Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Instrumental music
Serenades, Divertimentos, and Marches
Background and overview
This is a particularly delightful, puzzling category of Mozart’s music. A divertimento, as its name would suggest, is music of a diverting sort – entertainment music. It is usually said (questionably, in my opinion) to be of a lighter character than “serious” genres such as sonata, string quartet, etc. But as so much of Mozart’s other music is diverting, and as his divertimentos contain so much serious artistic content, the distinction would seem to be a dubious one. In Austria in the mid-eighteenth century, “divertimento” could be the title of almost any kind of instrumental music, including piano sonatas, string trios or quartets, and even orchestral works. Mozart’s divertimentos include chamber music (one on a part) and orchestral works. The one-on-a-part divertimentos usually give themselves away by demanding soloist technique of the first violinist, especially concerto-like high passages, and sometimes also the more difficult to play “stopped” notes for the horns.
The original meaning of “serenade” is a love song sung by a young man under the window of his beloved. In this sense, serenades are found in Mozart’s operas, the best-known of them being Don Giovanni’s “Deh, vieni alla finestra”. But here we are dealing with the orchestral serenade, which was an almost exclusively Salzburgian genre, composed there by Michael Haydn, Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart, and other local musicians, but virtually unknown elsewhere. A Salzburg orchestral serenade was an omnium-gatherum, often consisting of the following heterogeneous elements: an introductory march (and sometimes an ending march), the movements of a symphony, at least two minuets with trios (sometimes more than one trio per minuet), and one, two, or three concerto movements for one or several members of the ensemble to perform.
Salzburg serenades were usually written either for such private celebrations as weddings, birthdays or namedays, investitures, and promotions, or for the public celebrations of the end of the summer term at the university. (That is why the Mozarts referred to them as “Final-musik”.) Such a work constituted the main musical event of the celebration in question, providing a melange of marches, dances, symphony, and concerto, all rolled into one. These works were often performed out-of-doors, in the garden of a stately home or in the squares in front of the university and in front of the archbishop’s palace.
One further title is associated with divertimento and serenade: cassation. The etymology of this word is obscure, but it most probably can be traced to the German idiom gassatim gehen, meaning “to walk about and perform in the streets”. In mid-eighteenth-century Austria, in any case, it refered to the same kind of instrumental music called divertimento or serenade. In Mozart’s music the title is associated with only four works (K. 32, 62+ 100, 63, and 99), although there is some evidence in Mozart’s letters that the three terms, serenade, divertimento, and cassation, may have been used casually somewhat interchangeably. His widow Constanze, in any case, in a letter of 1801, claimed that cassation (which she spelled “gassation”) was “a loathsome, misunderstood provincial expression”.
N.Z.
Orchestral serenades, divertimentos, and marches
K. 32 Gallimathias Musicum in D major (K2 Anh 100a)
Origin: The Hague, March 1766
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, [bassoon], strings, obbligato harpsichord
Writing from London early in 1765, Leopold Mozart informed his Salzburg correspondents, the Hagenauers, “We shall not go to Holland, that I can assure everyone”, and “The Dutch Envoy in London several times begged me to visit the Prince of Orange at The Hague, but I let this go in by one ear and out by the other”. Leopold had plans to bring his family home by way of Paris, Milan, and Venice, but then in late July 1765, at the beginning of the return journey something happened to change his mind:
On the very day of our departure the Dutch Envoy drove to our lodgings and was told that we had gone to Canterbury for the races and would then leave England immediately. He turned up at once in Canterbury and implored me at all costs to go to The Hague, as the Princess of Weilburg, sister of the Prince of Orange, was extremely anxious to see this child, about whom she had heard and read so much. In short, he and everybody talked at me so insistently and the proposal was so attractive that I had to decide to come.
This “proposal” – for the Mozarts to be official guests of the court – led to their remaining in Holland from September 1765 to April 1766. The length of their stay was in part a result of illnesses suffered by Wolfgang and Nannerl, and, in part, of the favorable reception and financial success of their concerts; but it was also owing to a desire to remain long enough to take advantage of the liberal patronage likely to accompany the installation of the eighteen-year-old Prince William V of Orange on March 11, 1766, at The Hague.
Prince William had a strong musical lineage. His mother, Princess Anne of Britain, had been Handel’s loyal pupil and patron, and a patron of the violinist and composer Jean-Marie Leclair I’aîné. As she gave her son a musical upbringing, it is hardly surprising that there were considerable musical entertainments associated with his installation (as well as fireworks that Leopold characterized as “astounding”). The orchestra for these entertainments comprised twelve violins, three violas, three cellos, two double basses, pairs of winds, trumpets, and timpani, for a total of about thirty-six musicians not counting the harpsichord player, who was the ten-year-old composer himself.
Written for this occasion, the Gallimathias is a quodlibet (a medley of tunes), some movements based on tunes known to Wolfgang and his Salzburg compatriots, some on tunes familiar to his Dutch audience. The work survives in two versions: a preliminary draft in which Wolfgang’s and Leopold’s hands are found intermingled, and a fair copy made by a professional copyist apparently for a performance in Donaueschingen some months later. The order and number of movements of the draft version and the Donaueschingen fair copy differ. Between them the two versions contain some twenty-one movements. Which movements, and in which order, one hears performed depends on the version chosen. Most of the movements are on a tiny scale.
With its quotations of popular songs and other special effects, the Gallimathias displays strongly satirical and parodistic elements. A movement entitled “Pastorella” presents the melody of the Christmas carol, “Joseph, lieber Joseph mein” (Resonet in laudibus) over a drone. The melody is in a particular version known to every denizen of Salzburg because it was played in the appropriate season by a mechanical carillon (“Hornwerk”) in the tower of the Hohensalzburg Castle that dominates the city. (Mozart would return to this tune in 1772, quoting it in the original slow movement of his symphony, K. 132.) Two movements are marches, one a minuet, and several based on materials idiomatic to hunting horns, post horns and Alphorns. Another movement in 3/4 is based on the song “Eitelkeit! Eitelkeit! Ewigs Verderben” (Vanity! Vanity! Endless corruption). Yet another movement incorporates a Bavarian song, “Gedult beschutzet mich, wann Neid und Hass wird rasen” (Forebearance shields me when envy and hate rage). And the Finale is a fugue based appropriately, for the occasion, on the Dutch patriotic hymn “Willem van Nassau”. (The previous month Mozart had published a set of keyboard variations, K. 25, on the same tune.)
N.Z.
K. 63 Cassation in G major
Origin: Salzburg, 1769
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Marche. Allegro. Andante. Menuet. Adagio. Menuet. Finale: Allegro assai.
In 1769 Mozart wrote his first serenade-like works for Salzburg events: the Cassations K. 63 in G major and K. 99 in B flat major, both scored for oboes, horns, and strings, and the Serenade in D major, K. 100, scored for larger orchestra. The first of this pair of cassations was probably written very early in 1769, just after Mozart had returned from Vienna. It may have been performed as a musical contribution to the carnival season (Shrovetide), those traditional days of license and merriment immediately preceding Lent until Shrove Tuesday.
The opening March of K. 63 begins quietly. It is almost as if the marching procession is heard at first in the distance, rounds a corner, and then is suddenly upon us. For the first Minuet there is a curious twist: virtually the entire minuet is a canon, the violas, cellos, and basses following exactly one measure behind the violins.
D.S.
K. 99 Cassation in B flat major (K6 63a)
Origin: Salzburg, 1769
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Marcia. Allegro molto. Andante. Menuetto. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
In 1769 Mozart was content to write lighthearted outdoor music without any thought of its later use or publication; yet for all the music’s ephemeral nature, he withheld none of his genius or invention. That is what makes the Cassation in B flat such a gem among his early works: it has elegance, character and a rare conviction, so that the listener feels not that he is in the midst of an experiment but that he is at the fountainhead of genuine inspiration, lavished upon music that he hopes was appreciated in its own time.
In the opening movement, the characteristic march rhythm is present in a more subtle way than usual; there is a general impression of grace as well as dignity. As in the G major Cassation, Mozart adopts a distinctly intellectual pose for the first of his two minuets: once again a canon opens each half, strict enough to make clear that this is not simply a passage in loose imitation. The busy allegro that begins the Finale seems to be getting into its stride when an Andante in 6/8 time breaks in and changes the mood. This pattern recurs, and then a sudden pause leads back – not to the beginning of the movement but to the beginning of the cassation. We are back to the march that started things off.
D.S.
K. 62 March in D major, “Cassation”
Origin: Salzburg, 1769 Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
K. 100 Serenade in D Major (K6 62a)
Origin: Salzburg, 1769
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro. Menuetto. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
This is the last of the three serenades (or cassations) written in the summer of 1769. Almost certainly intended for performance out-of-doors, the serenade combines elements of ceremony and entertainment, and it may well be the work referred to in the minutes of the Salzburg Gymnasium, or Latin grammar school: “August 6, 1769: At night, in honor of the Professor of Logic, music composed by the most excellent boy Wolfgang Mozart.” The addition of wind instruments to the string ensemble helped the sound to carry and also provided the ambitious young composer with a spendid opportunity to show how skillfully he could deal with orchestral textures.
Originally this eight-movement serenade began with a march, K. 62, the opening measures of which were noted down by Mozart in a letter from Bologna dated August 4, 1770. But the march disappeared for nearly 200 years. When the Mozarts reached Milan in December of 1770, they found themselves in the midst of the myriad problems of operatic production. Wolfgang had been invited to compose an opera, Mitridate, rè di Ponto, and when it came time to rehearse the entry of King Mithridates the director called for a suitable march – which had not been included in the original plan. Suddenly the youthful genius, remembering that he had the score of the serenade with him, hurriedly pulled it out of a trunk, removed the pages containing the march and solved the problem without more ado. The march was lost when the run of performances came to an end. A few years ago, however, a copy of Mitridate was discovered that contained the march, which can now be restored in performances of both the opera and the serenade.
After the opening Allegro, there are three consecutive movements in which solo oboe and horn are highlighted, creating a kind of inset sinfonia concertante. In the second Andante, the two oboists switch to flutes, as oboe players were often expected to be able to do in Mozart’s day.
D.S.
K. 113 Divertimento in E flat major
Origin: Milan, November 1771
Scoring: 2 clarinets, (2 oboes, 2 English horns, 2 bassoons added later), 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
Despite the tide “divertimento”, which usually implies a “chamber” scoring with one to a part (i.e. in the strings), K. 113 appears to be a work for orchestral forces. The principal evidence is the following: (1) the use of heavy wind forces, especially in the later version, which would seem to require an orchestral string complement for adequate balance, and (2) the presence of the double title “Concerto ò sia Divertimento” written by Leopold Mozart on Wolfgang’s original manuscript, which would seem to indicate an intended concertante effect of various solo lines emerging from an orchestral background. Whatever Mozart’s intent, K. 113 is nowadays performed satisfactorily both as an orchestral work and as chamber music.
Mozart composed the divertimento on his second tour to Italy, during the month following the successful premiere of his Ascanio in Alba in Milan on October 17. The occasion for the work may have been an “academy”, or private concert, in the home of Albert Michael von Mayr on November 22 or 23, for which Mozart may also have composed his Symphony in F major, K. 112. K. 113 is an arresting work, composed both in the four-movement form and energetic style of the modish Italian sinfonia.
The second version of K. 113, with expanded wind forces, can be dated on the basis of handwriting to early 1773. This coincides with Mozart’s third and last visit to Italy, for the production of Lucio Silla for Milan. In connection with his stay in Milan, Mozart composed two wind divertimentos, (K. 186 and 166) that require the same forces as the revised wind complement of K. 113: pairs of oboes, clarinets, English horns, horns, and bassoons. It seems likely that Mozart had the same group of wind players in mind when he added the new parts to K. 113 as when he composed the new divertimentos.
K. 113 is Mozart’s first work to use the clarinet. It is also his only four-movement orchestral serenade, although this was to become a standard format of his later wind divertimentos, and it reappears in both Ein musikalischer Spass and Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Moreover, K. 113 seems to share with many of these works a certain robust charm and alfresco atmosphere.
W.C.
K. 131 Divertimento in D major
Origin: Salzburg, June 1772
Scoring: flute, oboe, bassoon, 4 horns, strings
Movements: [Allegro.] Adagio. Menuetto. Allegretto. Menuetto. Adagio. Allegro molto.
Like K. 113 (see above), the title “divertimento” would seem to belie the fact that this music has certain inherent orchestral qualities, particularly in its heavy scoring for wind instruments. The occasion for the composition is unknown. Its autograph date places it in the summer of 1772, a time of year for which, in 1774 and 1775, Mozart provided the serenades K. 203 and 204 respectively – be it either for the name day of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo or for the end of the academic year in the University (as “Finalmusik”). It is conceivable that K. 131 might have fulfilled a similar function in 1772.
Like K. 113, K. 131 makes colorful and clever use of instrumental combinations, particularly among the winds. Its format reverts, however, from the Italianate four-movement sequence of K. 113 to a more spaciously designed seven-movement sequence reminiscent of the early Salzburg cassations. Mozart specialist Alfred Einstein has remarked that K. 131 “is exactly like the Milan Divertimento (Concerto) K. 113 in character, but is transformed in style into something Salzburgian”.
W.C.
K. 189 March in D major (K6 167b)
Origin: Vienna, July or early August 1773
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 violins, basso
This was probably the march to open and close the Serenade K. 185 (see below) ordered as “Finalmusik” (music for the end of the University term in early August) by the “young Herr Andretter” in Salzburg and composed by Mozart in Vienna in the summer of 1773.
E.S.
K. 185 Serenade in D major, “Andretter” (K6 167a)
Origin: Vienna, July or early August 1773
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings with violin solo in movements two, three, and six
Movements: Allegro assai. Andante. Allegro. Menuetto. Andante grazioso. Menuetto. Adagio – Allegro assai.
The “Andretter” Serenade was composed in the summer of 1773 while Mozart and his father were spending the better part of three months in Vienna on the lookout for positions at the imperial court. Nothing came of it, but there was a commission to write a festive work (“Finalmusik”) in connection with the wedding of the elder son of Johann Ernst von Andretter, military counselor to the archbishop of Salzburg’s court. Since writing the serenade K. 100 of 1769, Mozart had lost none of his touch as a composer of firstrate light music. The intervening years had seen the production of numerous minuets for public dancing and the divertimentos K. 113, 131, 186, and 166. It is possible that Mozart also wrote the Divertimento K. 205 for the Andretter family at about the same time (see below).
The second and third movements of the “Andretter” Serenade (as well as the first Trio of its second Minuet) call for a solo violin, a reflection of the fact that since July 9, 1772, Mozart held the resoundingly titled but poorly paid job of concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra, and could create opportunities to show off his facile fiddle.
D.S.
K. 237 March in D major (K6 189c)
Origin: Salzburg, August 1774
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 violins, basso
In this march, composed to go with the serenade K. 203 (see below), Mozart uses horns in A and trumpets in D; the former are prominent in the first half (which has moved to A major) and are joined by the bassoons, the latter, along with the oboes, in the tonic key parts of the second half. As usual, Mozart makes a positive virtue of a technical limitation, and achieves sounds unusual even for him.
E.S.
K. 203 Serenade in D major (K6 189b)
Origin: Salzburg, August 1774
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings with violin solo in movements two, three and four
Movements: Andante maestoso – Allegro assai. [Andante.] Menuetto. [Allegro.] Menuetto. [Andante.] Menuetto. Prestissimo.
Composed in the summer of 1774, either for the ceremonies marking the end of an academic year or for the name day of the archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus Colloredo (it has sometimes been called the “Colloredo” Serenade), this work again is planned on ample lines, with no less than eight movements, including three minuets. No less, but possibly more; for like the serenade K. 100, which originally started with a March of suitable length and dignity for the entrance of the venerable ecclesiastics, professors, and city officials, this work also has a clearly related (though now separate) march, K. 237 (see above).
A subtle feature is the sudden appearance of a solo bassoon part in the Trio of the second Minuet. As in so many other orchestras, the archbishop’s musicians were frequently “double-handed”, and a few could even lay reasonable claim to competence on three or four instruments. It would have been perfectly possible for one of the musicians to put down his instrument and take up a bassoon for as long as it might be needed. But this was not the case here; rather, in any movement without obbligato bassoon parts, the bassoons are present anyway, playing along on the bass line with the cellos and double basses, according to standard eighteenth-century practice. In any event, the oboists were doubling on flutes, as in the serenades K. 185, 204, and 250.
The first of the serenade’s two Andante movements, together with the following Minuet and Allegro, forms a miniature violin concerto, set apart from the serenade proper because of its special scoring and its choice of keys – B flat, F, then back to B flat.
D.S.
K. 215 March in D major (K6 213b)
Origin: Salzburg, August 1775
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
This march was composed as a introduction or exit to the Serenade K. 204 (see below), which was probably composed for the feast celebrating the end of the academic year at Salzburg University.
E.S.
K. 204 Serenade in D major (K6 213a)
Origin: Salzburg, August 5, 1775
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings with violin solo in movements two, three, and four
Movements: Allegro assai. Andante moderato. Allegro. Menuetto, [Andante.] Menuetto, Andantino grazioso – Allegro.
This work, probably completed on August 5, 1775, for the academic festivities, is virtually a twin of the previous serenade (K. 203). Again it offers evidence of the oboists who doubled on flutes and the bassoonist whose participation is highlighted only in the fifth movement. Once again, too, the solo violin comes to the fore and was probably played by Mozart himself. As in K. 203, the first Andante, together with the following Allegro and Minuet, form a miniature violin concerto.
The second Andante offers a further glimpse of Mozart’s skill as an orchestrator. Instead of using either the two oboes or the two flutes, he asks for only one of each and adds a solo bassoon and two horns, thus creating a five-part wind harmony team.
D.S.
K. 214 March in C major
Origin: Salzburg, August 20, 1775
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
All the other marches written in Salzburg belonged to one of the serenades or “Finalmusiken”. This march cannot be attributed to any of the serenades, which are all in D. Whether it was written for a serenade now lost or as an occasional piece remains a puzzle.
E.S.
K. 239 Serenade in D major, “Serenata Notturna”
Origin: Salzburg, January 1776
Scoring: timpani, strings with 2 violins, viola, and double bass soli
Movements: Marcia: Maestoso. Menuetto. Rondeau: Allegretto.
This must have been a work for carnival of 1776. Despite Mozart’s preference for five or more movements in serenades, there was no standard number, as this work demonstrates by proceeding directly from its opening march to a Minuet and Trio and thence to a Rondo-Finale. The orchestra consists of kettledrums and strings without double basses. However, as in nearly all the tuttis the solo double bass doubles the orchestral cellos, and the expected sixteen-foot sound is heard. The work’s special color derives at least in part from the kettledrums, which, liberated from their usual role of providing the bass for a pair of trumpets, are elevated to an unwonted prominence.
The stately opening movement, Maestoso 2/4, is filled with subtleties of rhythm and orchestration, which place it outside the realm of the normal march. Fragments of fanfares and march rhythms sprinkled throughout the movement cannot disguise the fact that it was written to serve in place of a symphonic movement and for an attentive audience of amateurs and connoiseurs rather than for the parade grounds. The Minuet, as stately as the March, makes good use of the short-long rhythm known variously as the Lombardic rhythm or Scotch snap. It is neatly contrasted by a more sedate Trio, played by the soloists alone.
The 2/4 Finale, marked “Rondeau: Allegretto”, reminds us of descriptions of the Salzbourgeois of Mozart’s time. One traveler remarked that “The Salzburger’s spirit is exceedingly inclined to low humor. Their folksongs are so comical and burlesque that one cannot listen to them without side-splitting laughter. The Punch-and-Judy spirit shines through everywhere, and the melodies are mostly excellent and inimitably beautiful.” The Rondo theme is a high-spirited country dance, cheekily decked out with grace notes. The intervening episodes include a mock-pathetic Adagio in 3/4, a kind of quick-step march, an outburst of pizzicato, and a closing blaze of martial gaiety based on the quick step.
N.Z.
K. 249 March in D major
Origin: Salzburg, July 20, 1776
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Mozart’s “Haffner” Serenade, K. 250 (see below), was first played on the eve of the wedding of Marie Elisabeth Haffner, a member of the notable Salzburg family. Mozart wrote the present splendid march to open or close the evening, but it is all too rarely played with the serenade today.
E.S.
K. 250 Serenade in D major, “Haffner” (K6 248b)
Origin: Salzburg, July 1776
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings with violin solo in movements two, three, and four
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Andante. Menuetto. Rondeau: Allegro. Menuetto. Andante. Menuetto. Adagio – Allegro.
In the summer of 1776, Mozart received a commission to write a full-scale serenade for the wedding of Marie Elisabeth Haffner, daughter of a wealthy merchant and burgomaster of Salzburg, Sigmund Haffner, who was a friend of Leopold Mozart and an admirer of his lively young son.
The serenade was probably a great success, for in 1782, when a member of the Haffner family attained a modest place among the nobility, Leopold immediately contacted Wolfgang – then in Vienna – about another musical contribution for the Haffners, the work now known as the “Haffner” Symphony, K. 385.
The distinguished French Mozart scholar, Georges Saint-Foix, writes illuminatingly about the serenade and its place in Mozart’s development:
This Serenade (K. 250), composed by Mozart in the middle of his twentieth year – that is to say, in the full flower of his musical inspiration, for this year, 1776, sees the full blossoming of his rarest gifts of music and poetry – this Serenade marks for us the climax, not to say the apotheosis, of the period we have designated as galante. It is the successor of the serenades of 1773, 1774, and 1775 [K. 185, 203, and 204], but with what a difference! Its exceptional length is perhaps due to the solemnity of Elisabeth Haffner’s wedding, but it is certain that on this particular day the young master was bent on making a great impression and spreading out before his fellow-citizens all the richness his genius was able to produce.
Like K. 185, 203, and 204, the present Serenade includes a miniature violin concerto – movements 2, 3, and 4 – as a showcase for Mozart’s own violinistic abilities.
D.S.
K. 335 Two Marches in D major (K6 320a)
Origin: Salzburg, August 1779
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Probably these two marches were intended for the “Post Horn” Serenade, K. 320 (see below). A conventional flourish opens the first march but is forgotten in the recapitulation in favor of a better idea – a melody for oboes and horns with a flowing violin counterpoint. Again, the more or less formal continuation of that first subject becomes – piano and scherzoso – a witty second subject in which the oboe is accompanied by the strings battendo col legno, striking the strings with the wood of the bow.
The second march contains the usual series of good tunes. In the second part, just as in the first march, Mozart disconcertingly forgets all the music of the first part, except for the first four and the last four measures, and produces a string of new tunes – a delightfully cavalier, and probably unique treatment of sonata form on an informal occasion. Among other things, trilling flutes provide bird song.
E.S.
K. 320 Serenade in D major, “Post Horn”
Origin: Salzburg, August 3, 1779
Scoring: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns (1 doubling post horn), 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Adagio maestoso – Allegro con spirito. Menuetto. Concertante: Andante grazioso. Rondeau: Allegro ma non troppo. Andantino. Menuetto. Finale: Presto.
Mozart’s biographer and Prague acquaintance Franz Xaver Niemetschek claimed that Mozart wrote the “Post Horn” Serenade to celebrate Archbishop Colloredo’s name day on September 30, 1779. But Mozart dated the work August 3 of that year, suggesting that it was intended for the end of the academic year celebrations held annually in the Kollegienplatz, the square in front of Salzburg University, in the first week in August. In seems, rather, that for the archbishop’s name day Mozart revived his “Haffner” Serenade, K. 250.
The “Post Horn” Serenade is crammed full of musical jokes, and we may suspect that in some of them Mozart was slyly thumbing his nose at the archbishop and other citizens of provincial Salzburg. It is also quite possible that he was influenced by Haydn’s odd Symphony No. 60, “Il Distratto” (The Absent-Minded Man), written originally as incidental music for a comedy given at Esterházy in 1774, and performed as a six-movement symphony in Pressburg the following year. Mozart heard it when it was performed in Salzburg in 1776, by a traveling theatrical troupe. The basic principle underlying the composition of both works is the use, abuse, and overuse of every sort of eighteenth-century musical cliché.
Mozart’s serenade introduces itself with a majestic, slow introduction, which leads, two measures earlier than one might expect, into an Allegro con spirito. The first violins, the bassoons, and trumpets each have short rhythmic figures of their own, which interplay for eight measures; the principle of repetition with virtually no melody continues throughout the first episode, each section of the band demanding its sometimes superfluous say. The second subject is announced by a brusque preparatory measure having nothing to do with the attractive tune that follows in the violins, except that it interrupts at every fourth measure; one’s ear consequently must concentrate on the oboes to catch the continuation of the melody. There is much chattery question-and-answer between instruments in the development. Then comes a variation of the slow introduction, a regular recapitulation, and a coda that emphasizes rather excessively that the key is D major and the occasion one of celebration.
The allegretto Minuet starts boldly enough, but shortly before it reaches the halfway point it comes to a modest, almost apologetic close; the process is then repeated. (Haydn’s Minuet in Symphony No. 60 has a similar anticlimax.) The Trio, a dialogue between flute and bassoon, each in unison with the first violins, has the character of a charming peasant dance.
Next follow two concertante (soloistic) movements, with pairs of flutes and oboes acting as solo quartet in concert with their colleagues, the main burden being carried by the first flute and first oboe. (Trumpets and drums are silent but horns occasionally also play a soloistic role.) Mozart thought highly of these two movements, for he programmed them in a concert he gave in Vienna some four years later, referring to them as “the short concertante symphony from my last Finalmusik”.
The second Minuet is grandiose. Two instruments not hitherto heard show up in the two Trio sections of this Minuet. The piccolo, two octaves above the violins, takes the lead in the folklike first trio. In the second trio a charming melody in the violins is quite overshadowed by the call of the post horn, an instrument that gives the Serenade its subtitle. A valveless brass instrument, the post horn was designed for mail-coach guards, who would use it to announce their impending approach to the next stop along the route. Was it Mozart’s way of saying how much he longed to get the deuce out of Salzburg?
The presto Finale, like the first movement, is a succession of typical musical figures of the period, ascending and descending scale and arpeggio passages, accompaniments in triplets, military brass calls, a development that begins too ambitiously and fizzles out (there is a similar moment in Haydn’s Symphony No. 60), and so on. The occasional suspicion of a gloomy shadow is speedily dismissed, and this choice spoof ends, as did the opening movement, with too many emphatic repetitions of the D major tonic chord.
It is astonishing that Mozart, in parodying indifferent music, as he does in several movements of this serenade, should nevertheless manage to produce so fresh and delightful a work.
A.R.
K. 408/1 March in C major (K6 383e)
Origin: Vienna, 1782
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
This was presumably composed for one of Mozart’s concerts in Vienna in I782. Constanze later claimed that he had composed it for her (1782 was the year of their marriage), and Mozart himself reduced it to piano score. There is some resemblance to the Idomeneo march of the previous year, but above all this tiny piece of four-and-one-half minutes (including repeats) shows how generous Mozart was with his melodies.
E.S.
K. 408/3 March in C major (K6 383F)
Origin: Vienna, 1782
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
This march was probably written along with K. 408, No. 1 for Mozart’s Vienna concerts in 1782. Like the other marches, this one is in a richly melodic sonata form.
E.S.
K. 408/2 March in D major (K6 385a)
Origin: Vienna, 1782
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
The summer of I782, his first in Vienna, was a complicated one for the twenty-six-year-old Mozart. He was eager to marry and only awaited parental approval. Leopold Mozart in Salzburg, though tardy in sending his blessing, was assiduous in his demands for compositions: first for a symphony for a Haffner family feast (and Mozart, though struggling to complete a large-scale wind piece, wrote the “Haffner” Symphony, K. 385) and then for a march to go with the symphony. Mozart writes on August 7 thanking his father for his blessing, and enclosing “a short march. I hope it arrives in time”. This is the present work, intended to be performed with the first version of the “Haffner” Symphony.
E.S.
Non-orchestral serenades, divertimentos, and marches
K. 290 March in D major (K3 173b, K6 167AB)
Origin: Salzburg, summer 1772?
Scoring: 2 horns, violin, viola, basso
This march has often been paired with the Divertimento in D major, K. 205 (see below), on the grounds of scoring: both the march and divertimento are unique among Mozart’s works of these genres in their use of a single violin part, rather than first and second violins. (The fact that the divertimento contains a bassoon part, while the march does not, presents no problem, for the bassoon could have doubled the bass line, as it does throughout the divertimento.) Recently, however, handwriting analysis has suggested a date of a year earlier, in the summer of 1772. No occasion has yet come to light to correspond to this earlier date of origin.
W.C.
K. 186 Divertimento in B flat major (K3 159b)
Origin: Milan, March 1773
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 English horns, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Allegro assai. Menuetto. Adagio. Allegro.
The divertimentos K. 186 and 166, Mozart’s first works for wind band, were almost certainly commissioned during his stay in Milan in March 1773. They were certainly not performed in Salzburg, where Mozart returned at the end of the month, for clarinets and English horns were not available there. Both works are in nine, not ten, parts, for the second bassoon always plays in unison with the first or remains silent.
The first movement of K. 186 is at the same time an opening Intrada and a simple rustic Ländler. The sturdy Minuet is contrasted by a legato Trio in which clarinets and horns are silent. The Andante, with its solemn, slow 6/8 swing and its innocent beauty, is one of those early works of Mozart which make one catch one’s breath. The final Allegro is similar in mood and construction to the contredanse Finale which rounds off the companion divertimento, if a bit less boisterous.
E.S.
K. 166 Divertimento in E flat major (K3 159d)
Origin: Salzburg, March 24, 1773
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 English horns, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Allegro. Menuetto. Andante grazioso. Adagio. Allegro.
This is the companion divertimento to K. 186 (see above). The first movement is in binary form, for the exposition is immediately followed by a recapitulation in varied harmony. The Minuet is a sturdy martial piece. The Trio for once is really a trio – for two English horns and bassoon. The Andante grazioso is a Rondo with varied instrumentation of the theme but dominated by the curious octaves of oboe and English horn. The Adagio with its held notes, legato line, and high horn parts gives a radiant sonority. The Allegro is a high-spirited contredanse in rondo form.
E.S.
K. 205 Divertimento in D major (K3 173a, K6 167A)
Origin: Salzburg, July 1773
Scoring: 2 horns, bassoon, violin, viola, basso
Movements: Largo – Allegro. Menuetto.[Adagio.] Menuetto. Finale: Presto.
The origin of K. 205 is unclear, for Mozart failed to include a date on his manuscript. Since the paper type of the manuscript is unusual for Mozart’s Salzburg compositions, many historians have dated the work during Mozart’s visit to Vienna in the fall of 1773. Specifically, it has often been connected with a garden concert given at the home of the Viennese physician Dr. Anton Mesmer on August 18, mentioned in a letter of Leopold Mozart three days later.
More recently, handwriting analysis has placed the work slightly earlier, in July. During this time Mozart was composing a serenade, K. 185, for the Andretter family in Salzburg – either for the elder Johann Ernst von Andretter or for his son Thaddäus. In later years, Leopold Mozart referred to his son’s “Andretterin Musik”, that is, a composition for a female member of the Andretter family. Perhaps the work was K. 205. If so, it may have been designed for the name day festivities of Maria Anna Elisabeth von Andretter, first wife of Johann Ernst, on July 26, 1773.
W.C.
K. 188 Divertimento in C major (K6 240b)
Origin: Salzburg, mid-1773
Scoring: 2 flutes, 5 trumpets, timpani
Movements: Andante. Allegro. Menuetto. Andante. Menuetto. [Gavotte.]
The idea of rococo chamber music for trumpets, flutes, and timpani seems odd to modern sensibilities, but it must not have to Mozart and his father. They arranged a suite of dances from Viennese ballets by Joseph Starzer and Christoph Willibald Gluck for that combination (K. 626b/28 and 159c=Anh C 17.12), and Mozart composed this original divertimento, K. 188.
Trumpet playing was an old and honorable calling; for centuries the players had belonged to guilds in which they served long apprenticeships. Along with the timpanists they made their livings as town musicians or attached to the cavalry. Their duties included such activities as sounding the hour, playing fanfares for civic, courtly, and religious ceremonial occasions including the arrival and departure of dignitaries, and (mounted on horseback) signaling maneuvers in battle and on the parade grounds. And the most skilled among them were also on call to supplement bands and orchestras for operas and concerts.
The archbishop of Salzburg supported a dozen trumpet players and a pair of timpanists for his court and cathedral. Leopold Mozart praised the first of the trumpet players, Johann Baptist Gesenberger, “who has made himself very famous for the extraordinary purity of his intonation (especially in the high register), for the rapidity of his leaps, and for his good trill”. The second trumpet player, Caspar Köstler, was known for his cantabile tone and his performances of concertos and solos. The third trumpet player, Johann Andreas Schachtner, was a close friend of the Mozart family. “There is not one of the trumpeters or kettledrummers in the princely service who does not play the violin well”, Leopold adds. These were refined, elegant musicians.
Mozart’s autograph manuscript of the divertimento, K. 188, is on a kind of paper that he used in Salzburg following the return from his third and last trip to Italy in March 1773 until around 1775, and the relative immaturity of his musical hand suggests the beginning of that period; but the work cannot be more closely dated than that.
The sounds of the trumpets and flutes mingle in surprising and sometimes scintillating ways, the former giving brilliance to the latter and the latter sweetening the former. The effect resembles a manic set of stops on a Baroque organ, indeed, rather like the mechanical organ (Hornwerk) that sounded from a tower in the castle on the cliff overlooking Salzburg.
The divertimento’s opening Andante is a stately intrada, the following Allegro a kind of diminutive sonata movement. The third and fifth movements, old-fashioned minuets without trios, frame an Andante in which Alberti-bass figurations from the flutes give the effect of an enlarged hurdy-gurdy, with a giant organ-grinder turning the crank. A brilliantly orchestrated gavotte serves as the brief Finale.
N.Z.
K. 213 Divertimento in F major
Origin: Salzburg, July 1775
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Andante. Menuetto. Contredanse en Rondeau: Molto allegro.
With this divertimento Mozart begins the series of five Tafelmusik (dinner music) works for wind sextet. These include K. 213, 240, 252, 253, and 270, composed between July 1775 and January 1777, presumably for the Salzburg court. The slightly gauche unison effects of the Milan divertimenti are passed, and Mozart has become complete master of the material.
The first movement of K. 213 is in miniature sonata form with a most subtly varied recapitulation. The Andante in varied ternary form (A-B-A) has the innocence and grace of some antique ballet. The Minuet is of a very Haydnesque cast; the Trio is a swinging Ländler. The Finale is the only one among the contredanse finales in these works actually titled thus. With its irrepressible horns it is one of Mozart’s most exuberant movements.
E.S.
K. 240 Divertimento in B flat major
Origin: Salzburg, January 1776
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Allegro. Andante grazioso. Menuetto. Allegro.
This is the second of the “Dinner Music” series. The first movement is more extended than in K. 213, and the second subject is fuller; the recapitulation begins with the middle of the first subject, reserving the formal opening statement for the very end of the movement. The Andante grazioso, like all these slow movements, has the dancing lilt of a gavotte. The Minuet is noteworthy for the high range of the high B flat horns, and for its delightful concluding bars in which the instruments seem to tease each other with their dotted rhythms. The finale, unexpectedly in sonata form, is an odd movement – it makes up for a lack of melodic wealth with a wistful little phrase as a second subject, which appears like a sensitive poet at a rowdy party.
E.S.
K. 252 Divertimento in E flat major (K6 240a)
Origin: Salzburg, early 1776
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Andante. Menuetto. Polonaise. Presto assai.
This is the third in the series of “Dinner Music”. Mozart provides variety by opening with an Andante, a graceful siciliano but with an unusual number of dynamic marks. The Minuet with its merrily prattling first horn is one of the gayest; the Trio has the more solemn character of its key of A flat. The Polonaise appears rarely in Mozart’s music (the piano sonata K. 284, the divertimento K. 287, and the divertimento K6 439b, No. 5); this one has a delightful swagger. The Finale, based on the Austrian tune “Die Katze lässt das Mausen nicht” (“The cat won’t give up chasing mice”), chases along to a brilliant conclusion.
E.S.
K. 248 March in F major
Origin: Salzburg, June 1776
Scoring: 2 horns,2 violins, viola, basso
This march originated with the divertimento, K. 247 (see below), which was written for the name day of Countess Antonia Lodron in Salzburg.
E.S.
K. 247 Divertimento in F major, “Lodron” No. 1
Origin: Salzburg, June 1776
Scoring: 2 horns, 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Allegro. Andante grazioso. Menuetto. Adagio. Menuetto. Andante – AlIegro assai.
Count Ernst Lodron was High Master of Ceremonies in Salzburg, a man in an influential position with whom Mozart always got on well, unlike his employer, the archbishop. This divertimento is the first work which the twenty-year-old composed for the name day of Lodron’s wife, Countess Antonia, on June 13, 1776. The success of the piece encouraged the Lodrons to commission and Mozart to write another in the following year with the same instrumentation, the divertimento K. 287.
The first movement is in sonata form, with a wealth of melodic invention; Mozart doesn’t repeat his opening four measures until the very end of the whole movement, when he uses it by way of a coda. The second movement is a kind of slow rondeau. Following the first Minuet comes an Adagio for strings only; it is largely a show piece for the first violin, as is the Trio of the second Minuet. A short Andante ushers in the lively contredanse Rondo with which the work ends.
C.C.
K. 251 Divertimento in D major
Origin: Salzburg, July 1776
Scoring: oboe, 2 horns, 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Allegro molto. Menuetto. Andantino. Menuetto. Rondeau: Allegro assai. Marcia alla francese.
This work, one of the gayest and most light-hearted that Mozart ever penned, was written, some say, for the twenty-fifth birthday of Mozart’s beloved and gifted sister Nannerl on July 30, 1776. The opening Allegro molto is one of Mozart’s most brilliant early experiments in sonata form. In it he employs one of Haydn’s favorite devices, building the whole movement out of the energetic first subject; it even appears in the dominant minor, instead of a true second subject, and rounds off both the exposition and the whole movement as a forceful coda.
The second movement is a straightforward Minuet; strings alone play the Trio. Then comes another highlight, a serenely beautiful Andantino in the form of a rondeau. Mozart’s own special blend of exquisite melody and heart-searching sadness is now here more apparent than at the point where the solo oboe takes up the tune. A Minuet follows, most unusually serving as the theme for a set of three variations, the first featuring the solo oboe, the next the first violin, the third bringing forward the second violin. Then comes the Rondo, one of the brightest and most entertaining which Mozart ever wrote. The final March “in the French style” may have been meant to begin the divertimento as well as conclude it.
C.C.
K. 253 Divertimento in F major
Origin: Salzburg, August 1776
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Andante. Menuetto. Allegro assai.
This is the fourth in the series of “Dinner Music”. The work opens with a Theme and Variations, as do only two other multimovement works of Mozart’s (the flute quartet K. 298, and the piano sonata K. 331). But its position in the divertimento is the only unconventional feature of this movement; as a final variation the theme is repeated allegretto. As so often occurs in Mozart’s dances, the Minuet is noble and expressive, the Trio more playful and dancing. The Finale combines bravura with delicacy; it is in ternary form with a coda.
E.S.
K. 286 Notturno in D major (K6 269a)
Origin: Salzburg, between December 1776 and January 1777
Scoring: four groups, each with 2 horns, 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Andante. Allegretto grazioso. Menuetto.
K. 286 may have been written for carnival of 1777. The work is exceptional both in its instrumentation and in the layout of its movements. The first of the four identical groups of players has no special designation, but the others were labeled by Mozart “First echo”, “Second echo”, and “Third echo”, making clear their functions. The three movements are an Andante in 3/4, an Allegretto grazioso in 2/4, and a Minuet and Trio. It has been widely stated that this work must be a fragment because of its apparently unorthodox structure. This is a fallacy, for numerous Austrian works from this time have three movements with a minuet as the third.
The opening of the Andante (a leisurely sonata form with both halves repeated) has a gentle cantabile melody to which, however, pulsating eighth notes in the accompaniment impart a certain passion. The movement’s “development” section is not one, but this is in some sense atoned for by a developmental retransition in which occur syncopations, sixteenth notes, and a touch of the minor – a “storm” that proves only a brief summer shower, passing as quickly as it came.
The perky Allegretto grazioso in 2/4 begins as if it were going to be a rondo, but (peculiarly for a work with all its movements in the same key) it seems unable to get far from D major, and instead of a rondo we get a sonata form without development section. The Minuet is closer in character to Mozart’s ballroom dances than to his symphonic minuets; by its considerable length it dwarfs the brief Trio (performed by the string players of the first ensemble) that Mozart added apparently as an after-thought. In all three movements the twenty-one-year old composer amuses himself and his listeners by toying with the amount of delay between and overlap among the echoes; this is especially delightful in the Minuet when the four pairs of horns break into fanfares.
N.Z.
K. 270 Divertimento in B flat major
Origin: Salzburg, January 1777
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Allegro molto. Andantino. Menuetto. Presto.
This is the fifth of the set of “Dinner Music”, and perhaps the finest of all. The Allegro molto is the longest first movement of the series, being in full sonata form with a dramatic development and a deliciously varied repeat in the recapitulation. The Andantino is a graceful gavotte in miniature sonata form with a delightful Alberti-bass accompaniment for horn in the coda. The Minuet (moderato) has a witty tune with a sort of hiccup in the second bar, and a Ländler Trio. The Presto is a breathless gigue, or rather 3/8 contredanse, with a moment of glory for the bassoon in the coda.
E.S.
K. 287 Divertimento in B flat major, “Lodron” No. 2 (K3 271b, K6 271H)
Origin: Salzburg, June 1777
Scoring: 2 horns, 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Allegro. Tema con variazioni: Andante grazioso. Menuetto. Adagio. Menuetto. Andante – Allegro molto.
The B flat Divertimento is the second of a pair written for Countess Antonia Lodron, the leading light of the music-loving aristocracy in Salzburg. The previous year Mozart had composed the Divertimento in F (K. 247) for the name day of the Countess, on June 13. She herself was an amateur pianist and Mozart had taught her two daughters piano. (In 1776 he had written his Concerto for Three Pianos, K. 242, especially for the Lodron ladies.)
The composer himself must have been proud of the B flat Divertimento; he took it with him to Munich three months after the premiere and performed the solo violin part from memory at the home of Count Joseph von Salern, the chief manager of the Court Opera. Mozart wrote to his father afterward: “You cannot imagine how delighted Count Salern was. But he really understands music, for all the time he kept on shouting ‘Bravo’, where other noblemen would take a pinch of snuff, blow their noses, clear their throats – or start a conversation.” A day or two later Mozart gave a concert at Franz Albert’s, the musical landlord of the Black Eagle, the inn where he was lodging. And once more, in the course of four and a half hours of music, he played the B flat Divertimento. “They all opened their eyes!” he wrote home proudly. “I played as though I were the finest fiddler in all Europe.”
The divertimento is in six substantial movements. They are worked out with such care and brilliance that one can well believe Mozart spent a good deal of effort in their making. The melody of the Theme and Variations is that of a German folksong, “Heissa, hurtig, ich bin Hans und bin ohne Sorge” (Whoopee! My name is Hans, and I haven’t a care in the world).
The last movement opens with a tragic recitative for the solo violin, in the style of opera seria; we expect an equally tragic dramatic aria to follow. Instead, there is a sudden change of scene: in a breezy Allegro molto, in 3/8 time, the first violin plays the tune of a Tyrolean folksong, “D’Bauerin hat d’Katz verlorn” (The farmer’s wife has lost the cat).
A.R.
K. 445 March in D major (K6 320c)
Origin: Salzburg, summer 1780
Scoring: 2 horns, 2 violins, 2 violas, basso
This march was almost certainly written for the “Robinig von Rottenfeld” Divertimento, K. 334 (see below). It shares with the Divertimento its melodic style and somewhat virtuoso character.
E.S.
K. 334 Divertimento in D major “Robinig von Rottenfeld” (K6 320b)
Origin: Salzburg, 1779 or 1780
Scoring: 2 horns, 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Allegro. Thema (con sei variazioni): Andante. Menuetto. Adagio. Menuetto. Rondo: Allegro.
After a fateful tour that took him to Munich, Mannheim, and Paris – during which his mother died, his hopes of gaining fame and independence were dashed, and the young soprano with whom he had fallen in love jilted him – Mozart returned to Salzburg in January 1779, staying there until 1780.
The months of travel were of immense importance to Mozart’s psychic as well as his artistic development. Not only had he been exposed to some of the finest music-making in Europe, he had also discovered how it feels to be talented but no longer a Wunderkind. Temporary successes there had certainly been; but in the end he had been rejected for permanent posts, and, equally distressing, had been rejected in love. His new music, though still in the galant style, begins to show traces of deeper emotion, even of violence and anguish.
The new depths are at once evident if one compares the divertimento for Countess Lodron (K. 287), written before his journey, and the one in D (K. 334), composed a few months after his return. K. 334 was intended for his family’s patrician friends, the Robinig von Rottenfelds. Though the scoring is the same – strings and two horns – its scale and sweep are grand. It demands considerable virtuosity of the first violinist.
The opening Allegro begins cheerily enough with an extended melody, promising at once a composition of substance. The first Minuet, often played as a separate piece, is one of Mozart’s best-known movements, rivaled perhaps only by Boccherini’s famous Minuet. It is very much in the style of a Ländler. The final Allegro is a Rondo in 6/8 dance rhythm. At times Mozart takes his first violin so high above the staff that the music could almost be mistaken for the high jinks of Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini, who was not yet born when this piece was written.
A.R.
K. 375 Serenade in E flat major
Origin: Vienna, October 1781
Scoring: 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons (2 oboes added in July 1782)
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Menuetto. Adagio. Menuetto. Allegro.
In a letter to his father of November 3, 1781, Mozart explains how he came to write the original version of the Serenade, K. 375:
I wrote it for St. Theresa’s Day for Frau von HickeI’s sister, or rather the sister-in-law of Herr von Hickel, court painter, at whose house it was performed for the first time. The six gentlemen who executed it are poor beggars who, however, play quite well together, particularly the first clarinet and the two horns. But the chief reason why I composed it was in order to let Herr von Strack, who goes there every day, hear something of my composition, so I wrote it rather carefully. It has won great applause too and on St. Theresa’s Night it was performed in three different places: for as soon as they finished playing it in one place, they were taken off somewhere else and paid to play it.
St. Theresa’s Day was October 15. Two weeks later, on Mozart’s own name day, October 31, the six wind players showed up in his courtyard at eleven o’clock at night to serenade him with the same composition. “These musicians asked that the street door might be opened and, placing themselves in the center of the courtyard, surprised me, just as I was about to undress, in the most pleasant fashion imaginable with the first chord in E flat.”
The Herr von Strack for whom he composed the piece “rather carefully” was Joseph von Strack, a gentleman of the emperor’s bedchamber, who Mozart hoped might report on it favorably at court. Certainly the composition is more elaborately worked out than the previous serenades, more serious in mood.
A.R.
K deest Harmoniemusik in C major, from Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Origin: Vienna, July 1782
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Overture and 16 numbers
This transcription of music from The Abduction from the Seraglio is one of many such operatic transcriptions for wind ensemble that enjoyed a vogue in Vienna in the early 1780s. In a letter to his father on July 20, 1782, four days after the premier of The Abduction, Mozart wrote:
Well, I have a big piece of work in front of me because I have to arrange my opera for Harmonie [wind ensemble] by a week from Sunday. If I don’t someone else will beat me to it and take my profit. ... You don’t realize how hard it is to arrange a work of this kind for Harmonie so that it suits wind instruments and yet loses none of its effect. I’ll have to spend the night over it because that’s what it takes to bring it off. ...
Indeed, besides the present transcription, another wind arrangement of music from The Abduction is known – in two extant versions – by the leading Viennese wind-band arranger of the day, Johann Nepomuk Went.
In a recent monograph, the Dutch conductor and musicologist Bastiaan Blomhert has for the first time stated the case for Mozart’s authorship of this arrangement, which was formerly attributed, on slender evidence, to Franz Joseph Rosinack. Blomhert’s argument focuses primarily on the technique of transcription, which in the case of this work is far more innovative and ambitious than that of standard, routine wind-band transcriptions of the time. Moreover the techniques of the present arrangement manifest similarities to certain Mozartean peculiarities of wind scoring, such as one finds in the wind-band arrangements of popular opera tunes in Don Giovanni, Act II, and in Mozart’s original compositions for wind ensembles.
The transcription contains the Overture (with a newly composed ending) and sixteen of the opera’s twenty-one numbers, thus encompassing most of the original score.
W.C.
K. 388 Serenade in C minor, (K6 384a)
Origin: Vienna, July 1782 or late 1783
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto in canone. Allegro.
July 1782 was an exceptionally busy month for Mozart. The first two weeks were taken up by the premiere of The Abduction from the Seraglio, on the 23rd Mozart changed his residence, and he was involved in considerable dilemmas and intrigues with the Weber family preceding his marriage. To crown it all, his father wrote, asking Wolfgang to compose a symphony (K. 385) to celebrate young Sigmund Haffner’s ennoblement. “You will be astonished to see only the first Allegro”, Wolfgang answered in a letter of July 27, “but I could do no more because I had hurriedly to write a serenade, but only for wind instruments (or I could have used it for you too)!” The other serenade, or “Night Music” as Mozart calls it in this letter, may have been the present work. It was perhaps written for one of the Princes Liechtenstein, but there is no record of its performance.
If Mozart said that the E flat Serenade (K. 375) was “rather carefully” written, he might have said of this one that it was composed “with the utmost care”. It shows no sign of hurried creation; it is tightly structured, and superbly wrought.
The Minuet and Trio might be said to be an act of contrapuntal homage to J. S. Bach and George Frideric Handel. Although the Minuet is not fugal, it is a canon: the oboes play the melody one measure ahead of the answering bassoons and two octaves above, with the clarinets and horns filling in the harmony. The Trio, in the major key, is a canon al rovescio, that is, with the answer played upside down.
Mozart later made a masterly arrangement of this Serenade for string quintet, K. 406 (see the note on p. 255).
A.R.
K. 410 Adagio in F major (K3 440d, K6 484d)
Origin: Vienna, 1782 or 1783?
Scoring: 2 basset horns, bassoon
K. 411 Adagio in B flat major (K3 440a, K6 484a)
Origin: Vienna, 1782 or 1783?
Scoring: 2 clarinets, 3 basset horns
The two Adagio movements K. 410 and 411 are of a somewhat serious character. Mozart fell in love with the basset horn during his Vienna period, encouraged by his friend and virtuoso of this instrument, Anton Stadler. Anton and his brother Johann are surely to be regarded as the first performers of these works. We know that the art of the Stadler brothers and the depth of the pleasant, secretive sound of these instruments induced the Vienna Freemasons to make use of them during solemn occasions in the Lodges. Both pieces were apparently created around 1783 and were intended for performance on such a festive occasion, with which the seriousness and the style of their construction is in harmony. K. 410 presents a quietly flowing canon in the two clarinets over a freely moving bass in the bassoon, a small contrapuntal masterpiece. It is countered by the rich harmonic structure of K. 411, a tonal gem and, at the same time, one of the most solemn and transfigured of Mozart’s creations.
E.F.S.
K3 439b Five Divertimentos in B flat major (K1 Anh 229 + 229a)
Origin: Vienna, 1783 or later
Scoring: 3 basset horns
Movements
No. 1: Allegro. Menuetto: Allegretto. Adagio. Menuetto. Rondo: Allegro.
No. 2: Allegro. Menuetto. Larghetto. Menuetto. Rondo: Allegro.
No. 3: Allegro. Menuetto. Adagio. Menuetto. Rondo.
No. 4: Allegro. Larghetto. Menuetto. Adagio. Allegro: Rondo.
No. 5: Adagio. Menuetto. Adagio. Andante: Romance. Polonaise.
The history of the three-part pieces K. 439b is complicated. The salient points are (a) that on May 31, 1800, Mozart’s widow wrote to the publisher Johann Anton Andre that the clarinetist Anton Stadler still had in his possession copies of trios by Mozart for basset horns, and (b) that in 1803, some pieces for two basset horns and bassoon (!) were published under Mozart’s name by Breitkopf & Härtel. In a later issue (by Simrock of Bonn), twenty-five pieces were published, divided into five “Serenades” of five pieces each. The scoring was given as two clarinets and bassoon. All later editions and arrangements were based on this Simrock issue. There are, however, indications that Constanze was quite right in believing in the existence of some trios for basset horns by her husband, and that they were these very pieces. For one thing, the lowest part sounds better on a basset horn than on a bassoon. Another indication is in the relation of the parts to each other: in the version for two clarinets and bassoon, there is often too great a distance between upper parts and bass. (In the reconstructed version for basset horns, the music is written in the key of F major, but it still sounds a fifth lower in B flat major.) It is perhaps worth mentioning that Mozart repeatedly experimented with pieces for homogeneous wind instrumentation, analogous to string quartet or quintet.
M.F.
K. 361 Serenade in B flat major (K6 370a)
Origin: Vienna, late 1783 or early 1784?
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 basset horns, 4 horns, 2 bassoons, double bass
Movements: Largo – Molto allegro. Menuetto. Adagio. Menuetto: Allegretto. Romance: Adagio – Allegretto – Adagio. [Tema con variazioni: Andante.] Finale: Molto allegro.
This great work is often called “Gran Partitta”, but not by Mozart (this title on his manuscript is in a foreign hand). Its origin is uncertain. Alan Tyson’s research assigns the paper of the manuscript a 1782 dating. On the other hand, stylistic evidence suggests that the work was commissioned somewhat later by Anton Stadler, the clarinet virtuoso for whom Mozart later composed his clarinet quintet (K. 581) and concerto (K. 622). On March 23, 1784, four movements of the B flat Serenade were premiered by Stadler and twelve other musicians at the National-Hoftheater in Vienna. The performance was announced in the newspaper Wienerblättchen and was chronicled with great admiration by Johann Friedrich Schink, who attended the concert and described in his Memoirs his delight and admiration for Stadler’s performance and Mozart’s work.
Mozart was quite possibly referring to this Serenade when he remarked to his father, in a letter dated February 10, 1784, “There are pieces I must write that will bring me money right now – but not later”. When would he ever again be likely to capitalize on a piece with such a singular instrumentation?
The work has a great number of stylistic similarities with pieces in the K. 450’s. A striking example is the largo introduction, with dotted fanfares and dolce responses. This device appears again immediately in the piano and wind quintet K. 452 and the piano and violin sonata K. 454. The syncopated accompaniment figure that immediately follows this opening in K. 454 is precisely the ostinato accompaniment figure in the sublime Adagio of the wind serenade.
Although the work is sometimes performed with contrabassoon, Mozart’s autograph is unequivocally scored for string bass, with occasional indications of pizzicato. The work’s texture is of a roundness and fullness of sonority that can be breathtaking in an intimate concert hall. It is fitting that it closes Mozart’s great period of wind writing.
R.D.L.
K. 487 12 Duos (K6 496a)
Origin: Vienna, July 27, 1786
Scoring: 2 horns
Movements: 1. Allegro. 2. Menuetto: Allegretto. 3. Andante. 4. Polonaise. 5. Larghetto. 6. Menuetto. 7. Adagio. 8. Allegro. 9. Menuetto. 10. Andante. 11. Menuetto. 12. Allegro.
Three of the twelve duos for horn (Nos. 1, 3, and 6) are preserved in Mozart’s own hand, written in separate parts. They are dated July 27, 1786, and the manuscript bears the additional note: “untern Kegelscheiben” (while playing skittles). This solves a puzzle which has long bothered many musicologists. A week and a half after the horn duos, Mozart wrote the trio for clarinet, viola, and piano, K. 498, which is sometimes called the “Kegelstatt” (skittle alley) Trio, because it was supposedly composed during a game of skittles. It is possible that these horn duos were forgotten, and, by word of mouth, the association of skittles with composing was passed on to the more important and better-known trio.
The performers must have been virtuosi, for in those days, horn playing was confined in principle to the series of natural fanfare tones, to which skilled players could add a number of in-between notes by various technical artifices. If in his orchestral horn writing, Mozart avoided these artifices, he never hesitated to require them in his solo horn parts. In these duos his demands on the players, particularly in the upper registers, verge on the incredible.
D.B.
K.522 Ein musikalischer Spass, in F major
Origin: Vienna, 1787
Scoring: 2 horns, 2 violins, viola, basso
Movements: Allegro. Menuetto: Maestoso. Adagio cantabile. Presto.
Mozart did little other composing during the spring months of 1787 as he was preoccupied with Don Giovanni. His father, who had been ailing for some time, had died in Salzburg on May 28, and the sad news must have reached Mozart in Vienna soon afterward. And on the 4th of June, the pet starling that had been a dearly loved companion for three years also died. Mozart wrote an affecting poem in its memory the same day, perhaps obliquely expressing his grief at Leopold Mozart’s death.
Mozart entered Ein musikalischer Spass (A Musical Joke) in the catalogue of his works under the date June 14, 1787. Coming, so it seemed, so soon after his father’s and pet’s deaths, the Musical Joke has puzzled Mozart’s biographers, who have struggled to offer psychological explanations: anger at his father or a primitive reassertion of life and joy. Recently, however, English musicologist Alan Tyson has demonstrated that Mozart composed most of the Musical Joke before he knew of his father’s final illness, but he completed the Finale and some other details only in late August. (The Finale, by the way, contains a parody of a not-too-skillful fugue that Mozart’s student Thomas Attwood wrote in his exercise book on August 13.) Hence, the entry in Mozart’s catalogue of his works is incorrectly dated.
Nothing is known about why Mozart began this piece, put it aside, and later returned to finish it. It was presumably composed for a private musical gathering of a sort common in Vienna in the 1780s. In such circles of connoisseurs and amateurs, this wickedly pointed parody of incompetent composition and performance would have been savored.
The very start of the Allegro shows with what singular lack of invention the audience is to be entertained. The melodies and the harmonies are of the simplest variety. There are bloopers of every kind: unbalanced phrases, false leading tones, exposed parallel fifths, accompaniments meandering aimlessly along without a melody to support them, modulations that are painfully clumsy.
The Minuet, after an uneasy first half, becomes totally chaotic in the second, when the horns find themselves hopelessly out of kilter. The violins practice scales, leaps, and other technical studies in the overly extended trio.
The horns are mercifully silent in the Adagio cantabile. Basically in C major, it nevertheless discomfits us with the immediate appearance of an F sharp, a note that belongs to the key of G. There follows an orgy of non sequiturs, of sudden and unwanted loud punctuation marks. The leading violin totally loses his way in a lunatic cadenza.
The Presto is a sort of rondo, with its maddeningly perky theme reappearing whenever it is needed. A fugato passage quickly fizzles out after four measures and is followed by an episode of seemingly infinite modulation. Ill-considered deeds of contrapuntal daring are undertaken in the coda, and this odd serenade comes to a halt in a multiple and cacophonous crash of five different keys.
An interesting footnote to this amusing send up of incompetence is the fact that another supremely gifted composer once owned and treasured the manuscript of A Musical Joke: Franz Schubert.
A.R.
K. 525 Eine kleine Nachtmusik, in G major
Origin: Vienna, August 10, 1787
Scoring: 2 violins, viola, violoncello and double bass
Movements: Allegro. Romanze: Andante. Menuetto: Allegretto. Rondo: Allegro.
The title Eine kleine Nachtmusik translates into English with deceptive ease as “A Little Night Music”; it does not actually mean “a small amount of music to be played at night” but rather “a short notturno”. The eighteenth-century nocturne was essentially an instrumental serenade in several movements. In fact, when Mozart entered the piece in his catalogue as “Eine kleine Nacht-Musik” he had no intention that that should serve as its title, but merely as a convenient quick description. It would be more accurate to identify it simply as the Serenade in G Major.
Mozart’s complete catalogue entry is worth quoting because it proves that K. 525 began life as a five-movement work: “Eine kleine Nacht-Musik, comprising an Allegro, Minuet and Trio, Romance, Minuet and Trio, and Finale.” Obviously, somewhere along the line the first Minuet and Trio disappeared; it has never been recovered or, at any rate, identified. Whether it was Mozart or someone else who removed it, in order to change a “short notturno” into something resembling a short symphony, no one knows. But the formal balance of the work as it now stands seems so exquisite that one might be reluctant to see the first Minuet restored, even if it were found.
There is another unsolved mystery connected with this famous Night Music. Is it an orchestral piece or should it be played by five solo strings? In Mozart’s manuscript the bass line is allotted to “violoncello e contrabasso”. Although the work sounds splendid played by a string orchestra, the balance of the (admittedly ambiguous) historical evidence suggests that Mozart probably had one-on-a-part performance in mind.
A bold attention-demanding statement sets the Allegro on its cheerful way. The Romance is in four episodes. The Minuet is courtly and aristocratic, the trio Ländler-like and flowing. The final Rondo shows Mozart at his most galant, charming and witty.
A.R.