Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Instrumental music
Symphonies and Symphonic Movements
Background and overview
Mozart’s first symphony was written in 1764, his last in 1788; in the former year Jean-Philippe Rameau died, in the latter Ludwig van Beethoven turned eighteen. During this quarter-century significant changes in musical style occurred, which can be observed in Mozart’s more-than-fifty symphonies as well as in the symphonies of his contemporaries.
Many writers about Mozart’s symphonies have made the mistake of confusing the general change in symphonic style during his lifetime with his personal development as a composer. These style changes were closely related to a gradual shift in the function and valuation of symphonies, from works intended to provide entertaining but conventional introductions to plays, operas, ballets, concerts, serenades, and a variety of other social, religious, or civic events, to works viewed as art for art’s sake and the principal attractions of formal concerts.
Examination of Mozart’s symphonies of the late 1770s and early 1780s reveals the emergence of essential elements of the new style. A key technical and stylistic change was the dissolution of the composite bass line of the early symphonies into independent parts for cello, double bass, and bassoon. The last symphony in which bassoons merely play along on the bass line is K. 208 + 102 of 1775, and the first in which the cellos and double basses are systematically written for separately is K. 319 of 1779.
Another noteworthy development was the definitive separation of the overture-sinfonia and the concert-sinfonia. These two genres were intertwined for most of the eighteenth century, not only in their forms and functions but in the interchangeability of the labels “overture” and “sinfonia”. The last opera overture refurbished by Mozart as a symphony was Il rè pastore, K. 208 + 102, of 1775. The last concert symphony used as an overture with his consent was K. 318 of 1779. The first overture that Mozart did not recycle as a concert symphony was the overture from Idomeneo of 1781.
Then there was the new style of orchestration. To the winds’ Baroque function as instruments doubling the strings, opposing the strings in concerto grosso fashion, or appearing as soloists, and to their mid-century function of sustaining slow-moving background harmonies in the tuttis, was now added a new function: ongoing participation in the presentation, fragmentation, and development of important thematic materials. This new treatment of the wind instruments, by no means entirely absent from the symphonies of the 1770s, is clearly adumbrated in the “Linz” Symphony of 1783, K. 425, but it first appears fully developed in the “Prague” Symphony, K. 504, having been brilliantly evolved in the piano concertos and operas of the early 1780s. The increased virtuosity demanded of the wind players meant a decline in the practice of doubling: the last of Mozart’s symphonies requiring the oboists to play the flute is K. 250 of 1776.
The increased difficulty was not limited to the wind parts, however. It generally went along with increases in length, in contrapuntal textures, and in chromaticism, which, taken together, amounted to a new seriousness and complexity in the symphony as a genre. The symphonies that Mozart wrote between his symphonic debut as an eight-and-a-half-year-old prodigy and the “Haffner” Symphony of 1782 (K. 385) display the growth of the genre, the evolution of the musical style of the period, the maturing of Mozart’s own style, and his increasing command of the métier. They do not show much development in technical or conceptual difficulty, which seems to have awaited Mozart’s break with the conservative influences of Salzburg, his father, and the archbishop, and his freely breathing the more bracing atmosphere of Emperor Joseph II’s Vienna.
Looking back on these striking changes in the form and function of symphonies from the viewpoint of the early nineteenth century, German writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann summarized the matter succinctly:
In earlier days one regarded symphonies only as introductory pieces to any larger production whatsoever; the opera overtures themselves mostly consisted of several movements and were entitled “sinfonia”. Since then our great masters of instrumental music – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven – bestowed upon the symphony a tendency such that nowadays it has become an autonomous whole and, at the same time, the highest type of instrumental music.
The enumeration of Mozart’s symphonies requires a brief explanation. Of the traditional forty-one numbered symphonies, four are now considered spurious, Nos. 2, 3, 11, and 37. (However, No. 37 does contain a short introductory passage by Mozart that is discussed below in the note for Symphony No. 36, K. 425.) Two more symphonies have recently come to be regarded as authentic, K. 19a and 45a. This yields a total of thirty-nine symphonies conceived originally as such by Mozart.
One must add to them, however, thirteen more symphonies that Mozart derived from his own previous compositions. Six of these symphonies were extracted from extended Salzburg serenades, K. 100, 185, 203, 204, 250, and 320, by the exclusion of various “extra” movements. Three more symphonies originated as three-movement overtures to Mitridate, La Betulia liberata, and Lucio Silla. The remaining four symphonies borrow their first two movements from the overtures to Ascanio in Alba, Il sogno di Scipione, La finta giardiniera, and Il rè pastore, and in each case Mozart composed a new concluding (third) movement. The inclusion of these thirteen works brings the total number of Mozart’s symphonies to fifty-two.
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K. 16 Symphony in E flat major, No. 1
Origin: London, end of 1764
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Molto Allegro. Andante. Presto.
Late in April 1764 the Mozarts, on a grand tour of western Europe, left Paris and settled in London. How Wolfgang came to write his first symphony there was recalled after his death by his sister Nannerl:
On the fifth of August [we] had to rent a country house in Chelsea, outside the city of London, so that father could recover from a dangerous throat ailment, which brought him almost to death’s door. [...] Our father lay dangerously ill; we were forbidden to touch the keyboard. And so, in order to occupy himself, Mozart composed his first symphony with all the instruments of the orchestra, especially trumpets and kettledrums. I had to transcribe it as I sat at his side. While he composed and I copied he said to me, “Remind me to give the horn something worthwhile to do!” [...] At last after two months, as father had completely recovered, [we] returned to London.
The earliest symphony listed by Köchel, and No. 1 in collected editions of Mozart’s symphonies, is the Symphony in E flat, K. 16. The autograph manuscript bears the superscription “Sinfonia / di / Sig. Wolfgang / Mozart / a london / 1764”. But is this the symphony described in Nannerl’s account? She mentioned that she copied Wolfgang’s first symphony, whereas the score of K. 16 is in Wolfgang’s hand with corrections by his father, Leopold. Perhaps Nannerl may simply have meant she had to copy parts for her brother; other symphonies from this period (K. 19, 19a, 45a) survive as sets of parts copied by Leopold and Nannerl. She also mentioned that Wolfgang wrote for trumpets and kettledrums, instruments not used in K. 16. As for giving the horn “something worthwhile to do”, that is perhaps satisfied by a passage in the Andante, where the horn plays the motive “do-re-fa-mi”, best known from the Finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony, K. 551, but found in other work s by Mozart and his contemporaries. Yet all this sounds too much like special pleading: the discrepancies between the symphony in Nannerl’s anecdote and K. 16 suggest that the latter may not be the symphony described as his first by his sister.
If the heading “Sinfonia / di Sig. Wolfgang / Mozart / a london / 1764” is correct, the work must date from after Leopold’s illness but before the New Year – from October, November, or December. The manuscript begins tidily, but soon numerous corrections are entered by Wolfgang and Leopold in larger, cruder hands, attesting to artistic and mechanical struggles in the creation of what is probably Wolfgang’s earliest surviving symphony.
The first movement opens with a three-measure fanfare in octaves, immediately contrasted by a quieter eight-measure series of suspensions, all of which is repeated. This leads to a brief agitato section, and the first group of ideas is brought to a close on the dominant. At this point the wind s fall silent, and the initial idea of the second group is heard, extended by a passage of rising scales in the lower strings accompanied by tremolo in the violins. A brief coda concludes the exposition, which is repeated. The second half of the movement, also repeated, covers the same ground as the first, working its way through the dominant and the relative minor to reach the tonic at the beginning of the second group. The movement faithfully captures the early symphonic vocabulary, with its alternations of loud and soft, syncopations, unisons, tremolos, rapid scales, and repeated notes. Only the singsong melody at measures 37-43 and 99-106 seems to fall flat. Here Wolfgang originally wrote independent parts for first and second violins, but Leopold changed them to play in unison; even so, the melody projects weakly in these passages.
The brevity and lack of development of the Andante – a binary movement in C minor – give it an aphoristic character. Sustained winds, triplets in the upper strings, and duplets in the bass instruments combine effectively to paint a scena that would have been at home in an opera of the period, perhaps accompanying a nocturnal rendezvous. Brief as this movement is, however, it wanders a bit. That is, the immature composer had a good idea but perhaps not yet the craft to develop it cogently.
At the beginning of the Presto a new fanfare launches a jig-like Finale in the form of a truncated rondo with a diatonic refrain and intervening episodes containing touches of chromaticism in the galant manner.
Writers who, wishing to chronicle Mozart’s progress, have taken pains to point out the great differences in length, complexity, and originality between this earliest surviving symphony and his last few, may have missed a crucial point: there is little difference in length, complexity, or originality between K. 16 and the symphonies of Johann Christian Bach’s Op. 3 and Carl Friedrich Abel’s Op. 7, which were apparently among Mozart’s chief models. The change in Mozart’s symphonies over his lifetime must be explained not only by his own artistic and technical development, but by the stylistic evolution of the period.
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K. 19 Symphony in D major, No. 4
Origin: London, 1765
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegro.
The wrapper that held the original set of parts for K. 19 survives; it is inscribed “Sinfonia / à 2 Violinj / 2 Hautbois / 2 Corni / Viola / e / Basso / in F [overwritten with] C [crossed out in pencil and added alongside] D”. These notations in Leopold’s hand apparently indicate that the wrapper had served first for a Symphony in F (presumably K6 19a), and then for one in C (the missing K6 19b?), before being pressed into service for K. 19. The three symphonies were probably not intended to form an “opus”, since each replaced the one before it.
The first movement begins with a fanfare of the kind used for signaling by post horns or military trumpets, which sounds twice and is never heard again. The movement has the bright timbre that sharp keys impart to the strings. Like the first movements of K. 16 and K6 19a, this one is binary form, here without repeats. An especially nice touch is the unprepared A sharp with which the second half begins – the kind of quirky chromatic twist much in evidence in Mozart’s published sonatas of the period.
The G major Andante, sempre piano, possesses a conventional, pastoral serenity, its “yodeling” melodies and droning accompaniments evoking thoughts of hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes. This movement had its models in certain types of melodies originating in Naples and popular in those parts of Europe to which Italian opera had penetrated. An occasional “yodeling” in the melody of the Finale, a binary movement in jig style with both sections repeated, ties it to the previous movement.
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K3 19a Symphony in F major (K1 Anh 223)
Origin: London? first half of 1765?
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. Andante. Presto.
The existence of this long-lost work was known from the beginning of its first violin part, written on the wrapper of the previous symphony. That it was a completed work and not a fragment had also been known, from its incipit in the early-nineteenth-century Breitkopf & Härtel Manuscript Catalogue, with an indication of instrumentation. K. 19a reappeared at the beginning of February 1981, when press dispatches from Munich reported the discovery of a set of parts in Leopold’s hand, found among some private papers.
Leopold entitled the work, “Sinfonia / in F / à / 2 Violinj / 2 Hautb: / 2 Cornj / Viola / e / Basso / di Wolfgango Mozart / compositore de 9 Añj”. The paper on which Leopold copied K. 19a is French, but as Wolfgang was in England and Holland during his ninth year, it must have been exported from France. Since Mozart turned nine years old on January 27, 1765, the symphony, if it was in fact created in London as suggested by the number K. 19a given it by Alfred Einstein in K3, would then have to be placed in February, March, or April of that year, in time for either the concert of February 21 or perhaps one of the famous London concert series run by J. C. Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel, which was in its first season. But Alfred Einstein’s dating of K. 19a was based up on its link to K. 19, whose dating is also uncertain, so K. 19a may possibly belong to the time between the Mozarts’ arrival in Holland in September 1765 and Wolfgang’s tenth birthday in January 1766.
The first movement opens with a broad melody in the first violins, accompanied by sustained harmonies in the winds, broken chords in the inner voices, and repeated notes in the bass instruments. A brief bit of imitative writing leads to a cadence on the dominant and the introduction of a contrasting second subject. Tremolos in the upper strings accompanying a triadic, striding bass line lead to a closing subject. The second half of the movement presents the same succession of ideas as the first, and both sections are repeated. As the harmonic movement is from tonic to dominant in the first half and from dominant to tonic in the second, with little that could be described as developmental in the use of themes or harmonies, and as the double return of a recapitulation is absent, the movement is nearer to binary than to sonata form. In this regard the first movements of K. 16 and 19a are alike; in another regard the first movement of K. 19a seems superior: the kind of lapse in the handling of thematic material mentioned above in the discussion of K. 16 is no longer in evidence.
The oboes are silent in the B flat Andante, which, like the first movement, consists of two approximately equal sections, both repeated. The bass line instruments and horns are assigned supporting roles, and a dialogue between first violins and violas is media ted by the second violins, which join now one, now the other.
Finales in 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, or 12/8 were common at the time K. 19a was written, and usually took on the character of an Italianate giga. Here, however, the rondo refrain has a different sort of rustic character. Many a play and opera on the London stage had a hornpipe, reel, or highland fling danced in it; these “exotic” touches perhaps tickled the fancy of a nine-year-old composer, who may have tried to capture their spirit in this Finale.
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K. 22 Symphony in B flat major, No. 5
Origin: The Hague, December 1765
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Allegro molto.
At the top of Leopold’s score of K. 22, which is written on Dutch paper, is the inscription “Synfonia / di Wolfg. Mozart à la Haye nel mese December 1765”. The work was almost certainly composed for the Mozart’s public concert at The Hague on January 22, 1766.
The opening movement, binary and without repeats, has no tempo indication, which by eighteenth-century convention is therefore understood to be a generic “Allegro”. It begins with a tonic pedal in the bass for fourteen measures, in a manner usually associated with the Mannheim symphonists but which originated in Italy and which by 1765 could be heard in many parts of western Europe. A contrasting second subject, a dialogue between the first and second violins, is followed by the apparently mandatory theme in the bass instruments accompanied by tremolo in the upper strings. A brief transition section puts the opening idea through the keys of F minor and C minor, returning to the home key shortly after the recapitulation of the second subject, with the rest following essentially as in the exposition.
The G minor Andante, a simple A-B-A-coda, exhibits chromaticism, imitative textures, and occasional stern unisons. German musicologist Hermann Abert even thought that he heard fore-shadowings here of the Andante of Mozart’s penultimate symphony, K. 550, but such a comparison does injustice to both works, which were composed two decades apart in disparate styles, for varying purposes and different audiences. As if the Andante’s intensity of feeling were dangerous in a work intended for polite society, the Finale – a sort of brisk minuet in the form of a rondo, originally marked Allegro moderato – makes amends by leaning m the other direction.
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K. 43 Symphony in F major, No. 6
Origin: Vienna, 1767
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, strings
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
The autograph manuscript, a beautifully written fair copy, bears the heading “Sinfonia di Wolfgango Mozart à Vienne 1767”. Above “1767” was written (apparently in Leopold’s hand) “a olmutz 1767”, but this was subsequently crossed out. The Mozarts visited the North Moravian town of Olomouc (Olmütz) on only one, unhappy occasion, between approximately October 26 and December 23, 1767. They had fled there from Vienna hoping to avoid an outbreak of smallpox, which, however, both Wolfgang and Nannerl did eventually contract. From the inscriptions on the autograph, Alfred Einstein in K3 concluded that K. 43 must have been either begun in Vienna in the autumn and completed in Olomouc, or begun in Olomouc and completed in Vienna at the end of December, and the editors of K6 concur. But K. 43 cannot have been completed in Vienna at the end of December 1767, for although the Mozarts did leave Olomouc around December 23, they reached Vienna only on January 10 of the new year. The reason for the slowness of their journey was this: in the course of fleeing from Vienna they had stopped at Brno (Brünn), where the Count von Schrattenbach, brother of the archbishop of Salzburg, had arranged a concert. But Leopold wanted his children even further from Vienna’s smallpox epidemic, so he postponed the concert until their return trip. Hence the Mozarts returned to Brno on Christmas Eve and on December 30 gave their concert, which was duly noted in the diary of a local clergyman:
In the evening ... I attended a musical concert in a house in the city known as the “Taverna”, at which a Salzburg boy of eleven years and his sister of fifteen years, accompanied on various instruments by inhabitants of Brno, excited everyone’s admiration; but he could not endure the trumpets, because they were incapable of playing completely in tune with one another.
This report of Wolfgang’s reaction has the ring of truth to it, for extreme sensitivity to trumpets in his childhood is documented elsewhere. Trumpets aside, however, if Leopold Mozart was anything other than pleased with the local orchestra, he was politic enough to hide the fact, for the leader of the Brno town musicians reported that “Mr. Mozart, Kapellmeister of Salzburg, was compIetely satisfied with the orchestra here and would not have believed that my colleagues could accompany so well at the first rehearsal”.
There is one more fact to consider about the genesis of K. 43: the paper on which it was written is of Salzburg origin. Perhaps the symphony was begun prior to departure for Vienna and completed later, but this is not a necessary assumption, as the Mozarts would have carried some music paper with them when traveling. We may therefore propose the following hypothetical scenario for K. 43: it was drafted in Vienna between September 15 and October 23, 1767 (and perhaps also in Salzburg before September 13), completed, revised, or recopied in Olomouc after Wolfgang’s recovery from smallpox, and may have received its premiere on December 30 in Brno. As all of Mozart’s unquestionably genuine symphonies datable to before the end of 1767 are in three movements, K. 43 may provisionally be regarded as his earliest four-movemene symphony.
The first movement opens with a fanfare virtually identical to one used by J. C. Bach, Johann Stamitz, Carl Joseph Toeschi, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, and undoubtedly others to open symphony movements. Then follows a passage built over a pedal and probably implying a crescendo, the turn to the dominant, the opening fanfare in the bass with tremolo above, a lilting theme (strings alone, piano), and the energetic closing section of the exposition. A concise development section, based on the fanfare in the bass and some new material, leads to the lilting theme, now in the tonic, and then the rest of the exposition by way of recapitulation. The movement thus lacks the “double return” of opening theme and key of Wolfgang’s later symphonies.
The Andante of K. 43 is based upon the eighth number of his “Latin comedy” (we should perhaps call it a “cantata” or “serenata”) Apollo et Hyacinthus, K. 38 (see the note on p. 42). In the libretto for K. 38 Hyacinth and Zephyr are friends and Zephyr loves Hyacinth’s sister Melia. But Apollo also loves Melia and seeks the friendship of Hyacinth. Zephyr, in a jealous rage, mortally wounds Hyacinth by flinging a discus at him, and then blames Apollo, causing Melia to renounce Apollo. Discovered by his father, Hyacinth reveals in his dying breath that Zephyr, not Apollo, was his murderer. In the duet which became the Andante of K. 43, the King, having vented his grief and rage at the death of his son, reveals the true story to his daughter, and they beg Apollo’s forgiveness. This supplication has the desired effect: Apollo reappears, turns Zephyr into a wind, transforms Hyacinth’s body in to a bed of flowers, and agrees to marry Melia.
Responding not to the sense of anxiety in the text but rather to the mood of supplication, the youthful composer composed a movement of almost sublime serenity. In both versions the movement displays the characteristic orchestral color of Mozart’s symphony andantes of this period, here created by a change of key (C major), flutes replacing oboes, first violins muted, second violins and bass instruments pizzicato, and violas, divisi, murmuring in sixteenth notes.
The Minuet, rather legato compared to the others of the period, exploits descending tripIet upbeats in the first section, ascending ones in the second. The Trio, in the subdominant, also makes use of tripIets, with the wind silent and the articulation more detached. In the second section of the Trio the theme appears in the bass and then, returning to the violins, is interrupted and terminated by an unforeseen touch of chromaticism. The Finale, a binary movement with both halves repeated, is as notable for its careful writing for the strings, including playful dialogues between first and second violins, as for the conservative role assigned the winds, which support the strings and seldom venture out on their own.
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K. 45 Symphony in D major, No. 7
Origin: Vienna, January 16, 1768
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. [Allegro.]
The autograph of K. 45 bears the inscription “Sinfonia di Sig[no]re Wolfgang Mozart / 1768, 16 Jener” – thus it was completed just a few days after the return to Vienna from the journey to Olomouc and Brno discussed above. It is written on paper of a particularly large, coarse type, which bespeaks purchase in a provincial place (undoubtedly, in this instance, Brno or Olomouc), where large paper of good quality could not be had.
There is no record of the Mozarts’ giving a public concert at this time, so we must assume that this symphony was written for a private concert. The Mozarts did have a two-and-a-half-hour audience with Empress Maria Theresa and her son, the recently crowned Emperor Joseph II, only three days after the completion of K. 45. During the audience Wolfgang and Nannerl performed and music was discussed, but as none of the court musicians were present, no orchestral music can have been played. The earliest documented occasion on which K. 45 could have been heard was near the end of March at a grand Lenten concert which, Leopold reported to his friends in Salzburg, “was given for us at the house of His Highness Prince von Galitzin, the Russian Ambassador”.
By the time of the Russian ambassador’s concert, Leopold had overstayed the leave of absence granted him from his duties at the Salzburg court, and the archbishop had issued an order stopping his pay until he returned. The reason Leopold had not returned to Salzburg was that (following the Emperor’s suggestion) Wolfgang had composed a comic opera, La finta semplice, K. 51, whose production was repeatedly delayed by intrigues on the part of envious Viennese musicians. Malicious rumors circulated that Wolfgang was a fraud, and that his father did his composing for him. Leopold, a man with an acute sense of honor, felt that he could not leave Vienna before he and his son were vindicated. Yet although he battled valiantly against his opponents, the opera remained unperformed in Vienna.
The overture for the ill-fated La finta semplice was a reworking of K. 45. And this new version was, in its turn, used as an independent symphony. To turn a concert- or chamber-symphony into an overture-symphony Mozart omitted the Minuet and Trio. He altered the orchestration of the remaining movements, adding pairs of flutes and obbligato bassoons to the original pairs of oboes and horns, while dropping the trumpets and kettledrums. Mozart added a considerable number of phrasing and dynamic indications to the reworked symphony, as well as a few changes of rhythm and pitch. In the Andante he also altered the meter from common time to alla breve, and the eighth notes of the melody to dotted eighths and sixteenths. Finally, he added two additional bars of music to the first movement and four to the Finale. In the Finale the repeats of both halves were eliminated and changes were made to the ending.
The Finale is based on the kind of idea that, if found in a set of dances, would have been called a contredanse, that is, a popular rather than courtly dance. A closely related tune circulated in London around 1800 under the name “Del Caro’s Hornpipe”, while another appears in the Intrada (introductory movement) of Leopold Mozart’s divertimento, Die musikalische Schlittenfahrt (The Musical Sleighride). The origins of this vernacular tune-type may be lost in the mists of oral tradition.
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K3 45a Symphony in G major, “Lambach” (K1 Anh 221)
Origin: The Hague, late 1765 or early 1766; revised Salzburg, 1767
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Andante. Presto.
The Benedictine monastery at Lambach, in Upper Austria near Wels, was a convenient way station for the Mozart family on their journeys between Salzburg and Vienna. Like many other Bavarian and Austrian monasteries of the time, Lambach provided rooms and meals for travelers, and maintained a musical establishment to ornament its liturgy and to provide entertainment. Amandus Schickmayr, a friend of Leopold Mozart’s, was at Lambach from 1738 and had become abbot of the monastery in 1746. At the beginning of January 1769 the Mozart family, returning to Salzburg from their stay of more than a year in Vienna, stopped at Lambach. The visit, not mentioned in the family’s surviving letters and diaries, is known solely from inscriptions on two musical manuscripts.
The manuscripts in question are sets of parts for two symphonies in G, one inscribed “Sinfonia / à /2 Violini / 2 Oboe / 2 Corni / Viola / e / Basso. / Del Sigre Wolfgango / Mozart. / Dono Authoris / 4ta Jan: 769”, and the other bearing a similar inscription but with “Leopoldo Mozart / Maestro di Capella di S: A: R: / à / Salisgo” in place of “Wolfgango Mozart”. For convenience of reference, the symphony at Lambach ascribed to Wolfgang will be referred to as K. 45a, that ascribed to Leopold as G16. The two manuscripts, neither of which is an autograph, were discovered in the monastery’s archives by the Austrian musicologist Wilhelm Fischer, who in 1923 published K. 45a. Prior to that, however, an entry for K. 45a could be found in the first and second editions of the Köchel Catalogue as Anh. 221, one of ten symphonies known to Köchel solely by the opening measures of their first movements in the Breitkopf & Härtel Manuscript Catalogue.
In K3 Alfred Einstein placed the rediscovered Symphony in G, K. Anh. 221, in the chronology of authentic works according to the date on the Lambach manuscript. Speculating that the symphony had been written during the Mozarts’ just ended sojourn of more than a year in Vienna, he assigned it the number 45a representing early 1768. The editors of K6 accepted Einstein’s and Fischer’s opinion of the authenticity of Anh. 221 = 45a, as did the French writer Georges Saint-Foix and others who wrote about Wolfgang’s early symphonies. And Einstein’s placing of K. 45a in Vienna in early 1768 was generally accepted too.
In 1964 the German musicologist Anna Amalie Abert published a startling hypothesis about the two G major “Lambach” symphonies. She had come to believe that – like the accidental interchange of infants that underlies the plots of a number of plays and operas – the two symphonies had been mixed up, perhaps by a monkish librarian at Lambach. Abert based her opinion on a stylistic examination of the two, and on comparisons between them and other symphonies thought to have been written by Leopold and Wolfgang at about the same time.
In February 1982, however, new evidence was published confirming the correctness of arguments in favor of Wolfgang’s authorship of, and an earlier date for, K. 45a. The Bavarian State Library in Munich had acquired the recently discovered, original set of parts for K. 45a. They comprise first and second violin parts apparently in the hand of a professional copyist, a basso part in Nannerl’s hand, and the other parts in Leopold’s hand. The title page of the rediscovered manuscript, also in Leopold’s hand, reads: “Sinfonia / à 2 Violini / 2 Hautbois / 2 Corni / Viola / et / Basso / di Wolfgango / Mozart di Salisburgo / à la Haye 1766”. K. 45a therefore forms a pendant to the Symphony in B flat, K. 22, also composed at The Hague, where the reception granted the Mozarts appears to have been enthusiastic. K. 45a may have been written (along with the Gallimathias musicum, K. 32) for the investiture of Prince William V of Orange, in which case it would have been part of what Leopold referred to in a letter to Salzburg when he said that Wolfgang “had to compose something for the Prince’s concert”.
The first movement of K. 45a is one of only two of Mozart’s more-than-fifty symphonies (the other being the Symphony in D major K. 185) that begin with the melody in the bass, a texture he otherwise reserved for near the ends of expositions and of recapitulations. In a number of his early symphonies the beginnings of the first and final movements are related in melodic contour. In K. 45a something else occurs: the second or lyrical subjects of the first and third movements are the ones that are connected. (A related procedure is found in the Piano Concerto in F major, K. 414, in which the first theme of the opening Allegro reappears transformed as the second theme of the Andante.) The Finale of K. 45a is so much of a piece with the Finales of K. 16, 19, 19a, and 22 that all may be said to belong to the same general conception and, key s aside, to be virtually interchangeable. As for the Andante, the revised version is the first of Wolfgang’s symphonic andantes to use an orchestral texture that would be his favorite for a number of years: in these movements (the Andantes of K. 43, 100, 113, 183, 201, 203, and 200) the winds are either silent or reduced, the violins are muted, and the cellos and basses play pizzicato.
It remains to be said on the subject of K. 45a that between the copying of the original set of parts in The Hague in 1766 and the copying of the Lambach parts in Salzburg in 1767, the work underwent a careful revision. The two versions are very much the same work: no bars of music have been added or deleted and no new ideas introduced. Rather, numerous details large and small have been altered, mostly in the inner parts. As Wolfgang would scarcely have revised his symphony merely as an academic exercise, he probably had occasion to perform the second version of K. 45a in Salzburg between the return from the grand tour in December 1766 and the departure for Vienna in October 1767, and the success of the Salzburg performance (or performances) must have encouraged Leopold to take the work on tour to Vienna.
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K. 48 Symphony in D major, No. 8
Origin: Vienna, December 13, 1768
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Menuetto. [Allegro.]
Why, on the eve of his departure from Vienna after a stay of more than a year, did Wolfgang write another symphony? The autograph manuscript of K. 48 is inscribed “Sinfonia / di W: Mozart / 1768 / à Vienna / den 13ten dec:”. The very next day Leopold wrote a final letter to Salzburg, yet mentioned no forthcoming event that might explain the need for a new symphony. Indeed, he would seem to have been deliberately mysterious about the obligations keeping them in Vienna:
As very much as I wished and hoped to be in Salzburg on His Highness the Archbishop’s consecration day [December 21], nonetheless it was impossible, for we could not bring our affairs to a conclusion earlier, even though I endeavored strenuously to do so. However, we will still set out from here before the Christmas holiday.
As the Mozarts were long overdue at Salzburg and Leopold’s pay was being withheld, one might expect that they would have left Vienna immediately after their vindication on December 7, when, at the consecration of a new church, Wolfgang led performances of his own newly composed Mass, Offertory, and trumpet concerto in the presence of the Imperial court and a large audience. Yet something held the Mozarts in Vienna for more than two weeks longer. That “something” may have been the unknown occasion for which K. 48 was written, most likely a farewell concert in the palace of one of the nobility.
Like K. 45, K. 48 is in the festive key of D and calls for trumpets and kettledrums in addition to the usual strings and pairs of oboes and horns. Like both K. 43 and 45, K. 48 is in four movements. Its opening Allegro begins with a striking idea featuring dotted half notes alternating forte and piano. In the space of a mere six bars this melody covers a range of two and a half octaves. This wide-ranging melody is accompanied by nervous eighth notes in the bass line soon followed by running sixteenth notes in the violins which, with an occasional comment from the oboes and one dramatic silence, bring the bustling exposition to its conclusion. The movement, like all four in this symphony, has both sections repeated. Exceptionally for first movements of symphonies from this period in Mozart’s life, the development section of K. 48 is nearly as long as its exposition; in the course of its modulations it reviews the ideas already heard. The recapitulation gives them again in full (for the first time in his symphonies), and the movement thus provides a lucid demonstration of American musicologist James Webster’s apparently paradoxical description of sonata form as “a two-part tonal structure, articulated in three main sections”.
The Andante, in G major for strings alone, is a little song in binary form. The peculiar character of the opening idea results from its harmonization in parallel 6/3 chords and the singsong quality of its melody, rather like a nursery-rhyme tune. This leads, however, to a second, more Italianate, idea, which, with its larger range and insistent appoggiaturas, conveys a more worldly, perhaps even operatic, ethos.
The Minuet reinstates the winds, although the trumpets and drums drop out for the contrasting G major Trio. Here Mozart perfectly captured the stately pomp that Viennese symphonic minuets of the time provided as a kind of aesthetic stepping-stone between the Apollonian slow movements and the Dionysian finales, which in this case is a jig in a large binary design.
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K3 61g/1 Symphonic Minuet in A major
Origin: Italy? 1770?
Scoring: 2 flutes, strings
Several German Mozart scholars have suggested that this A major Minuet, K. 61g, No. 1, was originally intended for the Symphony in A major, K. 114, of December 1771, but according to Mozart’s writing in the work’s autograph it probably dates from as early as 1770, and the paper on which he wrote it is a type he used in Italy that very year. Furthermore, the work is scored for flutes and strings, and lacks the horns called for by K. 114. That K. 61g, No. 1 may have had some sort of symphonic connection, though, is suggested by the fact that, unlike Mozart’s ballroom minuets, it does call for violas.
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K. *100 Symphony in D major, “Serenade” (K6 *62a)
Origin: Salzburg, autumn? 1769
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro. Menuetto. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
This work consists of movements one, five, six, seven, and eight of the Serenade in D major, K. 100, used by Mozart as a symphony. See the note on p. 230.
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K. 73 Symphony in C major, No. 9 (K3 75a, K6 73)
Origin: Salzburg or Italy? late 1769 or early 1770?
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro molto.
The autograph manuscript of K. 73 bears only the inscription “Sinfonie” in Wolfgang’s hand. The date “1769” was added in another hand, perhaps Leopold’s, perhaps Johann Anton André’s. Köchel accepted that date, and the editors of K6 have reverted to it, thus calling into question Alfred Einstein’s attempt in K3 to redate the work to the summer of 1771. Because a sketch for the Minuet of this symphony is found in the autograph of a series of minuets (K. 103) that K3 and K6 claim Wolfgang wrote for carnival 1769, it might seem logical to propose that the symphony was completed around the same time, in which case even the Köchel No. 73 would be too high. But the dating of the minuets themselves rests on vague stylistic grounds and should only with great caution be used as a basis for dating the symphony. From Wolfgang’s writing, German musicologist Wolfgang Plath assigns the manuscript of the minuets, K. 103, to early summer 1772, while Oxford scholar Alan Tyson reports that its paper is a type used by Wolfgang in the spring of 1772. Again on the basis of writing, the manuscript of the symphony was originally dated “probably not before early summer 1772” by Plath, but more recently – after examining the autograph in Cracow – he has reverted to Köchel’s estimate of late 1769 or early 1770. Tyson reports that the paper of K. 73 is a Salzburg type that cannot be closely dated.
The evidence connecting K. 73 with Italy is also ambiguous: there is a single leaf that began its existence as an attempt by Leopold to copy out a basso part for this symphony. For unknown reasons, he abandoned his effort after only twelve measures, and Wolfgang later used the mostly empty sheet of music paper to work out a puzzle canon from the second volume of Padre Martini’s Storia della musica, a book that came into the, Mozarts’ possession in Bologna in early October 1770. But this provides only a starting date, as Wolfgang continued to work sporadically on Martini’s puzzle canons for a few years. In sum, even with its autograph, the basso fragment, and the other version of the Minuet available for examination, K. 73 has so far resisted efforts firmly to date or place it.
German musician Detlef Schultz wrote of the first movement that its “principal theme departs from the overture-type, It is a hybrid form in which a first phrase, built of chordal figurations in the Italian style, gives way to a cantabile phrase in a manner unknown to the theater symphony. In other respects the movement still bears a pronounced overture character”. Likewise indicative of the movement’s hybrid nature is that fact that, even though the symphony as a whole is a four-movement concert symphony along Germanic lines rather than a three-movement Italianate overture-symphony, the first movement lacks the repeats usually found in the former genre.
The Andante, a subdominant binary movement with both halves repeated, is treated similarly to the andantes of a number of Wolfgang’s symphonies of the period: the horns, trumpets, and kettledrums drop out and the oboists, taking up their flutes, soar above the treble staff coloring the movement from beginning to end. Danish musicologist Jens Peter Larsen singles out this movement from Wolfgang’s symphonies of the period “for its fine cantabile”.
In their monumental biography of Mozart, Théodore de Wyzewa and Georges Saint-Foix find the stately Minuet Haydnesque, and especially the Trio, which is for strings alone, even though both are more foursquare than the older master’s best minuets. The violas, by their simple doubling of the bass line in the Minuet, reveal the movement’s ballroom origin. (Other symphony minuets that exist also in versions for the ballroom and likewise lack independent viola parts are found in K. 112 and 320.)
The Finale is a gavotte (or contredanse) en rondeau. Although the movement is marked Allegro molto 2/4, its rondo theme is based on an underlying moderate tempo 2/2 gavotte, which can be sensed by beating time once in a measure, starting with an upbeat. The Finale is 176 measures long, but Wolfgang only wrote out eight passages totaling seventy-two measures. These he numbered one to twenty in such a way that an alert copyist could piece together the whole movement. Over the first eight measures, for instance, he wrote “1 2 5 6 8 9 16 17”, signifying the four pairs of appearances of the movement’s refrain. This method, which saved time, paper, and ink, suggests how clearly Wolfgang must have had the movement’s straight-forward structure (A-B-A-C-A-D-A) in mind as he came to write it down. The whole projects an impression of deliberate naïveté, from the nursery-rhyme character of the refrain to the comically singsong quality of the D section in C minor.
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K. 74 Symphony in G major, No. 10
Origin: Rome, April 1770
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. [Andante.] [Allegro.]
The autograph of K. 74 bears neither date nor title, although at the end of the last movement Mozart expressed his gratitude (or perhaps relief?) at its completion by writing “Finis Laus Deo”. At the beginning someone else wrote “Ouverture (zur Oper Mitridate)”, but this incorrect inscription was subsequently crossed out. Unable in the early 1970s to examine the autograph of K. 74, Wolfgang Plath had to content himself with echoing the Köchel Catalogue’s “probably 1770 in Milan”. Alan Tyson, more fortunate a few years later, discovered that K. 74 is written on the same rare type of paper that Wolfgang used for the aria “Se ardire, e speranza”, K. 82, composed in Rome in April 1770. This places the work reasonably securely.
K. 74 is written in Italian overture style, that is, the first movement is in sonata form without repeats in which, after a complete recapitulation, an altered codetta flows into the second movement not only without a halt but even without a new tempo indication or double bar-line. At this juncture the eighth notes in the oboes continue on unperturbed, as the meter shifts from common time to 3/8 and the key from G major to C major. The Finale is marked simply “Rondeau”, whose spelling gives a hint of the character of its refrain, which is that of a French contredanse. Noteworthy in this movement is an “exotic” episode in G minor, perhaps the earliest manifestation of Wolfgang’s interest in “Turkish” music, discussed in connection with the Violin Concerto in A major, K. 219.
A remarkable aspect of the Mozart family’s voluminous correspondence is its almost exclusive concentration on people and their creations. Did they never look out the windows of the carriages in which they traveled or of the buildings in which they stayed? Did they fail to look about themselves when they went out walking? It is as if in their view of the world nature hardly existed or was little worthy of comment. But in Rome in the spring of 1770 the fourteen-year-old Mozart perhaps did notice something, for in the first movement of K. 74 at measures 17-22 and the parallel passage in the recapitulation (measures 77-82) there occurs what appears to be the call of the cinciallegra or titmouse.
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K. *87 Symphony in D major, “Mitridate” (K6 *74a)
Origin: 1770
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante grazioso. Presto.
This work consists of the Overture to the opera Mitridate, rè di Ponto used by Mozart as a symphony.
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K. *118 Symphony in D minor, “La Betulia liberate” (K6 *74c)
Origin: Italy and Salzburg, between March and July 1771
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Presto.
This work consists of the Overture to the oratorio La Betulia liberata used by Mozart as a symphony.
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K. 110 Symphony in G major, No. 12 (K6 75b)
Origin: Salzburg, July 1771
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. [Andante]. Menuetto. Allegro molto.
Wolfgang headed the autograph manuscript of this work, “Sinfonia / del Sgr. Cavaliere Amadeo / Wolfg. Mozart in Salisburgo / nel Luglio 1771”. The title “Cavaliere” refers to the Cross of the Golden Spur, or Knighthood of the Golden Order, which the Pope conferred upon the fourteen-year-old prodigy in Rome in July 1770. A year later plans were already well advanced for a second trip to Italy, and this symphony was doubtless intended for (undocumented) concerts in Salzburg that summer and (documented) concerts during his second Italian journey, in Milan (November 22 or 23) and Brixen (December 11 and 12).
It is difficult to regard this symphony as having been born of the same creative impulses that spawned K. 73. It is worked out on a grander scale and apparently with more care. The care is manifested in all movements in the more contrapuntal conception of the inner parts and, especially, of the bass line. The opening Allegro tends toward the monothematic, a tendency that has been noted in the symphonies K. 114 and 134. That is, the opening idea reappears, somewhat transformed, in the dominant as a “second subject” and again in its original guise in the closing section of the exposition. The development section is based on an imitatively treated descending scale, followed by striding eighth notes in the bass, an idea previously heard in the closing section of the exposition. The recapitulation is not literal, with the retransition extended in a developmental way.
The second movement of K. 110 bears no tempo indication, although it is without question an Andante or Andantino. The oboes are replaced by flutes, the horns fall silent, and a pair of bassoons, previously and subsequently tacitly subsumed along with the cellos, double basses, and harpsichord (under the rubric basso), suddenly blossoms forth with obbligato parts. If the movement had been given a title, it might have been “romanza”. It is in the “simple” key of C major and is in sonata form with two repeated sections. Many of the movement’s two-measure phrases are immediately repeated, creating a kind of musical construction that the French called “couplets”. The carefully wrought inner parts in Mozart’s movement reveal the German craftsman hidden beneath the French finery, while a touch of harmonic color is provided by the major chord on the flatted sixth degree, which sounds twice near the end of each section.
The Minuet is canonic, a device found in a number of Joseph Haydn’s symphony minuets of this period, and one to which Mozart would occasionally return, for instance, in the F major Symphony, K. 130, the C minor Wind Serenade, K. 388, and the G minor Symphony, K. 550. This application of learned canonic devices to the insouciant ballroom minuet may be considered an attempt to render the dance more “symphonic”. The aggressively striding Minuet is set off by the more sedate E minor Trio for strings alone.
Like the Finale of K. 73, the present Finale is a 2/4 Allegro in which one can sense the moderate tempo 2/2 gavotte or contredanse underlying the theme by beating time half as often. This Rondo has a G minor middle section, itself binary in structure, which is exotic in character; the origins and associations of such exoticism are explored in connection with the violin concerto K. 219.
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K. *111 + 120 Symphony in D major, “Ascanio in Alba” (K6 *111 + 111a)
Origin: Salzburg, between December 1771 and October 1772
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. [Andante grazioso?] Presto.
This symphony also began its life as an overture, in this case to the serenata Ascanio in Alba, K. 111, written for the celebrations surrounding the wedding of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and Princess Maria Beatrice Ricciarda d’Este of Modena. Mozart began work on the opera in late August 1771, completing it by September 23. Its first performance in Milan on October 17 was a success, apparently eclipsing a new opera by the veteran Johann Adolf Hasse, which was also part of the festivities. That the great choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre created the ballets in Ascanio doubtless added to its brilliance.
In this instance Mozart went against his usual custom and composed the overture first, because he had decided to integrate the end of his overture into the beginning of the serenata. Thus, following the opening Allegro, the Andante served as a ballet, to be danced by “the Graces”. The libretto explains the setting that the Andante was to accompany:
A spacious area, intended for a solemn pastoral setting, bordered by a circle of very tall and leafy oaks which, gracefully distributed all around, cast a very cool and holy shade. Between the trees are grassy mounds, formed by Nature but adapted by human skill to provide seats where the shepherds can sit with graceful informality. In the middle is a rustic altar on which may be seen a relief depicting the fabulous beast from whom, according to legend, the City of Alba derived its name. A delicious, smiling countryside – dotted with cottages and encircled by pleasant, not-too-distant hills from which issue abundant and limpid streams – is visible through the spaces between the trees. The horizon is bounded by very blue mountains, which merge into a most pure and serene sky.
For a Finale, the overture had an Allegro in 3/4 with choruses of spirits and graces singing and dancing, thus anticipating (in a most diminutive way) Beethoven’s innovation in his Ninth Symphony. When Mozart decided to turn the overture into a concert symphony, he kept the first two movements unchanged, replacing the choral Finale with a brief giga in the form A-B-A-coda. On the basis of Mozart’s writing, the autograph of the new Finale has been dated “probably the end of October or beginning of November 1771 in Milan”. But as the paper employed in the Finale is of Salzburg manufacture, this symphony Finale was more likely written sometime between the second half of December 1771 and the beginning of October 1772.
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K. 112 Symphony in F major, No. 13
Origin: Milan, November 2, 1771
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Molto Allegro.
The autograph manuscript is a clearly written fair copy inscribed “Sinfonia / del Sigre Cavaliere Amadeo / Wolfgango Mozart / à Milano 2 di Novemb. / 1771” (the first word in Wolfgang’s hand, the remainder in Leopold’s). Its first performance was probably at an orchestral concert (eine starke Musik) that Leopold and Wolfgang gave in Milan on November 22 or 23 at the residence of Albert Michael von Mayr, keeper of the privy purse to Archduke Ferdinand, governor of Lombardy and son of Empress Maria Theresa.
That K. 112 was conceived as a concert piece and not an overture can be seen in the first, second, and fourth movements, in which all sections but the coda of the Finale are repeated. Whereas three previous symphonies require five to seven minutes each to perform, K. 112 takes about fifteen minutes. From the beautifully proportioned sonata form of the first movement, through the careful part-writing of the B flat Andante (for strings alone) to the characteristic jig-like Rondo-Finale, a spirit of confidence and solid workmanship seems to emanate from this symphony, fruits perhaps garnered from the success of Ascanio in Alba the previous month.
In the Minuet the violas, instead of having an independent part to play, as is customary in Mozart’s symphonic minuets, double the bass line. Given that his ballroom dances are without viola parts, this feature of the Minuet of K. 112 may mean either that it had fulfilled another function before being pressed into service in this symphony, or that, with this sonority, Mozart wished to evoke memories of the ballroom in his listeners. In the Trio (for strings alone), however, the violas do carry an independent part. That the Minuet probably existed before the rest of the symphony is suggested by the fact that it (but not the Trio or the rest of the symphony) is copied into Wolfgang’s manuscript in Leopold’s hand.
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K. 114 Symphony in A major, No. 14
Origin: Salzburg, December 30, 1771
Scoring: 2 flutes (doubling oboes), 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro moderato. Andante. Menuetto. Molto allegro.
K. 114 Symphonic Minuet in A major
Origin: Salzburg, December 30, 1771
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
This is the first of a series of eight symphonies written for Salzburg in the period of less than a year between the Mozarts’ second and third Italian trips. Presumably practical motives lay behind this outpouring. The Italian trips had not proven lucrative, and a portion of Leopold’s salary had been withheld during his absence. The time had come for him and his son to dig in their heels at home, in order to reestablish their usefulness there and to pay off their debts. Wolfgang and Leopold returned from Italy on December 15, 1771, and next day the Archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach died. The autograph manuscript of K. 114 is dated two weeks later. Symphonies may have been needed for the period of mourning, for muted carnival festivities, for Lent, and for the installation of the new archbishop in March. In addition, Wolfgang sought a promotion, for his title of concertmaster had been honorary. Having proven his mettle, the sixteen-year-old was decreed a regularly paid member of the court orchestra on August 9, 1772 by the archbishop, at the modest annual salary of 150 florins.
It has been suggested that in this symphony Wolfgang declared himself for the “Viennese” or “Austrian” symphonic style, while still keeping key Italian elements. In this context, “Austrian” refers to the greater length, more extensive use of winds, more contrapuntal texture, four-movement format, and greater use of non-cantabile thematic materials. But the first theme, with its mid-measure syncopation, is closer to the style of J. C. Bach than to that of Vienna. Danish musicologist Jens Peter Larsen considers K. 114 “one of the most inspired [symphonies] of the period. One could point out many beauties in this work, such as [in the first movement] the developmental transition, the second subject with its hint of quartet style, and the short, but delicately wrought development with elegant wind and string dialogue”. Even the gentle opening bars, which forgo loud chords or fanfares and begin piano, suggest something new. The relatively high-pitched horns in A were probably responsible for suggesting to Mozart that flutes be used in place of oboes; once the decision was made on technical grounds, however, the whole symphony seems to have been colored by it. The sole conservative trait of this strikingly modern movement is the handling of the winds in the development section, more in a concerto-grosso style than in a symphonic style.
In a number of symphonies Mozart required that the oboists take up flutes in the andantes; here the reverse is the case, oboes replacing flutes and the horns dropping out. The movement is in sonata form with both sections repeated. The violas, which had already had a divisi passage in the development section of the first movement, here form an important series of duets, often doubling the oboes at the octave below or engaging in dialogue with them. The development section, written in continuous eighth notes, gives the somewhat old-fashioned impression of Baroque style intercalated between the more characteristic Classical style of the exposition and recapitulation.
The autograph manuscript of K. 114 contains an extra, fully scored Minuet, without Trio, that Mozart crossed out. The opening theme of the rejected movement is a reworking of the theme of the Andante. The Minuet Mozart finally provided is a particularly stately one, spiced with some well-placed secondary-dominant chords near the end of each section. Its Trio, in A minor, is in a mock-pathetic vein. The pathos is provided by the repeated-note melody on the fifth degree of the scale rising the semitone to the flatted sixth; this melodic shape would have been familiar to Mozart from such plainchant settings as that for the somber Holy Week text “Miserere mei Deus”. The mocking comes from the second violins, which, with their tripIets and trilIs, wander about as if making variations on a comic-opera tune. The intention behind the juxtaposition of high and low styles was probably ironic or parodistic.
The Finale begins with a three-note fanfare and a response, once repeated. Then something strange happens. Instead of developing the fanfare or introducing a proper first theme, Mozart has the orchestra play, twice in a conspicuous manner, the harmony-primer chord progression I-IV-V-I. This is apparently an allusion to the bergamasca, a kind of dance or song in which a melody is composed or improvised over many repetitions of these four chords. In German-speaking countries a text commonly sung to the tune most often associated with the bergamasca reads:
Kraut und Ruben haben mich vertrieben,
Hätte meine Mutter Fleisch gekocht,
So wär ich länger blieben.
(Cabbages and turnips drove me away.
Had my mother cooked some meat,
Then I’d have stayed longer.)
J. S. Bach quoted the “Kraut und Ruben” tune at the end of his Goldberg Variations. Mozart did not quote the tune, but the presence of his little joke in the Finale supports the suggestion that this symphony may have been composed with carnival in mind. The rest of the movement, in sonata form with both sections repeated, is also in high, if more conventionally symphonic, spirits.
The mockery of the Trio and the bergamasca of the Finale’s exposition and recapitulation bring to mind the remarks of a German visitor to Salzburg in the mid-1770s, surely describing carnival: “Here everyone breathes the spirit of fun and mirth. People smoke, dance, make music, make love, and indulge in riotous revelry, and I have yet to see another place where one can with so little money enjoy so much sensuousness.”
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K. 124 Symphony in G major, No. 15
Origin: Salzburg, February 21, 1772
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Presto.
Carnival ends on Mardi gras (Shrove Tuesday) and with the next day, Ash Wednesday, the forty days of Lent begin; in 1772 these days fell on February 3 and 4 respectively. Mozart wrote at the top of the autograph manuscript of K. 124, “Sinfonia / del Sigre Cavaliere Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart Salisburgo 21 Febrario 1772”. Hence the work may have been intended either for a Lenten concert or for the new archbishop, who took office on April 29. The archbishop was an amateur violinist who liked to join his orchestra in performing symphonies, standing next to the concertmaster, perhaps for maximum professional guidance or perhaps to be seen symbolically at the orchestra’s center of power.
The first movement of K. 124 has a character quite different from that of the previous symphony. Its angular opening theme is of a more abrupt sort than the genial theme of K. 114, although, curiously, the two themes outline the same scale degrees: do-sol-mi-re-sol-fa-mi. For the rest, the first movement of K. 124 is more compact, less inclined to a “fullness of ideas” than that of K. 114. An attractive touch is the ambiguous rhythm of the second subject, which for an instant leaves the listener unsure of whether he is hearing 3/4 or 6/8. A pause on a diminished chord allows listeners and performers alike to catch one last breath before plunging with great momentum toward the final cadence of the exposition. The development section begins calmly, but a false reprise in E minor soon introduces some of the agitated effects often associated with symphonic development. The recapitulation is literal, with a four-bar codetta added. Both main sections are repeated.
The C major Andante, a binary movement with both halves repeated, is notable for its concertante writing for horns and oboes. The Minuet and Trio (for strings only) illustrate German theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger’s description of the minuet as “ruled by galant agreeableness united with calm dignity. There is hardly another dance where so much elegance, noble decorum, and such a highly pleasing manner is to be met”.
The Rondo-Finale begins with the same fanfare as does the Finale of K. 114, but here it is not instantly repeated, and the movement continues in an apparently straightforward manner. The joke (and it surely is one) comes in the coda, where the melody suddenly evaporates, leaving only some chords, syncopations, tremolos, an oom-pah bass, and a fanfare or two.
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K. 128 Symphony in C major, No. 16
Origin: Salzburg, May 1772
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Andantino grazioso. Allegro.
The autograph manuscripts of the symphonies K. 129 and 130 are in the West Berlin library, while K. 128 is in East Berlin. Each of these three manuscripts and that of the Regina coeli, K. 127, also in West Berlin, is inscribed “nel mese di maggio 1772 Salisburgo”, an exceptional output for a single month even for the prolific sixteen-year-old Mozart. Was this fire lit under him by a desire to attract the favorable notice of the newly installed archbishop? Perhaps, too, Mozart was girding his loins for the third (and final) trip to Italy from October 1772 to March 1773, which would require new symphonies.
That the opening movement of the first of these works is marked not simply “allegro” but also “maestoso” suggests something broader in tempo than the typical first movement of this period of Mozart’s symphonic production. It is notated in 3/4, but, as the rhythm of the first half of the exposition comprises entirely eighth note triplets, the listener at first takes it for 9/8. The second theme, a memorable leaping melody, first reveals the true underlying meter. After a touch of the second theme in the minor, an energetic bass line figure ushers in the closing section. The exposition is repeated but the rest is not. The development section is announced by the sudden appearance of an E-flat chord, which proves to be a herald of D minor. Then follow in rapid succession hints of E minor, A minor, G major, F major, and again G major, the dominant needed to establish the recapitulation. The development takes only thirty-one measures during which the thematic material is almost entirely scales, yet it is so tightly and logically constructed that one has the impression of having traversed great tonal distances. The recapitulation is not literal, containing a number of telling developmental touches.
Just as the previous Allegro was maestoso, so the Andante is grazioso, which has equally the result of slowing the movement’s tempo and deepening its affect. The movement, for strings only, is in sonata form with both sections repeated. A chamber-music texture involves the players in dialogue, most often between the first and second violins or between the upper and lower strings.
The Finale is a jig in the form of an oddly proportioned rondo: A-A-B-A-B-A-C-A-coda, in which the B section is roughly five times the length of the A section. When the end of the Finale is nearly reached and the listener thinks that Mozart has already showed his hand, he kicks up his heels with a series of hunting-horn calls. This is all the more unexpected as the wind writing in the rest of the symphony is conservative.
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K. 129 Symphony in G major, No. 17
Origin: Salzburg, May 1772
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Allegro.
The autograph manuscript of K. 129 has the usual sort of heading that Wolfgang, with or without the help of his father, put on his works during this period: “Sinfonia / del Sgre Cavaliere Amadeo Wolfgango / Mozart nel mese di Maggio 1772/ Salisburgo.” Such inscriptions have been, and generally must be, taken at face value, for they are often the only information about the provenance of Wolfgang’s instrumental works, which usually do not leave behind additional clues, the way operas and other occasional works do. The studies (often referred to here) of the evolution of Wolfgang’s writing and of the paper types used in his music manuscripts have confirmed the reliability of most of the dates on the manuscripts. The same studies show that K. 129 was begun, put aside, and then resumed at a later time. This in turn could suggest either that the symphony was begun in May 1772 and completed at a later date, or that it was begun earlier and completed on that date. (The latter suggestion is most likely the correct one.)
The first movement of K. 129 begins with a great chord reinforced by quadruple stops in the violins. There follows an odd little tune, based on the so-called Scottish snap (also known as the Lombard rhythm). To identify this rhythm, sing the following Scottish folksong, noting the rhythm to which the italicized syllables are set: “When a Laddie meets a Lassie, Comin’ through the rye.” This rhythm is heard again as part of the second subject and as the most important motive of the development section. A repetitive passage over a pedal, probably calling for a crescendo, leads into the closing section of the exposition, in which the first and second violins engage in witty repartee. Both sections of this sonata-form movement are repeated. A temperamental development section alternates brief moments of lyricism with forte outbursts of the Scottish snap; the recapitulation is literal.
The C major Andante begins like a serene song with the strings playing alone. The oboes and horns join and the song is repeated. For the rest of the exposition no other striking ideas are introduced, but Mozart spins a magical web of common place melodic fragments. The “development” section is a concise eight-measure fugato, leading to a literal recapitulation. Again both halves are repeated.
The Finale begins with a hunting-horn flourish virtually identical to one Mozart was to use in 1773 played by horns as the trio of a minuet of the Divertimento, K. 205, and again years later to begin his piano sonata K. 576. This, then, may have been the kind of symphony which English historian Charles Burney denigrated for having its Finale based on “a minuet degenerated into a jigg”. Although the movement consists of two repeated sections with the sonata-form modulatory scheme, at the moment the tonic returns, the opening theme is merely hinted at and no true recapitulation occurs. The movement is thus perhaps best considered in rounded binary rather than sonata form. The function of jig-finales like the present one is analogous to that which Mozart later ascribed to the Finale of an act of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which “must go very fast – and the ending must make a truly great racket ... the more noise the better – the shorter the better – so that the audience doesn’t grow cold before the time comes to applaud”.
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K. 130 Symphony in F major, No. 18
Origin: Salzburg, May 1772
Scoring: 2 flutes, 4 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andantino grazioso. Menuetto. Molto allegro.
Mozart inscribed the autograph of this work simply “Sinfonia”, to which his father added “del Sgre Cavaliere Amadeo Wolfg: Mozart / à Salisburgo nel Maggio 1772”. Several commentators, following French scholar Georges Saint-Foix, have regarded K. 130 as the first of Mozart’s “great” symphonies, and, it must be admitted, the piece does contain inspired ideas, beautifully worked out. In addition to its fine ideas, this symphony also has a distinctive timbre, arising from the key, which is unusual for Mozart’s symphonies; from flutes in place of, and occupying a higher tessitura than, oboes; and from the two pairs of horns in C alto and F (or F and B flat basso in the Andantino grazioso).
Mozart had begun the first movement with the customary single pair of horns in mind, and continued that way through the Andantino. By the time he reached the Minuet, however, he decided to add another pair of horns, found in this movement and the Finale, and he subsequently went back and wrote parts for the additional horns on blank staves between systems in the first and second movements. Mozart’s change of mind may have been motivated by the return to Salzburg from a European tour of the horn virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb, for whom he was later to write his horn quintet and horn concertos.
The first movement, in sonata form with the first section repeated, begins quietly without fanfare. The opening motive, also heard at the end of the exposition, in the development section, and at the beginning and end of the recapitulation, prominently features the short-long rhythm mentioned in connection with the first movement of the previous symphony – a rhythm associated not only with Lombardy and Scotland but also with Hungarian folk music, some of which Mozart may have encountered in his travels or heard from Michael Haydn, who had worked in Hungary before moving to Salzburg.
The Andantino grazioso is a placid movement in binary form, whose opening idea features three-measure phrases rather than the usual even-numbered ones. Once again the violins are muted, the cellos and basses pizzicato; as in other andantes that feature this orchestration, the violas are without mutes, perhaps confirming a puzzling feature of so many of the orchestras of the period: the tiny number of violas. The meter is 3/8 rather than the customary 2/4. Joseph Haydn first wrote symphonic andantes in 3/8 in four symphonies from the years 1770-72. Could Mozart have known and imitated any of them in K. 130, or was the timing mere coincidence?
The Minuet is wittily constructed around a canon between the bass line and the violins in octaves, with the violas adding a rustic drone wobbling back and forth between C and B natural, in good-natured contradiction of the F major harmonies. The Trio offers a bit of musical slapstick: quasi-modal harmonies and stratospheric high horn writing. The French writers Théodore de Wyzewa and Georges Saint-Foix called this Trio (along with that of K. 132) “daring and bizarre”, which it is. Here was something special for the recently returned Leutgeb. Lest the gay exterior of this movement deceive, however, note that Mozart crossed out and rewrote a ten-bar passage in the Trio on the way to achieving the unassuming perfection of his final results.
The Finale, marked Molto Allegro in pencil, probably in Leopold’s hand, balances the first movement in length and substance, and, like it, is in sonata form; it thus departs from the short, dancelike finales of the Italian symphonists and of many of Wolfgang’s own earlier symphonies, imparting new substance to a formerly lightweight design. The movement is filled with rushing scales, sudden changes of dynamic, tremolos, and other joyous sounds much in favor in symphonies of the period. Although Leopold once referred to such writing in the symphonies of Johann Stamitz as “nothing but noise”, Wolfgang understood how to make brilliant use of the style.
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K. 132 Symphony in E flat major, No. 19
Origin: Salzburg, July 1772
Scoring: 2 oboes, 4 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
K. 132 Symphonic Andantino grazioso in B flat major
Origin: Salzburg, July 1772
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Leopold’s hand is in evidence in the autograph manuscript of this symphony too. Besides adding to Wolfgang’s heading “Sinfonia” the information “del Sgre Cavaliere Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart / nel Luglio 1772 Salisburgo”, he also provided the tempo indications for the first, second, and fourth movements.
The triadic figure with trill, which opens the first movement of K. 132, also serves as the beginning of the piano concerto K. 482. Although the movement’s orchestration is conservative (that is, the winds are used as a choir rather than as soloists), few symphony movements of the 1770s show better Mozart’s extraordinary ear for orchestral sonorities. Indeed, the movement seems to be as much about orchestral sonorities as about themes or modulations.
Two complete slow movements survive for this symphony: an Andante in 3/8 found in the expected position between the first movement and the Minuet, and a substitute movement, an Andantino grazioso in 2/4, added in the manuscript after the Finale. (In both movements one pair of horns is silent.) The 3/8 movement is based in part upon borrowed materials. Its opening melody reproduces the first seven notes of a Gregorian Credo. Later in the movement there appears a variant of a popular German Christmas carol, “Joseph, lieber Joseph mein”, also known with the Latin text “Resonet in laudibus”. The residents of Salzburg were familiar with this version of “Joseph, lieber Joseph mein”, as it was played by the mechanical carillon in a tower of the Hohensalzburg Castle each Christmas season. That instrument has survived and may occasionally still be faintly heard above the noises of the modern city, although it no longer plays the tune in question. Mozart tucked the quotation into the second violin part in measures 37-56 and the parallel passage at measures 128-47.
Although unaware of the presence of musical quotations, musicologist Alfred Einstein found Mozart’s first Andante “full of personal spiritual unrest and rebellion” and even “expressionistic”, and Italian critic Luigi Della Croce, so “personal” as to require replacement. Besides its other eccentricities, the movement was too long, as may be seen by comparing it with the andantes of the seven other symphonies written around the same time, which in performance average roughly five-and-three-quarter minutes, whereas K. 132’s first Andante lasts about nine-and-a-half minutes. This exceptional movement must have had some local significance, an allusion to Salzburg affairs or a private joke, but whatever that may have been is lost to us. Perhaps its very specificity led to its being replaced by an all-purpose, “abstract” movement, containing (as far as anyone knows) no quotations. This new, more conventional movement features a simple but elegant melody shared between violins and oboes and maintaining a dialogue with the rest of the orchestra.
The Minuet begins with a canonic exchange between the first and second violins. This tune is soon imitated by the bass instruments and then heard in one voice or another throughout the piece, including after a humorously timed pause just before the return of the opening theme in the middle of the second section. As mentioned above, the Trio, for strings only, was called “daring and bizarre” by the French writers Théodore de Wyzewa and Georges Saint-Foix, while the Austrian scholar Hermann Abert too noted a “tendency toward eccentricity”. It appears to be based upon a melody in the style of a psalm tone (the most monotonous type of Gregorian chant), set as a parody of a post-Renaissance motet. A brief outburst of ballroom gaiety at the beginning of the second section is the only intrusion of the secular world into the mock-sanctity of the psalmody. Was this Mozart’s commentary on the curious mix of secular and sacred at the court of the prince-archbishops of Salzburg?
The Finale, a substantial movement in the form of a gavotte or contredanse en rondeau, is as French as Mozart’s symphonic music ever becomes. The Rondo resounds with a kind of mock naïveté of which, one imagines, members of the French nobility who enjoyed playing at shepherds and shepherdesses would have approved. Mozart had harsh things to say about most French music of his time, exasperatedly calling it “trash” and “wretched”, and he was loath to admit any indebtedness to it. Yet in 1778 he wrote of a group of his symphonies that “most of them are not in the Parisian taste”, implying, of course, that some of them were in that taste.
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K. 133 Symphony in D major, No. 20
Origin: Salzburg, July 1772
Scoring: 2 oboes (1 doubling flute), 2 horns, strings
Movements: [Allegro.] Andante. Menuetto. [Allegro molto.]
The autograph bears the characteristic inscription “Sinfonia / del Sgre Cavaliere Amadeo Wolfgango / Mozart. nel Luglio 1772 à Salisburgo”. The first movement opens with three tutti chords, after which a rising sequential theme with trills follows in the strings. (The theme of this rising sequence is related to the opening idea from a sonata of J. C. Bach’s, which Mozart used as the basis of the first movement of his pastiche piano concerto, K. 107/3.) Flourishes from the trumpets, as well as from the other winds, define this as a festive work, and there is much dialogue between the winds and strings throughout the movement. A contrasting lyrical section of the exposition features the Scottish or Lombardic rhythm noted in several other of Mozart’s symphonies of this period (see p. 182). Both halves are repeated. A well-worked-out development section returns to the tonic key without presenting the opening theme. That theme Mozart saves for the end, where it is heard in the strings and then, in a grand apotheosis, heard again doubled by the trumpets. This handling of sonata form thus creates a kind of mirror form, which works especially well here because the closing theme of the exposition is derived from (and both precedes and follows) the primary theme, imparting to the movement striking unity despite an apparent variety of themes.
Exceptionally, the binary Andante is in the dominant instead of the subdominant. It is scored for strings (once again violins muted .and the bass instruments pizzicato), with the addition of a solitary “flauto traverso obbligato”. The translucent timbre of the orchestra, with the flute doubling the first violins at the octave above and occasionally venturing forth as a soloist, is handled with felicity. Did Mozart know the similar writing for solo flute found in the Andante of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in C major, Hob. I:30, of 1765?
The Minuet is short, simple, and fast, something Mozart favored at this time judging by his complaint about Italian minuets that “generally have plenty of notes, are played slowly, and are many bars long”. The Trio, for strings accompanied by the oboes, once again provided an opportunity for him to shake a few tricks from his sleeve, in this case syncopations, suspensions, and other contrapuntal devices, or an ironic negation of the homophonic texture normally found in dance music.
The Finale is an enormous jig in sonata form that, once begun, continues virtually without rest to its breathless conclusion. This movement bears no tempo indication, and none would have been needed, as jig-finales were common and everyone knew how they went. In addition, the finales of symphonies were usually faster than their first movements. Thus the first and last movements of this symphony should bear the generic, editorial tempo indications “[Allegro]” and “[Allegro molto]” respectively.
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K. 134 Symphony in A major, No. 21
Origin: Salzburg, August 1772
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
With their customary division of labor, Wolfgang headed the autograph manuscript of K. 134 “Sinfonia” and his father added “del Sgre Caval: Amadeo Wolfg: Mozart. / in Salisburgo nel Agosto 1772”. Since the symphonies K. 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, and 134 are dated May (three works), July (two works), and August 1772 respectively, there must have been a pressing need for new symphonies. It may have been the Mozarts’ intention to form an “opus” of six, although as the works’ manuscripts come down to us, they consist of two separate works (K. 128, 129) and then the four others bound together in the nineteenth century.
The first movement eschews a more usual march-like, common-time opening in favor of one in 3/4. For Mozart, this is an exceptionally monothematic movement. The opening idea is heard repeatedly in the tuttis of the exposition and recapitulation and in the development section as well. Perhaps the approach to monothematicism is the reason that Mozart felt the need, rather unusual for him during this period, to add an eighteen-measure coda in which, after a brief allusion to the principal theme, a few triadic flourishes assure even an inattentive listener that the close has been reached.
The Andante, like several others of the, period, is in 2/4 and in the subdominant. It opens with a melody that Mozart may have been inspired to write by Gluck’s aria “Che farò senza Euridice?” from Orfeo ed Euridice. The movement’s cantabile beginning is spun out into a sonata-form movement of considerable subtlety, i texture carefully worked out, with elaborate second violin part and divided violas.
The Minuet has a brusque quality audible in a number of Mozart’s and Joseph Haydn’s symphonic minuets. The courtly Minuet gives way to an anti-courtly Trio, with its virtually no melodic first section and, in the second section, chords tossed antiphon between winds and violins, pizzicato, over a drone in the violas, arriving at a peculiarly chromatic passage to prepare return of the opening “non-melody”.
The Finale begins with a bourreé, which is subjected to full development in sonata form with coda. One might expect a dance turned into a symphonic finale to be in the “lighter” form of a rondo rather than sonata form; but apparently this not seen by Mozart as an aesthetic problem of disparity between form and content, and the Finale of his penultimate symphony, K. 550, observes the same procedure. The spirit of the dance continually peers through the symphonic facade.
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K. *135 Symphony in D major, “Lucio Silla”
Origin: Salzburg? 1772
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Molto allegro. Andante. Molto allegro.
This works consists of the Overture to the opera Lucio Silla used by Mozart as a symphony. *See the note on p. 47.
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K. 161 + 163 Symphony in D major, “II sogno di Scipione” (K6 141a)
Origin: Salzburg, between May and October 1772
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andante. [Presto.]
Until recently it was believed that Mozart’s setting of Metastasio’s serenata drammatica Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126, was composed for ceremonies connected with the installation of the new archbishop of Salzburg, and performed in early May 1772. This was logical enough, as on the autograph could be seen the date 1772, apparently in Leopold’s hand, and the Italian name “Girolamo” (that is, Hieronymus Colloredo) appears in the text. It now emerges, however, that “Girolamo” was written over an erasure, which can be deciphered as “Sigismondo”, the Italian form of the name of the previous archbishop, Sigismund Christoph von Schrattenbach, who died on December 16, 1771. Hence, this occasional cantata must date from between April and August of 1771, when the Mozarts were in Salzburg between Italian sojourns, and it was probably revived in 1772 with the necessary change of name. The overture of K. 126 (to which Köchel originally gave the separate number K. 161) consisted of an Allegro moderato and an Andante; Mozart later added a Finale (originally numbered K. 163), to make an autonomous symphony.
On the basis of the writing In the autograph manuscript of the Finale, the German musicologist Wolfgang Plath believes it to date from the summer of either 1773 or 1774, when Mozart was in Salzburg, but the English scholar Alan Tyson reports that the paper on which it is written is a type used by Mozart mostly between May and October 1772, although a few bits of it were used somewhat later. The symphony version thus most likely belongs with the six other symphonies produced in the busy summer of 1772.
Metastasio’s azione teatrale of 1735, Il sogno di Scipione, based on Cicero’s Somnium Scipioris with personae and incidents from Roman history, offers much philosophy and little “azione” (action), featuring among its cast of characters the allegorical figures of Constancy and Fortune. Instead of trying to create some kind of music of the spheres, Mozart responded to the libretto’s abstractions with an all-purpose sinfonia that would have been at home in any church, chamber, or theater of the period, regardless of the occasion.
The first movement opens in unison, a device that Mozart would later mock as a mannerism of Mannheim symphonies. The exposition continues in the most brilliant Italian-overture style, with the requisite lyrical interlude. The development section jumps into B minor, leaving behind it the tremolo of the exposition, and – in a reversal of the common pattern – deals with newly introduced, calmer material. After twenty measures of the recapitulation, it is interrupted by new developments, which abbreviate the section and lead it to the Andante, a movement of pastoral serenity. The three movements of K6 141a, linked by incomplete cadences, are played without a break, the Finale even beginning on a dominant seventh rather than a tonic chord, an unusual gesture that may also be heard at the beginning of the Finale of Schubert’s second symphony. (In Schubert’s case, however, the dominant seventh is just a transition heard once, whereas in K6 141a it is essential to the movement’s opening idea and, as such, is repeated.) The Finale, whose Presto indication is written in pencil by an unknown hand (perhaps Leopold’s), is a kind of minuet in the form of a rondo under a strong sonata-form influence.
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K. 184 Symphony in E flat major, No. 26 (K3 166a, K6 161a)
Origin: Salzburg, March 30, 1773
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Molto presto. Andante. Allegro.
The first two pages of the autograph manuscript of K. 184 were written by Leopold, the remainder of the first movement by a professional copyist, and the other movements by Wolfgang. Recent examination of the heavily defaced date confirms that it probably reads “30 March 1773” following the usual inscription “Del Sigre: Cavaliere Amadeo Mozart”. This was about a month after the seventeen-year-old composer and his father returned from their third and last Italian journey.
Every commentator has remarked on the dramatic character of this work; for instance, Georges Saint-Foix in his typically extravagant diction: “The violence of the first movement followed by the infinite despair of the Andante (in the minor), and the ardent and joyous rhythms of the Finale mark this symphony as something quite apart; romantic exaltation here reaches its climax.” In addition, the work seems filled with familiar ideas. The intense opening gesture of the Molto presto later served Mozart as a model for the more relaxed openings of two other E flat pieces: the Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, and the Serenade for Winds, K. 375. The C minor Andante, replete with sighing appoggiaturas and other effects borrowed from tragic Italian arias, is the first in a series of powerful C minor andantes. The theme of the jig-like Finale of K. 184 resembles that of the rondo-finale of the horn concerto, K. 495, again in E flat. Thus, Mozart had in mind a group of ideas associated with E flat major and C minor, which reappeared in various guises over a period of years. Throughout all three movements of K. 184, concertante writing for the winds is prominent for this period.
The jig-finale makes no attempt to maintain the high drama of the two previous movements. That Mozart thought of its function as relaxing the tension generated earlier appears in the reversal of the tempo indications of the first and third movements from his usual practice.
There are two clues about the possible origins of this exceptionally serious symphony: its three movements are played without a break, in the manner associated with many Italian overture-sinfonias, and the orchestration calls for pairs of flutes and oboes to play simultaneously. Mozart’s practice in his orchestral serenades and earlier symphonies was to use either oboes or flutes, not both, and in his last symphonies to use a pair of oboes plus a single flute. With the exception of K. 297, written for Paris, the relatively few symphonies requiring pairs of flutes and oboes played simultaneously originated as overtures to theatrical works: Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, K. 35; La finta semplice, K. 51; Mitridate, rè di Ponto, K. 87; Ascanio in Alba, K. 111; and Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126. Especially telling in this regard is the overture to La finta semplice, which began life as the concert symphony, K. 45, with oboes, and then had a pair of flutes added to it for the theater. Hence, K. 184 was likely intended from the start to serve in the theater as an overture, a function that would not then have precluded (nor should it now preclude) its use in concerts.
Appropriately, therefore, K. 184 was pressed into service during the 1780s, apparently with Mozart’s consent, by the traveling theatrical troupe of Johann Heinrich Böhm as the overture to Lanassa by the Berlin playwright Karl Martin Plümicke, which concerns the plight of a Hindu widow who, unable to reconcile herself to her husband’s death, eventually flings herself onto a funeral pyre. Böhm’s production of Lanassa not only employed K. 184 as an overture, but was decked out with the not-inconsiderable incidental music Mozart had composed for Thamos, King of Egypt (K. 345), to which new texts had been set. This is undoubtedly why one sometimes reads the probably erroneous statement that K. 184 was originally intended as an overture for Thamos itself.
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K. 199 Symphony in G major, No. 27 (K3 162a, K6 161b)
Origin: Salzburg, April 10 [16?], 1773
Scoring: 2.flutes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro. Andantino grazioso. Presto.
The date on the autograph is, once again, defaced and difficult to decipher with confidence; the paper is a type used by Mozart between about March 1773 and May 1775. The first movement of K. 199 is a small-scale, finely proportioned sonata-form movement exuding high spirits. As in the first movement of K. 124, an attractive metric ambiguity is hinted at.
In the D major Andantino grazioso the upper strings are muted, the lower ones play mostly pizzicato, and the flutes, previously limited to reinforcing the tuttis, come into their own, offering up the kind of air sung beneath the balconies of young women in many an eighteenth-century Italian opera. With its mild parallel sixths and thirds and flowing triplets, the movement offers only a touch of chromaticism occasioned by augmented sixth chords toward the end of each of its two repeated sections to hint that the world might contain any darkness.
The Finale begins with some contrapuntal gestures, which coexist uneasily with the galant ideas in the rest of the movement. Georges Saint-Foix describes the effect as “a sort of fugato that soon takes on a waltz rhythm”. The subject of the fugato, G-C-F#-G, is derived from the opening theme of the first movement. Mozart would later comment wryly on this sort of quasi-contrapuntal writing in the Finale of his Musikalischer Spass (Musical Joke), K. 522. The short-windedness of the opening is somewhat redeemed by a more extended version of the same material that occurs at the recapitulation, where it serves both as main theme and as retransition. (As discussed below in connection with the Symphony in B flat, K. 319, such suggested rather than actual counterpoint was an essential element of symphonic style of the period.) Counterpoint aside, the jig-like Finale brings the symphony to a lively conclusion.
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K. 162 Symphony in C major, No. 22
Origin: Salzburg, April 19 [29?], 1773
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. Andantino grazioso. Presto assai.
This symphony calls for a pair of “long trumpets” (trombe lunghe) in addition to the usual strings and pairs of oboes and horns. If kettledrum parts once existed, they have been lost. The date on the autograph has been tampered with, but perhaps reads April 19 or 29, 1773; this date is contradicted neither by the form of Mozart’s writing nor by the paper employed, a type used by Mozart in Salzburg between about March 1773 and May 1775.
The opening gestures of the first movement establish the festive character of the entire work, by an alternation of tutti outbursts with a quiet staccato motive. These first twelve measures are absent at the beginning of the recapitulation, reserved for the end where they serve as closing section. This is thus a mirror-form movement of the sort discussed in connection with the first movement of K. 133. The Andantino grazioso in F major temporarily retires the trumpets and adheres to the customary pastoral spirit of such movements. The prominently featured concertante writing for the oboes and horns brings this movement close in style to several of the andantes in Mozart’s orchestral serenades of the period. The jig-like Finale – which brings back the trumpets with a vengeance, opening with a transformation of the fanfare that, in the bass instruments, began the first movement – is worked out in a concise sonata form.
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K. 181 Symphony in D major, No. 23 (K6 162b)
Origin: Salzburg, May 19, 1773
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Andantino grazioso. Presto assai.
This symphony and K. 162 open with similar flourishes. The present first movement, with the unusual tempo indication Allegro spiritoso, is an essay in the use of orchestral “noises” to form a coherent and satisfying whole. That is, there are few memorable melodies, but rather a succession of timbral devices, including repeated notes, fanfares, arpeggios, sudden fortes and pianos, scales, syncopations, dotted rhythms, and so on. Eighteenth-century debates about the aesthetics of such a musical style show striking similarities to twentieth-century discussions of abstract art.
The G major Andantino grazioso follows the first movement without pause. The trumpets again fall silent, and the movement in some sense compensates for the previous lack of beautiful melody, offering an oboe solo in the style of a siciliano, a kind of lilting, slow-motion jig vastly popular in eighteenth-century operas and instrumental music and originating in the folksong of Sicily. This leads, again without break, straight into a rondo in the style of a contredanse or march, to which Georges Saint-Foix correctly applied the eighteenth-century appellation “quick step”.
N.Z.
K. *185 Symphony in D major, “Serenade” (K6 *167a)
Origin: Salzburg, autumn 1773?
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. Andante grazioso. Menuetto. Adagio – Allegro assai.
This work consists of movements one, five, six, and seven of the Serenade in D Major, K. 185, used by Mozart as a symphony. *See the note on p. 232.
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K. 182 Symphony in B flat major, No. 24 (K3 166c, K6 173dA)
Origin: Salzburg, October 3, 1773
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Andantino grazioso. Allegro.
The autograph manuscript bears the inscription “Sinfonia / del Sigre Cavaliere / Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart il 3 d’ottobre / a Salisburgo 1773”, with the date strongly crossed out. This symphony has been undervalued by modern commentators and conductors, yet Mozart must have thought well of it, for a decade after he composed it, he wrote from Vienna to his father in Salzburg requesting that it be sent (along with other works) for use in his concerts in the Austrian capital.
Although the opening movement is nearly as dependent on orchestral “noises” for its content as the first movement of K. 181, a few melodies of note emerge including one in which the Scottish or Lombardic rhythm again features prominently. The Andantino grazioso, with its muted violins, change of key to E flat putting the horns a fifth lower, and substitution of a pair of flutes for oboes, providing a characteristic contrast of timbre and mood, is a simple cantilena in A-A-B-A form. This is a reversal of Mozart’s previous practice of associating flutes with higher pitched horns and oboes with lower pitched horns. The jig-Finale that concludes this Dionysian work is pure opera buffa from start to finish.
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K. 183 Symphony in G minor, No. 25 (K6 173dB)
Origin: Salzburg, October 5, 1773
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro con brio. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro.
Debussy once wrote of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that it “has long been surrounded by a haze of adjectives. Together with the Mona Lisa’s smile – which for some strange reason has always been labeled ‘mysterious’ – it is the masterpiece about which the most stupid comments have been made. lt’s a wonder it hasn’t been submerged entirely beneath the mass of words it has excited”. On a more modest scale, the same might be said of the verbiage surrounding Mozart’s two G minor symphonies – the famous one, K. 550, and the so-called “Little” G minor, K. 183. The vast majority of eighteenth-century symphonies are in major keys and appear to convey the optimistic “grand, festive, and noble” character mentioned by the contemporary writer Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, rather than the darker, more pessimistic or more passionate feelings of the few minor works. The “haze of adjectives” can be at least partially dissipated by attempting to view K. 183 (and other minor-key works of the period) looking forward from the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, rather than backwards from the nineteenth century.
The sounds of the minor-key symphonies of the early 1770s were not entirely new ones. These tempestuous effects had been invented in the opera houses to portray nature’s storms as well as storms of human emotion. A thorough investigation of opere serie of the 1760s might reveal the musical sources of the so-called Sturm und Drang symphonies of the 1770s.
Both the opening Allegro con brio and the closing Allegro of K. 183 display, in addition to their often-mentioned stormy character, large-scale sonata form with both halves repeated plus a coda. The special sound of the symphony’s outer movements is partly a result of four horns in place of the usual two, which not only impart a certain solidity to the work’s texture, but, as the two pairs of horns are in different keys (G and B flat), gave Mozart a wider palette of pitches to exploit in writing his horn parts, enabling him to allow those primarily diatonic instruments to participate in some of the work’s chromaticism. The first movement, which has recently acquired notoriety in the sound-track of the film Amadeus, exhibits, in British musicologist Stanley Sadie’s words, the “urgent tone of the repeated syncopated notes ... the dramatic falling diminished seventh and the repeated thrusting phrases that follow. The increased force of the musical thinking is seen in the strong sense of harmonic direction, the taking up of melodic figuration by the bass instruments, and the echo sections, which are no longer merely decorative but add intensity”.
The Andante in E flat major is also in sonata form with both halves repeated, but without coda. Here storminess gives way to other passions, portrayed by the appoggiaturas of longing and sadness. These are tossed back and forth between the muted violins and the obbligato bassoons, and also heard in the violas, cellos, and basses. An especially fine moment occurs eight measures into the recapitulation where, in a passage not present in the exposition, a rising sequence of sighs touches in rapid succession upon F, G, and C minor, and then A flat, E flat, and B flat major.
The Minuet’s stern unisons and chromaticism contradict received ideas about the polite social graces of that dance, illustrating J. A. P. Schulz’s remark that “because minuets of this type are really not for dancing, composers have departed from the original conception”. The four-measures phrases and rounded binary form are traditional, but the movement’s darkened demeanor is no longer that of the ballroom. This disparity between what is expected of a minuet and what Mozart wrote in K. 183 is pointed up by the genial G major Trio, written for Harmonie – that is, for the favorite Austrian wind band consisting of pairs of oboes, horns, and bassoons. Such groups were much employed in and around Vienna to provide music for banquets, out-of-doors social occasions, evening serenades, and the like. Wind players provided English historian Charles Burney with dinner music during his stay at the Viennese inn “At the Sign of the Golden Ox”, and a decade later Mozart wrote a wind serenade, K. 375, and then was pleasantly surprised by a sextet of itinerant musicians playing it under his window on his name day. The Trio of K. 183 offers a breath of fresh air and relaxation, as it were, placing in sharp relief the sterner Minuet that flanks it.
That the first movement of K. 183 is marked Allegro con brio and the last only Allegro may appear to contradict the principle that the tempos of last movements are generally faster than those of first movements. Here, however, the first movement includes sixteenth notes and important rhythmic, harmonic, or melodic events on all four quarter notes of the measure, whereas the most rapid notes in the Finale are eighth notes and important events tend to occur only twice per measure. American musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon has suggested that this extraordinary work may have been modeled on, or inspired by, Joseph Haydn’s equally extraordinary Symphony No. 39 of the late 1760s, which is also in G minor with four horns.
N.Z.
K. 201 Symphony in A major, No. 29 (K6 186a)
Origin: Salzburg, April 6, 1774
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro moderato. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro con spirito.
Much of what was stated about K. 183 could be repeated about this work, including (despite its major key) the agitated and serious character of the first and last movements, the use of sonata form in three of the four movements, the strongly contrasted character of the Andante (in this case perhaps noble serenity rather than longing), the symphonic rather than dance quality of the minuet, and the basing of the opening of the Finale on a transformation of the opening of the first movement. The thoroughgoing excellence of this symphony has long been recognized; it and K. 183 are the earliest of Mozart’s symphonies in the repertories of major orchestras.
The first movement begins piano, without the more usual loud chords or fanfare. The opening theme consists of an octave drop (which reappears at the beginning of the Finale) and a group of forward-moving eighth notes leading to a second octave drop, and so on in a rising sequence, the whole then repeated an octave higher, tutti, and in canon between the violins and the lower strings. Several subjects of contrasted character appear in the dominant, leading to a closing section with repeated notes and arpeggios. The compact development section, bustling with scalewise passages, repeated notes, modulations, and syncopations, leads to a literal recapitulation. Both sections are repeated, and the movement is brought to its jubilant close by a coda based upon the opening idea heard in canon.
The Andante and Minuet have in common the prominent use of dotted and double-dotted rhythms, characteristic of marches and of the slow sections of French ouvertures and considered to convey stateliness, nobility, and even godliness. The Andante, another with muted strings, is perhaps the most eloquent of the several that Mozart wrote in this vein. The energy of the outer movements spills over into the Minuet, which seems presided over more by the spirit of Mars than by that of Terpsichore.
Despite its fully worked-out sonata form, including a development section that Alfred Einstein described as “the richest and most dramatic Mozart had written up to this time”, the Finale has the character of a chasse (a piece based on hunting-horn calls) , with its mandatory repeated notes and other fanfares. At the ends of the exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda, Mozart gave the violins a rapid ascending scale: clear aural signposts to articulate the movement’s formal structure. In this symphony Mozart seems to have achieved a successful equilibrium between the lyrical elements and the abstract, instrumental ones.
N.Z.
K. 202 Symphony in D major, No. 30 (K6 186b)
Origin: Salzburg, May 5, 1774
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Molto allegro. Andantino con moto. Menuetto. Presto.
The first and last movements begin with a melody constructed around the descending tonic triad D-A-F#-D. The first movement is in a tightly knit sonata form, featuring manipulations of a cliché trill figure that occurs unobtrusively on D in the fourth measure, with more emphasis on E some nineteen measures later, then eleven measures after that with considerable force on A as an interruption of a lyrical theme, and finally invades the texture toward the end of the exposition, like a hive of musical bumblebees trying to sing polyphony.
The Andantino con moto, in A major, is in a diminutive sonata form and scored for strings alone. The apparent simplicity of its cantabile melodies belies the care that Mozart must have taken to make all four voices active and interesting. The Minuet and Trio exude a ballroom spirit, but comparison with sixteen minuets, K. 176, which Mozart wrote for carnival of 1774, reveals some differences: the ballroom minuets are shorter, more homophonic, and always omit violas. The simpler textures and more symmetrical phrase structures of K. 176 were apparently designed to be easily perceptible in a noisy social setting, whereas the more elaborate symphony minuet was meant to have closer attention paid to it by both performers and listeners.
The Finale, like the first movement in sonata form with both sections repeated and a coda, displays a bold mixture of serious and not-so-serious ideas. The opening fanfare in dotted rhythms is in the spirit of a quickstep. This march-like opening is contrasted however with patches of lyricism; and if the development section, with its diminished chords and abrupt pauses, causes us momentarily to be quite serious, then the way in which the coda simply evaporates rather than offering a “proper” ending reminds us that the composer was, after all, an eighteen-year-old with a well-developed sense of humor.
Georges Saint-Foix, Alfred Einstein, and other commentators have detected a retrenchment in this symphony, a return to the sheer entertainment and galanterie of earlier works after the greater seriousness of K. 183 and 201. Whether this is a cause for regret or pleasure depends upon one’s aesthetic; for Saint-Foix and Einstein it was the former. But why should a festive work in D with trumpets be “serious”, and what anachronistic (i. e., romantic) overvaluation of “seriousness” is implied? Who knows what gala occasion in Salzburg may have required just such spirited music as this?
N.Z.
K. *203 Symphony in D major, “Serenade” (K6 *189b)
Origin: Salzburg, autumn? 1774
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Andante maestoso – Allegro assai. [Andante.] Menuetto. Prestissimo.
This work consists of movements one, six, seven, and eight of the Serenade in D Major, K. 203, used by Mozart as a symphony. See the note on p. 233.
N.Z.
K. 200 Symphony in C major, No. 28 (K3 173e, K6 189k)
Origin: Salzburg, November 17 [12?], 1774 [1773?]
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Andante. Menuetto. Presto.
The autograph of K. 200 is apparently dated November 17, 1774, although because the date has again been tampered with, the day can also be read as November 12 or the year as 1773. The paper used by Mozart was a type that appears in works of his dated between about March 1773 and May 1775. If the date November 17 (or 12), 1774 is correct, then K. 200 brings to an end the outpouring of symphonies composed for Salzburg in the early 1770s. After this he was not to write another symphony proper until he arrived in Paris in 1778.
Several commentators have heard echoes of other music in this piece. German musicologist Hermann Abert pointed to the similarity between the first movement and that of the symphony in B flat, K. 182. Théodore de Wyzewa and Georges Saint-Foix heard Joseph Haydn’s influence in the first movement. They judged the opening idea of the Andante to be in the style of a German popular song, and they considered the Minuet “like a first draft of the minuet from the Jupiter Symphony”. (The present writer, however, finds the opening of the Minuet closer to that of the minuet of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, No. 45.) French author J.-V. Hocquard is reminded of Die Zauberflöte, finding in the symphony’s Finale musical motives that recur in this opera. This game of “find the tune” and “name the influence” is difficult to resist and, as several studies have been devoted largely to it, one should try to understand what may lie behind it. Composers of the period were not as interested in originality per se as were those of a later period. As more attention was paid to craft and less to inspiration, great works could be based upon common materials. This may be compared to the attitude of a skilled cabinetmaker commissioned to build a fine table: his choice of materials and shape need not be novel for the table to be beautiful to look at and well functioning, provided he knows how to choose wood and work with it.
N.Z.
K. *196 + 121 Symphony in D major, “La finta giardiniera” (K6 *196 + 207a)
Origin: Salzburg, spring? 1775?
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro molto. Andantino grazioso. Allegro.
Mozart visited Munich from December 6, 1774 to March 7, 1775, to attend the rehearsals and performances of La finta giardiniera (K. 196). This new Italian comic opera was performed on January 13, 1775 and had a favorable reception. Later on the work was given, in a translation supervised by Mozart, in a number of German-speaking cities as a Singspiel, Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe (or sometimes as Das verstellte Gärtner-Mädchen), with the recitatives as spoken dialogue. As befitted its function, the first movement of the overture is shorter and less serious than first movements of other symphonies Mozart had recently written. The brief Andantino grazioso in A major is for strings alone. At some other time, in a separate manuscript, Mozart wrote a lightweight but brilliant Finale, K. 121 = 207a. On the basis of the writing in the autograph of this Finale the date of spring 1775 has been suggested, but the paper is a Milanese type from the third Italian journey, used mainly between November 1772 and early 1773. Was the paper left over from Italy, or did Mozart have an older movement around that he decided to press into service when a finale for the Finta giardiniera overture was needed?
Mozart’s overture-symphony is neither programmatic nor even psychological in nature. But as it was his practice to write the overture of an opera after he had familiarized himself with the story and composed most of the music, a brief summary of the opera’s intrigues may serve to suggest why the symphony’s first movement is so gay and its second so galant. The Marchesa Violante, slighted by Count Belfiore whom she loves, disguises herself and her valet as gardeners and the two seek employment at the Podesta’s palace. The Podesta is charmed by Violante, and the Podesta’s maid by the valet. Meanwhile, Count Belfiore is about to marry the Podesta’s niece who is, in turn, being pursued by Ramiro. All appears lost, but the plot receives the necessary twists and Violante and the Count, the valet and the maid, and Ramiro and the niece are joined together in pairs by mutual love, leaving only the Podesta alone.
N.Z.
K. *204 Symphony in D major, “Serenade” (K6 *213a)
Origin: Salzburg, autumn? 1775
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. [Andante.] Menuetto. Andantino grazioso – Allegro.
This work consists of movements one, five, six, and seven of the Serenade in D major, K. 204, used by Mozart as a symphony. See the note on p. 234.
N.Z.
K. *208 + 102 Symphony in C major, “Il rè pastore” (K6 *208 + 213c)
Origin: Salzburg, 1776 or 1777
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Molto allegro. Andantino. Presto assai.
This Symphony in C major is derived from the overture to Mozart’s serenata Il rè pastore (The shepherd king), K. 208, a famous libretto by Metastasio set by an extraordinary number of composers including Christoph Willibald Gluck, Francesco Uttini, Giuseppe Sarti, Johann Friedrich Agricola, Johann Adolf Hasse, Niccolò Piccinni, Baldassare Galuppi, Niccolò Jommelli, Felice Giardini, and many others. The work, which Mozart composed in the space of about six weeks before its premiere in Salzburg on April 23, 1775, had been commissioned to celebrate the visit to Salzburg by Archduke Maximilian Franz, youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa. As Salzburg lacked a proper opera house, this work was cast as a serenata and given in concert form; the archduke’s travel diary, therefore, speaks only of attending a “cantata”.
The story concerns the conflicts between love and duty in a foundling prince who, having been raised a shepherd, is reluctant to give up rustic pleasures for the burdens of the throne. Mozart’s one-movement “overtura” to the opera has the same opening gesture as the previous symphony, but there follows in this case a movement more concise and Italianate. In the concert symphony version this leads directly into an Andantino that Mozart manufactured from the first aria of the opera. This he accomplished by substituting a solo oboe for the shepherd king Aminta (sung by a castrato) and by writing eight new measures that lead, again without halt, into an entirely new Finale. The aria, of which the middle movement of the symphony is a barely altered arrangement, finds Aminta on the banks of a stream with shepherd’s pipes in hand (the orchestration features a pair of flutes), wondering what fate holds for him and his shepherdess.
The newly created Finale, a rondo in the style of a country dance, is written on a type of paper that Mozart used in the Litany, K. 243 (March 1776), in the symphony version of the Serenade, K. 250 (probably the second half of 1776 or first half of 1777), and in the entr’actes to Thamos, King of Egypt, K. 345 (undatable), so the symphony must have been created in 1776 or 1777.
N.Z.
K. *250 Symphony in D major, “Serenade” (K6 *248b)
Origin: Salzburg, autumn? 1776
Scoring: 2 oboes (doubling flutes), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
Movements: Allegro maestoso. Menuetto galante. Andante. Menuetto. Adagio – Allegro assai.
This work consists of movements one, five, six, seven, and eight of the “Haffner” Serenade in D Major, K. 250, used by Mozart as a symphony. See the note on p. 235.
N.Z.
K. 297 Symphony in D major, “Paris”, No. 31 (K6 300a)
Origin: Paris, June 1778
Scoring : 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. Andantino. Allegro.
K. 297 Symphonic Andante in G major (K6 300a)
Origin: Paris, ?July 1778
Scoring: flute, oboe, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Mozart must have completed this symphony by June 12, 1778, on which date he wrote to his father reporting that earlier in the day he had played it through at the keyboard for the singer Anton Raaff and Count Carl Heinrich Joseph Sickingen, minister of the Palatinate, after lunch at the latter’s house. The symphony had its premiere at the Concert spirituel on Corpus Christi (June 18) after only one rehearsal – the usual practice – on the previous day. Mozart reported:
I was very nervous at the rehearsal, for never in my life have I heard a worse performance; you cannot imagine how they twice bumbled and scraped through it. It was really in a terrible state and would gladly have rehearsed it again, but as there is always so much to rehearse there was no time left. So I had to go to bed with an anxious heart and in a discontented and angry frame of mind. Next day I had decided not to go to the concert at all; but in the evening, the weather being fine, I at last made up my mind to go, determined that if [my symphony] went as badly as it had at the rehearsal I would certainly go up to the orchestra, take the violin from the hands of Lahoussaye, the first violinist, and lead myself! I prayed to God that it might go weIl, for it is all to His greater honor and glory; and Ecce, the symphony began. ... Right in the middle of the first Allegro was a passage that I knew they would like; the whole audience was thrilled by it and there was a tremendous burst of applause; but as I knew when I wrote it what kind of an effect it would produce, I repeated it again at the end-when there were shouts of “Da capo”. The Andante also found favor, but particularly the last Allegro because, having observed that here all final as well as first allegros begin with all the instruments playing together and generally unisono, I began mine with the two violin[-section]s only, piano for the first eight bars – followed instantly by a forte; the audience, as I expected, said “Shh!” at the soft beginning, and then, as soon as they heard the forte that followed, immediately began to clap their hands. I was so happy that as soon as the symphony was over I went off to the Palais royal where I had a large ice, said the rosary as I had vowed to do – and went home.
In a perceptive commentary on this letter, Austrian conductor and cellist Nikolaus Harnoncourt remarks on differences between Mozart’s audiences and ours: the 1778 audience required new music and expressed its appreciation and understanding not only after each movement but – exceptionally – during a movement. Harnoncourt also suggests that the passage in the first movement of K. 297 which so pleased the members of the Parisian audience that they burst into applause may be measures 65-73, recurring at 220-27, where a spiccato (bouncing bow) melody in the violins supported above by sustaining wind and below by cellos and basses pizzicato creates a brilliant effect.
On the other hand, Stanley Sadie (following Théodore de Wyzewa and Georges Saint-Foix) has proposed a different identification for the passage that Mozart “knew they would like”. The passage in question occurs in the exposition at measures 84-92, then in the recapitulation at measures 238-50, and finally in the coda at measures 257-69.
The success of the new symphony is to some extent confirmed by a brief review, which remarked that “This artist, who from the tenderest age had made a name for himself among harpsichordists, can today be placed among the ablest composers”, and by the director of the Concert spirtuel, Joseph Legros’s decision to publish it as, presumably, one of the best symphonies in his repertory.
After the performance of his symphony, Mozart had a falling-out with Legros, because of the latter’s failure to perform his (now lost) Sinfonia concertante, K. Anh 9=297B). Then one day the two men had a chance encounter:
I told you already that my symphony at the Concert spirituel was a tremendous success. ... Monsieur Legros, the director, is amazingly taken with me. You must know that, although I used to be with him every day, I have not been near him since Easter; I felt so indignant at his not having performed my sinfonia concertante. I often went to the same house to visit Monsieur Raaff and each time I had to pass his rooms. His servant and maids often saw me and I always sent him my compliments. It is really a pity that he did not perform it, as it would have made a great hit – but now he no longer has an opportunity of doing so, for [the Mannheim wind players having returned home] where could four such players be found to perform it? One day, when I went to call on Raaff, I was told that he was out but would certainly be home very soon and I therefore waited. M. Legros came into the room and said: “It is really quite wonderful to have the pleasure of seeing you again.” “Yes, I have a great deal to do.” “I hope you will stay to lunch with us today?” “I am very sorry, but I am already engaged.” “M. Mozart, we really must spend a day together again soon.” “That will give me much pleasure.” A long pause; at length, “Apropos. Will you not write a grand symphony for me for Corpus Christi?” “Why not?” “Can I then rely on this?” “Oh yes, if I may rely with certainty on its being performed, and that it will not have the same fate as my sinfonia concertante.” Then the dance began. He excused himself as well as he could but did not find much to say. In short, the symphony was highly approved of-and Legros is so pleased with it that he says it is his very best symphony. But the Andante has not had the good fortune to satisfy him; he says that it has too many modulations and that it is too long. He derives this opinion, however, from the fact that the audience forgot to clap their hands as loudly and as long as they did at the end of the first and last movements. For indeed the Andante has won the greatest approval from me, from all connoisseurs, music-lovers. and the majority of those who have heard it. It is just the reverse of what Legros says-for it is quite simple and short. But in order to satisfy him (and, as he maintains, several others) I have composed another Andante. Each is good in its own way-for each has a different character. But the new one pleases me even more. ... On 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, my symphony is to be performed for the second time – with the new Andante.
The order of events narrated in this letter is not easily grasped. Mozart is distracted (understandably, under the circumstances; the letter was written just after his mother died) and seems to be relating events by free association rather than by any systematic method. This tendency to chronological incoherence in his letters, which Leopold had noticed and complained about while Mozart was still in Mannheim, can only have been exacerbated by his mother’s death, his failure to find suitable employment, and his defensive need to persuade his father that things were going better than in reality they were. In any case, the portion of Mozart’s letter suggesting the creation of a second Andante for K. 297 is confirmed by the sources: the Berlin and Salzburg autographs contain one Andante (in 6/8) while the Parisian first edition has an entirely different one (in 3/4). There remains some confusion about which is the earlier movement and which the later, and the experts continue to debate the matter.
N.Z.
K. 318 Symphony in G major, No. 32
Origin: Salzburg, April 26, 1779
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro spiritoso. Andante. Tempo Primo.
This was the first symphony Mozart composed after his unfortunate trip to Paris. Because its format bears a resemblance to some Parisian opéra comique overtures by André Grétry, biographers have exerted themselves trying to guess for which stage work this “overture” may have been intended. German writer Hermann Deiters suggested that K. 318 was intended for Thamos, König in Ägypten, K. 345, while Alfred Einstein thought that it was for the untitled and never completed Singspiel now known as Zaide, K. 344. But this symphony, dated April 26, 1779, was composed too late for the first version of Thamos (1773) and almost certainly too early for Zaide (1779-80) or the second version of Thamos (winter? 1779-80). Furthermore, when in the 1780s the music to Thamos was reused with new words as incidental music to a Viennese play, not K. 318 but the E flat symphony, K. 184, was the overture. Finally, the one-movement da capo form for sinfonias was not the invention of Grétry and other composers of opéras comiques, but had been taken over by them from Italian models; Mozart had previously composed such a work in the D minor overture for his oratorio La Betulia liberata, K. 118.
Most editions of K. 318 give it the subtitle “Ouverture”, and the widely-circulated Breitkopf & Härtel edition dubs the work “Ouvertüre in italien Stile”. However justified these labels may seem, there is no authority for them. They were apparently intended to make a distinction between concert symphonies and theater overtures – a distinction that in Mozart’s time was largely observed in the breach thereof, as his own practices reveal. He gave the score no title at all, simply writing “di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart mpr. d. 26 April 79”. Certainly he approved the work’s use in the theater (as he probably would have done with most of his symphonies): in 1785 he provided it (along with two new vocal numbers, the quartet “Dite almeno, in che mancai”, K. 479, and the trio “Mandina amabile”, K. 480) as the overture for a Viennese production of Francesco Bianchi’s opera buffa, La villanella rapita (The Abducted Country Girl), which was how the symphony was published and known in the nineteenth century.
The work’s opening Allegro spiritoso is a sonata form movement in which, for almost the first time in Mozart’s symphonies, the basso of Baroque tradition is in several passages resolved into independent parts for bassoon, cello, and double bass, creating novel timbral effects. (Could this have been part of what struck a correspondent of the music newspaper, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, in 1822 as too modern to have been written by Mozart?) At the point in the movement where the recapitulation might be expected, the Allegro breaks off at a grand pause and a G major Andante, organized in the form of a rondo A-B-A'-C-A"-B', is heard. After ninety-eight measures this too breaks off, leading without pause to a Tempo primo which, after a few bars of transition, presents a literal recapitulation not from the beginning but from six bars before the return of the so-called “second subject”, telescoping the exposition’s 109 measures to sixty-seven. The “missing” opening of the recapitulation finally sounds at the end, functioning as a brilliant coda. The resulting shape is an asymmetrical arch- or mirror-form, which, if the opening group of ideas is A, the second group of ideas B, and the Andante C, has the design A-B-C-B'-A'.
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K. 319 Symphony in B flat major, No. 33
Origin: Salzburg, July 9, 1779
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Allegro assai. Andante moderato. Menuetto. Allegro assai.
The autograph is headed “di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart mpr. Salisburgo li 9 di giuglio 1779”. The pages from Nannerl’s diary covering the period between June 16 and September 14 of that year are missing, and no other document gives us a clue to Mozart’s reason for having written this symphony. If intended for something other than the usual round of church, court, or private concerts, K. 319 was probably for Johann Heinrich Böhm’s theatrical troupe. Böhm’s troupe, which had in its repertory at least two of Mozart’s works (Thamos and the Italian opera buffa La finta gardiniera transformed into a Singspiel as Die verstellte Gärtnerin), was first in Salzburg from late April to early June 1779, at which time the Mozarts became acquainted with him and a number of his leading players. The company of nearly fifty actors, dancers, and singers returned to Salzburg in early September and stayed until the beginning of Lent 1780. K. 319 thus may have been written in anticipation of their return.
This symphony originally had only three movements, but sometime after he moved to Vienna Mozart added a Minuet and Trio. The added movement was inserted into the autograph on paper of a type that he used mainly from June to the end of 1785 but also in one or two scores of the previous year. This work enjoyed considerable circulation, with early sets of parts found in Salzburg, Schwerin, the Reichersberg Monastery in Upper Austria, Bozen, Prague, Modena, Frankfurt, Donaueschingen, and Graz.
All three of the original movements of K. 319 are in sonata form, share thematic resemblances, and begin their development sections with new ideas rather than with manipulations of previously presented ones. In the development section of the first movement the four-note motto “do-re-fa-mi” sounds at measures 143-46 and 151-54, and again, altered, in the Andante at measures 44-47, and the Minuet (9-12) and Trio (1-4). The Andante is in the form A-B-A'-B'-A-coda, with the A' section written in imitative texture, first in the strings in the dominant, then in the winds in the tonic.
The Finale begins as if it were simply one more brisk jig; but the jig’s triplets alternate with a march’s duplets (and in four passages the two overlap), the wind writing is more prominent than earlier, and the development section offers an example of that kind of pseudo-counterpoint which, while never exceeding two real voices, creates the illusion of many-layered polyphony. This way of handling counterpoint has important implications for the technique of symphony composition in the eighteenth century. It may also be connected to Mozart’s methods of sketching and of writing out his music; indeed, to his conception of that music. Among the sketches that survive, some are on a single line, but many occupy two lines on which are found the principal melodic line and the lowest-sounding part. From those scores that Mozart began as fair copies and then abandoned, and from scores in which he changed ink or quill while writing, one sees that those two structural voices were written first, and the others filled in later. A report suggesting that Joseph Haydn employed and taught a similar way of composing symphonies comes from his pupil, the composer and pianist Frédéric Kalkbrenner, who wrote concerning imitation: “The best are the imitations in two parts, which were the only ones that Haydn used, even in his symphonies for full orchestra. He said that imitations of more than two parts ‘befuddle the ear’.”
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K. *320 Symphony in D major, “Serenade”
Origin: Salzburg, autumn? 1779
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings
Movements: Adagio maestoso – Allegro con spirito. Andantino. Presto.
This work consists of movements one, five and seven of the “Post Horn” Serenade in D major, K. 320, used by Mozart as a symphony. Mozart also used movements 3 and 4 as a sinfonia concertante (K. *320). See the notes on p. 236, and on p. 153.
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K. 338 Symphony in C major, No. 34
Origin: Salzburg, August 29, 1780
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro vivace. Andante di molto. Allegro vivace.
This, the last symphony Mozart wrote in (although not the last he wrote for) Salzburg, is inscribed “Sinfonia di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart mpr. li 29 Agosto, Salsbourg 1780”. Nannerl’s diary reports that her brother played at court on September 2, 3, and 4; one of those dates probably was the premiere of K. 338. By then Mozart knew that he was to leave for Munich in a few weeks to oversee the preparation of Idomeneo, so this symphony could have served both as farewell to Salzburg and as introduction to Munich. No Munich performance is in fact recorded, however; K. 338 was indeed performed by Mozart in Vienna in the early 1780s, and in 1786 he sold a set of parts with corrections in his own hand to Prince Joseph Wenzel von Fürstenberg, still found in the archives at Donaueschingen. Other early sets of parts survive at Salzburg, Berlin, Vienna, and Prague, but the work was not published before 1797.
The first movement of K. 338 – originally headed “Allegro”, to which Mozart added “vivace” – is in sonata form without repeats. The opening fanfare is the prototype for the nearly identical gestures that begin the overtures of Così fan tutte and La clemenza di Tito; but here, by inserting echoes and extensions of the material that follows, Mozart has created an entirely different shape and character.
The first movement was originally followed by a minuet, or at least Mozart began one, but it has been torn from the autograph, leaving only the first fourteen measures, which are on the back of the last page of the first movement. A number of four-movement symphonies by other composers of the period place the minuet second instead of third, but as Mozart’s practice was the latter pattern, this fragmentary minuet is an enigma. (See also the discussion of the symphonic minuet, K. 409, below.)
In the autograph Mozart labeled the middle movement of K. 338 “Andante di molto”, but he must have found that it was performed more slowly than he wished, for in the concertmaster’s part that he sent to Donaueschingen he added “più tosto allegretto”. The Finale, another large jig in sonata form with both sections repeated, gives a special concertante role to the oboes, yet this is still not the kind of elaborate writing for winds that would be a hallmark of Mozart’s Viennese orchestration of the 1780s. After K. 338, Mozart abandoned the commonplace jig-finale forever in his symphonies.
Mozart was to write one more symphony for the musicians of Salzburg with whom he had such ambivalent relations: the “Haffner” Symphony, K. 385. By the time he composed it, however, he was permanently installed in Vienna, far from his father, the archbishop, the “coarse, slovenly, dissolute court musicians”, and the other citizens of Salzburg with whom he found it “impossible to mix freely”.
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K. 409 Symphonic Minuet in C major (K6 383f)
Origin: Vienna, May 1782
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
The notion promulgated by Alfred Einstein in K3 that this C major Symphonic Minuet was written to be added to K. 338 is improbable. K. 409 is too long to fit the proportions of K. 338, and calls for a pair of flutes not found in it. The editors of K6 suggest that Mozart could have added flutes to the first and last movements of K. 338, as he did to the Viennese version of K. 385; but there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that he actually did so. From its large scoring, length, relative complexity of texture, and the presence of violas, K. 409 must have been intended as a concert piece and not as dance music.
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K. 385 Symphony in D major, “Haffner”, No. 35
Origin: Vienna, July or August 1782
Scoring: 2 oboes, (2 flutes and 2 clarinets added later), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro con spirito. [Andante.] Menuetto. Presto.
The circumstances surrounding the creation of K. 385 are more fully documented than those of any other of Mozart’s symphonies. In mid-July 1782 Leopold wrote requesting a new symphony for celebrations for the ennoblement of Wolfgang’s childhood friend Sigmund Haffner (the younger). On July 20, Wolfgang replied:
Well, I am up to my eyes in work. By Sunday week I have to arrange my opera [Die Entführung aus dem Serail] for wind instruments, otherwise someone will beat me to it and secure the profits instead of me. And now you ask me to write a new symphony too! How on earth am I to do so? You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange a work of this kind for wind instruments, so that it suits these instruments and yet loses none of its effects. WeIl, I must just spend the night over it, for that is the only way; and to you, dearest father, I sacrifice it. You may rely on having something from me by every post. I shall work as fast as possible and, as far as haste permits, I shall write something good.
Although Wolfgang was prone to procrastination and making excuses in letters to his father, in this instance his complaints were possibly justified; he had just completed the arduous task of launching his new opera (the premiere was July 16) and was preparing to move house on July 23 in anticipation of his marriage. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a week later Mozart reported to his father:
You will be surprised and disappointed to find that this contains only the first Allegro; but it has been quite impossible to do more for you, for I have had to compose in a great hurry a serenade [probably K. 375], but for wind instruments only (otherwise I could have used it for you too). On Wednesday the 31st I shall send the two minuets, the Andante and the last movement. If I can manage to do so, I shall send a march too. If not, you will just have to use the one [K. 249] from the Haffner music [K. 250], which hardly anyone knows. I have composed my symphony in D major, because you prefer that key.
On July 29 Sigmund Haffner was ennobled, adding to his name “von Imbachhausen”. On the 31st, however, Mozart could write only that:
You see that my intentions are good – only what one cannot do, one cannot! I am really unable to scribble off inferior stuff. So I cannot send you the whole symphony until next post-day. I could have let you have the last movement, but I prefer to dispatch it all together, for then it will cost only one fee. What I have sent you has already cost me three gulden.
On August 4 Wolfgang and Constanze Weber were married in Vienna without yet having received Leopold’s grudging approval, which arrived the following day. Meanwhile, the other movements must have been completed and sent off, for on August 7 Wolfgang wrote to his father: “I send you herewith a short march [probably K. 408, No. 2]. I only hope that all will reach you in good time, and be to your taste. The first Allegro must be played with great fire, the last – as fast as possible.” Given the speed at which the “Linz” Symphony could be produced a year later, one may be justified in suspecting that the slow progress of the “Haffner” Symphony had more than a little to do with Mozart’s disaffection toward Salzburg and anger at his father.
Precisely when the party celebrating Haffner’s ennoblement took place is not known, for Leopold’s letter reporting the event is lost. However, the fact that in a later letter Wolfgang was unsure whether orchestral parts had been copied (see below) suggests that the symphony had not arrived in time. Be that as it may, either the work was performed in Salzburg prior to August 24 or Leopold had studied it in score and had indicated his approval, for on that day Wolfgang responded, “I am delighted that the symphony is to your taste”.
Three months after the premiere of K. 385 in Salzburg the symphony again entered the Mozarts’ correspondence, when Mozart wrote to his father on December 4, in a letter that went astray, asking for its return. He wrote again on the 21st, summarizing the lost letter, including the remark: “I also asked you to send me at the first opportunity which presents itself the new symphony that I composed for Haffner at your request. I should like to have it for certain before Lent, for I should very much like to have it performed at my concert.” On January 4, 1783 he returned to the subject: “It is all the same to me whether you send me the symphony of the last Haffner music which I composed in Vienna, in the original score or copied out [in to parts] for, as it is, I shall have to have several additional copies made for my concert.” Mozart then asked in addition to be sent four other symphonies: K. 204, 201, 182, and 183. On the 22nd he again reminded his father, “Please send me the symphonies I asked for as soon as possible, for I really need them now”, and on the 5th of February yet again, this time with renewed urgency:
Please send the symphonies, especially the last one, as soon as possible, for my concert is to take place on the third Sunday in Lent, that is, on March 23rd, and I must have several duplicate string parts made. I think, therefore, that if it is not copied [into orchestral parts] already, it would be better to send me back the original score just as I sent it to you; and remember to put in the minuets.
Finally, on February 15 Wolfgang could write, “Most heartfelt thanks for the music you have sent me ...”, adding (ironically?), “My new Haffner symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect”.
Mozart then proceeded to rework the score of K. 385 sent from Salzburg by putting aside the March, deleting the repeats in the first movement, and adding pairs of flutes and clarinets in the first and last movements, primarily to reinforce the tuttis and requiring no further changes in the already existing orchestration of those movements. The added instruments are written in a lighter ink than the rest of the score and can be easily distinguished in the autograph manuscript and in the facsimile edition.
Mozart’s academy (concert) duly took place on Sunday, March 23, in the Hofburgtheater. He reported to his father:
The theater could not have been more crowded and ... every box was full. But what pleased me most of all was that His Majesty the Emperor was present and, goodness! – how delighted he was and how he applauded me! It is his custom to send money to the box office before going to the theater; otherwise I should have been fully justified in counting on a larger sum, for really his delight was beyond all bounds. He sent 25 ducats.
In its broad outlines Mozart’s account is confirmed by a report published in the Magazin der Musik, Hamburg:
Vienna, 23 March, 1783. ... Tonight the famous Chevalier Mozart held a concert in the National Theater, at which pieces of his already highly admired composition were performed. The concert was honored with an exceptionally large crowd, and the two new concertos and other fantasies that Mr. Mozart played on the fortepiano were received with the loudest applause. Our Monarch, who, against his habit, attended the whole of the concert, as well as the entire audience, accorded him such animous applause as has never been heard of here. The receipts of the concert are estimated to amount to 1,600 gulden in all.
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K. 425 Symphony in C major, “Linz”, No. 36
Origin: Linz, October or November 1783
Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Adagio – Allegro spiritoso. Poco Adagio. Menuetto. Presto.
Mozart’s letters from Vienna in the months following his marriage are filled with promises of a journey to Salzburg to enable his father, his sister, and their friends to meet his bride. Excuse after excuse was found to postpone this trip, not only because Mozart was painfully aware of his father’s and sister’s disapproval of his choice of wife, but also because he feared forcible detention in Salzburg for having left the archbishop’s service. On being reassured by his father concerning the latter point, Wolfgang and Constanze finally set out, arriving in Salzburg toward the end of July 1783 and remaining there until the end of October. From what little is known of the visit, it must have been difficult for all concerned.
On the return trip to Vienna the couple had to pass through the town of Linz. What took place there is recounted in Mozart’s letter of October 31 to his father:
We arrived here safely yesterday morning at 9 o’clock. We spent the first night in Vöcklabruck and reached Lambach Monastery next morning, where I arrived just in time to accompany the Agnus Dei on the organ. The abbot [Amandus Schickmayr] was absolutely delighted to see me again. ... We spent the whole day there, and I played both on the organ and on a clavichord. I heard that an opera was to be given next day at Ebelsberg at the house of the Prefect Steurer ... and that almost all of Linz was to be assembled. I resolved therefore to be present and we drove there. Young Count Thun (brother of the Thun at Vienna) called on me immediately and said that his father had been expecting me for a fortnight and would I please drive to his house at once for I was to stay with him. I told him that I could easily put up at an inn. But when we reached the gates of Linz on the following day, we found a servant waiting there to drive us to Count Thun’s, at whose house we are now staying. I really cannot tell you what kindnesses the family are showering on us. On Tuesday, November 4th, I am giving a concert in the theater here and, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at breakneck speed, which must be finished by that time. Well, I must close, because I really must set to work.
If Mozart is to be believed, then between October 30 and November 4 he wrote a new symphony, copied the parts (or had them copied), and perhaps even had time to rehearse the work once before its premiere. The concert took place in the main room of the Ballhaus in Linz. Nothing is known of the orchestra, which was probably that of the Counts Thun, junior and senior, and which Mozart would reencounter in Prague in 1787, and which Franz Xaver Niemetschek, in a passage cited below, called “first rate”. It may have had a fair complement of players, to judge by the full instrumentation of K. 425.
The new symphony was taken to Vienna where Mozart performed it again at his “academy” of April 1, 1784.
From the moment the noble, double-dotted rhythms of the opening Adagio sound, the listener is plunged into the musical world of Mozart’s late masterpieces. The fruits of the artistic freedom of Vienna, of working with that city’s outstanding orchestral musicians, of experience in orchestration gained in piano concertos and Die Entführung, and of a more serious approach to the symphony in general, are apparent in the “Linz” Symphony. The large scale of the first movement, its perfectly proportioned form, the skill of the orchestration – none of these gives the slightest clue to the hurried circumstances under which the work was created.
The presence in the Andante of trumpets and drums – instruments otherwise silent in slow movements and in all movements in F major – changes what might have been simply an exquisite cantilena into a movement of occasionally almost apocalyptic intensity. Beethoven apparently took note of the effectiveness of this movement when he decided to use the trumpets and drums in similar ways in the same key in the Andante of his First Symphony of 1799-1800. Joseph Haydn had earlier tried trumpets and drums in slow movements of symphonies probably unknown to Beethoven, but in general it remained a special effect rarely used in the classical symphony.
The Minuet and Trio of the “Linz” Symphony form the most conventional of its four movements, the pomp of the former set off by the mock innocence of the oboe and bassoon duet in the latter – but none of the high jinks here that Mozart sometimes put into his trios for Salzburg consumption.
The Finale of the “Linz” Symphony is akin to that of the “Haffner” Symphony of the previous year and, like it, was undoubtedly meant to be performed observing Mozart’s injunction to play “as fast as possible”. As a foil to the brilliant homophonic texture dominating this spirited movement, and by way of development, Mozart inserted passages of the characteristic kind of pseudo-polyphony already noted in the Finale of K. 319.
Among Mozart’s possessions found after his death was the score of a symphony, containing a slow introduction, the following Allegro and half of the Andante in his hand, but the rest of the Andante, the Minuet and Trio, and the Finale in another hand. The work, K. 444, has frequently been performed as Mozart’s Symphony No. 37, despite the fact that as early as 1907 it was known – without its slow introduction – as a symphony by Michael Haydn (Perger No. 16 = K6 Anh A 53), written for the installation of a new abbot at the Michaelbeuern Monastery in May 1783.
Otto Jahn and Ludwig Köchel had stated that Mozart created K. 444 in 1783 on the same occasion he created K. 425, when, as discussed above, he was asked without warning to give a concert during a stopover in Linz. Investigation suggests that the notion that Mozart’s version of Haydn’s symphony was written in Linz originated with Johann André, upon-whose researches Jahn and Köchel relied considerably. Andre thought that K. 444 was the symphony which Mozart had composed so rapidly in Linz. By the time the true “Linz” Symphony, K. 425, was identified, the original (false) reason for K. 444’s connection with that city had been forgotten, and a myth was born. Thus, every Mozart biography, as well as all editions of the Köchel Catalogue, place Mozart’s version of Haydn’s symphony in Linz in 1783. As it is based upon André’s incorrect hypothesis, this explanation of the origin of K. 444 is groundless; and Alan Tyson’s researches have now shown that Mozart’s manuscript is written on a type of paper that he used only after his return from Salzburg via Linz to Vienna in 1783, and mainly in the months February-April 1784.
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K. 504 Symphony in D major, “Prague”, No. 38
Origin: Vienna, December 6, 1786
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Adagio – Allegro. Andante. Presto.
Mozart’s relations with the citizens of Prague form a happy chapter in the sad story of his last years. At a time when Vienna seemed to grow indifferent to him and his music, Prague apparently could not get enough of either. The success of his visit to supervise a production of Le nozze di Figaro was such that he was commissioned to write an opera especially for Prague, which turned out to be Don Giovanni; and his final opera too, La clemenza di Tito, was written for the Bohemian capital. The Prague schoolmaster Franz Niemetschek, who after Mozart’s death was entrusted with the education of his son Karl, has left an eyewitness account of the premiere of the “Prague” Symphony and of Mozart’s relationship with the Prague orchestra. Written a decade after the events it describes, and certainly idealized, Niemetschek’s account is accurate in broad outline if not always in detail:
... [Mozart] came to Prague in 1787 (to supervise the premiere of Don Giovanni); on the day of his arrival Figaro was performed and Mozart appeared in it. At once the news of his presence spread in the stalls, and as soon as the overture had ended every one broke in to welcoming applause.
In answer to a universal request, he gave a piano recital at a grand concert in the opera house [on 19 January]. The theater had never been so full as on this occasion; never had there been such unanimous enthusiasm as that awakened by his heavenly playing. We did not, in fact, know what to admire most, whether the extraordinary compositions or his extraordinary playing; together they made such an overwhelming impression on us that we felt we had been bewitched. When Mozart had finished the concert he continued improvising alone on the piano for half-an-hour. We were beside ourselves with joy and gave vent to our overwrought feelings in enthusiastic applause. In reality his improvisations exceeded anything that can be imagined in the way of piano-playing, as the highest degree of the composer’s art was combined with perfection of playing. This concert was quite a unique occasion for the people of Prague. Mozart likewise counted this day as one of the happiest of his life.
The symphonies [sic] which he composed for this occasion are real masterpieces of instrumental composition, which are played with great élan and fire, so that the very soul is carried to sublime heights. This applied particularly to the grand Symphony in D major, which is still always a favorite in Prague, although it has no doubt been heard a hundred times.
... [Mozart] had experienced how much the Bohemians appreciated his music and how well they executed it. This he often mentioned to his acquaintances in Prague, where a hero-worshipping, responsive public and real friends carried him, so to speak, on their shoulders. He warmly thanked the opera orchestra in a letter to Mr Strobach, who was director at the time, and attributed the greater part of the ovation which his music had received in Prague to their excellent rendering.
The “Prague” symphony distinguishes itself from the fifty-odd symphonies that Mozart had previously written by being noticeably more difficult: it is harder to perform and more challenging conceptually. As early as December 1780, when Wolfgang was composing and rehearsing Idomeneo with the famous Mannheim orchestra, then transplanted to Munich, Leopold twice warned him of the dangers of the demands he placed upon the orchestral musicians: “... when your music is performed by a mediocre orchestra, it will always be the loser, because it is composed with so much discernment for the various instruments and is far from being conventional, as, on the whole, Italian music is”, and, three weeks later,
... do your best to keep the whole orchestra in good humor; flatter them, and, by praising them, keep them all well-disposed toward you. For I know your style of composition – it requires unusually close attention from the players of every type of instrument; and to keep the whole orchestra at such a pitch of industry and alertness for at least three hours is no joke.
In the years following Idomeneo and the “Haffner” and “Linz” Symphonies Mozart had been exposed to the extraordinary wind playing of Vienna and, in his operas and piano concertos of those years, he had gone beyond the already advanced techniques found in the works of 1780-83, forging entirely new methods of orchestration. The change in orchestration did not occur in isolation, for Mozart’s style had deepened in all major genres in the mid-1780s, becoming more contrapuntal, more chromatic, and more extreme in expression. The “Prague” Symphony benefited not only from this newly elaborated orchestration and deepening of style, but also from the more serious role that, increasingly, was assigned to symphonies, which were now expected to exhibit artistic depth rather than serving merely as elaborate fanfares to open and close concerts.
In German-speaking countries K. 504 is often dubbed “the symphony without minuet”. This designation arises from a retrospective point of view, for although thousands of eighteenth-century symphonies (including many of Mozart’s) are in three movements, the Classical symphonies most performed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – Mozart’s last six, Haydn’s twelve “London” symphonies, and all the symphonies of Beethoven and Schubert – are, except for K. 504, in four movements. If K. 504 is the only famous Classical symphony to lack a minuet or scherzo, then there must be something special about it, at least according to this anachronistic notion – hence the soubriquet.
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K. 543 Symphony in E flat major, No. 39
Origin: Vienna, June 26, 1788
Scoring: 1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Adagio – Allegro. Andante con moto. Menuetto. Allegro.
The Symphony in E flat, K. 543, dated June 26, 1788 in Mozart’s catalogue, is the least studied of the final trilogy. Compared to the extensive critical and analytical literature devoted K. 550 and 551, that for K. 543 is modest. As this symphony exhibits no lack of workman-like construction or sublime inspiration, its relative neglect is a puzzle. Could this be because it has neither the proto-Romanticism of the G minor Symphony nor the nickname and extraordinary Finale of the “Jupiter”? Could it be that the kinds of ideas Mozart chose to explore in this work survive the translation from the lean, transparent sounds of eighteenth-century instruments to the powerful, opaque sounds of modern instruments less well than the more muscular ideas of the G minor and “Jupiter” symphonies? That the flat key, which creates a somewhat muted string sound compared to the brilliance of C major (K. 425, 551) or D major (K. 297, 385, 504), makes less of an impression in large modern halls on twentieth-century instruments than it did in small halls with the instruments of the period? It is also Mozart’s only symphony, and one of his very few orchestral works in any genre, without oboes, which imparts to it a particular timbre.
Mozart’s introduction is an amalgam of noble dotted rhythms, descended from the openings of French ouvertures, with the insinuating chromaticism that pervades all movements of the symphony. The introduction rises majestically from the tonic stepwise to the dominant in eight measures and then ornaments the latter for seventeen measures, creating a sense of expectancy. The opening of the Allegro is an interesting case of strong ideas presented in a deceptively understated way. Beginning with a thin, imitative texture, piano, the exposition works itself into an agitated state, with such momentum that much of it sounds developmental in character, and when the dominant is reached, the calmer “second group” of ideas sounds more like a transition to the closing section than a stable presentation of contrasting material. The development section gives an idea from the “second group” another chance to assert itself, but this is soon driven out by some of the agitated motives which, after an abrupt general pause, seem to evaporate mysteriously, making way for the quiet beginning of the recapitulation.
The Andante con moto presents its main subject in binary form with both sections repeated, leading to a stormy section, which, together with the opening subject, recurs frequently, the development of the two accounting for virtually the entire movement. This economy of means was commented upon by an early reviewer, who singled out the tune of the first measure-and-a-half as “an in itself insignificant theme admirably developed in an artful and agreeable manner”.
The courtly Minuet is set off by a Trio that is not merely in the style of a Ländler (an Alpine folkdance which is the forerunner of waltz), like several of Mozart’s earlier trios, but is actually based on a real one, given out by a pair of clarinets, which were favorite Alpine village instruments. Thus the rusticism of Mozart’s earlier trios remains in this late Trio, if in a more suave guise.
The perpetual motion of Mozart’s monothematic Finale exhibits the kind of good humor for which Joseph Haydn’s finales are known and loved, in this case resembling in its hurtling high spirits the Finale of Haydn’s eighty-eighth symphony, composed about 1787. There is something profoundly comical about the juxtaposition of the trivial contredanse tunes on which these movements are based with the intense thematic and harmonic manipulations to which those tunes are subjected in the working out of the form. The aura of elevated irony thus created is sometimes lost in too-pious performances, which may attempt to minimize the movements’ pervasive humor by smoothing over the rough edges and unexpected turns of direction.
N.Z.
K. 550 Symphony in G minor, No. 40
Origin: Vienna, July 25, 1788
Scoring: 1 flute, 2 oboes, (2 clarinets added later), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Movements: Molto allegro. Andante. Menuetto. Allegro assai.
The G minor Symphony, K. 550, dated July 25, 1788, in Mozart’s own catalogue of his work (and also on the autograph, although probably not in his hand), was as early as 1793 advertised by the Viennese music dealer Johann Traeg as “one of the last and most beautiful of this master”. The work’s intensity, unconventionality, chromaticism, thematic working-out, abundance of ideas, and ambiguity – all of these brought it close to the hearts of early nineteenth-century musicians and critics, who praised its richness of detail and called it “romantic” (meaning, apparently, “modern” and “good”). Not that there was agreement about its “meaning”, for some found it filled with “the agitation of passion, the desires and regrets of an unhappy love” while others attributed to it “Grecian lightness and grace”.
Whatever it may have been thought to mean, the work was widely known, performed, and imitated. By beginning the first allegro of a symphony with a quiet, cantabile utterance, as in K. 543 and 550, Mozart had ignored contemporary symphonic norms. The opening of K. 550 in particular, piano, with no brilliant opening chords but merely an accompaniment waiting for a tune to accompany, reverberated through the nineteenth century, and can be heard at the beginnings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Schubert’s A-minor string quartet, Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, and more than one Bruckner symphony.
Even earlier, Joseph Haydn quoted from K. 550’s E flat slow movement in his oratorio Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) in the E flat aria, No. 38, “Erblicke hier, bethörter Mensch” (See here, deceived mankind), where winter is compared to old age. The quotation occurs following the words “exhausted is the summer’s strength”, by which Haydn perhaps offered simultaneously a gloss on Mozart’s music, a commemoration of the loss of his admired younger colleague, and a commentary upon the approaching end of his own career. Schubert took note also of the Minuet of K. 550, using it – in a general way – as a model for the G minor Minuet of his Fifth Symphony; Schubert’s copy of the beginning of Mozart’s Minuet survives.
No symphony of Mozart’s, not even the “Jupiter”, has aroused so much comment as this one. A vast body of criticism and analysis has been published in several languages, to say nothing of hundreds of pages of program notes. This is perhaps to be expected of a work in the regular repertory of most conductors and orchestras and widely disseminated in recordings, but the intensity of the interest in K. 550 is even greater than that in many other works which likewise belong to the regular repertory. In addition to being a pillar of the repertory and one of the most flawless exemplars of the Classical style, the G minor Symphony is a key work in understanding the link between musical Classicism and musical Romanticism, and perhaps even a mournful hint of what Mozart might have composed had he lived a normal lifespan.
Numerous articles and whole books have been written trying to describe or analyze the miraculous construction and effects of K. 550. What more can one write about the stormy yet lyrical first movement with its distant modulations and insistent anapest rhythms? About the E flat major Andante with its throbbing eighth notes, sighing appoggiaturas, and twitching pairs of thirty-second notes? About the darkly canonic Minuet and its surprisingly sunny, al fresco Trio? About the brilliant Finale, which takes a bourrée rhythm, attaches it to a Mannheim “rocket” (a rapid upward arpeggio), and tums the unlikely mixture into a propulsive sonata form movement of enormous proportions? With all of its repeats observed, Mozart’s great penultimate symphony lasts more than half an hour, taking on Beethovenian proportions.
N.Z.
K. 551 Symphony in C major, “Jupiter”, No. 41
Origin: Vienna, August 10, 1788
Scoring: 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
Movements: Allegro vivace. Andante cantabile. Menuetto. Molto allegro.
In German-speaking countries during the first half of the nineteenth century, K. 551 was known as “the symphony with the fugal finale” or “the symphony with the fugue at the end”. The nickname “Jupiter” originated in Britain. Mozart’s son Franz Xaver told publishers Vincent and Mary Novello that the sobriquet was coined by Haydn’s sponsor in London, the violinist and orchestra leader Johann Peter Salomon. Certainly, the earliest manifestations of the title were British: the first appearance of the “Jupiter” subtitle on concert programs, which occurred in Edinburgh on October 20, 1819, followed by its use in a London Philharmonic Society concert of March 26, 1821; and the earliest edition to bear the subtitle, a piano arrangement of the work made by Muzio Clementi and published in London in 1823.
There is no reason to deny how revolutionary a work the “Jupiter” Symphony is in its ideas and their working out. To what other symphonies prior to 1788 can it be compared? What political and social motivations could have been responsible for Mozart’s abandonment of the familiar style of so many earlier symphonies for something so elaborate and large-scale? His discontent or idealism must have been great to have released him from normal constraints, allowing this symphony to transcend the musical, technical, and philosophical bounds that polite society generally placed on symphonies. What, for instance, could Mozart have had in mind when he permitted himself the harmonic daring, when he constructed his contrapuntal finale, and when he decided to juxtapose prominently these features with the dotted rhythms and abrupt scalewide passages of the French ouverture of the ancien régime – rhythms used in hundreds of eighteenth-century operas, cantatas, oratorios, and liturgical works to symbolize nobility or godliness? (Was it these rhythms, found to some extent in every movement except the Minuet and Trio, that inspired the symphony’s British admirers to style it the “Jupiter”?)
What Mozart had in mind will never be known, for he “forgot” to write the words to his melodies. Or nearly so, for in the first movement he quoted a recent aria, “Un bacio di mano”, K. 541 (see the note on p. 87). Composed for insertion into Anfossi’s opera Le gelosie fortunate for performances in Vienna from June 2, 1788, the aria has a witty Frenchman, Monsieur Girò, warning an inexperienced, would-be lover, Don Pompeo, about the dangers of wooing women (the quoted portion italicized):
Un bacio di mana vi fa maraviglia,
E poi bella figlia volete sposar,
Voi siete un po’ tondo, mio ear Pompeo,
L’usanze del mondo andate a studiar.
Un uom, che si sposa con giovin vezzosa,
A certi capricci, dee pria rinunciar,
Dee libere voglie lasciar alla moglie,
Dee sempre le porte aperte lasciar,
Dee chiudere gli occhi, gli orecchi, la bocca,
Se il re degli sciocchi non vuole sembrar.
(A kiss on her hand astonishes you,
And then you wish to marry the beautiful girl.
You are a bit innocent, my dear Pompeo.
Go study the ways of the world.
A man who marries a pretty young thing,
Must first be prepared to renounce certain of his own whims,
To let his wife have her way,
To always leave the doors open,
His eyes, ears, and mouth shut,
If he does not wish to seem the king of fools)
The verse is thought to be the work of da Ponte and, indeed, both text and music are very much of a piece with similar scenes of sexual comedy in Le nozze de Figaro and Così fan tutte. But what has this to do with Jupiter, ruler of the gods (or at least, with those musical features which tempted musicians to coin the sobriquet)? A partial answer is suggested by Stanley Sadie, who remarks that the first movement of K. 551 is embued with the spirit of Mozart’s comic operas of the period. And those operas are of the genre known as semiseria (or dramma giocoso, as the libretto of Don Giovanni has it), a new hybrid mixing the formerly separate genres of opera buffa with its lower-class characters, opera seria with its kings, queens, gods, and goddesses, and the sentimental opéra comique with its middle-class characters. Thus in the first movement of K. 551 characters of all classes – Jupiter (if it is he), Monsieur Girò, Don Pompeo, and doubtless others to whom we have not been properly introduced – could strut upon the same stage on a more-or-less equal footing, something the ancien régime had invariably striven to suppress. And into the mix, along with the seria, buffo, and middlebrow characters, went the Revolutionary (Mozart himself?) with his abrupt outbursts, shocking modulations, heroic wind orchestration, and pleasure in puncturing the too-comfortable received truths of society.
The Andante cantabile of the “Jupiter” Symphony not only moves, it profoundly disturbs. Its opening theme seems to express some inchoate yearnings to which the rude fortes reply with a brusque “Nein”, rather like what Beethoven would write many years later in the instrumental recitative in the Finale of his Ninth Symphony. After this theme with its negation reappears, now in the bass, a section of agitated chromaticism, syncopations, accents, and off-beat sixteenth notes (measures 19ff.) introduces elements of tension and instability that cannot be completely dispelled by the calming sextuplets of the closing section (measures 28ff). The repeat of this exposition only increases the sense of unresolution, which reaches such a pitch in the development section (based upon the ideas of the agitated section from measures 19ff.) that when the opening idea returns in the tonic at measure 60 it cannot prevail, and is swept away by more development. This further development extends until the reintroduction of the calming dosing subject in the tonic at measure 76, which the third time is even less able to contain the underlying instability than it was the first two times. Finally, the opening, thwarted at the false recapitulation, returns as a coda, but a sense of true resolution proves elusive and, although the tonic cadence is affirmed three times, this proves insufficient to clear the air, which is left ringing with mysterious reverberations of unease.
Even in the Minuet and Trio – the archetypal musical symbol of the ancien régime – one hears a host of contrapuntal and motivic complexities murmuring uneasily beneath a galant exterior, and threatening at any moment to break through the facade. The Trio (so often reserved by Mozart for some kind of joke) also has a special character, as it puts the cart before the horse, or, rather, the cadence before the melody it would normally terminate. The rounded binary form of Mozart’s minuets in general is here enlarged to such a point that it functions like a monothematic sonata form movement, with the apposite rhythmic drive and developmental textures. Thus, the earlier symphony scheme of four movements in contrasting forms (sonata-binary-dance-rondo) has now been replaced by four essays in sonata form, by four parallel structures. Besides the Minuet’s pervasive chromaticism, so alien to eighteenth-century dance music, another technical clue to the further removal of the dance from its ballroom origins is found in the bass line, where, for the first (and only) time in a symphony minuet, Mozart writes separate parts for the cellos and for the double basses (measures 9-13, 52-55).
And what, finally, could Mozart have intended in using a contrapuntal tag of liturgical music (the notorious do-re-fa-mi motive) for the opening of the Finale? (A surely coincidental closure to Mozart’s career as a symphonist is effected by the presence of the same motive in his “first” symphony, K. 16, written nearly a quarter-century earlier.) This motive, derived from Gregorian chant and probably best known in the eighteenth century as the beginning of the hymn Lucis creator, was a commonplace of the Fuxian species of counterpoint in which Mozart was trained and upon which he in turn trained his own pupils. It appears in the works of dozens of composers from Palestrina to Brahms. Something of what it may have meant to Mozart in the Finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony is suggested by the Credo of his Missa brevis in F major, K. 192, based on the same motive, where the continuation on the words “in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem” is closely related to what follows in the “Jupiter” Finale at that point. Does this work, then, contain Mozart’s Creed?
American musicologist Leonard Ratner has plausibly demonstrated that the fugato in the coda of the Finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony (and by implication the entire sonata form movement leading up to it, as if by fortunate accident) is an instance of musica combinatoria – “that part [of music theory] which teaches the manner of combining sounds; that is, of changing their place and figure in as many manners as possible”. Musicians of the second half of the century were so fascinated by this possibility, and the periodic style was so conducive to its methods, that between 1757 and 1813 more than a dozen musical games were published which enabled one to compose simple dance movements by a throw of the dice or some other system of random choice. These parlor games were commercial manifestations of a method of compositional manipulation that helped composers and would-be composers generate new ideas that could, by means of craft, be turned into binary, ternary, rondo, sonata, or other forms.
In the “Jupiter” Finale six themes heard during the exposition, development, and recapitulation function as they might in any brilliantly worked out sonata-form movement of a symphony (given Mozart’s propensity for “fullness of ideas”), and only in the coda is his secret plan revealed: five of these themes can be combined to create a fugato in five-part invertible counterpoint (see the table below). A sixth theme, the continuation of the opening motive, does not enter into the fugato. In the “open” form that the sixth theme takes in measures 5-8 of the exposition and recapitulation, it appears not at all in the coda, but in the “closed” form given it in measures 13-19 it brings the fugato to a scintillating conclusion by resolving the complex polyphony into a powerful homophonic gesture that prepares the closing fanfares in the brass over which are superimposed the rest of the orchestra repeating one of the other themes in unison and octaves, in a triadically rising sequence. (See table below.)
In the last decade of his life, Mozart must have read or heard some of the complaints that his music had too great a profusion of ideas or was too densely textured: the elaborate orchestration, chromaticism, contrapuntally conceived part-writing, and extraordinary number of ideas that he used to construct an instrumental movement or aria posed problems for some of his contemporaries, as being inimical to “that sense of unity, that clarity and directness of presentation” that one critic found wanting in his symphonies, although not in Haydn’s. This perceived “problem” in the symphonies was neatly expressed by a Swedish admirer of Mozart’s as his “distractions”.
What a response the coda of the Finale of K. 551 makes to accusations of incoherence caused by too many ideas of varied character! as if to say, “Yes, these ideas do belong together, if only you can see it my way”, or – to rephrase this with reference to the earlier metaphor – “Yes, these people do belong together on the same stage.”
Just before the coda of the last movement of his last symphony, Wolfgang may have thought of his father and Salzburg, and added a seventh theme to the already generous complement of six on which the rest of the movement is based. This theme can easily be missed, appearing as it does in the midst of a complex texture and just before a powerful cadence that draws attention from it. No matter whether this theme is a quotation of something remembered from long ago or merely an evocation of all such conventional themes on which Wolfgang’s early symphonies were based but which find so little place in his last five. What does matter is that this conventional theme is presented in a work that puts behind it the style in which Leopold wrote and on which he trained Wolfgang. Yet the new style was not exclusive but inclusive, for it could combine in to an artistic whole ideas of the most diverse sorts. Hence, Leopold’s galant style was not rejected but had become merely one option among many.
When Mozart wrote the Finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony, he cannot have known that it would be his valedictory essay in the genre, for he had every reason to expect to live into the nineteenth century. Yet had he known, he could hardly have found a more telling summation of the journey he had traveled in his symphonies from lighthearted entertainment and formal articulation of other, more important works to serious works of art at the center of the musical universe. The fugato in the coda of the “Jupiter” Finale presents an apotheosis in which a contrapuntal motive representing faith, and four of the movement’s other themes are presented simultaneously in strict style in many combinations and permutations, introduced and (so to speak) presided over by a conventional theme not previously heard, which, however, is not permitted to enter into the final synthesis. This perhaps gives us a glimpse of Mozart’s dream of escaping his oppressive past and giving utterance to his fondest hopes and highest aspirations for the future. That fugal writing might go beyond its stile antico association with established religion to carry such Enlightenment symbolism was clearly stated by the Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, seven years Mozart’s senior but writing in the 1790s: “The fugue is a conversation among a multitude of singers. ... The fugue is thus a musical artwork where no one accompanies, no one submits, where nobody plays a secondary role, but each a principal part.”
N.Z.
Permutations of themes in the coda of the finale of K. 551 (wind-instrument doublings omitted)
| INSTRUMENT | THEME | |||||||
| Vn. I | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4+3 | 5 | 1 | ||
| Vn. II | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4+3 | 5 | 2 | 3 | |
| va. | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4+3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| vc. | 1 | 3 | 4+3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| db. | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4+3 | 5 | |||
| (from measure:) | (369) | (373) | (377) | (381) | (385) | (389) | (393) | (397) |
After L. Ratner, ‘Ars Combinatoria: Chance and Choice in Eighteenth-Century Music’, in H. C. Robbins Landon and R. E. Chapman (eds.), Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music: A Tribute to Karl Geiringer on His Seventieth Birthday (New York, 1970), pp. 343-63, here p. 361.