadays we hardly dance minuets any longer, for the same reason that the fox [in Aesop’s Fables] gave in refusing to eat the grapes.”
K. 246 too went with Mozart to Mannheim and Paris in 1777-78, and he performed it in Vienna in the early 1780s. Three sets of cadenzas survive for the first two movements, perhaps representing an early, simple set conceived for the Countess, a more challenging but still concise set used by Mozart and his sister in the 1770s, and an extended set written in the early 1780s.
N.Z.
K. 271 Piano Concerto in E flat major, “Jeunehomme”, No. 9
Origin: Salzburg, January 1777
Scoring: piano solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andantino. Rondeau: Presto.
In January 1777 Mozart turned twenty-one. This concerto – a work of emotional depth and virtuosity written in that month – marks his musical coming-of-age. The presumed cause for this sudden artistic maturation was a visit to Salzburg in the winter of 1776-77 by a French keyboard player, one Mlle Jeunehomme. Was she a great artist? Was she young and beautiful? Nothing at all is known of her except that she provided the inspiration for this concerto, and that Mozart may have encountered her again during his half-year in Paris in 1778.
K. 271 must have remained high in Mozart’s esteem, for he took it with him on his tour to Mannheim and Paris in 1777-78, and he was still performing it in Vienna in the 1780s. If, as is probable, K. 271 is the concerto listed in catalogues of 1779-81 of the Parisian music publisher Madame Gertrude Heina, then it was the first of Mozart’s concertos to be published. No copy of that edition survives, but a set of parts, which includes a piano part copied by Mozart’s sister Nannerl and edited by his father, is to be found in Salzburg; and the autograph score itself, after being inaccessible for four decades, can now be seen in the Jagiellonska Library in Cracow.
The first movement begins with a brief orchestral fanfare, which is answered immediately by the piano. This novelty – the introduction of the soloist into the opening tutti – alerts us at once to the special nature of the work. The march-like ideas that open and close the orchestral ritornello are softened by appoggiaturas and a contrasting theme having the character of a contredanse. The piano reenters with a trill while the strings and winds are still playing the ritornello’s concluding cadences, and it then dominates the proceedings for much of the movement, even adding its voice to the closing orchestral ritornello.
Andante in Mozart’s time meant a moderate tempo slightly slower than allegretto, and andantino meant something slightly slower than that. In this extraordinary C-minor Andantino the elegiac utterances of the soloist and the dramatic punctuation of the orchestra have the character of an accompanied recitative with aria, a type of music reserved in opera seria for movements of heightened emotion and flights of rhetorical expression.
The Finale is immediately off and running, with the soloist setting the pace – and run it does, pausing only for a pair of brief cadenzas and for the interpolation of a Minuet as one of the episodes of the Rondo. This ironic insertion of a courtly dance in to the hustle and bustle of the finales serves both to amuse us and temporarily to distance us from a movement that an instant earlier had us completely absorbed. It may also be a witty allusion to the nationality of the concerto’s dedicatee.
The first two movements of K. 271 call for full cadenzas, and the Rondo for a pair of brief ones – so-called Eingänge or “lead-ins”. Cadenzas, although in an improvisatory style, required preparation beforehand, and two different cadenzas for the first movement, two for the second movement, and three pairs of Eingänge for the finale have come down to us in the hands of Mozart, his sister, and his father.
N.Z.
K. 365 Double Piano Concerto in E flat major, No. 10 (K6 316a)
Origin: Salzburg, c. 1775 to 1777
Scoring: two pianos soli, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings (2 clarinets, 2 trumpets and timpani added in 1781)
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Rondeaux: Allegro.
On their grand tour of 1764-66 Leopold Mozart displayed his precocious children in pieces for two harpsichords, which was not a new idea, and for four-hands at a single keyboard instrument, which was a virtually unheard-of notion apparently popularized by the Mozarts. The repertory performed by the two Wunderkinder is mostly unknown, except for Wolfgang’s little four-hand sonata, K. 19d, and a concerto for two harpsichords by the widely admired Viennese composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-77), whom the Mozarts had met in 1762. Wolfgang and Nannerl continued to play together, for a British visitor to Salzburg in 1772 (Louis de Vismes) heard them perform four-hands. So it was probably inevitable that, once Mozart turned to composing concertos, he would compose one to perform with his sister. That would seem to be the origin of K. 365, which has traditionally been dated from around the beginning of 1779, although British scholar Alan Tyson has shown that the cadenzas for the first and second movements, partly in Wolfgang’s and partly in Leopold’s hand, are on a kind of paper that Mozart used between approximately August 1775 and January 1777. Mozart had his father send him a copy of this concerto to Vienna in 1781. There he added clarinets, trumpets, and kettledrums to the outer movements and performed the work with his pupil and patron Josepha Barbara von Auernhammer, at a private concert at the Auernhammer’s on November 23rd of that year and at a public concert in the Augarten (Vienna’s central park) on May 26th of the following year.
N.Z.
K. 382 Rondo in D major
See the note for K. 175, Piano Concerto in D major, No. 5.
K. 414 Piano Concerto in A major, No. 12 (K3 386a, K6 385p)
Origin: Vienna, 1782
Scoring: piano solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegretto.
K. 414 was the first of Mozart’s great series of Viennese piano concertos, and (with K. 413 and 415) also the first of a set of three that he performed at his Lenten concerts of 1783. It is thus the first piano concerto Mozart wrote after breaking with the archbishop of Salzburg and in 1781 settling in Vienna, where he established himself as a freelance musician. As part of his new existence he gave an extraordinary number of concerts, which explains the outpouring of piano concertos in the mid-1780s. In an often-quoted passage from a letter of December 28, 1782, to his father, Mozart described his situation:
I must write in the greatest haste, as it is already half past five and I have asked some people to come here at six for a little concert. Although I have so much to do that often I do not know whether I am on my head or my heels, I spend the whole forenoon giving lessons until two o’clock, when we eat. After this meal I must give my poor stomach an hour for digestion. The evening is therefore the only time I have for composing and of that I can never be sure, as I am often asked to perform at Concerts. There are still two concertos wanting to make up the series of subscription concertos. These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid. There are also passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less discriminating cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why. I am distributing tickets for six ducats in cash.
Mozart was referring to the set of three piano concertos, K. 413-15, of which only K. 414 had yet been completed. He intended to sell manuscript copies of all three by subscription: from January 15, 1783, “three new, recently finished piano concertos” were announced for sale by subscription in manuscript copies, and by January 22 Mozart wrote of them as if completed. This manuscript edition of the concertos could at first be ordered directly from Mozart and later from the Viennese copying firm of Johann Traeg. But although he lowered his asking price from six to four ducats, his subscription venture apparently foundered. In April 1783 he tried without success to sell the three concertos to the Parisian publisher Jean-Georges Sieber. They were finally engraved and published in March 1785 as Opus 4 by the Viennese firm of Artaria and Co. The autograph manuscript of K. 414 in the Jagiellonska Library, Crakow, is undated.
N.Z.
K. 386 Rondo in A major
Origin: Vienna, October 19, 1782
Scoring: solo piano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings with violoncello obbligato
The history of the Rondo in A major, K. 386, is a tortuous one. The autograph manuscript of this unpublished work, in Mozart’s possession at his death, was included in Johann Anton André’s purchase in 1799 of the composer’s manuscripts from his widow. But as K. 386 was missing its last leaf, Andre, instead of publishing it, sold it to England, where it came into the possession of Sir William Sterndale Bennett. In 1838 Cipriani Potter published in London an arrangement of the entire work for piano alone, presumably with an ending of his own construction. Subsequently, Mozart’s autograph was dismembered and distributed to many people, and bits and pieces of it have surfaced from time to time. When American musicologist Alfred Einstein came to investigate K. 386, he could locate only two leaves from the autograph containing measures 136-171; using those measures as a model, he published a freely conceived orchestration of Potter’s arrangement in 1936. By 1956 British musicologist Alec Hyatt King had uncovered six further leaves in England. Adding to these six another full leaf and a partial one that they had discovered (thus accounting for measures 1-78, 118-132;and 136-171), Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda and Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras published in 1963 an excellent reconstruction, much less speculative in nature than Einstein’s, since most missing passages now had a parallel one to serve as a model. This version has been widely performed, and recorded more than once. Recently the last leaf, missing since before 1799, was discovered by British scholar Alan Tyson in a manuscript miscellany in the British Library.
It was long ago suggested that K. 386 must have been connected to the Piano Concerto in A major, K. 414. The Finale of that work shares with K. 386 date of composition, key, Allegretto in 2/4, and character: an almost pastoral serenity, with few of the high jinks Mozart often tossed into his finales. As K. 386, even though completed in all its essentials, never had the final details of its orchestration filled in by Mozart, it was most likely a rejected Finale for K. 414.
N.Z.
K. 413 Piano Concerto in F major, No. 11 (K6 387a)
Origin: Vienna, 1782 or 1783
Scoring: piano solo, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Larghetto. Tempo di Menuetto.
The galant charm of the opening Allegro of K. 413 clearly reveals Mozart’s desire to please his listeners. Something special awaits connoisseurs in the B-flat major Larghetto: not the profundity of the middle movement of the previous concerto but a gossamer creation in which the soloist spins forth a fioritura (rapid, lightly played ornamental passages) of extraordinary subtlety. The Tempo di Menuetto Finale expands what was merely an episode in the Finale of K. 271 into a well-wrought Rondo.
The Finale requires no Eingänge. Cadenzas for the other two movements have come down to us in Leopold Mozart’s hand with a now incomplete set of parts in Salzburg dating from the summer or autumn of 1783, made by a professional copyist but with corrections in the hands of both Mozart and his father.
N.Z.
K. 415 Piano Concerto in C major, No. 13 (K6 387b)
Origin: Vienna, winter 1782-83
Scoring: piano solo, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegro.
Completed by January 1783, this concerto belongs to a group of three that Mozart performed at his Lenten concerts of that year and published two years later as “Opus IV”. It calls for the festive or military trumpets and kettledrums often associated with C major in Mozart’s orchestral music.
Eighteenth-century writers on music agreed that keys had inherent characters, but often disagreed about precisely what those were. Georg Joseph Vogler (1779) thought C major “pure”; Christian Schubart (1784) found it not only pure but also “innocent, simple, naive”; to Justin Heinrich Knecht (1792) it was “cheerful, pure”; to Francesco Galeazzi (1796) “grandiose, military, serious, majestic”; and to André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1797) “noble and frank”. For Joseph Haydn C major was the key of light, which he showed emerging from chaos in The Creation. A series of C major masterpieces – among them the piano concertos K. 467 and 503, the “Jupiter” Symphony K. 551, and the string quintet K. 515 – suggests that Mozart may have had similar associations.
The first movement of K. 415, with its bright orchestral palette and profusion of ideas, may be regarded in this context. The orchestra is treated with such affection that, as English writer Philip Radcliffe suggests, “we sometimes have the impression of a potential symphony [or is it an Italian overture?] into which a part for piano solo has strayed”.
The following Andante relaxes into the cooler regions of the subdominant, F major (Vogler: “dead calm”; Schubart: “cornplaisance, calm”; Knecht; “gentle, calm”; Galeazzi: “majestic, shrill”[!]; Gretry: “mixed [noble and pathetic]”). With the martial instruments temporarily silenced, it is a sort of cantabile aria in an almost pastoral vein. An especially magical moment occurs at the return of the opening idea and key, where Mozart provides a lesson in embellishing a melody with grace and feeling.
The return of C major and the trumpets and drums brings with it, not the martial spirits of the first movement, but a sort of gigue en rondeau, whose notable wit is epitomized by some roguish grace notes. Of the strongly contrasting episodes, the first and third are poignant C minor Adagios in 2/4, while the middle episode keeps to the jig tempo and meter with, as English musicologist Arthur Hutchings put it, “a farrago of the rondo tunes and, solo bravura”. The spirited tripartite refrain is varied each time it recurs. In its final appearance it serves as a coda, which finally evaporates amidst shimmering trills.
N.Z.
K. 449 Piano Concerto in E flat major, “First Ployer”, No. 14
Origin: Vienna, February 9, 1784
Scoring: piano solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro vivace. Andantino. Allegro ma non troppo.
Mozart entered this concerto in the catalogue of his works on February 9, 1784. Apparently because it was written for the exclusive use of his pupil Barbara (Babette) von Ployer, it was not published during his lifetime, although Mozart himself performed it at his benefit concert of March 17. There, he reported to his father, “it won extraordinary applause”, and he sent it to Salzburg for Nannerl to perform. Subsequently he distinguished K. 449 from his later, larger-scale piano concertos, calling it “a concerto in an entirely different style and written more for a small than a large orchestra”. Hence, this is a more intimate work, eschewing the resonant, extroverted, sunlit “public” keys of C and D major for one that Mozart’s contemporaries thought tended to convey “night” (Vogler, 1779), “love, devotion” (Schubart, 1784), or “splendor, solemnity” (Knecht, 1792).
The autograph manuscript, -formerly in Berlin but now in Crakow, is inscribed “Di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart, per la Sigra Barbara de Ployer / Viena [sic] li 9 di Febro 1784”. There is also in Salzburg a set of parts prepared by Nannerl for her own use.
N.Z.
K. 450 Piano Concerto in B flat major, No. 15
Origin: Vienna, March 15, 1784
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. [Andante.] Allegro.
Mozart entered this concerto in his catalogue of his works on March 15, 1784. This time the winds are all obligatory, according to a letter to his father. In a subsequent letter he added that K. 450 was a work “bound to make the performer sweat”. With the concertos K, 449 and 451, it forms an opus of “three grand concertos” (so-called by Mozart) which he planned first to hold back for his own and his patrons’ exclusive use, and to publish only later. In fact, however, the three works remained unpublished until after his death.
The term “grand” must refer to the breadth of the works’ conception and the expanded role of the wind instruments. In the piano concertos of this period Mozart first brought to full flower the new style of orchestration that distinguished his late operas and concerto s and the last three symphonies. This feature of his music forcibly struck his contemporaries, some of the more conservative of whom criticized his use of the winds either as being impracticably difficult or for overloading the accompaniments. Mozart had, in fact, arrived at a new conception of the concerto in which the orchestra did not merely accompany the fortepiano but was its equal. To the role of the winds in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (doubling the strings or answering them antiphonally) and to that of the mid-eighteenth (providing a harmonic background of sustained chords in the tuttis) Mozart now added a third possibility: sharing fully in the work’s thematic development. This, the basis of nineteenth-century orchestration, is the so-called durchbrochene Arbeit – “openwork” or “filigree”. Mozart was surely aware of the nature of his innovation, and in K. 450 he threw down the gauntlet by beginning unconventionally with the winds supported only by the bass line.
N.Z.
K. 451 Piano Concerto in D major, No. 16
Origin: Vienna, March 22, 1784
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. [Andante.] Allegro di molto.
This concerto and the next, dated respectively March 22 and April 12, 1784, by Mozart, were among those few published in his lifetime – K. 451 in Paris around 1785 and K. 453 in Speyer in 1787. The latter must have sold well, for in late 1791 its publisher Heinrich Philipp Carl Bossler also produced an edition of K. 451. This elicited a heretofore overlooked review in the Speyer magazine Musical Correspondence of the German Philharmonic Society (May 16, 1792), which provides a rare glimpse of how one of Mozart’s contemporaries viewed these works:
To every friend and admirer of the Mozartean muse this composition ... can be nothing but very precious. The original style of composition, which is unmistakable here, the fullness of the harmony, the striking turns of phrase, the skilled distribution of shade and light, and many other excellent qualities, all give us cause to feel very deeply the loss of Mozart, a paragon of his era. The concerto under review is in D major, and is one of the most beautiful and most brilliant that we have from this master, in the ritornellos as well as in the solos. The opening Allegro takes up the first twelve pages, and we miss nothing in it but the figuring of the bass line in the tuttis. The Andante in G major that follows next is a kind of romanza in 4/4 – very elegant and touching. The Finale is an Allegro di molto in 2/4, which, however, tums into 3/8 on the last page but one. In this movement the greatest difficulties certainly prevail, but there are also exceptionally beautiful modulations. It is only to be regretted that this masterly keyboard concerto is impracticable in smaller musical circles because of the number of instruments for which it is scored (and which are in part obbligato instruments), and is usable only with a strong, well-manned orchestra. The engraving is very clear and correct, and does true honor to Councillor Bossler’s printing-shop.
While we are unlikely to disagree with the reviewer’s critical judgments – “striking ... skilled ... excellent ... most beautiful and most brilliant ... very elegant and touching” – neither can we learn much from them except that the anonymous writer (perhaps Johann Friedrich Christmann) recognized the music’s superior quality. (He must have heard a performance, as – following the usual practice – the work was published only in parts, not in score). Nevertheless, the review does touch on those aspects of Mozart’s style which, contemporaneous reviews of his operas suggest, most forcibly struck his audiences as being different from other music they were encountering: the full scoring and technical difficulties for the orchestra, the chromaticism, the wide variety of texture and nuance, and the characteristic Mozartean tums of phrase. Also noteworthy here is the indication that a professional soloist, according to the performance practices of the period, would be expected to play continuo in the tuttis, and that, in the absence of a score, the tutti bass lines of the soloist’s part might have been figured (as was, indeed, the piano part copied by Mozart’s sister Nannerl).
A fact not commented up on by the reviewer was, however, noticed by NannerI. Mozart had sent K. 451 to Nannerl and their father on May 15, 1784, and she complained that something was missing from the Andante. Mozart replied on June 12, confirming that she was quite right (he had left room for himself to improvise during performance), and he eventually sent her an ornamented version of eight measures of the Andante as well as cadenzas for the first and third movements. These survive and serve as precious examples of what Mozart expected of his piano soloists.
N.Z.
K. 453 Piano Concerto in G major, “Second Ployer”, No. 17
Origin: Vienna, April 12, 1784
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegretto.
If K. 451 was written for Mozart’s own use and may have received its first performance at a private concert he gave on March 31, 1784, K. 453 was written for his pupil Barbara (Babette) von Ployer who, according to Mozart, paid him handsomely for it. Her father, Gottfried Ignaz von Ployer, an agent of the Salzburg court in Vienna, hired an orchestra and the premiere took place at their summer place in the suburb of Döbling on June 13, 1784; Mozart brought along the Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, to show off his pupil and his music. Babette von Ployer, for whom the concerto K. 449 was also written, must have been a fine performer; on the occasion of the premiere of K. 453, Mozart played his two-piano sonata K. 448 with her.
The bourrée or contredanse tune Mozart invented as the subject of the Variation-Finale of K. 453 clearly had a special place in his heart, since he taught his pet starling to sing it – although, much to his amusement, the bird sang a certain note wrong each time and held another note too long. In his cash book (May 27, 1784) Mozart commented ironically on the bird’s version: “Das war schön!” (That was fine!)
N.Z.
K. 456 Piano Concerto in B flat major, “Paradis”, No. 18
Origin: Vienna, September 30, 1784
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro vivace. Andante un poco sostenuto. Allegro vivace.
The autograph manuscript of this concerto is undated; Mozart entered the work in his catalogue with the date September 30, 1784. It is thought to be the work that Mozart performed at a Lenten concert in Vienna on February 13, 1785, and that his father (who was present) referred to as
a masterful concerto that he wrote for [the blind virtuosa Maria Theresa von] Paradis. ... I ... had the great pleasure of hearing all the interplay of the instruments so clearly that for sheer delight tears came to my eyes. When your brother left the stage, the Emperor tipped his hat and called out “Bravo Mozart!” and when he came on to play, there was a great deal of clapping.
The first movement begins, like those of the neighboring concertos K. 451, 453, and 459, with a favorite martial rhythm; but this proves merely an opening gambit and much of the rest of the movement is intimate, almost like chamber music, spiced with humorous (perhaps even satirical) passages and purple patches of chromaticism. This intimacy continues in a more poignant vein in the G minor Andante, whose beautiful binary theme is given five striking (mostly double) variations and a coda functioning as a sixth. Here Mozart exploits the tone color of the wind instruments to the fullest. The refrain of the sonata-rondo Finale, with its hunting-horn fanfares, is thrown into sharp relief not only by the movement that precedes it but also by a stirring B minor episode, in which the winds in 2/4 are pitted against the strings in 6/8, while the soloist seems torn between the two. This conflict is soon amicably resolved, and the Finale ends cheerfully.
N.Z.
K. 459 Piano Concerto in F major, “First Coronation”, No. 19
Origin: Vienna, December 11, 1784
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Allegretto. Allegro assai.
Like the autograph of K. 456, that of K. 459 is undated. It is entered in Mozart’s catalogue under December 11, 1784, and was thus perhaps intended for an Advent concert. In any case, Mozart would almost certainly have performed it at one of the Lenten subscription concerts he gave in the Mehlgrube on the six Fridays between February 11 and March 18, 1785. This concerto must have remained high in Mozart’s esteem, for he took it on tour with him in 1790, performing it in Frankfurt at a concert during the coronation festivities of the Emperor Leopold II. In his catalogue Mozart listed K. 459 as having trumpets and kettledrums, even though it is in a key in which (with the exception of the Andante of the “Linz” Symphony, K. 425) he did not usually use those instruments. Those parts, if they even existed, have been lost; perhaps there is an error in Mozart’s catalogue entry, or perhaps the trumpet parts were notated separately (as in the Symphony in G major, K. 318, where they are also in the “wrong” key).
The first movement (Allegro in the autograph, Allegro vivace in Mozart’s catalogue) presents a brilliant profusion of ideas, held together not only by Mozart’s seemingly infallible sense of continuity and contrast, but also by the way in which the opening martial rhythm pervades the texture, appearing in 165 of the 400 measures, as well as in Mozart’s own cadenza. Indeed, the movement might well be considered a kind of debate between this “strict” rhythm and the more galant triplets that also occur with great frequency, especially in the solo part.
The middle movement, in C major, is accorded the (for a “slow” movement) brisk tempo of Allegretto, as Haydn had done in the string quartet Op. 54, No. 1, and as Beethoven would do in his Eighth Symphony. This idyll, in sonata form without development section, is not without an occasional touch of pathos. Once again, Mozart’s bold wind orchestration provided glorious splashes of color.
At the time that Mozart composed K. 459 he was also completing his six string quartets dedicated to Joseph Haydn, and Haydn’s music must have been on his mind: the refrain of this concerto’s Finale is derived (as American musicologist, pianist, and conductor Joshua Rifkin has pointed out) from a theme in the middle of the Finale of the older master’s Symphony No. 78 in C minor of 1782. The theme of the concerto, a kind of contredanse treated in the spirit of opera buffa, is the perfect foil for a fugato that appears three times, once worked out at some length as a development section, and that is also alluded to in Mozart’s cadenza for the movement.
In addition to the autograph, there is a manuscript score with corrections in Mozart’s hand owned by the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow.
N.Z.
K. 466 Piano Concerto in D minor, No. 20
Origin: Vienna, February 10, 1785
Scoring: solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Romance. Rondo [Allegro assai].
The autograph manuscript of the Concerto in D minor, K. 466 (in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna), is undated, but Mozart entered the work in his catalogue on February 10, 1785. On that very day Leopold Mozart arrived to spend a few weeks with his son and daughter-in-law. He reported to his daughter Nannerl:
We arrived at one o’clock .... The copyist was still copying [K. 466] when we arrived, and your brother did not even have time to play through the Rondo, as he had to supervise the copying, .... On the same evening we drove to his first subscription concert [of six], at which a great many members of the aristocracy were present. Each person pays a souverain d’or or three ducats for these Lenten concerts. Your brother is giving them at the Mehlgrube and only pays half a souverain d’or each time for the hall. [There were more than 150 subscribers.] The concert was magnificent and the orchestra played splendidly. In addition to the symphonies, a female singer from the Italian theater sang two arias. Then we had [the] new and very fine concerto. ...
The orchestra musicians must have been outstanding and well acquainted with Mozart’s idiom to have satisfied his sophisticated father and the Viennese audience in a sightread performance of this subtle, difficult work. Perhaps because of its wide range of affect, brooding chromaticism, and stormy outbursts, K. 466 – one of only two concertos Mozart composed in minor keys – was a favorite in the nineteenth century, even though its final seventy-five measures in D major represent a clear instance of an eighteenth-century lieto fine (happy ending), which nineteenth-century musicians found so hard to accept. The young Beethoven had K. 466 in his repertory and wrote cadenzas for it, as did Mozart’s pianist-composer son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang. However, Mozart himself did not leave any cadenzas.
N.Z.
K. 467 Piano Concerto in C major, No. 21
Origin: Vienna, March 9, 1785
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: [Allegro maestoso.] Andante. Allegro vivace assai.
The autograph manuscript of the Concerto in C major, K. 467 (in the Morgan Library, New York), is dated “nel febraio 1785” and entered in Mozart’s catalogue on March 9. This pellucid work was written, therefore, between the completion of the D minor concerto and the latter date, or a period of twenty-seven days during which Mozart also taught private pupils, entertained his father, held a quartet party to play through with Joseph Haydn and his father some of the new quartets dedicated to Haydn, and participated in perhaps another dozen public and private concerts. A handbill announcing the premiere of K. 467 reads:
On Thursday, 10th March 1785, Kapellmeister Mozart will have the honor of giving at the I. & R. National Court Theater a Grand Musical Concert for his benefit, at which not only a new, just finished Forte piano Concerto will be played by him, but also an especially large Forte piano pedale will be used by him in improvising. The remaining pieces will be announced by the large poster on the day itself.
The “especially large Forte piano pedale” refers to a device that Mozart had custom built for his Viennese concerts. It was essentially another, legless fortepiano which lay on the floor underneath his regular piano. It was played by means of a pedalboard with the feet, as an organ is played (and Mozart was a skilled organist). Mozart used it to reinforce the low notes in improvising fantasias and playing piano concertos.
Leopold Mozart reported that his son took in 559 gulden. K. 467 (or at least its Andante) has made a great deal of money in recent years too, in the soundtrack of the movie Elvira Madigan; as the movie is forgotten, its trivialization of K. 467 fades and the work maintains its status as a masterpiece. Again, no cadenzas by Mozart survive.
N.Z.
K. 482 Piano Concerto in E flat major, No. 22
Origin: Vienna, December 16, 1785
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Rondo: Allegro.
Mozart dated the Concerto in E flat, K. 482, “Vienna, 16 December 1785”, and on that very day performed it between the acts of Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf’s oratorio Esther. When he repeated the work at one of three Advent concerts that he presented to 120 subscribers at about the same time, the Andante received so much applause that he had to repeat it. The Concerto in A, K. 488, dated “Vienna, 2 March 1786”, was intended, along with K. 482 and one other piano concerto (K. 491), for Lenten concerts of that year. None of these three concertos written for Mozart’s own use was published in his lifetime, and only for K. 488 does a cadenza of his come down to us.
N.Z.
K. 488 Piano Concerto in A major, No. 23
Origin: Vienna, March 2, 1786
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Allegro assai.
The Concerto in A, K. 488, dated “Vienna, 2 March 1786”, was intended, along with K. 482 and 491, for Lenten concerts of that year. The A major concerto was one of five (with K. 451, 453, 456, and 459), copies of which Mozart offered in August of the same year to his childhood patron, the Prince von Fürstenberg. In a letter Mozart claimed that, since these concertos were “compositions which I keep for myself or for a small circle of music-lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands)”, therefore they “cannot possibly be known elsewhere, as they are not even known in Vienna”, asking the Prince likewise “not to let them out of his hands”.
Since its publication in 1800 by Johann Anton André (who purchased Mozart’s musical estate from his widow), K. 488 has been one of Mozart’s most popular piano concertos. Reasons are not hard to find. The special melodic charm of the first movement, along with its striking orchestral timbre created by the key of A, which is resonant and brilliant for the strings, and by the pair of clarinets in place of the usual oboes; the seriousness of the middle movement, Adagio in place of the usual Andante and in the rare key of F sharp minor, which transforms a siciliano into a passionate drama; the bouyancy of the sonata-rondo Finale, in which the piano and orchestra cavort jointly and severally in an exhilarating and satisfying manner – all these features combine to create one of Mozart’s seemingly most perfect masterpieces.
N.Z.
K. 491 Piano Concerto in C minor, No. 24
Origin: Vienna, March 24, 1786
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: [Allegro.] Larghetto. [Allegretto.]
Mozart gave a concert for his own benefit in Vienna at the Burgtheater on April 7, 1786, his last concert in that venue. Because his C minor Concerto, K. 491, is dated March 24, 1786, commentators have assumed (entirely reasonably) that it received its premiere on that occasion, whose program is unknown. As one of Mozart’s only two concertos in a minor key, K. 491 has long been the recipient of especial attention and favor. The darkened mood, chromatic instabilities, and stormy patches all endeared it to nineteenth-century performers and audiences. Nowadays, Mozart’s other, less romantic concertos have risen in popular estimation, but K. 491 has lost none of its attractiveness.
For a pianist, the C minor Concerto offers special challenges even beyond those posed by any such towering masterpiece. One challenge concerns the first-movement cadenza. Mozart not only failed to leave a cadenza, but unlike all the other concertos (except K. 488 where a cadenza is written into the score instead of on a separate sheet of paper), there is no trill at the fermata which signals the cadenza. Some performers follow, therefore, the precedure in Mozart’s cadenza for the third movement of K. 466, in which the trill does not end the cadenza but is followed by a solo thematic statement leading to the final ritornello. A movement as weighty as the first movement of K. 491 would seem to demand a cadenza to match. It may be not unreasonable to incorporate into the cadenza a contrapuntal section such as that found in the cadenza written for this movement by Mozart’s pupil J. N. Hummel.
Another challenge is the state of the autograph manuscript, which is the property of the Royal College of Music but deposited in the British Library, and has been published in facsimile. Unlike Mozart’s other piano concerto autographs, which mostly give the appearance of fair copies, K. 491 shows signs of almost Beethovenian creative struggle and indecision. In a passage like the third variation in the Finale, for instance, Mozart essayed several versions and never arrived at a final one. No definitive version is possible in such passages and each artist must, in effect, decide for himself which of Mozart’s ideas works best.
N.Z.
K. 503 Piano Concerto in C major, No. 25
Origin: Vienna, December 4, 1786
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Andante. [Allegretto.]
This concerto and the “Prague” symphony, K. 504, were apparently written for a series of four Advent subscription concerts that Mozart planned for December 1786 in the hall of Johann Trattner’s Viennese casino. The concerto may have been repeated at a Lenten benefit concert in the Kärntnerthortheater on March 7, 1787, and probably also at Mozart’s concert in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on May 12, 1789. This pellucid work was first published in 1798 by Mozart’s widow Constanze as an unhappy venture in selfpublication that had no sequel.
N.Z.
K. 537 Piano Concerto in D major, “Second Coronation”, No. 26
Origin: Vienna, February 24, 1788
Scoring: solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Larghetto. [Allegretto.]
The Concerto in D major, K. 537, was perhaps written by Mozart for a private Lenten concert, although no record of such an occasion exists. In one of his many letters begging money from his fellow Mason, Michael Puchberg, written in summer 1788, Mozart claimed that a concert series of his was to begin in Trattner’s casino in a week which would have called for piano concertos. These concerts traditionally have been thought never to have taken place, but H. C. Robbins Landon has recently argued persuasively that they did in fact occur. Mozart took K. 537 with him to Frankfurt for a concert he gave on October 15, 1790 in connection with the installation of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor, thus the nickname “Coronation” Concerto.
Like most of Mozart’s piano concertos, K. 503 (see above) and 537 were written for his own use. Unlike many of the others, however, these two were never prepared by him for presentation to a pupil, a patron, or a publisher. As a result, no cadenzas were written down, certain melodies in the right hand of the piano parts of both works remained in outline form, and the entire left hand of K. 537 was left blank. In the first edition of the latter work (1794) the publisher Johann Anton André supplied the left hand – in part derived from the orchestral bass lines and in part invented – which has appeared in all subsequent editions.
N.Z.
K. 595 Piano Concerto in B flat major, No. 27
Origin: Vienna, January 5, 1791
Scoring: piano solo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Larghetto. Allegro.
This is Mozart’s last piano concerto and last concerto of any sort except K. 622, written for his clarinetist friend Anton Stadler. Two months after it was entered into his catalogue, he performed it at a benefit concert for the clarinetist (Johann) Joseph Beer, held in the great room of Ignaz Jahn’s inn in the Himmelpfortgasse. Mozart’s sister-in-law, first love, and former pupil Aloysia Weber Lange sang in the same program. It was Mozart’s last public appearance as a concerto soloist. Mozart left cadenzas for the first two movements and two lead-ins for the Finale, which, however, also requires a third lead-in.
In Mozart’s catalogue of his works the very next entry after K. 595 is a little strophic lied, “Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge” (Longing for Spring), K. 596, for soprano or tenor and fortepiano. The poem’s first verse reads:
Komm, lieber Mai, und mache
Die Bäume wieder grün,
Und lass mir an dem Bache,
Die kleinen Veilchen blüh’n!
(Come, sweet May, and turn
the trees green again,
and make the little violets
bloom for me by the brook.)
The tune of the song is also the refrain of the piano concerto’s Finale. It was to be Mozart’s last spring.
N.Z.
Concertos for strings
Background and overview
“Wolfgang had a little violin that he got as a present in Vienna ...,” wrote musician Johann Andreas Schachtner, a friend of the Mozart family, of an incident which took place in January 1763. “We were going to play trios, Papa [Leopold] playing the bass with his viola, Wenzl the first violin, and I was to play the second violin. Wolfgang had asked to be allowed to play the second violin, but Papa refused him this foolish request, because he had not yet had the least instruction in the violin, and Papa thought he could not possibly play anything. Wolfgang said, ‘You don’t need to have studied in order to play second violin’, and when Papa insisted that he should go away and not bother us any more, Wolfgang began to weep bitterly and stamped off with his little violin. I asked them to let him play with me. Papa eventually said, ‘Play with Herr Schachtner, but so softly that we can’t hear you, or you will have to go’. And so it was. Wolfgang played with me. I soon noticed with astonishment that I was quite superfluous. I quietly put my violin down, and looked at your Papa; tears of wonder and comfort ran down his cheeks at this scene.”
A mere four months later the Augsburg newspaper published this report from a Salzburg correspondent: “I am credibly informed that the boy can now not only play from the violin clef, but also from the soprano and bass clefs, and takes part in everything on a small violino piccolo made specially for him, having already appeared with a solo and a concerto at the Salzburg court. Has he then learned this since the New Year?”
In the 1770s Mozart was heard in Salzburg, Vienna, Augsburg, and Munich as violin soloist, playing his own and other composers’ works. On one occasion in Munich in 1777 – after playing one of his own orchestral serenades with movements for solo violin – Mozart wrote to his father, Leopold, with a touch of irony, “I played as if I were the greatest fiddler in all of Europe”. His father replied to him: “You yourself do not know how well you play the violin; if only you will do yourself credit and play with energy, with your whole heart and mind, yes, just as if you were the first violinist in Europe. Many people do not even know that you play the violin, since you have been known from childhood as a keyboard player.”
One might suppose Leopold Mozart’s judgment was colored by the fact that in 1756, the year of his son’s birth, he had published an important textbook on the violin, a book that went through three editions, was translated into several languages, and is still in use. But his evaluation is confirmed by the violin virtuoso and first concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra, Antonio Brunetti, who, when he heard Leopold remark with deliberate understatement that his son could play the violin passably, blurted out, “What? Nonsense! Why, he could play anything!”
Mozart’s works for violin and orchestra were written mostly in Salzburg between the years 1773 and 1776. Leaving aside two concertos of disputed authenticity (K. 268 and 271a) and two sinfonie concertante that were never completed (K. 315f and 320e), they include five orchestral serenades containing one, two, or three violin-concerto movements, five independent violin concertos, four single violin-concerto movements, and two sinfonie concertante. This is a total of some thirty-seven movements involving solo violin and orchestra – a sizable body of music. One single movement (K. 470, an Andante in A major), the last that Mozart wrote for this combination, is unfortunately lost.
To the modern music lover, violin concertos are associated with performances in formal concert halls. But in Mozart’s day they were also played out-of-doors, in gardens and piazzas, as part of orchestral serenades, and were sometimes used as entr’acte music in the theater. The most common setting for violin concertos, however – at least in Northern Italy and Austria – was in church, where they embellished the Mass or Vespers service. Giuseppe Tartini and many other great violinists of the period frequently reached the general public by church performances, and this tradition was known to Mozart too.
We may guess how Mozart played the violin, for he valued in performers what we value in his music: beauty, clarity, logic, balance. When he was pleased with a performance, he reported that “It went smoothly as oil”. Not for him the pyrotechnics of the violinists Pietro Antonio Locatelli or Giovanni Battista Viotti. Once, after hearing a difficult violin concerto well performed, he informed his father that he enjoyed it, but added, “You know that I am no lover of difficulties”. The paradox is that Mozart’s playing down of virtuosity for its own sake in his violin concerto s makes them harder, not easier, to perform well. Sheer technique and bravura cannot be used in these works to compensate for a lack of thoughtful, sensitive musicianship.
N.Z.
K. 207 Violin Concerto in B flat major, No. 1
Origin: Salzburg, April 14, 1773 (or 1775)
Scoring: violin solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro moderato. Adagio. Presto.
It has long been thought that Mozart wrote all five of his violin concertos within a space of eight months from April 14 to December 20, 1775, in accordance with the dates written by the composer on the original manuscripts. German musicologist Wolfgang Plath has recently shown, however, that on all five manuscripts the last two digits of the date have been tampered with: it appears that all were changed to read 1780 at some point, and then changed back to 1775 later. Judging from the evidence of handwriting and watermarks, Plath argues that 1775 is probably correct for the last four concertos, but that the first concerto probably originally bore a date of 1773.
We do not know if Mozart wrote these concertos initially for his own use, although we do know that he played them in public on at least a few occasions. They cannot originally have been intended (as has often erroneously been stated) for the first concertmaster of the Salzburg orchestra, Antonio Brunetti, even though Brunetti eventually did perform some of them, because the Italian violinist assumed that post only in 1776. Mozart himself had held the title of concertmaster since July 9, 1772.
One concerto is described in a letter to Mozart from his father as “the concerto you wrote for Kolb”. This refers to the Salzburg violinist Franz Xaver Kolb, who is recorded in the Mozart family’s correspondence as having performed the concerto with success in Salzburg in September 1777 and July 1778. It may well have been the same concerto that Kolb played in August 1777, at a concert given by the Mozart family in their large room known as the Dancing-Master’s Hall. We do not know which, if any, of the five concerto s in question was the one written for Kolb, as the frequent pairing of him with this first violin concerto in the Mozart literature is nothing more than guesswork.
The great artistic distance that Mozart traveled in the period between his first and fifth violin concertos has frequently been remarked upon. And it is undeniably true that his last contributions to the genre have a kind of pristine perfection that defies explanation. Less frequently noticed, however, is the excellence of this first concerto. It is difficult to say what led up to this auspicious beginning. We know that Mozart admired the violin concertos of “the divine Bohemian”, Josef Myslivecek (1737-81), and that he had in his repertory a violin concerto, also in B flat major, by another fine Bohemian composer, Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813).
The seriousness with which Mozart approached this first violin concerto is suggested by the fact that all three movements are in sonata form – the form reserved by the composers of the Classical period for many of their weightier utterances. Another hint is that the slow movement is marked Adagio, rather than the less intense Andante that Mozart often chose for his more galant notions.
The rollicking first movement is notable for its treatment of a varying series of themes and also at one point for an oddly un-Mozartean sort of musical stutter. It opens with a relatively brief orchestral ritornello, or passage without soloist, that features a theme reminiscent of the music of Johann Christian Bach, whom Mozart knew as a child.
The Adagio opens with a poignant section reminiscent of a Mozartean aria for a soprano heroine longing for her distant lover. The brief development section is dominated by the passionate pleadings of the soloist. Soloist and orchestra join forces for the recapitulation, formed of a striking reshuffling of the ideas of the exposition, this leading to the cadenza and a brief closing tutti.
The Finale begins in the style of a quickstep march. Both orchestra and soloist then show off their skill at rapid scales, arpeggios and bariolage – rapid alternation of stopped and open strings. Only the briefest interludes of lyricism are permitted to intrude upon the general hustle-bustle and high spirits, and these brief passages are usually brusquely interrupted by a rude remark from the orchestra or a blaze of virtuosity from the soloist. The development section leans heavily upon the soloist and (as in the first movement) the use of triplet figurations. The recapitulation also exploits the soloist to the fullest, but the opening quickstep is suppressed, never to reappear. Like many concerto finales, this one presents the soloist with opportunities for a couple of short cadenzas in addition to the longer one in its usual location near the end. Mozart and his contemporaries called this kind of shorter cadenza an Eingang, which means “lead-in”, and its purpose, in fact, is to lead in to a return of one or another of the main themes of the movement.
N.Z.
K. 190 Concertone in C major (K3 166b, K6 186E)
Origin: Salzburg, May 31, 1774
Scoring: 2 violins soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Andantino grazioso. Tempo di Menuetto.
Mozart’s autograph manuscript of this work, now in private possession in Switzerland, is inscribed in his own hand: “Concertone. / di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart/à Salisburgo li 31 maggio / 1774.” Mozart was eighteen years old. A few months earlier he had completed his much-admired “little” G minor Symphony, K. 183, as well as his first piano concerto, K. 175, and he was soon to begin work on an opera for Munich for the Carnival of 1774-75, La finta giardiniera. For what performers the Concertone was created is, unfortunately, not documented, but the addition of trumpets to the usual oboes and horns suggests that the occasion may have been a festive one.
The unusual title “Concertone” was one in limited use in Southern Germany, Austria, and Northern Italy during the mid-eighteenth century. It means literally “grand concerto” which is similar to the Italian concerto grosso. In Mannheim, Paris, or London, such a work would probably have been entitled “sinfonia concertante”. These were all different ways of labeling a concerto with more than one soloist. In the case of the present work, the two solo violins are active throughout, the solo oboe has important contributions to make in all three movements, and the solo cello is heard only briefly in each movement. Mozart’s concertone resembles (at least in its quirky selection of solo instruments) three of Joseph Haydn’s early programmatic symphonies, Le Matin, Le Midi, and Le Soir (Nos. 6, 7, and 8).
Mozart must have thought highly of the Concertone, for he took it with him on his journey to Mannheim, Munich, and Paris (1777-78) in search of a job. His father urged him to have it performed at Mannheim, but Mozart succeeded only in playing it at the piano for a fellow composer, who advised him that it was the sort of work in fashion in Paris. He also played it more than once for a famous connoisseur, the Baron von Bagge, then at Mannheim but known in Paris for his musical salon. According to Mozart, von Bagge liked the piece so much that he was “quite beside himself”. But as far as we know, the Concertone was never performed in Paris.
The first movement is in the easy, galant style of Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian. The beautifully written out cadenza accomplishes in a few bars what many a longer cadenza has failed to do: it gives a dramatic summation of the movement.
The slow unfolding of the thirty-two-bar tutti that begins the Andantino suggests immediately the large scale on which this movement is constructed. The long, graceful melodies both here and in the solos that follow remind us of a society in which time passed more slowly and the fastest ways people could get where they were going were on horseback or aboard a sailing vessel.
The Finale is, rather exceptionally, cast in the form of a Minuet and Trio. Although not of extraordinary length for the finale of a concerto whose previous movements are on such a grand scale, the movement is large for a minuet. Mozart’s ballroom minuets with trio from this period average about thirty-four measures, his symphonic minuets about sixty, but the Finale of the Concertone reaches 151 measures. The movement is the most conventional of the three; what individuality it has comes from the cavorting of the soloists in the Trio, punctuated by some fine writing for the orchestra’s oboes and horns, forming an impromptu wind band.
N.Z.
K. 211 Violin Concerto in D major, No. 2
Origin: Salzburg, June 14, 1775
Scoring: violin solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro moderato. Andante. Rondeau: Allegro.
K. 211 is the first of four violin concertos – K. 211, 216, 218, and 219 – that Mozart composed within a six-month period from June 14 to December 20, 1775. More than two years had passed since he had written his first violin concerto. In the meantime he had written the Concertone (1774), as well as two Serenades, K. 185 (1773) and 203 (1774), each of which contained a miniature three-movement violin concerto within its eight-movement format – a pattern that Mozart was soon to repeat in Serenades K. 204 (1775) and 250 (1776). The second violin concerto stands at the chronological threshold of Mozart’s greatest accomplishments in the string concerto medium.
If one may venture a guess about what Mozart learned from his first concerto, it was to be more economical with his materials. Although the difference between the two concertos in playing time is slight, the second is tighter in structure and more organic in relationships between themes and sections. The sound of the second concerto is brighter, too, because a sharp key calls into play the resonance of the open strings of the violins. Although Mozart eschewed virtuosity for its own sake, the demands made on the soloist in this concerto are not inconsiderable. Yet, when the work was first published in 1802, it was under the title Concerto facile (Easy Concerto). This reveals the attitude of the early nineteenth century, which was increasingly fascinated by the possibilities of transcendental virtuosity. Beethoven’s violin concerto of 1806, for instance, owes more to the example of the famous composer-virtuoso Giovanni Battista Viotti than to that of Mozart.
The first movement finds Mozart exploring several avenues not visited in the earlier work, including some interesting touches of chromaticism and a few moments of delicious irony (as in those passages in which an “oom-pah” bass line suggests that Mozart’s tongue is firmly planted in his cheek).
The Andante, in G major, is filled from beginning to end with a serene lyricism. There is no touch of pathos, except perhaps for a few unexpected silences, during which the listener may well wonder whether the world can really be as lacking in tension as it is portrayed here.
The fact that Mozart labeled the Finale in French (“rondeau”) rather than in Italian (“rondo”) has given rise to speculation about possible French models or influences at work in the movement. It should not be overlooked, however, that Mozart was at no pains to hide his dislike of most of the French music of his time. In the 1770s the Italian-speaking composers and their imitators were preeminent in opera, the German-speaking composers in instrumental music, and the French in dance music. Mozart’s Rondeau refrain is, in fact, in the style of a French minuet, while the working out of the movement as a whole is strictly in the German-Italian style. The Minuet recurs three times.
N.Z.
K. 216 Violin Concerto in G major, “Strassburg”, No. 3
Origin: Salzburg, September 12, 1775
Scoring: solo violin, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Rondeau: Allegro.
Mozart’s activities during the summer of 1775 are not known to have been extraordinary. He is credited with composing a church sonata (K. 212), a divertimento (K. 213), a serenade (K. 204), and a march (K. 214). There is recorded no personal or musical experience that would explain a striking elevation of his style. Yet every commentator has noted that the first two violin concertos, fine as they are, are on a lower plane of inspiration than the last three. It is perhaps in the nature of Mozart’s precocious genius that no explanation for this can be or need be given, for as long as he practiced his art he continued to grow.
The first movement opens with a ritornello that, in quite another form and key, Mozart had used elsewhere. He had invented this cheerful opening as the ritornello of an aria in his serenata Il rè pastore, K. 208, which had had its first performance (probably only an unstaged, concert version, however) in Salzburg on April 23, 1775. The aria, “Aer tranquillo”, is sung by the nobly born foundling Aminta, the “shepherd king” of the opera’s title. The text is in two sections, the first expressing Aminta’s satisfaction with his lot as a shepherd, the second begging the gods to help him if he must give up this simple life.
A comparison between the aria and the concerto movement reinforces the often-stated notion that a concerto is a species of musical drama in which the violinist and the orchestra are protagonists. And the sense of an ongoing drama is heightened in the first movement of the present concerto by the increasingly articulate role assigned the orchestra during the solo passages, as well as by a recitative-like section.
In tone, the Adagio, in the dominant key of D major, differs not only from the previous movement but from the middle movements of the two previous concertos. Certain aspects of this new sound are straightforwardly attributable to the substitution of two flutes for the two oboes (in Mozart’s orchestra they would have been played by the same performers), to the horns moving to a lower key, to the muting of the orchestral violins, and to the pizzicati of the cellos and basses. In addition, however, there is a further change, much more subtle and harder to define. Perhaps some of the mystery may lie in the flawless way in which, when the opening of the movement returns near the end, the melodies are provided with a delicate overlay of fioritura. And some of it may be the seemingly careless manner in which the melody occasionally ignores the triplets of the accompaniment and goes its own way with groups of two or four notes. But to touch on these important aspects is still to fall short of a full explanation of this movement’s surpassing beauty.
In a letter written to his son at the beginning of October 1777, Leopold Mozart reported that at a performance of a play in Salzburg, “Brunetti had to play a concerto during an intermission while costumes were being changed, and it was the one of yours that contains the ‘Strassburger’. He played extremely well, but in both Allegros was occasionally out of tune, and once nearly overextended himself in a cadenza”. A few weeks later Mozart wrote to his father that he had gone with his uncle (Leopold’s brother) to spend the day at the Holy Cross Monastery in Augsburg. Mozart performed various pieces of his at lunch and in the evening, including his “Strassburg concerto”, “which went like oil. Everyone praised my beautiful, pure tone”. In most writings on Mozart, the “Strassburg” Concerto is identified as the Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218. But as we shall see, research by Hungarian musicologist Dénes Bartha has demonstrated conclusively that K. 216 is Mozart’s “Strassburg” Concerto.
The Rondo Finale develops in the more or less expected pattern, and we progress as far as A-B-A-C-A-D when, long before the D section can reach any sort of conclusion, it breaks off abruptly with three tutti chords. After a brief pause, the Allegro in 3/8 time is replaced by an Andante alla breve, and the solo violin performs an elegant gavotte in G minor, accompanied by the string section playing pizzicato. But before it reaches its conclusion, the music breaks off once again in mid-phrase and Mozart launches into yet another tune, a lusty one, also in alla breve time but now Allegretto and returning to G major. It is this gay tune that Bartha’s researches have shown is a song known in Mozart’s day under the title “The Strassburger”. (Unfortunately, only the tune without any words has been recovered; perhaps it was dance and not a song.)
After another brief pause comes the return of the jig, and, soon, of the Rondo refrain itself. Then, one more episode and the movement ends as it began, with the winds having the last word.
N.Z.
K. 218 Violin Concerto in D major, No. 4
Origin: Salzburg, October 1775
Scoring: violin solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante cantabile. Rondeau: Andante grazioso.
Like the opening of the previous concerto, the fourth concerto begins in martial fashion, but this time Mozart introduces a beautifully contrasting section into the orchestral ritornello and returns to the noisy energy of the opening for only the last few measures before the soloist enters. That entrance is effected with the ritornello’s opening fanfare, but transposed up two octaves. In fact, throughout the movement Mozart seems to have taken special pleasure in lifting the solo violin out of the orchestral texture and highlighting its activities. It is undoubtedly the heightening of simultaneous expressivity and virtuosity in this movement that has made it such a perennial favorite with violinists and audiences alike.
The Andante cantabile, in the dominant key of A major, is just what its heading suggests: a “singing” movement. The quiet contentment of this piece is established from the very first note of the broad opening theme, which recurs in the middle of the movement, and (disguised somewhat) in the coda. The virtuosity of the outer movements is absent here, replaced by an unabashed melodic outpouring. An especially lovely touch is furnished by the little canonic echoes that the oboe offers the soloist just prior to the return of the opening material in the middle of the movement. The opening idea of the Andante cantabile is one that Mozart used briefly earlier in a subsidiary role in the Finale of his concertone. It also serves in this concerto, speeded up and turned into 6/8 in the Allegro ma non troppo section of the Finale.
The brief, dance-inspired Andante grazioso in 2/4 that opens the finale recurs three times during the course of the movement. It is always followed by a larger, jig-like Allegro ma non troppo section in 6/8, but whereas the Andante is always the same, the Allegro only begins the same way in its four appearances and then branches off into something new.
Between the second and third occurrence of this andante-allegro unit, there is an interruption rather similar in effect to the interruption in the Finale of the previous concerto. The new tune introduced at this point is in G major, in cut time, and is marked Andante grazioso. Like the “Strassburger” tune, it is a contredanse and includes a rustic drone, This melody may have folk, or popular, origins as well, as some commentators have suggested, but no source for it has yet been uncovered. We do know, however, that Mozart revised it and turned it into the first of a set of four contredanses, K. 269b (see the note on p. 219).
N.Z.
K. 219 Violin Concerto in A major, “Turkish”, No. 5
Origin: Salzburg, December 20, 1775
Scoring: violin solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro aperto. Adagio. Rondeau: Tempo di Menuetto.
With this concerto we reach the last of the group of five works that constitute Mozart’s central contribution to the violin concerto repertory. Once again we are in the dark about the precise occasion for which the piece was written. All five of Mozart’s violin concertos are filled with witty and humorous moments. Sometimes we smile, hardly knowing why; at other times the joke is plain. English music scholar, composer, and pianist Sir Donald Tovey writes of this aspect of young Mozart’s style as a “special vein of epigrammatic comedy”, and this is nowhere more evident than in the present concerto. But the pervasive good humor of the splendid first movement does not hide its underlying poetry.
The opening ritornello begins with great energy and conviction, introducing a number of attractive ideas. The innocuous upward arpeggio with which the orchestral introduction ends – a most improbable idea – is developed later on in the movement and serves to end it. The violinist enters not in the usual way, with either a return to the beginning of the movement or a transitional flourish leading to that return, but rather with a totally unexpected six-bar Adagio.
The slow movement, an Adagio in E major, has been thought by some critics to bear a resemblance to the aria “O wie ängstlich, o wie feurig” from The Abduction from the Seraglio, an aria in which Belmonte expresses his eager anticipation at being reunited with his love, Constanze. The movement is on a larger scale than the slow movements of any of the previous violin concertos.
The Finale gives this concerto its nickname. Like the finales of the two previous violin concertos, it is a Rondo organized around an interruption. The refrain of the Rondo is a Minuet, as are the first episodes. The courtly elegance of the Minuet places us firmly in the West, ready for a confrontation with the infidel East, which appears in the form of a “Turkish” section: the interruption.
Turkish subjects were popular in Western Europe at this time. Mozart, Gluck, Haydn, Grétry, and others wrote operas with Turkish settings. But of course Mozart’s “Turkish” music is not really Turkish, for even had he known such music firsthand (which is improbable), the notation he used could not have conveyed, nor could the musicians for whom he wrote have performed, its microtonal intervals and “irrational” rhythms. What then is the origin of his “Turkish” music? (It is found not only in this concerto, but in The Abduction, in the Finale of the A major piano sonata, K. 331, and in a couple of other pieces.) The answer, worked out with great clarity by the late Hungarian musicologist Bence Szabolcsi, is this: Hungarian and gypsy music from areas abutting the Ottoman Empire.
In those areas, in which there had long been both peaceful and warlike interactions with the Muslims, the Christian peasants and the gypsies were influenced in their music-making by the Eastern music they heard and sometimes imitated or parodied. Some of the features that Mozart picked up in his desire to convey a sense of the exotic to his listeners include: a leaping melody, a drone bass with percussive repeated notes, odd chromatic touches to the melody, swirling ornamentation, mostly in the form of grace notes, trills, and turns, and a lively march-like tempo. In one area of Hungary the peasants call this style of music Törökös, which means precisely the same as Mozart’s own “alla turca”, namely, “in the Turkish manner”.
The invigorating result of this borrowing is not a transcription of eighteenth-century Turkish music, but, rather, a parody of a parody. Although this music is in a completely Western manner, it evokes something foreign that is simultaneously the subject of admiration, fear, and ridicule. As to where Mozart could have heard such music, it may have been in Pressburg, Hungary (now the Czechoslovakian city of Bratislava), which he visited briefly in 1762, not long before his seventh birthday. Or it may have been on his extensive travels in Western Europe, during which he encountered itinerant musicians from many nations. But most likely it came from his senior colleague at Salzburg, Michael Haydn, who, before assuming his post there, had worked in Hungary and who spiced several of his own pieces with pseudo-Turkish elements.
The form of this Rondo could be schematized as A-B-A-C-A-D-A-B-A, but this would be somewhat misleading since the D section, which is the “Turkish” interruption, is much longer than any of the others and is itself a rondo structure. Hence, we have a pair of rondos, or a rondo within a rondo. In the “Turkish” section there occurs three times a characteristic leaping theme that was not new to Mozart when he included it in this Finale. He had already used it in a ballet entitled Le gelosie del Serraglio (Jealousy in the Harem), K. 135a, written in December 1772 in Milan for performance with his just-completed opera, Lucio Silla, K. 135. The completed version of this ballet is lost, but sketches survive that show Mozart intended to employ the leaping theme in A major as a brief contredanse, and then in A minor as a more extended finale. The title of the lost ballet confirms the symbolism assigned to the exotic portion of the violin concerto.
N.Z.
K. 261 Adagio in E major
Origin: Salzburg, 1776
Scoring: violin solo, 2 flutes, 2 horns, strings
K. 269 Rondo in B flat major (K6 261a)
Origin: Salzburg, 1776
Scoring: violin solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
K. 373 Rondo in C major
Origin: Vienna, April 2, 1781
Scoring: violin solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
These three independent movements were written for the Salzburg concertmaster Antonio Brunetti, as we learn from the Mozart family’s correspondence.
The Adagio, K. 261, and the Rondo, K. 269, have often been linked, because Leopold Mozart mentioned them in a letter of September to his son as “the Adagio and Rondo that you composed for Brunetti”, and because they were first published together as “Adagio et Rondo pour le Violin, oeuvre 99”. But there can be no question of the two works having been intended as a unit, for the key relation between them does not permit that. In fact, they may have been written as substitute movements for the fifth and first violin concertos respectively.
The autograph of the Adagio, K. 261, bears the brief note, “Di Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart, 1776”. It was undoubtedly this work that Leopold referred to in his letter of October 9, 1777, as “the Adagio you wrote specially for Brunetti, because he found the other one too artificial”. “The other one” must refer to the slow movement of the A major Concerto (No. 5), K. 219, which is the only one that could accommodate a slow movement in E major.
Mozart returns here to his idea in the slow movement of the third concerto of muting the orchestral violins and replacing the oboes with flutes. With the horns tuned a fourth lower (E instead of A), the orchestra takes on a new sheen, which would provide a fine foil for the bright sounds of the outer movements of K. 219. Whether or not the movement can truly be said to be less “artificial” than the original slow movement is a question difficult to answer. If Brunetti was looking for a somewhat simpler piece containing less artifice than the original slow movement, he was probably disappointed. The movement begins in a serene cantabile vein, but soon enough musical complexities and a certain amount of melodic (but not harmonic) chromaticism are introduced. To modern ears the result is attractive but not superior to the original slow movement of K. 219. The new movement is, in any case, noticeably shorter than the old one, and this may perhaps have been something that Brunetti requested.
Toward the end of his life Mozart was commissioned to write some pieces (K. 594, 608, and 616) for what were then called musical clocks but what we would now call music boxes. The existence in a Leipzig collection of one such instrument of the period that plays an arrangement of the Adagio, K. 261, suggests that Mozart himself may have returned to his beautiful piece a decade after he wrote it and reworked it for another purpose.
The Rondo in B flat major, K. 269, bears only the inscription “Rondeaux” on the autograph manuscript, but since it was, as we have seen, mentioned in Leopold’s letter in the same breath with the Adagio, K. 261, which is dated 1776, that date has been assigned to it too. It is not clear why this work is usually known under the title “Rondo Concertante”. Speculation about the work’s origin suggests that Mozart eventually came to consider that the original sonata-form Finale of his first concerto was unsuccessful, and wrote (for one of Brunetti’s Salzburg performances) this brief Rondo Finale more in line with his later thinking on the matter.
The attractive tune with which the Rondo begins must have appealed to Mozart, because he planned to use it in a ballet in Paris in 1778 – a project that never came to fruition. The slender plot of the unfinished, untitled ballet (K. 299c), as well as it can be made out from Mozart’s sketches, involves a man who dares to dance with another woman while his wife is temporarily absent. The little tune that forms the refrain of the concerto was to have been the pas de deux in which the man dances with the other woman.
Unlike most of the other works for violin and orchestra, the creation of the Rondo in C major, K. 373, is documented. In 1781 Mozart, along with Brunetti and the castrato Francesco Ceccarelli, was ordered to accompany the archbishop of Salzburg on a visit to Vienna. On April 8 the archbishop commanded that a concert be given, and that evening Mozart wrote to his father: “Today (for I am writing at 11 o’clock at night) we had a concert, where three of my compositions were performed – new ones, of course; a concerto-rondo for Brunetti [K. 373]; a sonata for myself with violin accompaniment [K. 379], which I composed last night between 11 and 12 (but in order to be able to finish it, I wrote out only the accompaniment for Brunetti and retained my own part in my head); and then a rondo [K. 374] for Ceccarelli, which he had to repeat.” The autograph of K. 373 has gone astray, but it reportedly bore the legend, “Wien am 2. April 1781”, confirming that the work was indeed new – just six days old – when it received its first performance.
It would be inaccurate to state that K. 373 shows signs of haste in its composition, because it is perfectly wrought, and charming of its sort. But in comparing it to Mozart’s several other violin concerto rondos, we cannot but notice that this one is briefer and less seriously worked out. Or to put it another way, had Mozart written this rondo after writing two other concerto movements, he most likely would have made it a bit weightier than this admittedly delightful occasional piece.
N.Z.
K. 364 Sinfonia Concertante in E flat major (K6 320d)
Origin: Salzburg, 1779
Scoring: violin and viola soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Andante. Presto.
We know even less about the genesis of the Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, than about that of the Concertone, K. 190. The original score is lost, and the brief autograph fragments that do survive bear no indications of date or provenance. The work is thought to date from the summer of 1779, when Mozart was twenty-three years old. It has generally been supposed that after his return from Paris, where works in sinfonia-concertante form were all the rage, Mozart may have wished to introduce the genre to Salzburg, and that this work was the result.
About the same time that he wrote K. 364, Mozart also attempted a sinfonia concertante for violin, viola, cello, and orchestra (K. 320e), but he abandoned it and it remained only a noble torso. The two works have a technical peculiarity in common: the solo viola part is transposed to a lower key, forcing the violist to tune the instrument higher in order to sound in the same key as the other instruments. In the present work, the viola part is notated in D major, and the violist must tune each string a half step higher to sound in E flat major.
Mozart’s reasons for taking this unusual step may be surmised: the higher tuning makes the tone of the viola more brilliant and increases the ease with which rapid passages can be articulated. Furthermore, the viola playing in D on open strings has added resonance that will be lacking to the violin playing in E flat. Thus the usually milder viola is put on a more equal footing with the customarily more brilliant violin. Mozart was an excellent violist as well as violinist, and he treats the two instruments with absolute equality throughout this double concerto, often giving to the viola in the recapitulations what he had given to the violin in the expositions.
This work has many fervent admirers. Alec Hyatt King, an English musicologist, calls it a giant in comparison with Mozart’s other music of the period: “It towers up as would the Matterhorn if transplanted to stand among the gentle foothills and lesser peaks that rise from the Salzburg plain.” Although the orchestra calls for only oboes and horns with the usual strings, Mozart deepens and enriches it partly through passages where the various string choirs are divided, partly through the frequently concertante treatment of the oboes and horns in the outer movements.
The long first movement is so full of thematic substance – some six motifs in the opening tutti, followed by about six new ones when the soloists enter – that the listener cannot take everything in at a first hearing but must come back to the movement again and again to do it full justice.
With the Andante, the music ceases to be galant and amusing, the key shifts to C minor, and the whole takes on a demeanor of the utmost seriousness. In fact, the grave atmosphere of this movement transcends anything found in the other works for violin and orchestra. Some of the writing sounds deliberately archaic. The model seems to be not the carefree extroversion of the London Bach, Johann Christian, who served Mozart as a model so often, but rather the sensitive introspection of the Berlin and Hamburg Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel.
In listening to this movement, it is hard to avoid the notion that we are witnessing the expression of some inner emotions, and at least one commentator has speculated that Mozart may have been paying tribute to his mother, who had died in 1778 at the age of fifty-seven, while accompanying him on his trip to Paris.
The Finale returns to the happier realms of the first movement, and in typical finale fashion presents us with a Rondo based upon lively, dancelike tunes. Mozart is not so lavish with his melodies here as in the opening movement, but still quite lavish enough.
N.Z.
Concertos for winds
Background and overview
Mozart possessed a consuming interest in the solo qualities of wind instruments. In his compositions for orchestra, and especially in his piano concertos, concert arias, and operas, he gave winds an importance and an independence that was unprecedented in the music of his time. Not only did he give them passages in which they speak as a band totally unsupported by strings, but he often gave them solo and ensemble passages of obbligato proportions. From the horn obbligato in the early opera Mitridate, K. 87, to the one for trombone in the Requiem, K. 626, at one time or another the composer gave a prominent role to every standard wind instrument that was available to him (he even wrote a trumpet concerto, a work that has, unfortunately, been lost).
The strongly individual flavors of the different wind instruments impressed Mozart deeply. But, as with singers, his readiness to write for them was dependent ultimately upon his knowledge of the abilities of the performers themselves. He came to know intimately many wind players who possessed talents of the highest order. But curiously it was the personalities of these performers as much as their artistry that seem to have attracted the composer. He was stimulated by their company and, paradoxically perhaps, even by their human shortcomings. Thus Mozart was inspired by the brilliance of the wind players in Mannheim and elsewhere, and he seemed curiously accepting of their sometimes loose morals. The clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler – a man whom one can sense Mozart loved deeply – apparently cheated Mozart mercilessly and actually was in debt to him for 500 gulden at the time of the composer’s death, a sum greater than one half the annual income of either man. Yet it was for Stadler that Mozart wrote many of his most heartfelt compositions for the clarinet.
With the wind concertos the paradox goes even deeper, because writing them proved to be economically disastrous for Mozart. He received half his fee for the flute concertos (but then he delivered only half the number he had promised) and no payment at all for the flute and harp concerto. The horn concertos were probably presents to a friend of his, the horn player Joseph Leutgeb, and the clarinet concerto certainly can be included as part of Stadler’s unpaid debt to Mozart. Fortunately none of these hazards seems to have deterred him. The concertos come from the pen of a man whose understanding of wind instruments had never before been approached and whose wide experience with them was unparalleled.
R.H.
K. 191 Bassoon Concerto in B flat major (K6 186e)
Origin: Salzburg, June 4, 1774
Scoring: bassoon solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante ma adagio. Rondo: Tempo di Menuetto.
It is possible that Mozart wrote as many as five bassoon concertos; only one survives. In all likelihood, this concerto was written for one of the two bassoonists employed by the archbishop in Salzburg – Johann Heinrich Schulz or Melchoir Sandmayr. It is the first of Mozart’s extant concertos for a wind instrument, and, by common consent, a little masterpiece.
To accompany the bassoon, Mozart employed his standard orchestra of strings, oboes, and horns, though use of the wind instruments is reserved mainly for the orchestral passages and, in the solos, to those sections in which the soloist is confined to long notes.
The concerto bears witness to Mozart’s skilled use of the orchestra to accompany an instrument that has limitations both of range and power. In compensating for these shortcomings the composer is able positively to embrace the bassoon’s virtues – its lyrical gift, its agility, its rich sonorities, its wit, and its wide-stepping ability. Mozart has thus achieved a concerto intrinsically for the bassoon (as any cellist who has attempted to arrange the work for his own instrument will readily testify).
The opening orchestral passage falls naturally into three parts, beginning with a truncated version of the first subject and ending with an arpeggiated codetta that, throughout the movement, the orchestra always reserves for itself, and with which it marks off the various sections.
The British critic Alec Hyatt King refers to the second movement as a “dreamy arioso”. Certainly there is an operatic quality about the serene melody entrusted to the bassoon that extends beyond its possibly accidental similarity to the Countess’s aria “Porgi amor” from The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492; the feeling of somberness is also intensified by the strings, muted throughout the movement.
The last movement is one of Mozart’s minuet finales; that is, a movement based on the rhythm, rather than the actual form, of a minuet. He called it a Rondo, but it is in fact a mixture of rondo and variation.
R.H.
K3 271k Oboe Concerto in C major
Origin: Salzburg, 1777
Scoring: oboe solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro aperto. Andante ma non troppo. Allegro.
During his years in Salzburg in the mid-1770s Mozart’s interest in wind instruments grew. For instance, he wrote five divertimenti for oboes, bassoons, and horns for the archbishop’s dinner table, and he employed a solo oboe prominently in the Concertone for Two Violins and Orchestra, K. 190. He also wrote, sometime before October 1777, a concerto in C major for the principal oboist in Salzburg, Giuseppe Ferlendis. For many years the work was assumed to be yet another in the tragically long list of lost works by Mozart, but research has established that the Flute Concerto in D major, K. 314, written in Mannheim in 1778, is in fact nothing other than a reworking of this earlier oboe concerto.
The oboe concerto remained a favorite with Mozart. He made a present of it to Friedrich Ramm, the oboist of the Mannheim orchestra, and recorded that Ramm was “quite crazy with delight”, and that in February 1778 “Herr Ramm (by way of a change) played for the fifth time my oboe concerto written for Ferlendis, which is making a great sensation here. It is now Ramm’s cheval de bataille [war horse]”. The oboist’s delight in the gift was no doubt due to the flood of beautiful melodies that Mozart offered his soloist.
The concerto opens with the normal orchestral ritornello, ending with a downward-curving orchestral tailpiece that Mozart uses constantly in this movement at decisive moments. Hard upon this the soloist enters with a seemingly unending melody that is replete with pure joyousness. Mozart here found much to his liking a new method of accompanying the soloist by means of the violins only. He frequently returned to the device in this concerto, and in others requiring light accompaniment for a relatively light-voiced solo instrument.
After a sonorous orchestral introduction, the soloist dominates the slow movement with an expansive and highly decorated melody, much of which is again accompanied only by the violins.
The Finale is a beautifully integrated rondo in which ideas from the opening portion find their way into the two subsequent episodes. The Rondo theme itself inspired Mozart when he came to compose his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384; it has strong similarities with Blonde’s aria, “Welche Wonne, welche Lust”.
R.H.
K. 313 Flute Concerto in G major(K6 285c)
Origin: Mannheim, early 1778
Scoring: flute solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Adagio non troppo. Rondeau: Tempo di Menuetto.
On September 23, 1777, Mozart set out from Salzburg on a tour that took him principally to Mannheim and Paris. It is well known that he was overwhelmed by the brilliance of the Mannheim orchestra in the employ of Karl Theodor, Elector Palatine. This orchestra had achieved a Continental reputation for the precision of its ensemble, its bowing, its dynamic effects, and the accuracy of its phrasing. Mozart was particularly impressed by Mannheim’s wind players, as much (it would appear) for their readiness to befriend him as for the brilliance of their playing. His letters frequently reflect his enthusiasm for Johann Baptist Wendling, Friedrich Ramm, and Georg Wenzel Ritter, respectively principals on flute, oboe, and bassoon.
The twenty-one-year-old composer came to know Wendling’s family intimately – he orchestrated one of Wendling’s flute concertos, composed several works for members of his family, frequently took his meals with them, and eventually lodged with them. Wendling, for his part, interceded with the Elector to obtain commissions or employment for Mozart. When this did not work, and there was a very real risk that Mozart would have to leave Mannheim, Wendling found other freelance work for him, including a commission to write some concertos and quartets for a wealthy amateur flutist named Ferdinand de Jean. Mozart was to receive 200 gulden for these pieces – a sizable sum that many musicians would have taken more than six months to earn.
To his father Mozart stressed his determination to complete the commission within two months. But even at this stage Leopold Mozart evidently had reservations about these assurances and by the end of January 1778 it was apparent that he was indeed right: his son was procrastinating and the commission was probably more extensive than he had at first admitted. Mozart’s dilatory attitude served only to make his father extremely angry. His fear was that if Wolfgang did not soon complete the works he would not receive his money.
He was more than half right. On February 14 Mozart told his father that Wendling and Ramm were leaving Mannheim for Paris, adding, “M. de Jean is also leaving for Paris tomorrow and, because I have only finished two concertos and three quartets for him, has sent me 96 gulden [that is, 4 gulden short of the total]; but he must pay me in full, for that was my agreement with the Wendlings, and I can send him the other pieces later”.
Leopold, who was not deficient in simple arithmetic, immediately perceived that the commission must have been for four concertos and six quartets, since his son was given only half the agreed sum. In a blistering letter he upbraided Wolfgang for lying to him. Wolfgang produced some lame excuses, concluding with an astonishing sentence that has troubled commentators on his flute music ever since it was published: “Moreover, you know that I become quite powerless whenever I am obliged to write for an instrument that I cannot bear.” The sentence, if it has been properly interpreted, presents us with the extraordinary paradox of a composer creating some of the most charming and idiomatic flute music ever conceived – and detesting the flute!
It seems that Mozart was lucky to receive as much money from de Jean as he did, assuming that the flute pieces we know of now are the sum of his finished work. Three quartets at the most can be attributed to the commission, and no more than two concertos and a single extra movement – and of the concertos, the one in D (K. 314) was no more than an arrangement of his earlier Concerto in C for oboe (271k) (see the notes for the Flute Quartets K. 285, 285a, and 285b, p. 261.) Ramm’s many performances of this work must have been known by de Jean, so he would hardly have been grateful for a second-hand composition. Mozart really had no grounds to complain.
The Flute Concerto in G major, K. 313, seems therefore to have been the only original one to come from de Jean’s commission. Yet it gives no sign of Mozart’s possible distaste for the instrument. It is full of humor, warmth, and refined good taste. As with every instrument he wrote for, he learned and assimilated the flute’s technical potential and never embarrassed the performer by exceeding it. He uses his customary orchestra of strings, oboes, and horns for the outer movements.
The opening orchestral ritornello presents the somewhat pompous first subject, merely hints at the second, and adds a rhythmically arpeggiated codetta of its own that recurs throughout the movement at moments of structural significance, very much as in the first movement of the oboe concerto.
In the slow movement Mozart replaces his oboes with two flutes, which, against an accompaniment of muted strings, spell out in harmony the sensuous melody later to be played alone by the soloist. Their soft sound rather than the penetrating timbre of the oboes seems exactly what Mozart required in this warm and gentle movement.
The Finale, in sonata rondo form, is one of Mozart’s elegant finales in minuet tempo. Its quality has inspired many tributes: American musicologist Alfred Einstein speaks of it as “a veritable fountain of good spirits and fresh invention”, while British musicologist Alec Hyatt King refers to its “easy graceful style which conceals a wealth of imaginative detail and clever formal planning”.
R.H.
K. 314 Flute Concerto in D major (K6 285d)
This work is Mozart’s arrangement of the Oboe Concerto in C major, K. 271k. See the notes for the Oboe Concerto, K. 271k, and for the Flute Concerto in G major, K. 313, above.
K. 299 Flute and Harp Concerto in C major (K6 297c)
Origin: Paris, April 1778
Scoring: flute and harp soli, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andantino. Rondeau: Allegro.
Among the other compositions Mozart was working on during his stay in Paris was the Concerto for Flute and Harp. His mother made the first, somewhat confused, reference to it as “two concertos, one for the flute and one for the harp”. Mozart can seldom have found a commission more distasteful than this one, disliking as he apparently did both the flute and the harp. Once again an ironical twist of fate was to confront him with a disagreeable task, and once again the expected recompense was not forthcoming. Even though he completed a concerto full of lyrical beauty and of technical complexity almost ideally suited to its exponents, he was to be deprived of his fee.
Baron Grimm, a lifelong friend of Mozart’s family, introduced him to the Count of Guines, who commissioned this concerto. Adrien-Louis Bonnière de Souastre, Comte de Guines (his complete title), was at the time governor of the province of Artois. He had been a French diplomatic representative in Berlin from 1769 and then in London until February 1776, when his service there was cut short by a lawsuit accusing him of bribery and speculation. This resulted in his recall to France. With such a background it is hardly surprising that this French aristocrat did not feel bound by debts owed to an impecunious and powerless young musician from Austria.
The Concerto for Flute and Harp is a salon piece, as befits the delicate nature of the solo instruments, but while externally it savors of Mozart’s most polite galant style, there are stronger, more personal forces at work in the beautiful slow movement, where the impersonal arioso style of his earlier years gives place to the more individual romance that would become characteristic of his mature years in Vienna. Each movement is compactly formed, but with an unusual abundance of melodic material – perhaps Mozart’s antidote to the sound of the solo instruments, which he may have found tedious. If so he need not have worried; his instinct for combinations of instrumental sounds and the best use of them is as accurate and vivid here as ever.
In fact, a constantly changing tonal palette is a feature of the entire composition, and the two soloists, when they enter, add to the possibilities – even though Mozart very rarely allows his orchestral wind players to accompany them lest they overbalance them.
Oboes and horns are omitted from the exquisite slow movement, and if the sonorities of the string writing seem even more luxurious than usual it is because Mozart allowed himself two viola parts.
The last movement is a Rondo in the style of a gavotte. If Mozart wrote such music for instruments he is reputed to have disliked, how would he have dealt with them had they been instruments he loved?
R.H.
K. *320 Sinfonia Concertante in G major
Origin: Salzburg, August 3, 1779
Scoring: 2 flutes soli, 2 oboes soli, 2 bassoons soli, strings
Movements: Andante grazioso. Rondeau: Allegro ma non troppo.
This work consists of movements three and four of the “Post Horn” Serenade in D major, K. 320, used by Mozart as a sinfonia concertante. Mozart also used movements one, five, and seven as a symphony (K. *320). See the notes on pp. 201, and on pp. 236.
K. 315 Andante in C major (K6 285e)
Origin: Salzburg? 1779 or 1780
Scoring: flute solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
The autograph manuscript of this pellucidly beautiful movement for flute and orchestra is undated, but the paper on which Mozart wrote was of a kind he used in Salzburg only in the years 1777-79. It has long been considered part of the commission of flute works Mozart undertook in Mannheim for the amateur de Jean and perhaps a substitute slow movement for the G major flute concerto, K. 313. These hypotheses are plausible, but remain unproven. This work’s continued popularity with flutists and audiences arises from the elegantly simple manner in which the flute pours forth its joy and sadness, above the sympathetic murmurings of the orchestra, like the heroine of a pastoral opera of the period.
N.Z.
K. 371 Rondo in E flat major
Origin: Vienna, March 21, 1781
Scoring: horn solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
In March of 1781 Mozart had just left the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg for Vienna and the life of a freelance composer, performer, and teacher. It is probable that at the earliest opportunity he sought out the company of the horn player Joseph Leutgeb, who as principal horn in the Salzburg orchestra since 1763 had been one of Mozart’s closest friends during his formative years. Leutgeb had performed as a soloist in Paris in 1770, and when Mozart and his father were in Italy in 1772 and 1773, he joined them as a traveling horn virtuoso. “He will certainly make his mark here”, Mozart predicted to his sister, and indeed Leutgeb does appear to have caused a sensation when he arrived in Milan in February of 1773. “He will make quite a fortune here, for he is extraordinarily popular”, reported Leopold Mozart. “If the concert takes place that the courtiers want to arrange for him, I wager that he will get 100 cigliati on the spot. The archduke too wants to hear him.”
In spite of these early auguries of a distinguished career, Leutgeb for some reason never achieved the financial security or fame that by rights his prowess on the horn should have brought him. He moved to Vienna in 1777, having borrowed the money from Leopold Mozart in order to do so – money that was still owing five years afterward when a sympathetic Wolfgang, who was continually in money trouble himself, asked his father: “Please have a little patience with poor Leutgeb. If you knew his circumstances and saw how he has to muddle along, you would certainly feel sorry for him. I shall have a word with him and I feel sure that he will pay you, at any rate by installments.”
Leutgeb’s name turns up in some of Mozart’s last letters to his wife, who was taking the cure at Baden: “I am sleeping tonight at Leutgeb’s”, he notes, and again, “I am going to give Leutgeb a surprise by going out to breakfast with him”. In his penultimate surviving letter, he tells Constanze that he twice took Leutgeb to see The Magic Flute, K. 620. Obviously Mozart loved the man.
Many writers have made assessments of Leutgeb’s ability as a horn player, but it is the music that Mozart wrote for him that bears the most vivid testimony: four concertos, a quintet for horn and strings, and probably also the Rondo, K. 371, as well as other fragmentary compositions.
All of these works were of course written for the hand horn (or natural horn), an instrument that lacked the valves of the modern instrument, which is fully chromatic throughout its compass. In contrast, the only notes naturally available on the hand horn were those of the harmonic series (the instrument’s overtones but not its fundamental tone). There were large gaps between the notes that could be sounded in the lower register. But many of the missing intermediate notes could be achieved by inserting the hand into the bell of the instrument at different depths; this method markedly altered the timbre of many of these “stopped” notes, a fact that sensitive composers like Mozart exploited to full advantage. This technique was not ordinarily expected of orchestral performers, but chamber music soloists and concerto players could achieve little without the ability to coordinate lip and hand.
In spite of his renowned buffoonery in the horn concertos, Mozart was sensitive to the characteristics of both instrument and soloist. His understanding of the technique of the hand horn player was masterly; the frequency of breathing points and the general conciseness of the concertos were only practical and not musical concessions to his soloist’s lungs and lips; the four horn concertos remain difficult to play well, on natural horns or modern valved horns. The slow movements bear witness to Leutgeb’s evident talent for intensely lyrical playing. All four concerto finales are children of their instrument, resplendent with lively rhythms drawn from the horn calls of the hunting field. During Mozart’s lifetime, hunting rhythms were common fodder in the concert hall when an exuberant finale was required, but the composer here transforms a cliché into consummate art.
Leutgeb asked Mozart for a concerto as early as 1777, when he transferred to Vienna, but the earliest work for solo horn and orchestra is K. 371, which dates from March 21, 1781. It was the first work Mozart wrote in Vienna as a freelance composer. He left it incomplete after dashing off the entire solo line and orchestrating the first page; thereafter he made only sporadic indications of the orchestral accompaniment. After Mozart’s death, one of his pupils completed the scoring. Mozart’s sixteen-page manuscript had always been considered to contain the entire Rondo, but in 1990 an additional four pages came to light, completing the work for the first time.
One of the most obvious features of the jaunty Rondo theme is the repeated off-beat stresses of its final measures, a figure that Mozart uses extensively throughout the Rondo and to which he was to return five years later in the first-act Finale of The Marriage of Figaro.
R.H.
K. 417 Horn Concerto in E flat major, No. 2
Origin: Vienna, May 27, 1783
Scoring: horn solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Andante. Rondo.
This was the first of Mozart’s horn concertos to be completed. The superscription on the autograph manuscript (“Wolfgang Amadè Mozart takes pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and simpleton, at Vienna 27 May 1783”) is not inconsistent with several anecdotes that reflect Mozart’s somewhat brutal, if affectionate, ridiculing of Leutgeb; the composer, it is said, would sit down and write a horn concerto only if Leutgeb was on hands and knees picking up and re-sorting pages of symphonies and concertos that Mozart had flung onto the floor. Another time, Leutgeb had to kneel down behind the stove while Mozart wrote. “I can never resist making a fool of Leutgeb”, he is reputed to have said. The image is at once funny and sad. In so many ways, Mozart was the kindest of men: witness the fact that he was composing these wonderful horn concertos for Leutgeb probably without expecting compensation. But, like other mortals, he had some puzzling and strangely insensitive sides to his character.
The spacious first movement is planned more broadly than the opening movements of later horn concertos and holds a wealth of melodic ideas. The slow movement, in the dominant key of B flat, has a simple songlike structure, preceded by an orchestral introduction of the first half of the melody. There are two complete “verses”, virtually identical except that the pitch of the second is suddenly altered during its second phase in order to fortify the sense of the home key. A third “verse” begins, only to break off, leading to a short coda and the conclusion of the movement.
The Rondo is full of gaiety and fun. The opening hunting theme is ideally suited to the solo horn, and its orchestral repeat is predominantly colored by wind instruments. The range of the horn is at its widest in this movement, especially in the first episode, where it stretches more than two octaves.
R.H.
K. 495 Horn Concerto in E flat major, No. 4
Origin: Vienna, June 26, 1786
Scoring: horn solo, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro moderato. Romanza: Andante. Rondo: Allegro vivace.
“Ein Waldhorn Konzert für den Leutgeb” (A hunting-horn concerto for Leutgeb) was entered by Mozart into his personal catalogue of compositions on June 26, 1786. This was the horn concerto, K. 495. Mozart was again back in humorous vein, copying out his autograph manuscript in a gay variety of different-colored inks: black, red, blue, and green. He returned also to his conventional orchestra of strings, oboes, and horns.
Mozart tricks us at the outset; we are led to believe that the strongly rhythmic violin melody (reminiscent of the opening of his masonic cantata Die Maurerfreude, K. 471, written the previous year) is the principal theme, but in fact it is the melody in long notes pursued by the oboes that that soloist adopts as his choice. The orchestral exposition follows its normal course, introducing the second subject and another curiously similar theme as a codetta, a theme the soloist cannot wait to play, coming in well before his traditional point of entrance.
In the recapitulation Mozart significantly reorders the material of the first subject group, and elements of both orchestral and solo expositions come together in new and hitherto untried relationships. Traditionally, the soloist bows from the scene after playing his cadenza, but here he puts in one last belated appearance at the end, sharing the codetta theme with the oboes over a whispery violin accompaniment.
The music of the slow movement is on a higher plane, and tests the soloist severely, both spiritually and physically. The impassioned principal theme is virtually identical to that in the slow movement of the four-hand Piano Sonata in F major, K. 497, composed just over a month later, except for its softer rhythms, which offer a greater expressive potential to the horn soloist. And curiously, Mozart’s self-quoting continues with the melody of the first episode, which recalls the beginning of the Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478.
The highly vivacious hunting Finale immediately dispels all traces of sadness. This could very well be the liveliest of all Mozart’s hunting finales. Many years later Richard Strauss paid this type of finale the compliment of brilliantly caricaturing it in his own two horn concertos.
R.H.
K. 447 Horn Concerto in E flat major, No. 3
Origin: Vienna, 1787 or 1788
Scoring: horn solo, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, strings
Movements: Allegro. Romance: Larghetto. Allegro.
The third horn concerto, K. 447, has the most enigmatic history of them all. Its date is uncertain, but the composer’s handwriting, the paper of the autograph, and stylistic considerations all suggest that it was probably written considerably later than the commonly accepted 1783 date, perhaps even later than the fourth horn concerto. It is the least humorous of the horn concertos – at least in its opening two movements – and had the composer not added Joseph Leutgeb’s name to his manuscript at two cadence points in the Finale, we would be tempted to speculate that he did not write it for his friend.
Curious also are the two title pages and two sets of page numbers, one for the first movement and one for the remainder, suggesting the distinct possibility that Mozart originally composed the Romance and Finale, and only later added a first movement to turn the work into a three-movement concerto. Its most unusual feature is its orchestration: Mozart abandoned his customary oboes and orchestral horns and chose instead clarinets and bassoons to join the strings. The additional warmth of these instruments, coupled with a more lyrical musical style, and a slow movement entitled “Romance” in the subdominant key of A flat major, resulted in a work less extroverted than its companions, but of greater beauty and intimacy.
These qualities are apparent from the start as the violins playa lush and warm melody in their low register. Even before the first idea is ended we are made aware that chromatic alterations to both melody and harmony are to play an important part in this concerto. The second subject is curiously identical to the one in the Piano Concerto in C major, K. 467, except that its accentuation is exactly reversed.
In the development section we enter the dark and romantic tonal regions of D flat major. Despite the difficult key, Mozart still finds enough notes possible on the natural horn to offer his soloist a new theme, and then the development continues with a series of remote modulations, with the sixteenth-note motive from the exposition on the violins over a pedal bass, the whole linked together by pivotal long notes from the horn. The English scholar Cuthbert Girdlestone considered this “one of the most remarkable symphonic passages in all Mozart”. Following it, most of the material of the recapitulation is familiar. As in the previous horn concerto Mozart felt the need for a cadenza, though he left it to Leutgeb to invent one.
We hear the exquisitely lyrical opening melody of the slow movement no fewer than five times. The first two, one for the soloist and one for the orchestra, following each other immediately. The Rondo Finale, in contrast, is positively teeming with thematic ideas; there are probably six or more in the opening refrain alone of which Mozart makes constant use, either integrally or as seeds for later development. The end of the second episode is the scene of one of his most inspired jokes. The orchestra, in octaves at the end of the second refrain, suddenly swerves off course into the key of the slow movement, and the solo horn repeats – now in tallyho hunting rhythms – the beautiful theme that was its constant companion there. When the refrain returns for the last time, Mozart’s purposes are made plain as all the member fragments of this vast Rondo theme come together.
R.H.
K. 412 Horn Concerto in D major, No. 1 (K1 514, K6 386b)
Origin: Vienna, first movement begun c. 1786 to 1788, completed in 1791; Rondò begun in 1791, incomplete.
Scoring: horn solo, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, strings
Movements: Allegro. Rondò: Allegro.
Like the Rondo, K. 371, this work was left incomplete. Mozart’s original manuscript is undated. It includes the completed first movement, scored for strings, oboes, and bassoons; this leads into a full-length sketch of the Finale with a score layout for solo horn and strings only. There is a second, completed manuscript of this second movement (Ludwig Köchel listed it separately as K. 514). It is in the hand of Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who completed his teacher’s fragmentary Rondo.
The first movement begins quietly with an enchantingly lyrical melody that seems on first hearing more suited to strings than to the horn. In fact, it proves as beautiful on the horn as on strings, but when the soloist turns to the second subject, he rejects out of hand the orchestra’s suggestion and invents a delightfully happy idea of his own.
The Rondo has three episodes, and at every turn there is ample evidence of Mozart’s gaiety and humor. He is laughing when he uses a canon, the most learned of devices, to link the end of the first episode to the Rondo theme. He is laughing still louder as he continues by trying out the Rondo theme itself in canon – and of course it works perfectly. In the lengthy second episode it is another of Mozart’s jokes to write for the horn, tonally a most conservative instrument, a melody in a foreign key. And not just any melody, either, for, as Alec Hyatt King has pointed out, Mozart (or, rather, Süssmayr) here adapts almost literally a wildly inappropriate Gregorian chant that would have been familiar to the Viennese as part of the Easter service, from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. When the Rondo theme returns for the fourth time the newly decorated violin accompaniment is pure joy, and Mozart, ever inventive, elaborates the idea further in the dosing stages of the movement. In his sketch of this Rondo Finale, Mozart jotted down a stream of jocular directions or abuse in Italian for Joseph Leutgeb, who frequently was the butt of the composer’s somewhat caustic sense of humor, such as “Ah, infamous pig”, “Take a breather”, “A sheep could trill like that” and (after the fourth repetition of the Rondo theme) “You’re going to bore me a fourth time, and thank God it’s the last”. Even the tempo marking is a joke: Adagio in the horn part and Allegro for the strings, perhaps an allusion to Leutgeb’s tendency to drag the tempo.
R.H.
K. 622 Clarinet Concerto in A major
Origin: Vienna, October 1791
Scoring: clarinet solo, 2 flutes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Adagio. Rondo: Allegro.
Mozart wrote only two more concertos after finishing his last horn concerto: one for the piano (K. 595, in B flat major) and one for the clarinet. The clarinet concerto turned out to be his valediction to instrumental composition: it was completed a mere two months before his death.
He first became enraptured by the clarinet during the months he spent in Mannheim in 1777 and 1778. “Ah, if only we had clarinets too! You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes, and clarinets”, he later wrote his father. Then he met Anton Stadler and his brother Johann in Vienna, where they had been freelance clarinetists for some eight years, and Mozart’s love of the instrument became absolute. Mozart was especially inspired by Anton’s playing; for him he composed the piano and wind quintet, K. 452, the clarinet trio, K. 498, the clarinet quintet, K. 581, and the two arias in the opera La clemenza di Tito that employ obbligato clarinet and basset horn (an alto clarinet). And finally and most wonderful of all, the clarinet concerto.
Anton was always fascinated by the deep notes of his instrument, so he sat second to his brother in orchestra and Harmonie (wind band). As his interest grew he designed, in collaboration with a local clarinetist and instrument maker, Theodor Lotz, a clarinet that would play two tones lower than normal, down to a written C, two octaves below middle C. It was for this clarinet that Mozart wrote the quintet, K. 581, the concerto, and the aria “Parto, parto” from La clemenza di Tito.
The work began as a concerto in G major for basset horn; 199 measures of the first movement survive in this form. They are virtually identical to the clarinet concerto, but whether it was Mozart’s or Anton Stadler’s decision to begin again a tone higher, utilizing the extended clarinet instead, we do not know.
The autograph manuscript of the concerto is lost. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of a work written specifically for Stadler’s clarinet. What we know today is an anonymous arrangement for the conventional clarinet; the notes Mozart would have allotted to the very bottom of Stadler’s instrument have been rewritten. But even in its slightly inauthentic state, this is Mozart’s greatest wind concerto. The galant era of the flute, oboe, and bassoon concertos is past, the almost concertino-like succinctness of the horn concertos is now unnecessary. The clarinet concerto is of the same depth and breadth of conception as the late piano concertos, and possesses the same serenity and sublimity as the very last, K. 595.
Mozart chooses a quiet orchestral background. He rejects the piercing oboes for the soft sound of flutes, uses horns as usual, and decides upon a pair of bassoons; these were an addition to the original instrumental line-up of the aborted basset horn version. Furthermore Mozart often writes the bass line for the cellos, unsupported by double basses. But this is just one of the many subtle instrumental refinements that are part of his orchestral palette at the end of his life. His harmonic palette has been enriched too with a wealth of chromatic detail that he always uses tastefully and relevantly. And his understanding of the technical abilities of the clarinet is nothing short of masterly. Its full compass and range of tone color are exploited, its capacity to sustain a cantabile melody has never been bettered, and the ease with which it can play scales and arpeggios makes it a natural instrument of accompaniment, as the interplay between soloist and orchestra in this concerto demonstrates. Yet Mozart shunned technical virtuosity for its own sake, and found even cadenzas irrelevant.
The concerto opens with a theme in the same limpid, easy-paced, and lyrical mold that characterizes Mozart’s late works in A major: the clarinet quintet and the Piano Concerto in A major (K. 488). Both seem immediately to strike the same mood. The amazing wealth of moods, colors, and images of the development are purely the result of Mozart’s mastery in transforming and reshaping the music of the exposition: he no longer has any need to invent new themes. The recapitulation, markedly shorter than the exposition, nonetheless follows the same course in a more concentrated and often subtly altered form.
As Alec Hyatt King says, “The Adagio, in D, is music of utter simplicity, which seems to reflect the timeless and beatific vision of a mind at peace with itself”. Mozart chooses that simplest of musical shapes for it, song form (A-B-A), concluding with a coda. The melody is one of Mozart’s most naive and yet most mature utterances. Except for the few bars that make up the middle section, the music clings to its home key of D major throughout. Commenting on this tonality, American musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon notes, “There are times when an unbearable sadness seems to linger in the music, the more profound and tragic because it smilingly emerges from the serenity of a bright major key”.
The Finale is a generously conceived Rondo, yet it is remarkable how concentrated and close-knit its various musical elements actually are. The soloist introduces the Rondo theme, and its working out involves a long discussion between soloist and orchestra, including some typically warm Mozartean instrumental touches.
Every such detail contributes to our awe at Mozart’s technical mastery in his last concerto. The ear marvels, but only the heart can understand the deeper message of this miraculous work. Its quiet resignation has often been noted, perhaps suggesting that when writing it Mozart understood the extent of his own illness. The poignancy of the slow movement is proof enough of this, but a hidden sorrow pervades the movements that flank it, as well. H. C. Robbins Landon found in Shakespeare the perfect words to describe the paradox of these great Allegro movements: “The heart dances, but not for joy.”
R.H.