Wolfgang Amadé Mozart

På skivbolaget Deccas märke L’Oiseau-Lyre gjordes den första inspelningen av Mozarts symfonier på tidstrogna instrument i slutet på 1970-talet och i början av 1980-talet. Inspelningarna gavs ut i sju volymer. Mozart-forskaren Neal Zaslaw var rådgivare till projektet och skrev även kommentarerna till inspelningarna. Dessa kommentarer har jag sammanställt och redigerat och gjort tillgängliga tillgängliga nedan. Texten finns även som ett pdf-dokument.

The Symphonies

Mozart’s earliest symphonies

The London Symphonies

Leopold Mozart realised early that he had on his hands what he later referred to as “the miracle that God permitted to be born in Salzburg”. Acting with vigour and imagination to carry out what he conceived to be a sacred trust, he virtually abandoned the furtherment of his own career in order to devote himself to his son’s education. This meant, among other things, that from January 1762 when little Wolfgang was just turning six, the Mozart family was frequently on the road, visiting the courts and musical centres of western Europe. These trips were intended to raise money, to spread the fame of the infant prodigy, and to educate Wolfgang by exposing him to the important music and musicians of the day. Thus it was that toward the end of April 1764 the Mozarts found themselves in London. By the beginning of August the eight-year-old Wolfgang had to his credit some four-dozen unpublished keyboard pieces, as well as three collections published in Paris and London containing ten sonatas for keyboard with violin. How he came to write his first symphony was recalled in the years following his death by his sister Nannerl, herself a precocious keyboard player who was thirteen at the time:

“On the 5th 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 copy 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.”

Leopold and his family moved back to London around the end of September, and Wolfgang and Nannerl resumed their round of public and private concerts and appearances at Court, while Wolfgang received instruction in singing from the Italian castrato Giovanni Manzuoli. From 6 February 1765 notices appeared in London newspapers for a “Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music” for the benefit of “Miss MOZART of Twelve and Master MOZART of Eight Years of Age; Prodigies of Nature”. (Note that Leopold misrepresented his children’s ages.) On 8 February Leopold wrote to his Salzburg friend, patron and landlord. Lorenz Hagenauer:

“On the evening of the 15th we are giving a concert, which will probably bring me in about one hundred and fifty guineas. Whether I shall still make anything after that and, if so, what, I do not know .... Oh, what a lot of things I have to do. The symphonies at the concert will be by Wolfgang Mozart. I must copy them myself, unless I want to pay one shilling for each sheet. Copying music is a very profitable business here.”

The concert was postponed until Monday the 18th, however, because a performance of Thomas Arne’s oratorio Judith had been put back from the 7th to the 15th, tying up some artists upon whose services the Mozarts had counted. A second postponement occurred for unstated reasons. From 15th February notices appeared in London newspapers reading:

'HAYMARKET, Little Theatre.
THE CONCERT for the Benefit of Miss and
Master MOZART will be certainly
performed on Thursday the 21st instant, which
will begin exactly at six,
which will not hinder the Nobility and Gentry
from meeting in other Assemblies
on the same Evening.
Tickets to be had of Mr. Mozart,
at Mr. Williamson’s in
Thrift-street, Soho, and at the said Theatre.
Tickets delivered for the 15th will be admitted.
A Box Ticket admits two into the Gallery.
To prevent Mistakes, the Ladies and Gentlemen
are desired to send their
Servants to keep Places for the Boxes, and give
their Names to the Boxkeepers
on Thursday the 21st in the Afternoon.

The notices published on the day of the concert contained an additional sentence: “All the Overtures [i.e., symphonies] will be from the Composition of these astonishing Composers, who are only eight Years old.” (An error made Wolfgang and Nannerl the same age and both composers.) Some weeks later Leopold sent Hagenauer a report of Wolfgang’s symphonic debut, which, disappointingly for us, dealt with financial rather than artistic matters:

“My concert, which I intended to give on February 15th, did not take place until the 21st, and on account of the number of entertainments (which really weary one here) was not so well attended as I had hoped. Nevertheless, I took in about a hundred and thirty guineas. As, however, the expenses connected with it amounted to over twenty-seven guineas, I have not made much more than one hundred guineas.”

The programme of 21 February 1765 has not come down to us, but extrapolating from programmes preserved from similar occasions, we can make an educated guess about the shape of the event. Concerts began and ended with symphonies, which might also have been used to complete the first half, to launch the second, or to serve both purposes. Between the symphonies there would have been performances on the harpsichord or chamber organ by Wolfgang and Nannerl, together and separately, improvised and prepared. Some of London’s favourite instrumentalists and singers would have contributed solos, as was the custom at benefit concerts. (We know which of the virtuosos active in London were associated with the Mozarts because Leopold listed their names in his travel diary). The symphonies performed on 21 February 1765 must have been from among K. 16, K. 19, and K. 19a, all of which are thought to date from this period in London. In addition, we should not rule out of consideration the symphony K. 19b, now lost and known only from its incipit in an old Breitkopf catalogue; this is also believed to have been composed by Mozart in London:

K 19b

From 11 March a series of notices appeared in London newspapers announcing the Mozarts’ final concert appearance there, on 13 May. The programme again included “all the OVERTURES of this little Boy’s own Composition”.

As early as 19 May 1763 a letter from Vienna had reported that, “... we fall into utter amazement on seeing a boy aged six at the keyboard and hearing him ... accompany at sight symphonies, arias and recitatives at the great concerts ...” That Wolfgang was not only able to direct his own symphonies from the keyboard but that he did so in London, is confirmed by one of Leopold’s newspaper announcements stating that the concert of 13 May would “chiefly be conducted by his Son”.

Mozart’s London symphonies reveal how perfectly the boy had absorbed and could imitate the most up-to-date, galant style of the period. His models were primarily the cosmopolitan group of German-speaking composers active in Paris and London: Johann Gottfried Eckard, Leontzi Honauer. Hermann Friedrich Raupach, Christian Hochbrucker and Johann Schobert in the former city; Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel in the latter. The care with which the little Mozart studied one of Abel’s symphonies is indicated by the fact that he copied it out himself. More than a century later, the existence of Mozart’s manuscript of Abel’s symphony caused it to be published in the old Complete Works as one of Mozart’s own early symphonies (the Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, formerly K. 18, now K. Anh. A51).

Though there is no evidence for the assertion that Mozart received formal instruction from J. C. Bach, the two were closely associated in London and the music of the older man influenced the younger throughout his career. J. C. Bach was one of the few musicians about whom only praise appears in the Mozart family correspondence. When Bach died, Mozart paid him tribute in the slow movement of the piano concerto, K. 414/385p, and when Abel died he did likewise in the finale of the violin sonata, K. 526 – in each case basing his memorial on a work by the man whom he wished to honour.

We do not know the make-up of the undoubtedly modest orchestra that Leopold Mozart assembled for the concerts of 21 February and 13 May 1765, but we do have information about other ensembles of the period. We have therefore based our interpretation of Mozart’s three London symphonies on a characteristic small English orchestra of the mid-1760s: the strings 6-5-2-2-1, with the necessary wind (pairs of oboes and horns) as well as harpsichord continuo and a bassoon doubling the bass line.

Symphony No. 1 in E flat major, K. 16

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante
3. Presto

The manuscript score of this work is found in the collection that was in Berlin until World War II and is now at Kraków. Unlike several other very early works which are in his father’s hand, this one is in Wolfgang’s. At the top of the first page is written Sinfonia, di Sig. Wolfgang Mozart a london 1764. The manuscript begins tidily, as if intended to be a fair copy, but extensive corrections were then entered by Mozart in a larger, cruder hand, creating the appearance of work-in-progress. This symphony has always been considered Mozart’s first, but can it really be the one described in Nannerl’s account? As we have seen, Nannerl mentioned that she copied the symphony and that it called for trumpets and kettledrums, neither condition applying here. Of course, many symphonies of the third quarter of the eighteenth century did circulate shorn of their trumpet and kettledrum parts, which were often considered optional and sometimes separately notated and absent from the score. Mozart’s usual trumpet keys were C, D, and E flat major, so this symphony could indeed have included those instruments. Furthermore, one might speculate that perhaps Nannerl did copy a score but that Wolfgang so throughly revised it that it became illegible, forcing him to make another copy – the one we now have – before continuing his revisions.

Another fact, the meaning of which is still unclear, is that the cover for the original parts to the Symphony in D major, K. 19, has notations on it, in Leopold’s hand, indicating that it had originally served first as the cover for parts to a symphony in F major (presumably K. 19a) and then for parts to one in C major (presumably the missing K. 19b) – but there is no mention of a symphony in E flat. As for giving the horn “something worthwhile to do”, that is perhaps satisfied by the passage in the andante of K. 16 where the horn plays the motive do-re-fa-mi, known to everyone from the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony. Considering all of the evidence, however, we are forced to conclude that the E flat symphony K. 16, is probably not the work described in Nannerl’s anecdote, and that Mozart’s “first” symphony must be lost.

The first movement of K. 16 opens with a three-bar fanfare in octaves, immediately contrasted with a quieter eight-bar 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 by a cadence on the dominant. At this point the wind fall silent and we hear the initial idea of the second group, which is 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 (B flat) and the relative minor (C) to reach the tonic (E flat) only at the beginning of the second group.

The andante – a binary movement in C minor – is a remarkably successful bit of atmospheric writing. The sustained wind, the mysterious triplets in the upper strings, and the stealthy duplets in the bass instruments, combine to create a scene that would have been perfectly at home in an opera of the period, perhaps to accompany a clandestine nocturnal rendezvous.

With the beginning of the presto, the sun rises and another fanfare launches us into a vigorous jig-like finale in the form of a simple rondo. The refrain of the rondo is committedly diatonic in character, but the intervening episodes are filled with delightfully piquant touches of chromaticism in the latest, most galant manner.

Those writers who have been at considerable pains to point out the great differences in length, complexity and originality between this earliest surviving symphony of Mozart and his last, may have missed a crucial point: there is little difference in length, complexity or originality between Mozart’s K. 16 and the symphonies of J. C. Bach’s opus 3 and Abel’s opus 7, which he took as his models.

Symphony No. 4 in D major, K. 19

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Presto

This symphony survives in the Bavarian State Library in Munich as a set of orchestral parts in Leopold Mozart’s hand, in the cover mentioned in the discussion of K. 16. The manuscript also contains what is described in the Mozart literature as a “keyboard reduction” of the second and third movements written in a childish hand. It is disputed whether or not this “keyboard reduction” may have been the original notation from which those movements were subsequently orchestrated, and whether or not the unidentified hand may be Nannerl’s.

The first movement opens with the kind of fanfare, used for signalling by posthorns or military trumpets, which never returns. The timbre of the movement is noticeably brighter than that of the previous symphony, due to the resonance that D major gives to the strings. The movement proceeds on its extroverted way, in a kind of march tempo, with no repeats. An especially nice touch is the unanticipated A sharp with which the development section begins.

The andante in G major 2/4 evokes a conventional, pastoral serenity. Its “yodelling” melodies and droning accompaniments were undoubtedly intended to evoke thoughts of hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes. The finale, 3/8, although marked presto as in the previous symphony, is however not quite as rapid, as the presence of demisemiquavers reveals. It is an energetic binary movement with both halves repeated. An occasional “yodelling” in the melody ties it to the previous movement.

Symphony in F major, K. 19a

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Presto

At the beginning of February 1981 Mozart lovers were surprised and delighted to read in their newspapers press dispatches from Munich describing the rediscovery of a lost Mozart symphony. A set of parts in Leopold Mozart’s hand, found among some private papers, proved to be the Symphony in F major, K. 19a, the existence of which had been known from the incipit of its first movement, which was notated on the cover of the Symphony in D, K. 19, discussed above. That K. 19a was a completed work and not a fragment had also been known, because its incipit occurred in an early-nineteenth-century Breitkopf & Härtel catalogue of manuscripts, with an indication that the work was for strings and pairs of oboes and horns. The newly-discovered parts were acquired by the Bavarian State Library, and the work has now been published. It was given its modern British première by the Academy of Ancient Music in a BBC broadcast of 2 August 1981. Thus a stroke of good fortune restores to us a work from Mozart’s London sojourn thought to be irretrievably lost.

Leopold entitled the work, Sinfonia in F/à/2 Violinj/2 Hautb:/2 Cornj/Viola/e/Basso/di Wolfgango Mozart/compositore de 9 Anj. As Mozart turned nine years old on 27 January 1765, the creation of the symphony must be placed after that date but in time for either the concert of 21 February or that of 13 May. Quite exceptionally for Mozart’s symphonies, the basso part is figured throughout – that is, numerical symbols indicating which chords to play have been provided for the continuo harpsichordist. (The score of K. 16 has a very few figures in its first movement and none in the rest; the other symphonies are unfigured.)

The first movement, allegro assai in common time, 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 but effective bit of imitative writing then leads to a cadence on the dominant and the introduction of a contrasting “second subject”. Tremolo in the upper strings accompanying a triadic, striding bass line carries us to the closing subject. The second half of the movement presents the same succession of ideas as the first, and both halves 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, the form is closer to simple binary form than to sonata form as it is generally understood.

In the second movement, andante 2/4 in B flat major, the oboes are silent. Like the first movement, this consists of two approximately equal sections, both repeated. Although the texture is simple and the ideas not unconventional, the movement exhibits a polish and élan quite remarkable in the work of a child.

The finale is a rondo, marked presto 3/8. Finales in 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, or 12/8 were extremely common at the time this work was written, and usually took on the character of an Italianate giga. Here, however, little Wolfgang must have had his eye on pleasing his British public, and the refrain of his rondo has some of the character of a highland fling, bringing the symphony to a suitably jolly conclusion.

The Dutch Symphonies

The Mozarts’ original intention up on leaving London was to return directly to Paris, where they had left some of their luggage. Not long after arriving in London, Leopold had informed Hagenauer, “... we shall not go to Holland, that I can assure her [Hagenauer’s wife]”. However, the Dutch ambassador to the Court of St James sought Leopold out in Canterbury around 25 July 1765, at the beginning of the Mozarts’ return journey. As Leopold later wrote to Hagenauer from The Hague, the ambassador “implored me at all costs to go to The Hague, as the Princess of Weilburg, sister of the Prince of Orange, was extremely anxious to see this child, about whom she had heard and read so much. In short, he and everybody talked at me so insistently and the proposal was so attractive that I had to decide to come ...” The Mozarts remained in Holland from September 1765 to April 1766.

This detour on their homeward journey resulted in performances in Ghent (5 September), Antwerp (7 or 8 September), The Hague (three concerts between 12 and 19 September, *30 September, *22 January), Amsterdam (*29 January, 26 February), the Hague (*mid-March), Haarlem (early April), Amsterdam (16 April), and Utrecht (*21 April). From newspaper announcements, archival documents and correspondence, we learn that at least five of these thirteen performances (indicated by asterisks) included performances of symphonies by Mozart. A typical newspaper announcement is the following, taken from the 'S-Gravenhaegse Vrijdagse Courant:

“By permission, Mr. MOZART, Music master to the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, will have the honour of giving, on Monday, 30 September 1765, a GRAND CONCERT in the hall of the Oude Doelen at The Hague, at which his son, only 8 years and 8 months old, and his daughter, 14 years of age, will play concertos on the harpsichord. All the overtures will be from the hand of this young composer, who, never having found his like, has had the approbation of the Courts of Vienna, Versailles and London. Music-lovers may confront him with any music at will, and he will play everything at sight. Tickets cost 3 florins per person, for a gentleman with a lady 5.50fl. Admission cards will be issued at Mr. Mozart’s present lodgings, at the corner of Burgwal, just by the City of Paris, as well as at the Oude Doelen.”

The “overtures” performed at the Dutch concerts must have been the London symphonies discussed above, and the B flat symphony, K. 22, written in The Hague in December 1765. These works received further performances on the journey homeward to Salzburg. We have more or less certain evidence of symphonies being performed in Paris (sometime between 11 May and 8 July 1766), Dijon (18 July), Lyons (13 August), Lausanne (mid-September), Zurich (7 and 9 October), Donaueschingen (between 20 and 31 October), and finally Salzburg itself where, on 8 December, just over a week after the Mozarts’ triumphal return, “at High Mass in the Cathedral for a great festivity [The Feast of the Immaculate Conception], a symphony was done which not only found great approbation from all the Court musicians, but also caused great astonishment ...”

A list of the orchestral personnel of the Schouwburg Theatre in Amsterdam survives for the year 1768. The orchestra consisted of 3 first and 3 second violinists, 2 violists (both of whom doubled on clarinet), 1 cellist, 1 bass player, 2 oboists (most likely doubling on flute), 1 bassoonist, 2 horn players, 1 harpsichordist, and a supernumerary who played kettledrums when needed – thus a total of 16 or 17 musicians. We have modelled our performance of Mozart’s two Dutch works on this ensemble.

Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, K. 22

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro molto

At the top of Leopold Mozart’s score of this work, to be found in the State Library, West Berlin, is the inscription Synfonia di Wolfg. Mozart à la Haye nel mese Decembre 1765. Despite the suggestion by several of Mozart’s biographers, it is unlikely that it was written for the installation of William V as Regent of the Netherlands, an event which occurred some three months later (see the notes for the following work). Rather, its creation was probably connected with public performances at The Hague: the Mozarts’ concert there on 30 September must have shown off the London symphonies, and its success led in turn to the concert of 22 January, for which new music would have been required.

The opening allegro in common time is without repeats. It begins with a pedal in the bass for fourteen bars, in a manner associated with the Mannheim symphonists but heard in many parts of western Europe by 1765. The contrasting second subject consists of a dialogue between the first and second violins, followed by the apparently mandatory theme in the bass instruments accompanied by tremolo in the upper strings. A brief but effective development section puts the opening idea through the keys of F minor and C minor, returning to the home key shortly after the reappearance of the second subject, with the rest of the exposition then heard essentially as before.

The G minor andante, 2/4, exhibits surprising intensity of musical gesture, with its brooding chromaticism, imitative textures, and occasional stern unisons. Abert thought that he heard foreshadowings here of the andante of Mozart’s penultimate symphony, K. 550. The movement’s form is a simple A-B-A structure with coda.

As if such intensity of feeling were “dangerous” in a work intended for polite society, the rondo finale makes amends by leaning in the other direction. No tension mars its frothy lightheartedness. Marked allegro molto, 3/8, it has the spirit of a brisk minuet, its opening bringing to mind that of the quartet “Signore, di fuori son già i suonatori” in the finale to the second act of Figaro.

In Leopold’s travel diary he noted two Amsterdam musicians named Kreusser. Johann Adam Kreusser had been leader of the Schouwburg orchestra since 1752, and his younger brother Georg Anton had, from 1759, taken lessons with him while playing in that ensemble. The latter must have heard Mozart’s B flat major symphony, K. 22 (probably as a member of the orchestra that performed it), because he paid it the compliment of stealing the opening of its first movement for his own E flat major symphony, opus 5, no. 4, published in Amsterdam in 1770.

Symphony in D major, K. 32

1. Molto Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Finale

For celebrations connected with the installation of William V, Prince of Orange, as Regent of the Netherlands, the ten-year-old Mozart composed a suite of pieces for small orchestra and obbligato harpsichord, under the title Galimathias musicum, which was performed on 11 March 1766. This was a “quodlibet”; that is, some movements were based on tunes well-known to Mozart and his Salzburg compatriots, and others on tunes familiar to his Dutch audience. The work survives in two versions: a preliminary draft in which Wolfgang’s and Leopold’s hands are found intermingled, and a fair copy apparently made by a professional copyist for a performance in Donaueschingen some months later. From the draft version it seems that Mozart originally thought of the first four movements as forming a kind of miniature introductory sinfonia, and these movements are indeed found together in a nineteenth-century manuscript labelled “sinfonia”. (In the Donaueschingen version the order of the movements has been altered, however, and the introductory sinfonia dispersed. It is the four movements of the preliminary draft that are presented here.

The opening allegro in common time is nothing more than a few happy noises – repeated notes, loud chords, rapid scale passages, and so on – here played twice. The D minor andante in binary form is strangely orchestrated, with the melody in the violas.

For a minuet, there is a G major piece in which, over a rustic drone, is heard the melody of the popular German Christmas carol, “Joseph, lieber Joseph mein” (also known to Latin words: “Resonet in laudibus”). The melody is presented in a particular version – not the one usually found in hymn books, but one known to every denizen of Salzburg because it was played in the appropriate season by a mechanical carillon in the tower of the Hohensalzburg Castle that dominates the city. (There also exists an eighteenth-century Salzburg arrangement for wind band of this version of the carol, and Leopold Mozart himself published an arrangement of it for harpsichord. Wolfgang returned to it in 1772, quoting it in the original slow movement of his symphony, K. 132.) This movement was suppressed in the Donaueschingen manuscript. The contrasting D major trio takes the form of an attractive horn duet with merely a bass-line accompaniment.

The 2/4 allegro finale offers us another bright noise, to close as we began. It is a tiny, two-part movement, with lively, al fresco horn duets at the beginning of the second section.

The Italian Symphonies

Mozart’s youth in Salzburg was punctuated by three journeys to Italy, which lasted from 13 December 1769 to 28 March 1771, 13 August 1771 to 15 December 1771, and 24 October 1772 to 13 March 1773. Thus during the period from just before Mozart’s fourteenth birthday until shortly after his seventeenth, he spent a total of about twenty-two months in the land that many of his contemporaries considered the fount of modern music. In so doing, Mozart and his father were following a well-beaten path, for generations of German composers had served apprenticeships in Italy, including Handel, J. C. Bach, Hasse and Gluck. The primary goal of such journeys was usually mastery of Italian opera, but training in other musical genres was not neglected. This was the situation discussed in an essay of 1770 by Nicolas Etienne Framery entitled “Some Reflexions upon Modern Music”, from which the following fragments are taken:

“While the French and the Italians were disputing which of them possessed music, the Germans learned it, going to Italy for that purpose ... The German artists filled the public conservatories of Naples ... They had all the raw materials required of great musicians; they lacked only the discipline to organise those materials, and they had no trouble acquiring that ... Upon leaving the schools, the Italian pupils remain in their own country ... The Germans, on the contrary, return to their country. They have carefully preserved their prodigious accumulation of [musical] science. They have tested the very fortunate use of wind instruments of which their nation makes much use, and they have known how to draw the most from them … They have realised that all expression does not suit vocal melody; that there are a thousand nuances which the orchestra is much more fit to render [than the voice]. They have tried, they have succeeded, and have raised themselves far above their masters, who now rush to imitate them ...”

From the letters that Mozart and his father wrote home during these travels (for Mozart’s mother and sister remained in Salzburg), we learn that they had need of symphonies for public and private music-making, that they brought some symphonies with them from Salzburg, and that Wolfgang composed others while in Italy.

The first such concert – which took place in Verona on Friday, 5 January 1770, in the Teatrino della Accademia Filarmonica – was probably typical of many of them. Leopold described the occasion in a letter to his wife:

“In all my life I have never seen anything more beautiful of its kind. ... It is not a theatre, but a hall built with boxes like an opera house. Where the stage ought to be, there is a raised platform for the orchestra and behind the orchestra another gallery built with boxes for the audience. The crowds, the general shouting, clapping, noisy enthusiasm and cries of ‘Bravo!’ and, in a word, the admiration displayed by the listeners. I cannot adequately describe to you.”

A newspaper account confirms the enthusiasm with which Wolfgang was received, mentioning “a most beautiful introductory symphony of his own composition, which deserved all its applause”. A similar programme given in Mantua at the Teatro Scientifico on 16 January 1770, to acclaim equal to that received in Verona, demonstrates the characteristic function usually assigned symphonies in concerts of the second half of the 18th-century, that of “framing” the event:

1. First and second movements of a symphony by Mozart
2. Harpsichord concerto played at sight by Mozart
3. Aria sung by the tenor Uttini
4. Harpsichord sonata played at sight and ornamented by Mozart, and then repeated in a different key
5. Violin concerto by a local virtuoso
6. Aria improvised by Mozart upon a poem handed him on the spot, sung by him to his own harpsichord accompaniment
7. Two-movement harpsichord sonata improvised by Mozart on two themes given him on the spot by the concertmaster; at the end the two themes were “elegantly” combined
8. Aria sung by the soprano Angiola Galliani
9. Oboe concerto by a local virtuoso
10. Harpsichord fugue improvised by Mozart on a theme given him on the spot
11. Symphony accompanied by Mozart on the harpsichord from a first violin part given him on the spot
12. Duet by two professional musicians
13. Trio “by a famous composer” in which Mozart performed at sight the first violin part, ornamenting it
14. Finale of the opening symphony.

As for his fellow musicians in Mantua, Wolfgang wrote in a letter, “The orchestra was not bad”. The only drawback to these otherwise brilliant events was explained by Leopold to his wife:

“... neither this concert in Mantua nor the one in Verona were given for money, for everybody goes in free; in Verona this privilege belongs only to the nobles who alone keep up these concerts; but in Mantua the nobles, the military class and the eminent citizens may all attend them, as they are subsidised by Her Majesty the Empress. You will easily understand that we shall not become rich in Italy ...”

The symphonies played at Verona and Mantua must have been brought from Salzburg. The first hint of symphonies composed in Italy is found in Wolfgang’s letter of 25 April 1770, written from Rome to his sister: “When I have finished this letter I shall finish a symphony which I have begun ... A symphony is being copied (father is the copyist, for we do not wish to give it out to be copied, as it would be stolen).” On 4 August, writing from Bologna in another letter to his sister, Mozart remarked, “In the meantime I have composed 4 Italian symphonies ...” This expression “Italian symphonies” has usually been taken to mean three-movement symphonies, that is to say, symphonies without the minuet and trio characteristic of the so-called Viennese symphony of the period. Hence it has frequently been asserted, concerning those of Mozart’s symphonies thought to originate in Italy which do have minuets, that the latter must have been added later for use in Salzburg. But Mozart wrote to his sister of his desire to introduce to Italy minuets in the German manner because, according to him, Italian minuets “last nearly as long as an entire symphony” and “have many notes, a slow tempo, and are many bars long”. By “Italian symphonies”, therefore, Mozart may simply have meant symphonies written in and for Italy, without reference to the presence or absence of minuets.

Two symphonies (K. 73l/81 and 73q/84) exist in sets of non-autograph parts in Vienna with indications of their provenance. The parts for the former symphony are labelled in Roma 25. April 1770. The parts for the latter bear the inscription at the top In Milano, il Carnovale 1770, but at the bottom this is contradicted by another inscription: Del Sig[no]re Cavaliero Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart à Bologna, nel mese di Luglio 1770. Nevertheless, the two symphonies written in Rome in April are probably K. 73l/81 and 73q/84, and the four symphonies mentioned in Bologna in August most likely include those two works plus others, the identity of which is unclear.

For five other symphonies which may date from Mozart’s Italian journeys, neither autographs nor other “authentic” sources survive (K. 73m/97, 73n/95, 74g/Anh. C11.03/Anh. 216, 75 and 111b/96.) These have been given their chronological positions in the Köchel Catalogue on imprecise stylistic grounds and, in fact, cannot even be proven to be by Mozart. Problems of attribution are severe among the symphonies of this period. Four symphonies have attributions to both Leopold and Wolfgang in various sources (K. 73l/81, 73m/97, 73n/95, and 73q/84), and the last of these is attributed also to Dittersdorf.

Of Mozart’s eleven Italian symphonies, eight are in D major. A clue as to why this is so may be contained in a cryptic remark Mozart made to his father in 1782 about his Haffner symphony: “I have composed my symphony in D major, because you prefer that key.” This may be because D major is simultaneously a brilliant yet easy key for string players, which, unlike the other “easy” keys (G and A major) is also one of the trumpet keys, permitting the addition of those instruments whenever they were available. It remains only to add that Mozart’s D major symphonies of the 1770s seem more conventional and less personal in character than several of those he wrote in other keys.

The most famous Italian orchestras in the early 1770s were those of the opera houses of Turin, Milan and Naples. We have pictures of the Turin orchestra in performance, as well as seating diagrams of the Turin and Naples orchestras. The players sat facing one another in long rows, half toward the audience and half toward the stage. Leopold wrote in December 1770 that the Milan orchestra consisted of 28 violins, 6 violas, 2 cellos, 6 double basses, 2 flutes who doubled on oboe, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, kettledrums, and 2 harpsichords. How such orchestras rearranged themselves when performing concerts rather than operas was described by Galeazzi (1791):

“The best placement for good effect is to arrange the players in the middle of the hall with the audience all around them; but the visual impression is more satisfying if you arrange them to one side, against one of the walls of the drawing-room (supposing a rectangular-shaped area), because the audience thus enjoys the entire orchestra from the front. The violins are then placed in two rows, one opposite the other so that the firsts are looking at the seconds ... With regard to the bass-line instruments, if there are only two, place them near the harpsichord (if there is one) in such a way that the violoncello remains near the leader of the first violins and the double bass on the opposite side, and between them the maestro or harpsichordist; but if there are more bass-line instruments, and if they are played by good professional musicians, place them at the foot – that is, at the other extremity – of the orchestra, otherwise you should place them as near to the firsts as you possibly can. The violas are always best near the second violins, with whom they must often unite in thirds, in sixths, etc., and the oboes are best alongside the firsts. The brass can then be placed not far from the leader. In this disposition all the heads of sections – namely, the leader, the principal second violin, the principal cello, the maestro, the singers, etc. – are neighbours, by which means perfect ensemble cannot but result.”

For smaller orchestras, a semi-circular arrangement of the players was also employed. A passe-partout title page used by the Florentine publisher Giovanni Chiari in the 1780s shows this particular orchestral layout (see illustration). The orchestra is rehearsing either on a stage with sets representing a formal garden, or in an actual garden with topiary trees. On the left, from front to back, we see 2 horns, 4 first violins, the first oboe, and the first viola; on the right 2 trumpets (showing plainly why Mozart designated them “trombe lunghe” in his scores), 4 second violins, the second oboe, and the second viola. In the centre at the back we see the maestro al cembalo, surrounded by a cello, a double bass and a singer of each sex. Another man seems to be directing the rehearsal, while fashionably attired ladies and gentlemen stroll, chat or listen, a dog barks and someone sweeps up.

For these performances we have applied Galeazzi’s instructions to the personnel lists of Turin, Milan and Naples for the large-scale symphonies (those with trumpets and kettledrums), and followed the Chiari engraving for the small-scale ones (those without these festive instruments). The large-scale orchestra has the strings at 12-12-4-2-6, five bassoons (reinforcing the bass line), the necessary wind, and two harpsichords improvising a continuo. The great strength of the violins and double basses and the relative weakness of the violas and cellos creates a sound quite distinct from that of the London, Paris, Salzburg, or Vienna orchestras, also recreated in this series of recordings. The predominance of the double basses over the cellos creates an organ-like sonority that makes the acoustic of a theatre or hall resemble that of a cathedral. The timbre is more “archaic”, that is, it tends toward the Baroque ideal and away from the Classical. The strong contingent of bassoons compensates for the small number of cellos and etches the details of the bass line with scintillating clarity.

For the small scale orchestra, the strings are 6-5-2-2-1 (following further advice from Galeazzi about proper string balance), with one bassoon, the necessary wind and one harpsichord. The layout in the Chiari engraving emphasises a special feature of the orchestration of Mozart’s Italian symphonies: the first oboe often doubles the violin in unison or the first viola in octaves, while, in a similar fashion, the second oboe often doubles the second violin or the second viola.

Symphony in D major, K. 73l [K. 81]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro molto

As we have, seen, a manuscript copy of this work dated Rome, 25 April 1770 attributes it to Wolfgang, but in a Breitkopf thematic catalogue published in 1775 it is listed as a work of Leopold’s. The symphony – bright, superficial and conventional – has generally been accepted, however, as being by Wolfgang. The orchestra is small: pairs of oboes and horns, strings, and harpsichord continuo.

The first movement opens with a rising D major arpeggio, an idea that is turned upside down for the opening of the finale. It continues as a compactly organised sonata form without repeats, and with a literal recapitulation. The tiny “development” section of twelve bars could perhaps more aptly be called a transition.

The second movement, a G major andante in 2/4, features a dialogue between the first and second violins, the conversation soon broadening to include the pair of oboes. In this serene binary movement with both halves repeated Wyzewa and Saint-Foix detected the influence of the Milanese composer Giovanni Battista Sammertini.

The 3/8 finale, marked allegro molto, is the sort of movement known as a “chasse” or “caccia” – that is, a jig filled with hunting-horn calls. This “hunt” would seem to be one contemplated from the comfort of the drawing room, however, far from the mud and commotion of the actual event. The form is a binary arrangement as described for the first movement of K. 19a.

Symphony in D major, K. 73m [K. 97]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Presto

This work survives in a single undated, non-autograph manuscript in the archive of Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig. Its provenance is therefore completely unknown. In recent editions of the Köchel catalogue it has been assigned to Rome, April 1770, on largely illogical grounds. It has nonetheless been included here among Mozart’s Italian symphonies, for lack of a better hypothesis.

The first movement is an Italian overture in style and spirit, in sonata form with no repeated sections. The trumpets add to the festivity, as well as helping to outline the movement’s structure. A neatly worked-out, brief development section travels through G major, E minor and B minor, before re-establishing the home key.

The andante, a binary movement in G major 2/4, with both halves repeated, exhibits an attractive mock-naïveté. The minuet that follows adheres to Mozart’s preference (documented above) for brevity. In fact, the spirit of the movement is more of the ballroom than the symphony. The G major trio omits the wind and, by its chamber-music character, provides an excellent foil to the pomp of the minuet proper.

The finale is a gem. It is a jig-like movement (presto, 3/8) in sonata form, with a brief but effective development section. Furthermore, the movement contains an uncanny adumbration of a passage in the first movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, not only in the theme itself but in the way in which it is immediately repeated with a turn to the minor. Beethoven cannot have known this work, so we can only speculate about coincidence or an as-yet-undiscovered common model.

Symphony in D major, K. 73n [K. 95]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Presto

The source for this work is identical to that of the previous one, and doubts about its provenance are equally severe. It has been given the same place and date as the previous symphony on similarly unsatisfactory grounds, and is included here for the same reason.

The first allegro, alla breve, opens with an idea more or less the same as that which launches the symphonies K. 73m/97 and 74. It is in sonata form without repeats. The movement is an essay in orchestral “noises” put together to form a coherent whole. That is, there are no memorable, cantabile melodies, but rather a succession of idiomatic instrumental devices, including repeated notes, scales, fanfares, turns, arpeggios, sudden dynamic changes, and so on. Descriptions and explanations of musical form tend to fall back on linguistic analogies. In this case, however, such an analogy would lead us into the absurd position of having to imagine meaningful prose composed of articles, conjunctions and prepositions! Responding to this paradox, Schultz refers to such movements as “purely decorative”. Leopold Mozart once called a symphony of J. Stamitz in this vein “nothing but noise”. The eighteenth-century aesthetician Lacépède thought that, therefore, symphony movements needed programmes to make sense of otherwise “meaningless” musical events. These reactions, and the failure of the linguistic analogy, point to a weakness of aesthetic theory in dealing with an art of abstract sounds unsupported by association with concrete verbal ideas. (A parallel may be drawn with the difficulties surrounding the acceptance of non-representational painting in the twentieth century.)

The first movement comes to a halt on a D major chord with an added seventh, leading directly into the G major 3/4 andante. Whatever lyricism may have been lacking in the previous movement is more than atoned for in its songful successor. The trumpets and kettledrums drop out and the oboes are replaced by flutes, which lend a pensive, pastoral hue to this sweet-sounding interlude.

The oboes and trumpets return for the boisterous minuet, in which Mozart presents yet another example of concision for the instruction of his longer-winded Italian colleagues. The trio in D minor omits the trumpets, and with its quiet intimacy nicely sets off the return of the minuet. The allegro 2/4 finale returns us to the sonata form and happy noises of the opening movement. The two movements are even linked by the same opening gesture.

Symphony No. 11 in D major, K. 73q [K. 84]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro

This symphony survives in manuscripts in Vienna (attributed to Wolfgang), Berlin (attributed to Leopold), and Prague (attributed to Dittersdorf). A close stylistic analysis of the work by LaRue has shown that Wolfgang is the most likely of the three to have been the composer. As has already been mentioned, the Vienna manuscript bears two inscriptions: In Milani, il Carnovale 1770 and Del Sig[no]re Cavaliero Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart à Bologna, nel mese di Luglio 1770. These apparently contradictory bits of information may perhaps be resolved in the following manner: in 1770 Carnival lasted from 6 January until 27 February, and the Mozarts were in Milan from 23 January to 15 March, and in Bologna from 20 July to 13 October. Hence, if the inscriptions are to be trusted, this symphony may well have been drafted in Milan in January or February and have received its final revision in Bologna in July.

The opening allegro in common time exhibit a fully-fledged sonata form without repeated sections. There are, well differentiated, an opening group of ideas, a second group and a closing group, a brief development section of eleven bars, and a full recapitulation.

The 3/8 andante in A major has a Gluck-like ambience. It is also in sonata form but without a development section. The finale, allegro 2/4, opens with a fanfare borrowed from the first movement. This idea is withheld during the rest of the exposition, development and recapitulation, to serve as coda. Most of the movement, the fanfare aside, is filled with a constant flow of triplets, which tum it into a kind of jig. One passage in particular reminds us of Figaro’s prattling in Rossini’s Barber of Seville.

Symphony No. 10 in G major, K. 74

1. Allegro – andante
2. Rondo

The autograph of this symphony is among those formerly in Berlin and now at Kraków. It 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”.

This work is written in Italian overture style, that is, the boisterous first movement is in sonata form without repeats, and flows into the finely-wrought second movement without a halt – in this case, without even a new tempo indication or double barline. At this juncture the quavers in the oboes continue unperturbed as the metre shifts from common time to 3/8 and the key from G major to C major.

The finale is marked simply Rondeau, and the French spelling gives a hint of the character of its refrain, which is that of a French contredanse. Especially noteworthy in this movement is the “exotic” episode in G minor, which is perhaps the earliest manifestation of Mozart’s interest in “Turkish” music – an interest exhibited in portions of such pieces as the ballet music for Lucio Silla, K. 135, the violin concerto, K. 219, the piano sonata, K. 300i/331, The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384, and the aria, “Ich möchte wohl der Kaiser sein”, K. 539. These pieces have nothing to do with true Turkish music, but represent rather a style found occasionally in the music of Michael and Joseph Haydn, Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, Dittersdorf, Gluck, and other middle European composers of the period. The origins of this style are as follows: “exotic” elements were drawn from the indigenous music of the region bordering the Ottoman Empire, where the Hungarian peasants and gypsies imitated or parodied the music of their Moslem neighbours. The “exotic” elements often included a leaping melody, a static bass with reiterated notes, occasional chromatic touches in the melody, a minor key, profuse ornamentation in the form of grace notes, trills and turns, and a marchlike tempo in 2/4 time. In parts of Hungary the peasants referred to this style of music as “Törökos”, which means precisely the same as Mozart’s “alla turca”, that is, “in the Turkish mariner”.

Symphony in D major, K. 74a [K. 87]

1. Allegro
2. Andante grazioso
3. Presto

This work originated as the overture for Mozart’s opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto. The opera was begun in September 1770. Wolfgang composed the recitatives first, then turned to the arias, and probably wrote the overture last. The opera had its first general rehearsal on 17 December and its première on 26 December, to general approbation. Wolfgang presided over the first three performances at the harpsichord, as was then the custom and required by his contract. The overture circulated widely in the eighteenth century as a concert symphony.

The autograph of the opera is lost, and only sketches of a few numbers survive in Mozart’s hand. In the extant sources for the opera, the orchestra employed in the overture calls for pairs of flutes, oboes and horns, and strings. Examination of the rest of the opera reveals, however, that the orchestra also includes pairs of trumpets and bassoons – instruments that would hardly have been silent during the festive overture. (Leopold Mozart, it will be recalled, reported the presence of trumpets and bassoons in the Milan orchestra.) Due to these circumstances, we have followed a set of eighteenth century manuscript parts in Donaueschingen for the overture. These provide for bassoons throughout, doubling the bass line, and trumpets in the first and last movements. Originally there must have been a part for kettledrums, but as that has been lost, we have had to improvise one.

The libretto of Mitridate, re di Ponto was the work of Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi, based on Racine’s Mithridate. A brief synopsis of its plot may serve to indicate the atmosphere that Mozart attempted to evoke in writing this symphony.

Mithridates VI Eupator (111-63 B.C.) had conquered Cappadocia and other provinces beyond the Bosphorus as far as the Crimea. In the third Mithridatian War, however, he was defeated by the Romans under Sulla and Pompey and fled to his kingdom of Pontus by the Bosphorus where, believing himself to have been betrayed by his sons and wife, he killed himself by falling on his sword, leaving open the way for a happy ending of the opera – at least for the other characters!

Symphony in D major, K. 111, 111a [K. 120]

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante grazioso
3. Presto

This symphony also began its life as an overture, in this case to the “theatrical serenade” Ascanio in Alba, K. 111. Ascanio was written for the celebrations surrounding the wedding of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and the Princess Maria Ricciarda Beatrice of Modena. Mozart began to compose it at the end of August, 1771, and the work was completed by 23 September. Its first performance in Milan on 17 October was a success, apparently eclipsing a new opera by Hasse that was also part of the festivities. That the great choreographer Noverre created the ballets to Ascanio undoubtedly added to its éclat.

In this instance Wolfgang went against his usual custom and composed the overture first. The reason for this was probably that he had decided to integrate the end of his overture into the beginning of the serenade. Thus, following the allegro movement, the andante served as a ballet, to be danced by “the Graces”. The libretto explains the setting portrayed by Mozart’s andante:

“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 skills 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 [the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus?] from whom, according to legend, the City of Alba derived its name. A delicious, smiling countryside – dotted with cottages and encircled with 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 3/4 movement with choruses of Spirits and Graces singing and dancing, thus anticipating (in a modest way) Beethoven’s innovation in his Ninth Symphony. When Mozart decided, at an unknown date, to turn the overture into a concert symphony, he kept the first two movements and replaced the choral movement with a brief, extrovert giga in the form A-B-A-Coda. The autographs of both Ascanio and the new finale are in the West Berlin Library.

Symphony in C major, K. 111b [K. 96]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro molto

Here we have another rootless symphony. Its assignment in the Köchel catalogue to Milan at the end of October or beginning of November 1771 is largely arbitrary, as the editors of the most recent edition of that venerable catalogue admit.

With a bright tantivy, of a sort that opens many an eighteenth-century orchestral work, the first movement is off and running. And run it does, with tremolo and scales, through a concise ternary form to a rather predictable conclusion.

The andante in C minor, 6/8, is a siciliano in an archaic style that recalls such late-Baroque works as the Pastoral Symphony and “How beautiful are the feet” in Handel’s Messiah, and certain movements in violin sonatas of Locatelli, Tartini, Nardini and Vivaldi. This is an exceptionally profound slow movement for a symphony of c 1771 (if indeed that is its date), but the stylistic disparity between its neo-Baroque intensity and the conventional modernity of the movements surrounding it is difficult to explain.

The minuet and trio and the finale return to the galant extroversion of the first movement. The finale, fashioned from a kind of quick step, rounds off the work with infectious exuberance.

Symphony No. 13 in F major, K. 112

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro molto

The autograph of this work is in New York, owned by the Heinemann Foundation. It is a clearly-written fair copy inscribed Sinfonia del Sig[no]re Cavaliere Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart à Milano 2 di Novemb. 1771 (the first word in Wolfgang’s hand, the remainder in Leopold’s). It may have had its first performance at an orchestral concert that Leopold and Wolfgang gave on 22 or 23 November at the residence of Albert Michael von Mayr, who was keeper of the privy purse to Archduke Ferdinand, son of Empress Maria Theresa and Governor of Lombardy.

That this 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. From the beautifully proportioned sonata form of the first movement, through the careful part-writing of the andante (for strings alone) to the energetic giga rondo-finale, a spirit of confidence and solid workmanship seems to emanate from this symphony, fruits perhaps garnered from the success of Ascanio the previous month.

The minuet shows sign of other origins, however. In this movement the violas double the bass line, instead of having an independent part to play, as is customary in Mozart’s symphonic minuets. Because Mozart’s ball-room minuets and contredanses were customarily composed without viola parts, this unusual feature of the minuet of K. 112 may mean that it fulfilled another function before being pressed into service in this symphony. The trio (for strings alone) may be new, however, as there the violas do carry an independent voice.

Mozart and the symphonic traditions of his time

Salzburg and its Orchestra

In the year 1757 there appeared in a Berlin music magazine an anonymous “Report on the Present State of the Musical Establishment at the Court of His Serene Highness the Archbishop of Salzburg”. This report lists by name and function those serving the archbishop in musical capacities, with biographies of the more important personages and brief notes on others who had attained special distinction. It begins with the Kapellmeister Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702-62), the Vice-Kapellmeister Giuseppe Francesco Lolli (1701-78), and the three court composers: Caspar Cristelli (dates unknown), Leopold Mozart (1719-87) and Ferdinand Siedl (dates unknown). Concerning Leopold Mozart we read:

“Herr Leopold Mozart from the Imperial City of Augsburg. First violinist and leader of the orchestra. He composes both church and chamber music. He was born on the 14th of November, 1719, and soon after completing his studies in philosophy and law entered the princely service in the year 1743. He has made himself known in every branch of composition, without, however, issuing anything in print except for 6 Sonatas à 3 that he himself engraved in the year 1740 (principally in order to gain experience in the art of engraving). In July 1756 he published his Violinschule.

Among the compositions by Herr Mozart which have become known in manuscript, numerous contrapuntal and church pieces are especially noteworthy; moreover a large number of symphonies, some only à 4, but some with all the generally current instruments; likewise more than thirty grand serenades, in which are introduced solos for various instruments. Apart from these he has composed many concertos, especially for transverse flute, oboe, bassoon, horn, trumpet, etc., countless trios and divertimentos for divers instruments; also twelve oratorios and a host of theatre pieces, even mime plays. and especially music for certain special occasions, such as a military piece with trumpets, kettledrums, side drums and fifes, together with the ordinary instruments; a Turkish piece; a piece with a steel xylophone; and music for a sleigh-ride with five sleigh-bells; not to mention marches, so-called notturnos, many hundreds of minuets, opera dances and suchlike smaller pieces ...

The three court composers play their instruments in the church as well as in the chamber, and, in rotation with the Kapellmeister, have each the direction of the Court Music for a week at a time. All the musical arrangements depend solely upon whoever is in charge each week, as he, at his pleasure, can perform his own or other persons’ pieces.”

This report was in fact written by Leopold, who gives himself away by immodestly making his own biography more than twice as long as (and more personal than) any of the others. His anonymity permitted him this self-indulgence, as well as the possibility of criticising one of his violinist colleagues for preferring to play technically difficult pieces while possessing a weak tone. At the time of this report, Leopold’s prospects must have seemed bright indeed: he was well thought of at the Salzburg Court and could reasonably hope for eventual promotion to Kapellmeister. His Violin Method was already receiving favourable critical notice. His devoted wife, after three tragic infant deaths, had presented him with two healthy children, Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia (“Nannerl”), soon to turn six, and Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, just turned one. But Leopold’s old age was to be a bitter one: for his wife died on a futile journey to find a post for Wolfgang, his son never achieved a suitable post and married (in Leopold’s eyes) beneath his station, and he himself never advanced beyond the rank of Vice-Kapellmeister, a fate that he brought down on his own head by virtually abandoning his own career in order to promote that of his extraordinary son.

Like Leopold’s hopes, the Salzburg orchestra steadily declined, not so much in size as in discipline and morale. By the late 1770s, sloppy playing, slovenly dress, absenteeism and drunkenness had become frequent problems. At the beginning of Wolfgang’s musical consciousness, however, the Salzburg orchestra was well run and indeed large for its time. Counting apprentices and choir boys, Leopold’s report chronicled some 46 instrumentalists and 56 singers, leaving aside an organ builder, a string-instrument maker, three organ blowers, and five vacant positions. At first examination the string section would appear to have consisted of only 16 players (5-5-2-2-2). This is deceptive, however, because many of the woodwind players also played string instruments and, as Leopold added at the end of his report. “There is not a trumpeter or kettledrummer in the princely service who does not play the violin well, who then all appear when large-scale music is performed at Court and play second violin or viola, which it is in the purview of whoever is in charge of the weekly direction to order.” The court musicians were also often supplemented by various amateur performers. Thus a string section of 10-10-4-6-3 or larger could be assembled without great difficulty. For the ordinary daily rounds of music-making, however, a system of rotation provided the necessary players without everyone having to play on any given day.

We have reconstituted the orchestra for these recordings as it may have been heard at festive occasions during the year: the strings 9-8-4-3-2, and the necessary woodwind, brass, kettledrums and harpsichord, with three bassoons doubling the bass line whenever obbligato parts for them are lacking.

The Symphonies of 1766-72

The eleven symphonies presented here, written between the ages of 10 years 2 months and 16 years 4 months, may be divided into four categories: three overtures intended in the first instance for vocal works but later used as independent concert pieces (K. 35, 38, 74c); five Germanic concert symphonies with minuets and (usually but not always) with repeated sections in all movements, (K. 73, 75, 75b, 114, 124); two Italianate overture-symphonies, without minuets, (K. 128, 129); and one five-movement symphony drawn from an eight-movement serenade (K. 62a). None of these works were published in the 18th century.

Chronologically the production of these works falls into four periods of residence in Salzburg, in between those trips on which Leopold took Wolfgang both to educate him and to exploit his status as child prodigy. This may be represented as follows:

Journey to Mannheim – Paris – London – The Hague
Stay in Salzburg, 29 or 30 November 1766-11 September 1767: K. 35, 38
Journey to Vienna
Stay in Salzburg, 5 January 1769-13 December 1769: K. 62a, 73
Journey to Italy
Stay in Salzburg, 28 March 1771-13 August 1771: K. 74c, 75, 75b
Journey to Italy
Stay in Salzburg, 15 December 1771-24 October 1772: K. 114, 124, 128, 129 [as well as K. 130, 132, 133, 134]
Journey to Italy.

Added to the third of these four Salzburg stays should perhaps also be the Symphony in B flat, K. Anh. C11.03 [K. Anh. 216/74g].

Furthermore, three lost symphonies known only by their incipits (K. 66c [K. Anh. 215], 66d [Anh. 217], 66e [Anh. 218]) may belong to the second or third of these periods.

In February 1772, Leopold Mozart wrote to the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf offering him various of his son’s works, including symphonies. It is usually stated that, as far as symphonies are concerned, nothing came of Leopold’s offer, because the Leipzig publisher never printed any of Wolfgang’s symphonies during the composer’s lifetime. This constitutes a serious misunderstanding. Breitkopf printed music only by means of moveable type, a method suited primarily to keyboard music, songs, and other items in short score. For the “publication” of sets of parts, the customary methods were either engraving or hand copying, and in fact the bulk of Breitkopf’s business consisted of manuscript copies. This therefore must have been what Leopold had in mind, and in the old Breitkopf archives there was indeed found a collection of parts for ten of Wolfgang’s symphonies from the period 1767-73.

Some six years later Leopold wrote to Wolfgang, rather unfairly and in the light of his own dealings with Breitkopf, I think, hypocritically:

“It is better that whatever does you no honour, should not be given to the public. That is the reason why I have not given any of your symphonies to be copied, because I suspect that when you are older and have more insight, you will be glad that no one has got hold of them, though at the time you composed them you were quite pleased with them. One gradually becomes more and more fastidious.”

Symphony in C major, K. 35

Sinfonia: Allegro

In late 1766 and early 1767 Mozart set Part 1 of a Lenten oratorio, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten und fürnenmsten Gebots (“The Obligation of the First and Foremost Commandment”). The second and third parts of this oratorio – the text of which is by the Salzburg Burgomaster Ignaz Anton Weiser (1701-85) – were set by Michael Haydn and Anton Adlgasser respectively. Mozart’s portion received its première in the Knights’ Hall of the archi episcopal palace on 12 March, with a second performance on 2 April. Haydn’s portion was performed on 19 March, and Adlgasser’s probably on 26 March. According to the libretto for Part 1, “The action takes place in a pleasant landscape with a garden and a small wood”, and there are stage directions throughout. Nonetheless, it is likely that the “theatre of the mind” was intended rather than the stage. The protagonists of this frigid allegory are: The Spirit of Christianity, The World Spirit, Divine Mercy, and Divine Justice. In Part 2 “A Lukewarm and Afterwards Ardent Christian” is added to the cast of characters. Mozart’s setting consists of seven arias and a concluding terzetto, interspersed with recitatives. This is prefaced by an orchestral movement headed Sinfonia. Allegro, which is the symphony presented here.

From its character this energetic common-time allegro, with its Italianate opening melody in sixths accompanied by a repeated-note bass line, could just as well have served to launch an opera. Carl Ferdinand Pohl, who in 1864 rediscovered the lost autograph manuscript of Die Schuldigkeit in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (where it is still located), characterised the “Sinfonia” as “simple and natural in structure”. It is in binary form, with both halves repeated. The opening section rapidly comes to rest on the dominant, and a contrasting “sigh” motive is heard several times. (This motive is featured prominently in the second half of the movement, in thirds, sixths, and octaves; upside down and rightside up.) A brief return of the opening idea leads to a sonorous closing section, with tremolo in the violins and the melodic interest transferred to the bass. The second half begins as did the first but in the dominant key. No new ideas are introduced; rather the ideas of the first half are skillfully manipulated through several keys and changes of orchestration, before the return of the home key and the opening idea a mere fifteen bars from the end. The entire small-scale movement is well wrought and in the period’s most modern, galant vein.

Symphony in D major, K. 38

Intrada: Allegro

In Leopold Mozart’s catalogue of his son’s childhood works, one reads the entry: “Apollo and Hyacinth, music to a Latin comedy for Salzburg University, with five singing personae. The original score had 162 pages. Written in [Wolfgang’s] eleventh year 1767.” Salzburg University was run by the Benedictines, who, in their schools, had long had the custom of mounting plays, operas and even ballets on morally edifying themes. In this instance, a spoken tragedy was being staged, and Mozart’s “opera” was, in the 18th-century manner, divided into three portions, which were used as a prologue and as intermezzos between the acts of the tragedy.

Apollo and Hyacinth was performed by students and teachers in the Great Hall of the University on 13 May. Although it seems to have been well received, there is no record of further performances. The libretto, in Latin and in the style of the Italian opera librettos of the day, relates the story found in Ovid and elsewhere of Apollo’s accidental slaying of the youth Hyacinth, whose blood was transformed into the flower that bears his name. The work’s overture, or Intrada as Mozart labelled it, is listed as an independent “Sinfonia” in an early 19th-century Breitkopf & Härtel manuscript catalogue.

The single-movement work, in 3/4 and marked allegro, is even briefer than the previous symphony. Like that work this too is in binary form, but with only the first half repeated. Saint-Foix remarks upon the work’s “symphonic” character. This may refer to the near total absence of cantabile melody in this “Sinfonia”, with its scales, arpeggios, syncopations, repeated notes and fanfares. All in all, a happy noise for a festive occasion.

Apollo and Hyacinth has one further symphonic connection: a duet from it (No. 8, “Natus cadit”) was itself transformed by Mozart into the slow movement of the Symphony in F major, K. 43.

Symphony in D major, K. 62a [K. 100]

1. Serenata: Allegro
2. Menuetto & Trio
3. Andante
4. Menuetto & Trio
5. Allegro

This symphony was extracted from an orchestral serenade – a logical procedure given that the occasions for serenades and for symphonies were quite different, and that serenades were made up of interlarded symphony and concerto movements prefaced by a march. In the present case the interpenetration of the constituent genres is as follows:

1. Marche: Maestoso [K. 62]
2. Allegro: Serenata
3. Andante
4. Menuetto
5. Allegro
6. Menuetto
7. Andante
8. Menuetto
9. Allegro

Symphonic movements: 2 Allegro; 6 Menuetto; 7 Andante; 8 Menuetto; 9 Allegro
Movements of a sinfonia concetante for oboe and horn: 3 Andante; 4 Menuetto; 5 Allegro

The undated autograph manuscript of the serenade is found among an important group of manuscripts that was in Berlin until World War II and is now in Kraków. The work is lacking in Leopold’s 1768 catalogue of his son’s works and mentioned by Wolfgang himself in a letter of August 1770, so these two documents provide us with termini a quo and ad quem. The large scale of the piece and the presence of trumpets and kettledrums suggest that it was intended for a celebration at court, and not (as is usually stated) as a “Finalmusik” for the end of the summer term at Salzburg University.

This is one of five Mozart serenades that exist in symphony versions. For three of the five there are extant sets of orchestral parts of the symphony version at least partially in Leopold’s or Wolfgang’s hand, making clear that they themselves were involved in the redaction. In the remaining two cases (including the one at hand) we have only copyists’ manuscripts, but there seems every reason to believe (by analogy with the other three) that these too stem from originals coming from Mozart or his immediate circle. The symphony version of K. 62a was perhaps for use in Salzburg, but may also have been intended for Mozart’s first trip to Italy, begun on 13 December 1769. It was the Mozarts’ custom when travelling to give concerts in the cities they visited, both to promote Wolfgang’s reputation and to help finance the journey. We note, for instance, that Wolfgang gave public concerts in Innsbruck (17 December), Rovereto (25 December), Verona (5 January), Mantua (16 January), Milan (23 February), Bologna (26 March), Florence (2 April), etc. The programme in Mantua is known, and it included two symphonies by Mozart. The programmes of the other concerts have not come down to us, but some them undoubtedly also included symphonies. It was not until August 1770 that Mozart wrote home to Salzburg from Bologna announcing, “I have already composed four Italian symphonies”. This suggests that he had previously been using Salzburg symphonies brought along for the purpose, and K. 62a may well have been among them.

Concerning the first movement – a common-time allegro – Günter Hausswald has written of “the echoes of a festive, boisterous opera overture on the Italian model”. Characteristics of this style are, he continues, thematic material built on broken triads and fanfare-like ideas, as well as “a true al fresco style worked into a large-scale overall structure”. The melodies are “essentially conventional and traditional in scope”, and “limited to repeated broken chords; to rigidly maintained chains of scales; to instrumentally idiomatic, free figuration; to punctuating chords. Only two subsidiary ideas reveal an individual profile”. Lurking behind Hausswald’s description of the movement one senses disapproval of what he considered to be a lack of originality and of singable melody. But the 18th century was much more interested in suitability than in originality, and the lack of vocal melody places the movement in the category of abstract art, a category with which aestheticians of both the 18th and 20th centuries have had difficulties. In the former period Leopold Mozart referred to symphonies by J. Stamitz in the abstract vein as “nothing but noise”, and the writer Lacépède tried to cope with the problem by requiring that symphonies have programmes. Linguistic analogies, beloved of 20th-century analysts, which speak of phrases, sentences and paragraphs, break down in the face of works that would appear to be composed largely of conjunctions, prepositions and articles. Detlef Schultz dismisses such movements as “purely decorative” which, like Hausswald’s remarks, seems to hint at a perceived “lack of meaning”. Here we have an aspect of musical creativity in which practice has far outstripped the ability of theory to explain it.

The minuet that follows is also based upon fanfares and scales. Its opening idea seems tongue-in-cheek, perhaps because, as Machaut had a circular creation of his own proclaim, “Ma fin est mon commencement”. The trio, in G major and for strings alone with divided violas, offers us a chamber-music intimacy that contrasts happily with the pomp of the minuet.

The marvellous change of tone evident from the first note of the andante (in 2/4 and A major) is due to a combination of factors: the key changes; the horns, trumpets and kettledrums have dropped out; the violins are muted; the cellos and basses play pizzicato; and the oboists would here have put down their instruments and taken up transverse flutes. This pastoral movement is dominated by the sound of the flutes, whether sustaining slowly changing harmonies or adding melodic fillips.

A second minuet exhibits less pomp than the first, though with even more scales. The trio, again for strings alone but now in D minor, makes much of joking grace notes and the slapstick comedy of high versus low and loud versus soft. Hausswald calls the trio “scherzo-like”.

The finale, a jig in the form of a rondo, brings the festivities to a suitably lively conclusion. Its principal theme, which occurs no fewer than fourteen times, bears a passing resemblance to the popular German round Am Abend, the first line of which is “O wie wohl ist mir am Abend” and which in English-speaking countries is known by the words “O how lovely is the evening”. The author of this tune is said to be one K. Schulz. Can this be the Karl Schulz who was a tenor and voice teacher at the Salzburg Cathedral during the periods 1769-79 and 1783-87? On the other hand, the principal theme also resembles the hunting call entitled “Le vol-ce-l’est”. According to an 18th-century treatise on hunting, “One sounds this fanfare when one again sees the hunted stag”. The likelihood is that these three tunes are not directly related, but have common antecedents.

Symphony No.9 in C major, K. 73

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro molto

The autograph manuscript of this work, also formerly in Berlin and now at Kraków, bears only the inscription “Sinfonie” in Mozart’s hand. The date “1769” was added in a later hand, perhaps Leopold’s. Köchel accepted that date and the editors of the sixth edition of his catalogue have reverted to the same date, thus calling into question Alfred Einstein’s assignment of the work in the third edition to the summer of 1771. It is due to Einstein’s attempted redating (accepted by Saint-Foix) that this symphony will occasionally be found designated as K. 75a. As a sketch for the minuet of this symphony is found in the autograph of a series of minuets (K. 61d/103) that Mozart is thought to have written for Carnival 1769, the symphony may have been completed around that time and the Köchel number 73 would therefore be too high. The error of Einstein’s proposed redating is confirmed by another manuscript, which originated as an attempt by Leopold to copy out a bass part for this symphony. For unknown reasons Leopold abandoned his effort after only 12 bars, and Wolfgang later used the largely empty sheet of music paper to resolve a puzzle canon from Padre Martini’s Storia della musica, a book which came into the Mozarts’ possession in early October 1770.

Wyzewa and Saint-Foix comment on the Germanic character of the first three movements of this work. Abert considers the opening idea of the first movement to be strongly influenced by the Mannheim School of symphonies. Schultz puts the matter somewhat differently, writing of the opening that “the 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 theatre symphony. In other respects the movement still bears a pronounced overture character”. It is perhaps indicative of the movement’s hybrid nature 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’s two main sections are (in the Italian manner) not repeated.

The andante – a binary movement in F major and 2/4 – is treated similarly to that of the previous symphony: the horns, trumpets and kettledrums drop out and the oboists take up their flutes. Larsen singles out this movement from among all of Mozart’s symphonies of this period “for its fine cantabile, and even more for the short dialogue between first violins and first flute”.

Wyzewa and Saint-Foix find the stately minuet Haydnesque (Joseph, not Michael), and especially the trio which is for strings alone. The finale shows French influence, as they point out, and is in fact a contredanse en rondeau. The movement is marked allegro molto 2/4, but one can sense the moderato gavotte underlying the rondo theme by beating time only once a bar, starting with an upbeat. Although the finale is 176 bars long, Mozart wrote out only eight brief passages totalling 72 bars. These eight passages he numbered in such a way that an alert copyist could piece together the whole movement. (Over the first passage, for instance, he wrote “1 2 5 6 8 9 16 17”, thus indicating the position of its eight appearances.) Mozart’s method of abbreviation saved him time, paper and ink; it also permits us a clear vision of the extent to which he had the structure of the movement in his mind before he wrote it down.

Symphony in D minor, K. 74c [K. 118]

Overture: Allegro – andante – presto

Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart spent a single day (13 March 1771) in Padua on the way home from a triumphant Italian tour. They had hoped to be mere tourists but news of their presence leaked out immediately and Wolfgang had to perform at two noble homes. As a result, he was commissioned by a local nobleman, Don Giuseppe Ximenes, Prince of Aragon, to set Metastasio’s 1734 oratorio text, La Betulia liberata. The work was apparently completed by the summer of 1771. In a letter of 19 July to an Italian patron, Leopold reported his plan to send the manuscript to Padua on the way south to Milan in August, in order to permit the oratorio to be copied; and on the return journey, to visit the town in order to listen to a rehearsal. We never learn why these plans fell through, but the Mozarts did not revisit Padua, and the Paduans performed another setting of the same libretto, apparently by the local composer Giuseppe Calegari. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Mozart’s oratorio was performed in Padua or in Salzburg at a later date, nor can vague reports of performances in Munich in 1775 or Vienna in 1786 be substantiated. Hence this major work of Mozart’s youth may have remained unperformed during his lifetime.

The symphony at hand was intended to serve La Betulia liberata as its overture. It is a work well written from beginning to end that deserves to be better known. Aspects of the more famous “Little” G minor symphony. K. 173dB/183, that have fascinated commentators are present in this work of two years earlier. The marvelous sounds found in the efflorescence of minor-key symphonies of the early 1770s by Mozart, Dittersdorf, J. Haydn, Vanhal, and Ordonez were not entirely new. The opera house had long required such tempestuous effects to portray both the storms of nature and those of human emotions. The young Mozart was familiar with this style some years before he composed K. 74c, for when he was staying in Chelsea in 1764 he had sketched into a notebook a G minor keyboard piece, K. 15p, in a quasi-orchestral style, which already captured the stormy character that has erroneously been claimed as an innovation of the 1770s.

Luigi Tagliavini, the editor of Betulia for the NMA, writes that the overture “introduces the atmosphere of the ‘Azione Sacra’”. This recalls Kirnberger’s description of the symphony as “... particularly suited to the expression of greatness, solemnity, and stateliness. Its purpose is to prepare the listener for the important music that follows ... If it is to carry out this purpose adequately and become part of the opera or church music that it precedes then, besides an expression of greatness and solemnity, it must also have a character that puts the listener in the proper frame of mind for the piece to follow ...”. Metastasio’s story is drawn from the Apocrypha. Its central figure is Judith who, when the Jewish city of Betulia was under siege by the Assyrians and nearing surrender, left the city and sought out the enemy commander, Holofernes. In pretending to seduce him, she managed to behead the disarmed commander. The Assyrians withdrew and Betulia was spared.

Mozart’s “Overtura” consists of three sections, in common time, 3/4 and 2/4, but without tempo indications. These sections are usually interpreted by performers and editors as a ponderous allegro, a flowing but poignant andante, and a fiery presto – by analogy with other sinfonias of this structure. The first and last sections are based upon the same thematic material and, in fact, the 3/4 section may be viewed as an interruption.

It is probably no coincidence that this work is in the same key as the overture to Gluck’s Alceste (1767) and shares with it a rising third motive. The Mozarts were familiar with Gluck’s opera, which figures in their correspondence as early as February 1768.

Symphony in F major, K. 75

1. Allegro
2. Menuetto & Trio
3. Andantino
4. Allegro

An autograph of this symphony is unknown. The work cannot have been widely circulated in the 18th century, for it survived only in a single set of manuscript parts in the Breitkopf archives in Leipzig. Köchel assigned the symphony to the summer of 1771, which Mozart spent in Salzburg between his first and second trips to Italy, and neither this date nor the authenticity of the work has ever been challenged. The need for new symphonies was constant, for aside from his participation in the continuing music at court, Mozart gave “academies” (as concerts were called) in Salzburg that summer, as well as in Rovereto (17 August), Milan (22 November) and Brixen (11 December). The present symphony may have figured in those activities. It is scored for the standard small orchestra of the period: strings with pairs of oboes and horns, and harpsichord and bassoons added to the bass line.

The opening of the 3/4 allegro is an unusual composite idea formed from turns (gruppettos) in the first violins connected by rising arpeggios in the oboes. This is extended by energetic “motor rhythms” of Vivaldian descent, which feature anapaestic patterns. All of the material of this lively ternary movement is thus accounted for except for the twenty-bar middle section, which is developmental in character and begins with a fugato on a new theme, though this soon lapses in to homophony. As in the previous symphony, there are no repeated sections.

The minuet is unusual in at least two regards: it occupies the second rather than the third position in the four-movement scheme and it is filled with slurs. Symphonic minuets, which trace their descent from French ball-room and stage dances, are usually in a more detached, staccato, rhythmic style, rather than the legato, cantabile style associated with Italian music. This example, however, leans in the cantabile direction. The trio, for strings alone, is thematically related to the opening of the first movement.

The andantino, like many of Mozart’s of this period, is in 2/4 with the violins muted. In addition the horns drop out and the key changes to B flat major. The character is that of an Italian cantabile aria, worked into a rounded-binary movement with both sections repeated. The two sections end with the same material, and the delicate way in which Mozart ornaments those ideas at the end of the second section is an especially fine touch.

The 3/8 finale seems to have confounded the critics. The Köchel catalogue gratuitously labels it “rondeau”, which it most assuredly is not. Wyzewa and Saint-Foix believe that the opening theme exhibits the character of a French dance, while Abert is equally certain that it is based upon a German folk dance. Neither the Frenchmen nor the German offers an example for comparison. The idea itself has the special feature of an unexpected pause, which in a most attractive way tums what the ear expects will be an ordinary eight-bar phrase into a nine-bar one. (The nature of the pause will be familiar to those who recall Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 6 in D flat major.) Nationality aside, there is at least agreement on the high spirits and dance-like nature of the finale. The movement is in rounded-binary form, influenced by rudimentary sonata-form, with both sections repeated.

Symphony No. 12 in G major, K. 75b [K. 110]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

The autograph manuscript of this symphony, along with several others, was previously in Berlin and is now in Kraków. Mozart headed it, Sinfonia del Sgr. Cavaliere Amadeo Wolfg. Mozart in Salisburgo nel Luglio 1771. The title “Cavaliere” refers to a knighthood within the Order of the Golden Spur, which the Pope had conferred upon the fourteen-year-old prodigy in Rome in July 1770. A year later plans were already well advanced for the second trip to Italy, and this symphony, like the previous one, was perhaps assigned the double role of providing material for a final round of music-making in Salzburg and for “academies” in Italy.

A work usually receives a new Köchel number only when new evidence emerges suggesting a changed date of origin. In the present instance, however, revisions to Köchel’s original chronology for 1771 were so extensive (many works were found to be in the wrong order, assigned to the wrong year, or even spurious), that an almost entirely new chronology had to be worked out. When the dust settled, it was no longer possible to use the number 110 for this symphony, and it acquired the new number 75b, without its date of composition, July 1771, altering.

It is difficult to regard this symphony as coming from the same creative impulse as the previous two. It is worked out on a much grander scale and apparently with more care. This is manifest in all movements in the more contrapuntal writing of the inner parts and, especially, of the bass line.

The opening allegro 3/4 is more than twice as long as the previous first movements, if the repeats of both sections are observed. Rather exceptionally for Mozart, the movement tends toward the monothematic. 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, and this is followed by striding quavers in the bass (an idea previously heard in the closing section of the exposition). The recapitulation is far from literal, with the bridge-passage extended in a developmental way. The monothematicism and the introduction of developmental aspects in the recapitulation are relatively unusual for Mozart but common for Joseph Haydn, whose influence has also been noted elsewhere in the symphony.

The second movement, in C major and alla breve, bears no tempo indication, although it is clearly an andante or andantino. The oboes are replaced by flutes, and a pair of bassoons – previously and subsequently 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”. The romanza, or romance (to give it its English and French form), was a strophic poem telling a gallant love story set in olden times. In mid-18th-century Paris it began to be set to simple folk-like melodies for use in salons and in stage works. This style of music was soon transferred to instrumental music. Gossec first used a romance in a symphony around 1761, as did Dittersdorf in Vienna, in 1773. Mozart has taken the mock-naïve musical style of the romance in the “simple” key of C major, and worked it into a sonata-form movement with two repeated sections. Most of the movement’s two-bar phrases are immediately repeated, creating a kind of musical construction that the French called “couplets”. The great care with which the inner parts of this usually homophonic style are worked out, however, reveals a craftsman in the German tradition. An especially effective colouristic touch is the major chord built upon the flattened sixth degree of the scale, which sounds twice near the end of each section.

The minuet is canonic, and commentators again see the influence of Haydn, who wrote canonic minuets in several symphonies of the period. Mozart’s aggressively striding minuet is nicely contrasted with the more sedate E minor trio, for strings alone. The Köchel catalogue claims that the da capo of the minuet is fully written out in Mozart’s autograph; this is not correct, and would have been most atypical of Mozart who customarily used every possible abbreviation and short-cut when writing down his compositions.

The finale, like that of K. 73, is a 2/4 allegro in which one can sense the gavotte or contredanse underlying the theme by beating time at half speed (once in a bar) beginning with an upbeat. This rondo has a striking middle section (itself binary in structure) in G minor that is rather exotic in character and nicely sets off the courtly dance that surrounds it.

Symphony No. 14 in A major, K. 114

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Molto allegro
5. Anhang: Menuett K. 61g

This is the first of a series of eight fine symphonies written for Salzburg in the period of less than a year between the Mozarts’ second and third Italian trips. It marks the onset of what Mila has dubbed “symphonic fever”, for in the period 1770-75 Mozart composed no fewer than thirty-six symphonies. There were undoubtedly practical motives behind this outpouring of symphonies in addition to artistic ones. The Italian trips had not proved as lucrative as Leopold had hoped, and he had been denied a portion of his salary during his absence. It was time for him and his son to settle down at home in order to pay off their debts. Archbishop Sigismund Christoph von Schrattenbach died in December 1771, a few days after the Mozarts returned to Salzburg. Much music was needed for the period of mourning, for Carnival, for Lent, and for the installation of the new archbishop in April. In addition, Mozart sought a promotion, for his title of concert master was honorary – that is to say, unpaid. Having proved his mettle with Il sogno di Scipione, the sixteen-year-old became a regularly paid member of the court orchestra on 9 July 1772, at the modest annual salary of 150 florins.

Mozart and his father returned from Italy on 15 December 1771, and the autograph manuscript of this symphony – once again found among the Berlin-Kraków material – is dated a fortnight later. This then must be a work for the muted festivities of Carnival 1772.

Several commentators suggest that in this symphony Mozart declares himself for the “Viennese” symphonic style, while still retaining important Italian elements. This refers to the greater length, the more extensive use of wind instruments, the more contrapuntal texture, the four-movement format, and the greater use of non-cantabile thematic materials. Larsen considers this symphony “one of the most inspired of the period. One could point out many beauties in this work, such as 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 opening bars, which forgo loud chords or fanfares and begin piano, suggest something new. Schultz thought the first theme to be “Viennese” in style but, in fact, with its mid-bar syncopation, it is closer to the style of J. C. Bach. Mozart heard Bach’s symphonies in London in 1764-65, and there is evidence that they were also performed in Salzburg in the early 1770s. This movement exhibits that fullness of ideas which was noted as a hallmark of Mozart’s style as early as 1792, and which Larsen describes with reference to this work as “the dominant tendency” to present “a whole series of fine cantabile themes: symphonic development results from their interplay and contrast”. Perhaps the only conservative trait of this inspired and otherwise forward-looking movement is the concertante, rather than symphonic, handling of the winds in the development section.

In the previous symphonies the oboists were required in the andante to take up flutes; here the reverse is the case, oboes replacing flutes and the horns falling silent. The movement, in 3/4 instead of the more usual 2/4, is in sonata form with both sections repeated. The violas, which had already made an appearance divisi in the development section of the first movement, here provide an important series of duets, often doubling the oboes at the octave below or engaging in dialogue with them. Schultz considered the movement the “highpoint” of Mozart’s symphonic andantes up to this point in his career. Its most curious feature is the development section which, written in continuous quavers, gives the impression of a not-quite-convincing Baroque Fortspinnung in the midst of the modern periodic style of the exposition and recapitulation.

The editors of both the NMA and Mozart-Handbuch claim that an unattached A major minuet, K. 61g/I, was originally intended by Mozart for this symphony. That cannot be right, however, because the work in question probably dates from as early as 1770 and lacks the pair of horns called for by K. 114. When Einstein examined the autograph manuscript of K. 114 prior to 1936, he found there another, fully-scored minuet that Mozart had crossed out. The opening theme of the rejected minuet (reproduced in the Köchel catalogue) is a reworking of the theme of the andante. Could this have been the reason that Mozart crossed it out and inserted the present minuet? In any case, the present minuet is a particularly stately, old-fashioned one, spiced with some implied secondary-dominant chords near the end of each section. Its trio, in A minor, is in a mock-pathetic vein. The repeated-note melody, on the fifth degree of the scale rising a semitone to the sixth, is a melodic shape familiar to Mozart from the plainchant setting of the sombre Holy Week text Miserere mei, Deus. The mocking comes from the second violins, who gad about with their triplets and trills as if they were making variations on a comic opera tune.

The finale, molto allegro 2/4, begins with a brief fanfare once repeated. Remarkably, however, instead of introducing a theme, Mozart then has the orchestra play, twice and in a conspicuous manner, the harmony primer chord-progression: I-IV-V-I. This is the so-called “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 the most common text sung in this fashion was “Kraut und Rüben”, which runs this way:

Cabbages and turnips drove me away.
Had my mother cooked some meat,
Then I’d have stayed longer.

Mozart does not quote the “Kraut und Rüben” tune, however, and we do not know what the purpose of his joke may have been, though its very presence would seem to reinforce our suggestion that this symphony was 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. All this reminds us of the description of Salzburg by a German visitor of the mid-1770s:

“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.”

Symphony No. 15 in G major, K. 124

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Presto

Carnival ends on Mardi Gras and with the next day, Ash Wednesday, Lent begins. In 1772 these days fell on 3 and 4 February respectively. Mozart wrote at the top of this symphony (also in the Berlin-Kraków collection), Sinfonia del Sigr. Cavaliere Wolfgang Amadeo Mozart Salisburgo 21 Febrario 1772. Hence we may have a work intended for a Lenten concert spirituel. On the other hand, Mozart may equally have been preparing works for the new archbishop, who took office on 29 April. The archbishop was a competent amateur violinist who liked to join his orchestra in performances of symphonies, standing next to the concert master, perhaps for maximum professional guidance and perhaps also to be seen symbolically at the orchestra’s centre of power. The new ruler took a personal interest in the orchestra, which even as early as 1772 must have been experiencing some difficulties, for a report from November of that year states that he “has lately been at great pains to reform his band, which has been accused of being more remarkable for coarseness and noise, than delicacy and high-finishing”.

The first movement of this symphony has a character quite different from that of the previous symphony. The angular opening theme in 3/4 is of a much more abrupt nature than the genial opening theme of K. 114. Curiously, however, the two themes outline the same note sequence: do-sol-mi-re-sol-fa-mi. For the rest, the first movement of K. 124 is more compact, more concise, less inclined to a fullness of ideas. An especially attractive touch is the ambiguous rhythm of the second subject, which for a moment leaves the listener unsure as to whether he is hearing 3/4 or 6/8. A fermata on a diminished chord allows us one last breath before we plunge with great energy toward the final cadence of the exposition. The development section begins calmly, but a “false reprise” in E minor soon introduces the stormy effects so frequently associated with symphonic development. The recapitulation is literal, with a four-bar coda added. Both main sections are repeated.

The andante, a binary movement in 2/4 with both halves repeated, is notable for its attractive concertante writing for horns and oboes. After the elegance of the andante, the brusquely energetic minuet and trio provide an exhilarating change of pace.

The cheerful rondo finale, presto 2/4, begins with the same fanfare as the previous finale, but continues on in an apparently straightforward manner. The joke, if it is one, comes in the coda where the melody suddenly evaporates and we are left listening to some chords, syncopations, tremolos, an oom-pah bass and a fanfare or two. The effect is rather like the music-hall’s “vamp ‘til ready”, but instead of serving as introduction, it serves as conclusion.

Symphony No. 16 in C major, K. 128

1. Allegro maestoso
2. Andante grazioso
3. Allegro

Along with the symphonies K 129 and 130 (the autograph manuscripts of which are all found today in West Berlin), this symphony bears the legend nel mese de maggio 1772 à Salisburgo. The composition of three symphonies (and the “Regina coeli”, K. 127) in a single month is unusual even for Mozart. Someone must have lit a fire under him, and we can only speculate whether or not it was the newly-installed archbishop.

The opening movement is marked not simply allegro but also maestoso, suggesting something slightly broader than that of the typical first movement of this period in Mozart’s symphonic production. It is notated in 3/4, but the listener at first takes it for 9/8 since the rhythm in the first half of the exposition comprises entirely quaver triplets. The second theme, a memorably leaping melody, first reveals the underlying 3/4 rhythm. After a touch of the second theme in the minor, an energetic bass line figure introduces the closing section. The exposition is repeated but the remainder is not. The development section is announced by the sudden appearance of an E flat major chord, which proves to be a herald of D minor. Then follow in rapid succession E minor, A minor, G major, F major and again G major, the dominant needed to lead to the recapitulation. The development takes only thirty-one bars during which the thematic material is almost entirely scales, yet it is so tightly and logically constructed that considerable momentum is generated and one has the impression of having traversed great tonal distances. The recapitulation is not literal, containing some fine developmental touches.

The slow movement employs only the strings. Just as the previous allegro was maestoso, so here the andante is grazioso, which has equally the effect of somewhat slowing and deepening the movement. The entire movement, which is in sonata form with both sections repeated, gives the impression of having been written con amore. A chamber-music texture involves all of the players in dialogue – usually between the first and second violins or between the upper and lower strings.

There is no minuet and the finale is a jig (in the form of an oddly proportioned rondo). These features stem from Italian models, rather than Viennese, as does the conservative writing for the oboes and horns in the first movement and in most of the last. When we reach the coda of the finale and think that Mozart has played his last card, he surprises us by bringing forth the horns for an extended series of hunting-horn calls.

Symphony No. 17 in G major, K. 129

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro

A great chord with quadruple-stops in the violins launches the first movement, which is an allegro in common time. There follows an odd little tune, based on the so-called “Lombardic” rhythm or “Scotch snap”, which is heard again as part of the second subject and as the most important motive of the development section. A Mannheim crescendo leads into the closing section of the exposition, in which the first and second violins engage in witty repartee. Both halves of this sonata-form movement are repeated. The temperamental development section alternates brief moments of lyricism with forte outbursts of Lombardic rhythm. The recapitulation is literal. Larsen notes the movement’s prevailing opera buffa character.

The 2/4 andante, in C major, begins like a serene song with the strings playing alone. The oboes and horns then join the strings and the song is repeated. For the rest of the exposition no other striking ideas are introduced, but Mozart spins a magical web of commonplace melodic fragments. The development section is a concise eight-bar fugato, leading to a literal recapitulation plus a two-bar coda. Again both halves are repeated.

The finale begins with a hunting-horn flourish or fanfare, virtually identical to one that Mozart used many years later to begin his piano sonata, K. 576. This 3/8 allegro has two large repeated sections with the modulatory scheme of a sonata-form movement. At the moment when the tonic returns, however, the opening theme is only hinted at and no true recapitulation occurs. This movement is thus perhaps best considered to be in rounded-binary rather than sonata form. The function of lively jig-finale like the present one is probably analogous to that which Mozart later ascribed to an act finale of an opera which, he wrote, “... 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”.

Mozart and the symphonic traditions of his time

Salzburg and its Orchestra

Some time between 1772 and 1777 the musician and writer Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart visited Salzburg and reported:

“For several centuries this archbishopric has served the cause of music well. They have a musical endowment there that amounts to 50,000 florins annually, and is spent entirely in the support of a group of musicians. The musical establishment in their cathedral is one of the best manned in all the German-speaking lands. Their organ is among the most excellent that exists: what a pity that it is not given life by the hand of a Bach! ...

Their [Vize]kapellmeister Mozart (the Father) has placed the musical establishment on a splendid footing. He himself is known as an esteemed composer and author. His style is somewhat old-fashioned, but well founded and full of contrapuntal understanding. His church music is of greater value than his chamber music. Through his treatise on violin playing, which is written in very good German and intelligently organized, he has earned great honour ...

His son has become even more famous than his father. He is one of the most precocious musical minds, for as early as his eleventh year he had composed an opera [La finta semplice] that was well received by all the connoisseurs. This son is also one of the best of our [German] keyboard players. He plays with magical dexterity, and sight-reads so accurately that his equal in this regard is scarcely to be found.

The choirs in Salzburg are excellently organized, but in recent times the ecclesiastical musical style has begun to deteriorate into the theatrical – an epidemic that has already infected more than one church! The Salzburgers are especially distinguished in wind instruments. One finds there the most admirable trumpet- and horn-players, but players of the organ and other keyboard instruments are rare. The Salzburger’s spirit is exceedingly inclined to low humour. Their folk songs are so comical and burlesque that one cannot listen to them without side-splitting laughter. The Punch-and-Judy spirit shines through everywhere, and the melodies are mostly excellent and inimitably beautiful.”

(One must keep in mind in reading this account that the Archbishop of Salzburg was both a clergyman and a temporal ruler; hence the church and court musicians were one and the same.)

During the same period that Schubart visited Salzburg, Charles Burney published a report sent from there in November 1772 by an unidentified writer who (whatever else he may have been) was clearly not an admirer of Mozart’s orchestral music:

“The archbishop and sovereign of Saltzburg [sic] is very magnificent in his support of music, having usually near a hundred performers, vocal and instrumental, in his service. This prince is himself a dilettante, and good performer on the violin; he has lately been at great pains to reform his band, which has been accused of being more remarkable for coarseness and noise, than delicacy and high-finishing. Signor Fischietti, author of several comic operas, is at present the director of this band.

The Mozart family were all at Saltzburg last summer; the father has long been in the service of the court, and the son is now one of the band ... I went to his Father’s house to hear him and his sister play duets on the same harpsichord ... and ... if I may judge of the music which I heard of his composition, in the orchestra, he is one further instance of early fruit being more extraordinary than excellent.”

Mozart’s opinion of the Salzburg orchestra was far from enthusiastic. He had heard the great orchestras of Mannheim, Turin, Milan, and Naples, and he knew that the Salzburg orchestra, although moderately large for its time, was too often second-rate in its execution. Writing to his father from Mannheim in 1778, he compared the fabulous orchestra there with their own:

“Ah, if only we too had clarinets! You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes, and clarinets. I shall have much that is new to tell the Archbishop at my first audience, and perhaps a few suggestions to make as well. Ah, how much finer and better our orchestra might be, if only the Archbishop desired it. Probably the chief reason why it is not better is because there are far too many performances. I have no objection to the chamber music, only to the concerts on a larger scale.”

The truth about the quality of the Salzburg orchestra undoubtedly lay somewhere between Schubart’s glowing appraisal and Mozart’s frequent complaints. As for its strength, the official roster of court musicians published in the Salzburger Hofkalender für 1775 shows Joseph Lolli and Dominicus Fischietti, both Kapellmeister, Leopold Mozart, Vizekapellmeister, Michael Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart, both Conzertmeister, as well as 3 organists, 8 violinists, 1 cellist, 3 double bass players, 2 bassoonists, 3 oboists, and 3 hunting horn players. Even a casual examination of this list suggests that something is missing, for Mozart’s Salzburg works of ten include parts for flutes, trumpets, and timpani, as well as divided viola parts and an additional horn. It appears that several of these 33 musicians played more than one instrument, and there were others who could be – and were – called upon to supplement the orchestra. These included the town waits, the trumpet – and kettledrum players of the Archbishop’s army, and various amateur performers whose principal posts at court were non-musical. Thus the make-up of the Salzburg orchestra varied widely from season to season and from occasion to occasion. As we have reconstituted the orchestra for these recordings, it is as it may have been heard at festive occasions during the year: the strings 9-8-4-3-2, and the necessary woodwind, brass, kettledrums and harpsichord, with 3 bassoons doubling the bass line whenever obbligato parts for them are lacking.

The Symphonies of 1772-73

The 11 symphonies presented here, written between the time that Mozart was 16 years, 2 months old and the time that he was 17 years, 8 months, may be divided into 3 groups: 4 symphonies (K. 130-134) written in Salzburg before Mozart’s third trip to Italy, 2 having connections with both Salzburg and Italy (K. 135, 141a), and 5 more written alter the return home (K. 161a, 161b, 162, 162b, 173dA). The 11 symphonies may also be divided into two groups: Germanic concert-symphonies with minuets and repeated sections in all movements, each lasting around 20 to 25 minutes (K. 130, 132, 133, 134, 161b); and Italianate overture-symphonies, without minuets and mostly without repeats, each lasting around 8 or 9 minutes. (K. 135, 141a, 161a, 162, 162b, 173dA). The 3 movements of the Italianate overture symphonies are usually linked by incomplete cadences and played without pause, and the third movement is often based upon a transformation of the opening of the first movement at a faster tempo.

None of the symphonies of 1772-73 were printed during Mozart’s lifetime, although they are easily the equals of hundreds of symphonies which did issue from the presses. It might appear that this was the result of a deliberate policy, for in 1778 Leopold Mozart wrote to Wolfgang that “... I have not given any of your symphonies to be copied, because I knew in advance that when you were older and had more insight, you would be glad that no-one had got hold of them, though at the time you composed them you were quite pleased with them. One gradually becomes more and more fastidious”. Leopold’s remarks, however, may have been hypocritical, for in 1772 he had written to the Leipzig publisher J. G. I. Breitkopf, “Should you wish to print any of my son’s compositions ... you have only to state what you consider most suitable. He could let you have [various compositions including] symphonies for two violins, viola, two horns, two oboes or transverse flutes, and bass”. And again 3 years later: “As I decided some time ago to have some of my son’s compositions printed, I should like you to let me know as soon as possible whether you would like to publish some of them, that is symphonies [and various other works].” The symphonies offered to Breitkopf must be among those here recorded. But Mozart’s symphonies were not to appear in the Breitkopf catalogue until 1785-87, and then only in editions purchased from other publishers.

Symphony No. 18 in F major, K. 130

1. Allegro
2. Andantino grazioso
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Molto allegro

Many commentators, following Saint-Foix, have considered this to be the earliest of Mozart’s truly great symphonies. Admittedly it is an excellent work, but does it really contain better ideas, better worked out, than several others of his symphonies of this period? It was written, according to Mozart’s father’s inscription on the autograph, à Salisburgo nel Maggio 1772. Mozart began the first movement with only a pair of horns in F in mind. In the second movement he had the players switch to a pair of B flat horns. By the time he began the minuet, however, he had decided to add another pair of horns, found in this movement and the finale, and he then went back and wrote the additional horn parts on blank staves in the first and second movements. This change may have been associated with the return to Salzburg from a European tour of Mozart’s friend (for whom he was later to write the horn quintet and horn concertos), the horn virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb. This symphony is the first of only four symphonies (K. 130, 132, 183, 318) in which Mozart used 4 rather than the customary 2 horns.

The first movement, in sonata form, begins quietly without the usual fanfare. The opening motive – heard also at the end of the exposition, in the development section, and at the beginning and end of the recapitulation – prominently features a rhythm Lombardic rhythm known in some circles as the “Lombardic” rhythm and in others as the “Scotch snap”. It is also omni-present in Hungarian folk music, some of which Mozart may well have encountered in his travels.

Mozart’s first attempt at an andante movement was abandoned after only 8 bars. The cancelled beginning has a more complex texture than the completed andante. Could this be the result of Leopold looking over Wolfgang’s shoulder and urging him (as he once did in a letter) to write something “only short-easy-popular”? In any case, the completed andantino grazioso is a serene, cantabile movement in 3/8 and in binary form. The violins are muted, the cellos and basses pizzicato; the violas, however, are without mutes, confirming that there were very few of them in the Salzburg orchestra. Landon points out what may or may not be a coincidence: Joseph Haydn first wrote 3/8 andante movements in 4 symphonies from the years 1770-72 (Hob. I: 22bis, 39, 42, and 45); could Mozart have known and imitated any of these in his andante?

The minuet is wittily constructed around a canon between the violins (in octaves) and the bass-line, with the violas adding a rustic drone wobbling back and forth from C to B (despite the F-major harmonies). This leads to a trio filled with highjinks: quasi-modal harmonies and stratospherically high horn writing. Here was something special for the recently returned Leutgeb, and a bit of Punch and Judy in the bargain! Lest the gay exterior of this movement deceive us about the craft behind it, however, it should be noted that Mozart crossed out and rewrote a 10-bar passage in the trio to achieve the unassuming perfection of his final results.

The energetic finale, molto allegro, is of a length and weight to balance the opening movement, and also in sonata form, thus departing from the short dance-like finale of the Italians. This buffo movement is filled with rushing scales, sudden changes of dynamics, tremolos, and other happy noises much favoured by the symphonists of the Mannheim school. Leopold Mozart called this sort of music “nothing but noise”, a judgment that did not prevent his son from making brilliant use of the style.

Symphony No. 19 in E flat major, K. 132

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro
5. Andantino grazioso (Anhang)

Mozart’s father labelled this autograph nel Luglio 1772 à Salisburgo. The opening triadic figure with trill bears a striking resemblance to the beginnings of two other pieces in the same key: the doubtfully authentic sinfonia concertante for winds (K. Anh. C14.01) and the thoroughly authentic piano concerto, K. 482. The notation of the horns presents a peculiar problem: Mozart marked the pairs of horns “2 Corni in E la fa alti, 2 Corni in E la fa bassi”, that is, 2 horns in high E flat, 2 horns in low E flat. But the valveless horns that are known to us from the period have crooks enabling them to play in the following keys only: low Bb, low C, D, E flat, E, F, G, A flat, A, high B flat, and high C. Three possible solutions present themselves: (1) a low-E flat crook combined with the old Baroque clarino technique, enabling the part to be played an octave higher; (2) an experimental instrument, perhaps brought to Salzburg by Leutgeb, which has not survived: or (3) the shortest crook (high C) and elimination of the usual tuning bits, thus inserting the mouthpiece further up the horn than is customary. This last procedure, discovered by experimentation during rehearsals for these recordings to yield an instrument pitched in high E flat, was the one used here.

Two complete slow movements survive for this symphony – an andante in 3/8, found in the normal location between the first movement and the minuet, and a substitute andantino grazioso in 2/4, written into the manuscript following the finale. Mila finds Mozart’s second attempt superior to the first, while most other commentators (and the writer of these notes) find precisely the opposite. Plath has recently pointed out that the 3/8 movement is based at least in part upon borrowed materials. The opening melody reproduces the incipit of a Gregorian melody for the Credo:

Credo in unum Deum

The significance of this quotation is unclear, but we must mention that Joseph Haydn quoted Gregorian chant in the slow movements of 2 of his symphonies (26, 60). Later in the movement there appears a variant of a popular mediaeval German Christmas carol, a tune that Mozart had used once before in a first version of his Gallimathias musicum, K.32. Here is the beginning of the carol in the 1599 version of Erhard Bodenschatz:

Joseph lieber Joseph mein

Is Mozart trying his hand at Lacépède’s programme symphony?

The andantino grazioso, entirely original as far as is known, features a beautiful cantilena shared between the violins and the oboes and making an effective dialogue with the rest of the orchestra.

The minuet begins with a lively canonic exchange between the first and second violins. The tune is soon imitated by the bass instruments and then heard in one voice or another throughout the piece, including after a humourously timed pause just before the return of the beginning in the middle of the second section. The trio (and that of K. 130) has been called “daring and bizarre” by Wyzewa and Saint-Foix, while Abert too noted a “tendency toward eccentricity”. It also brings to mind Lacépède’s notion of a programmatic symphony, for it appears to be based upon a melody in the style of a psalm tone, set in imitation of the stile antico of a post-Renaissance motet. A brief outburst of ball-room gaiety at the beginning of the second section is the only intrusion of the secular world into the sanctimony of the psalmody. (Mozart’s psalm tone is performed here one on a part, acknowledging that many German court orchestras of the period divided their rosters into highly paid soloisten and poorly paid ripienisten.) Was this Mozart’s commentary on the mixture of secular and sacred concerns at the court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg? Was this symphony destined for sacred rather than secular use? Could Haydn have once again pointed the way with the Gregorian melody in the trio of his Symphony 45 (“Farewell”)? We may never know the answers to these intriguing questions.

The finale is a substantial piece in the form of a gavotte or contredanse en rondeau. This is as French as Mozart’s music ever becomes, and filled with a kind of mock naïveté of which, one imagines, those of the French nobility who enjoyed playing at shepherd and shepherdess would have approved. Mozart, however, was not fond of most French music (he exasperatedly called it “trash” and “wretched”), and wrote of some of his Salzburg symphonies, “... most of them are not in the Parisian taste”.

Symphony No. 20 in D major, K. 133

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

Written in July 1772, the work opens with 3 tutti chords, after which a characteristic rising sequential theme follows in the strings. Flourishes in the kettledrums and trumpets, as well as the other winds, inform us that this is a festive work. A lyrical section of the exposition features the “Lombardic” rhythm found in several other symphonies of the period. An exceptionally 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, is heard again doubled by the trumpets.

The graceful, binary andante in 2/4 is scored for strings (once again violins muted and the bass instruments pizzicato) with the addition of a solitary “flauto traverso obligato”. We should not imagine the poor flautist sitting disconsolately during the other 3 movements with nothing to play. Rather, we should imagine a player of another instrument picking up a flute for this movement.

The minuet is typically Austrian, that is, short, simple, and fast, in contrast to Italian minuets which, Mozart tells us, “generally have plenty of notes, are played slowly and are many bars long”. The trio once again provides an opportunity for Mozart to shake a few tricks from his sleeve, in this case syncopations, suspensions, and other devices of learned counterpoint, or precisely the opposite of the homophonic texture normally found in dance music. The finale is an enormous 12/8 jig in sonata form that, once launched, continues virtually without rest to its breathless conclusion.

Symphony No. 21 in A major, K. 134

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

Written in August 1772, this symphony eschews the customary march-like: 4/4 opening in favour of one in 3/4. The orchestra is at its smallest – strings and pairs of flutes and horns (with bassoons and harpsichord added) – and Saint-Foix finds the whole “astonishingly imaginative and poetic”. The first movement is as close as Mozart comes to writing a monothematic sonata-form movement. (Haydn was much fonder than Mozart of monothematicism, and less attached to the insertion of contrasted themes.) Perhaps the approach to monothematicism is the reason that Mozart felt the need, rather unusually for him at this period, to add an 18-bar coda in which, after a brief allusion to the principal theme, a few triadic flourishes assure even the most inattentive listener that the close has been reached.

The andante opens with a melody that Mozart was surely inspired to write by Gluck’s famous aria for Orpheus, “Che farò senza Euridice?”. The cantabile beginning is spun out at some length in to a sonata-form movement of considerable subtlety. The texture is especially carefully thought out, with an elaborate second violin part and divided violas.

The minuet has a Haydnesque brusqueness about it. A Punch-and-Judy tendency again shows in the trio, with its virtually melodyless first strain and in the second strain antiphonal chords tossed between the wind and the violins pizzicato over a drone in the violas, arriving at a peculiarly chromatic passage to prepare the return of the opening “non-melody”.

The finale begins with a bourrée which, however, is subjected to full development in sonata form with coda. Despite the scale on which the movement is written, the spirit of the dance everywhere peers through the symphonic facade.

Symphony in D major, K. 135

1. Molto allegro
2. Andante
3. Molto allegro

In 1771 Mozart was granted the scrittura (commission) to write the first opera for Milan for carnival 1773. By October of 1772 he had received the libretto of Giovanni da Gamerra’s Lucio Silla. As he could not begin composing arias until he had heard the principal singers and knew their capabilities, he began by thinking about those numbers that he could compose in advance: the recitatives, choruses and overture. On 24 October he and his father left for Milan where they arrived 10 days later. By 14 November Leopold could report to his wife that only one of the principal singers had thus far arrived in Milan: “Meanwhile Wolfgang has got much amusement from composing the choruses, of which there are three, and from altering and partly rewriting the few recitatives which he composed in Salzburg. ... He has now written all the recitatives and the overture.” That “overture” is the 3-movement symphony recorded here.

Lucio Silla was a success and received about 20 performances following its première on Boxing Day 1772. Upon his return to Salzburg, Mozart was unable to have his opera performed, as Salzburg had no opera house, but he did extract certain arias to use as concert pieces, and the overture circulated as a concert symphony (as we learn from its presence in an early-19th-century Breitkopf & Härtel manuscript catalogue). We have chosen to perform the symphony as it may have been heard after Mozart’s return to Salzburg, rather than with Milanese forces.

The work opens with a typically festive, Italianate molto allegro. The andante is in a galant vein, avoiding the more worked-out part-writing of several of the andantes written for Salzburg. This leads to another molto allegro, a kind of 3/8 jig in which running semi-quavers throughout much of the movement create the impression of a moto perpetuo.

Symphony in D major, K. 141a [K. 161/163]

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante
3. Presto

For the ceremonies surrounding the installation of the new archbishop, Mozart set the text of a “serenata drammatica” by Metastasio, Il sogno di Scipione, and this was performed apparently in early May 1772. The overture of the work consisted of an allegro moderato in alla breve and an andante in 3/4. Perhaps anticipating the need to produce quickly a symphony while in Milan, Mozart must have taken those two movements with him to Italy, for (according to the Köchel catalogue) the finale, a 3/8 presto, was composed in Milan at the end of 1772. It was the Mozarts’ custom partially to finance their tours by giving concerts in each city they visited. Undoubtedly something of the sort was planned for Milan, even though Leopold reported that “It is not so easy to give a public concert here and it is scarcely any use attempting to do so without special patronage, while even then one is sometimes swindled out of one’s profits”. If this symphony was not created for such a public concert, then perhaps it was created for a private one of the sort described by Leopold: “On the evenings of the 21st, 22nd and 23rd December great parties took place in Count Firmian’s house at which all the nobles were present. On each day they went on from five o’clock in the evening until eleven o’clock with continuous vocal and instrumental music. We were among those invited and Wolfgang performed each evening.”

The 3 movements, linked by incomplete cadences, are played without break, and the finale even begins on a dominant rather than tonic chord. Tagliavini has noted a striking resemblance between the subsidiary theme of the first movement and that of J. C. Bach’s overture to the opera Alessandro nell’Indie (Naples, 1762).

Symphony No. 26 in E flat major, K. 161a [K. 184]

Molto presto – Andante – Allegro

Every commentator has remarked on the dramatic character of this work, which is dated Salzburg, 30 March 1773. Saint-Foix, for instance, in his characteristically extravagant diction, states, “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. ...” 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 wind serenade, K. 375. The subsidiary theme of the same movement bears a resemblance to a theme heard in the first movement of Haydn’s Symphony 52. The poignant C minor andante is filled with appoggiaturas and other effects borrowed from tragic Italian arias. The theme of the jig-like finale is remarkably like that of the rondo of Mozart’s horn concerto, K. 495, also in E flat. Throughout the 3 movements, the concertante writing for winds is especially well handled.

Although we do not know why this exceptionally serious symphony was written, we do know that in the 1780s it was used (apparently with Mozart’s consent) by the travelling theatrical troupe of his acquaintance Johann Böhm as the overture to Lanassa by the Berlin playwright Karl Martin Plümicke. This play – a German adaptation of Antoine-Marin Lemierre’s La Veuve du Malabar about a Hindu widow who, unable to resign herself to her husband’s death, flings herself onto a funeral pyre – was also decked out with Mozart’s incidental music for Thamos, King of Egypt, K. 345, to which new texts had been set. This is undoubtedly why it is sometimes stated (probably erroneously) that the present symphony was intended as an overture for Thamos itself.

Symphony No. 27 in G major, K. 161b [K. 199]

1. Allegro
2. Andantino grazioso
3. Presto

Dated 10 or 16 April 1773 (the date is partially illegible), the symphony opens with a 3/4 allegro in a small-scale but perfectly proportioned sonata-form movement filled with high spirits. The serene andante, with its parallel sixths and thirds and gracefully flowing triplets, has only a touch of chromaticism occasioned by augmented-6th chords toward the end of each strain to suggest that the world might contain any darkness. The finale begins with some not-entirely-convincing counterpoint, which rubs shoulders uneasily with more galant notions. The subject of the finale’s fugato (G-C-F sharp-G) is drawn from the opening theme of the first movement. (Saint-Foix describes the opening as “a sort of fugato that soon takes on a waltz rhythm”.) Mozart himself later commented wryly on this sort of writing in the finale of his Musical Joke, K. 522. It must be admitted that the short-windedness of the opening is somewhat redeemed by the more extended version of the same material that Mozart offers us at the recapitulation, where it serves as both main theme and retransition. But counterpoint aside, the movement jogs as nice a jig as could be wanted circa 1773 to bring a symphony to a happy conclusion.

Symphony No. 22 in C major, K. 162

1. Allegro assai
2. Andantino grazioso
3. Presto assai

The date at the beginning of this symphony has been defaced and cannot be confidently deciphered. The date “19 or 29 April 1773” in the Köchel catalogue is therefore somewhat speculative, although the work clearly dates from this period.

The opening gestures of the first movement in common time establish the festive character of the entire movement. When the brief development section leads back to C major at the recapitulation, the first 12 bars are missing. These ideas Mozart saves for the end, where they serve as an effective closing section. This is not the last we hear of these ideas, however, for, transformed into 6/8, they also open the finale, which is again treated in a highly concise sonata form. The intervening andantino grazioso, featuring obbligato writing for oboes and horns, is reminiscent of certain movements in Mozart’s orchestral serenades of this period.

Symphony No. 23 in D major, K. 162b [K. 181]

1. Allegro spiritoso
2. Andantino grazioso
3. Presto assai

Dated Salzburg, 19 May 1773, the work opens with a flourish reminiscent of the opening of the C major symphony, K. 162. The movement is an essay in orchestral “noises” used to form a coherent and satisfying whole. That is, there are few memorable melodies, but rather a succession of instrumental devices, including repeated notes, fanfares, arpeggios, sudden fortes and pianos, scales, syncopations, dotted rhythms, etc. Descriptions and explanations of musical form tend to fall back on linguistic analogies. In this case, however, such an analogy would lead us into the absurd position of having to imagine meaningful prose composed entirely of articles, conjunctions and prepositions! Responding to this, Schultz refers to the movement as “purely decorative”. Schultz’s reaction, Leopold Mozart’s “nothing but noise”, the failure of the linguistic analogy, and Lacépède’s need for programmes in symphonies all point to the same phenomenon: an inability of aesthetic theory to deal with an art of abstract sounds unsupported by verbal ideas. (A parallel may be drawn with the difficulties surrounding the acceptance of non-representational painting in the 20th century.)

The second movement, linked to the first, in some sense atones for the lack of beautiful melody in the allegro by presenting a moving oboe solo in the style of a siciliano. This leads straight into a cheerful rondo in 2/4 in the style of a contradance or march, to which Saint-Foix correctly applies the 18th-century appellation “quick step”.

Symphony No. 24 in B flat major, K. 173dA [K. 182]

1. Allegro spiritoso
2. Andantino grazioso
3. Allegro

Dated Salzburg, 3 October 1773, this work was apparently still thought highly of by Mozart in the final decade of his life. This emerges from a letter he wrote in 1783 from Vienna to his father in Salzburg, asking to be sent this work (along with others) for use in concerts in Vienna. The opening movement is nearly as full of orchestral “noises” as that of the D major symphony, K. 162b, although a few themes of note emerge including one in which the “Lombardic” rhythm features prominently. The andantino grazioso is of sharply contrasted timbre, due to the muted violins, the change of key to E flat, and the substitution of a pair of flutes for the oboes. This movement is a simple cantilena in AABA form. The lively, jig-like finale which concludes this Dionesian work is pure opera buffa from start to finish.

Mozart and the symphonic traditions of his time

Salzburg and its Orchestra

Some time between 1772 and 1777 the musician and writer Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart visited Salzburg and reported:

“For several centuries this archbishopric has served the cause of music well. They have a musical endowment there that amounts to 40,000 florins annually, and is spent entirely in the support of a group of musicians. The musical establishment in their cathedral is one of the best-manned in all the German-speaking lands. Their organ is among the most excellent that exists: what a pity that it is not given life by the hand of a Bach! ...

Their [Vize]kapellmeister Mozart (the father) has placed the musical establishment on a splendid footing. He himself is known as an esteemed composer and author. His style is somewhat old-fashioned, but well founded and full of contrapuntal understanding. His church music is of greater value than his chamber music. Through his treatise on violin playing, which is written in very good German and intelligently organized, he has earned great honour ...

His son has become even more famous than the father. He is one of the most precocious musical minds, for as early as his eleventh year he had composed an opera [La finta semplice] that was well received by all the connoisseurs. This son is also one of the best of our [German] keyboard players. He plays with magical dexterity, and sight-reads so accurately that his equal in this regard is scarcely to be found.

The choirs in Salzburg are excellently organized, but in recent times the ecclesiastical musical style has begun to deteriorate into the theatrical – an epidemic that has already infected more than one church! The Salzburgers are especially distinguished in wind instruments. One finds there the most admirable trumpet- and horn-players, but players of the organ and other keyboard instruments are rare. The Salzburger’s spirit is exceedingly inclined to low humour. Their folk songs are so comical and burlesque that one cannot listen to them without side-splitting laughter. The Punch-and-Judy spirit shines through everywhere, and the melodies are mostly excellent and inimitably beautiful.”

(One must keep in mind in reading this account that the Archbishop of Salzburg was both a clergyman and a temporal ruler; hence the church and court musicians were one and the same.)

Mozart’s opinion of the Salzburg musical scene was far less enthusiastic than Schubart’s. He had heard the great orchestras of Mannheim, Turin, Milan, and Naples, and he knew that the Salzburg orchestra, although moderately large for its time, was too often second rate in its execution. Writing to his father from Mannheim in 1778, he compared the fabulous orchestra there with their own:

“Ah, if only we too had clarinets! You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes, and clarinets. I shall have much that is new to tell the Archbishop at my first audience, and perhaps a few suggestions to make as well. Ah, how much finer and better our orchestra might be, if only the Archbishop desired it. Probably the chief reason why it is not better is because there are far too many performances. I have no objection to the chamber music, only to the concerts on a larger scale”. And a few months earlier writing from Paris, Mozart’s thoughts about the Salzburg orchestra were even harsher: “For the last five or six years the Salzburg musical establishment has always been rich in what is useless and superfluous, but very poor in what is necessary, and absolutely destitute of what is indispensable; such is exactly the case at the present moment!” Any evaluation of Mozart’s description of the Salzburg orchestra must take into account his unhappiness at having failed to receive in his native city the adulation he had garnered in so many other places, as well as the fact that he was attempting to soothe his father, who was once again being passed over for the position of Kapellmeister and who was to die still only Vizekapellmeister.

The truth about the quality of the Salzburg orchestra undoubtedly lay somewhere between Schubart’s glowing praise and Mozart’s bitter complaints. As for its strength, the official roster of court musicians published in the Salzburger Hofkalender für 1775 shows Joseph Lolli and Dominicus Fischietti, both Kapellmeister, Leopold Mozart, Vizekapellmeister, Michael Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart, both Conzertmeister, as well as 3 organists, 8 violinists, 1 cellist, 3 double bass players, 2 bassoonists, 3 oboists, and 3 hunting-horn players. Even a casual examination of this list suggests that something is missing, for Mozart’s Salzburg works often include parts for flutes, trumpets, and timpani, as well as divided viola parts and an additional horn. It appears that several of these 28 musicians played more than one instrument, and that there were others who could be – and were – called upon to supplement the orchestra. The latter included the town waits, the trumpeter and kettledrum players of the Archbishop’s army, and various amateur performers whose principal posts at court were non-musical. Thus the make-up of the Salzburg orchestra varied widely from season to season and from occasion to occasion. As we have reconstituted the orchestra for these recordings, it is as it may have been heard at festive occasions during the year; the strings 9-8-4-3-2, and the necessary woodwind, brass, kettledrums and harpsichord, with 3 bassoons doubling the bass line whenever obbligato parts for them are lacking.

The symphonies of 1773-75

The 7 symphonies presented here, written between the time that Mozart was 17 years, 8 months old and the time that he was 19 years, 6 months, may be divided into 3 kinds: 4 Germanic concert-symphonies with minuets and repeated sections in all movements, each lasting more than 25 minutes (K. 183, 200, 201, 202); 2 symphonies in a format similar to the previous 4 but drawn from orchestral serenades (K. 203, 204); and 1 Italianate overture-symphony, without a minuet and without repeated sections, lasting around 7 minutes, created from an opera overture (K. 121). None of these symphonies were printed during Mozart’s lifetime, although 2 of them (K. 182, 202) were brought out as early as 1798-99.

Mozart visited Vienna from the middle of July until the end of September 1773; the autograph manuscript of the G minor symphony, K. 183, is dated 5 October 1773. This symphony and 3 others (K. 201, 202, 200) are longer and more serious than any of Mozart’s previous symphonies, and most commentators suggest that this must have been the result of the Viennese visit. (In case we wonder what it was that Mozart heard in Vienna, Charles Burney, who spent some weeks there in 1772, tells us that the Viennese composers who were distinguishing themselves at that time were Hasse, Gluck, Gassmann, Wagenseil, Salieri, Hoffman, Haydn, Dittersdorf, Vanhal, and Huber.) We do not know of particular occasions for which any of this tetralogy may have been composed.

A trip to Munich to attend the rehearsals and performance of La finta giardiniera lasted from 6 December 1774 until 7 March 1775. This journey seems to have had an effect quite opposite to that of the journey to Vienna, for afterwards Mozart composed no further original symphonies prior to his visit to Paris in 1778. This is especially surprising in the light of the fact that on 16 November 1775 the Archbishop of Salzburg opened a new theatre, the existence of which surely created a demand for music to grace the plays presented there. It may be an indication of Mozart’s profound disillusionment with Salzburg at the time that he failed to respond to this opportunity.

Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 173dB [K. 183]

1. Allegro con brio
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. 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 labelled ‘mysterious’ – it is the masterpiece about which the most stupid comments have been made. It’s a wonder it hasn’t been submerged entirely beneath the mass of words it has excited”. On a more modest scale the same could be said of much of the verbiage surrounding Mozart’s two G-minor symphonies – the famous one, K. 550, and the so-called “Little” G minor presented here. In this case the adjectival excesses are at least in part due to the fact that the vast majority of 18th-century symphonies are in major keys and appear to convey the optimistic “greatness, solemnity and stateliness” mentioned by Kirnberger, rather than the darker, more passionate feelings of the G-minor works. In addition, these excesses result from a melioristic view of the history of music, which regards Mozart’s minor-key symphonies as adumbrations, mere forerunners, of the monumental symphonic masterpieces of the Romantic era. We are assured by adherents to this school of thought that K. 183 is pre- or proto-Romantic, that it is the result of “the romantic crisis in Austrian music around 1770”, and that it is a manifestation of the cultural trend which has been dubbed Sturm und Drang. This “haze of adjectives” can be at least partially dissipated by attempting to view K. 183 looking forward from the first two-thirds of the 18th century, rather than backwards from the 19th.

The contribution to the history of music made by the generation between that of J. S. Bach and that of Wolfgang Mozart was to create lighter, shorter, and simpler musical styles and genres – to move away from the seriousness and monumentality of some of the music of the previous generation. This lightening of spirit is nicely captured by the difference between Andreas Werckmeister’s late 17th-century definition of music as “a gift of God, to be used only in His honour” and Charles Burney’s mid-18th-century statement, “Music is an innocent luxury, unnecessary, indeed, to our existence”.

The “romantic crisis” theory is based upon the intriguing observation that, whereas the symphonies of the late 1750s and early 1760s largely avoided the minor keys, in the late 1760s and early 1770s there was a sudden production of minor-key symphonies in Austria by (in addition to Mozart) Dittersdorf, J. Haydn, Vanhal, and Ordonez. Landon points out that in contrast to most symphonies of the previous decade these works have in common more frequent use of counterpoint, themes incorporating wide leaps, greater use of syncopations, more extended finales, and more frequent occurrence of unison passages. (Note that – as we have seen – virtually all of these traits were, only a few years later, considered by Kirnberger to be the normal attributes of any concert symphony and not just those in minor keys.) Unfortunately for this theory, not a single word occurs in the correspondence, diaries, or periodicals of the period suggesting a “romantic crisis”, and as each of the composers mentioned wrote only 1, 2 or 3 such symphonies, the “crisis” must have been rapidly overcome, certainly more quickly and less expensively than any cure ever effected by psychoanalysis.

As for Sturm und Drang, of the key literary works of that “movement”, Goethe’s novel Werther dates from 1774 and Klinger’s play Sturm und Drang from 1776, while the works in the visual arts usually considered representative of “storm and stress” – by H. Füssli, F. Müller, J. A. Carstens, F. Kobell, J. C. Reinhart, W. Tischbein, and others – date from even later. Hence we are being asked to imagine that the prescient Austrian musicians participated in a cultural movement that had yet to come into existence. To dub the generation that included Bach’s sons, Mozart’s father, and Gluck (as well as Vanhal, Ordonez and Dittersdorf) “forerunners” is antihistorical. These talented composers did not rise from their beds each morning in order to “forerun”; rather they composed music that was thoroughly modern and that appealed to them and to their contemporaries. At first they must have been enchanted by the new, light, galant style they had helped to create. Later perhaps, the novelty of these sounds and forms began to wear off, and the musicians sought to reintroduce certain serious elements of the Baroque while maintaining other aspects of the new style. This stylistic evolution is hardly a “crisis” therefore, but rather, as Larsen has pointed out, “the breakthrough of the Classical style – the final synthesis”. This synthesis occurred in major – as well as minor-key works, but it was the sombre chromaticisms of the latter which appealed to Romantic critics, and it is those works that continue to call forth a “haze of adjectives”.

The marvellous sounds of the minor-key symphonies of the early 1770s were not entirely new ones. The opera house had long required these tempestuous effects to portray nature’s storms as well as storms of human emotion. Young Mozart knew of them long before he composed K. 183, for the D-minor “sinfonia” of 1771, K. 118/74c, is in a similar vein, and, even more extraordinarily, while staying in Chelsea in 1764 he sketched into a notebook a G-minor keyboard piece, K. 15p, in a quasi-orchestral style, which already captured the stormy character that has been erroneously claimed as the invention of a later period.

The Symphony’s opening allegro con brio in common time and its closing allegro in alla breve, in addition to their notoriously stormy character, exhibit large-scale sonata form movements with both halves repeated and the whole terminated by a coda. The andante in 2/4 in E flat major is also in sonata form with both halves repeated, but without coda. Here stormy emotions give 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 are heard in the violas, cellos and basses as well. An especially fine moment occurs 8 bars in to the recapitulation, where, in a passage not present in the exposition, a rising sequence of sighs touches upon F minor, G minor, C minor, A flat major, E flat major, and B flat major in rapid succession.

Mozart originally had begun the andante differently:

K 183

but when he had got no further than this he must have realized that something was amiss (the halting quality of the repeated E flats?), and he started again with the same initial three-note motive carried through in a more convincing manner.

The minuet’s stern unisons and touches of chromaticism contradict all of our received ideas about the polite social graces of that dance, and illustrate an extreme example of Koch’s remarks that “because minuets of this type are really not for dancing, composers have departed from the original conception ....” Here the four-bar phrases and the rounded binary form are traditional but the demeanour is no longer that of a ball-room dancer. This disparity between what we expect in a minuet and what Mozart has given us is emphasized by the G major trio, which is written for Harmonie – that is, for the favourite Austrian wind-band consisting of pairs of oboes, horns, and bassoons. The Harmonie trio offers a breath of fresh air and relaxation, as it were, placing into even sharper relief the character of the minuet that flanks it.

Such wind groups (sometimes joined by a pair of clarinets or English horns and occasionally reinforced in the bass by a contrabass viol, contrabassoon or serpent) were much employed in and around Vienna to provide music for banquets, out-of-doors social occasions, evening serenades, and so on. Such a group provided Burney with dinner music during his stay at the Viennese Gasthof “At the Sign of the Golden Ox”, and a decade later Mozart was to write a beautiful serenade (K. 375) for wind sextet and then be pleasantly surprised by itinerant musicians playing it under his window on his name day.

Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 186a [K. 201]

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro con spirit

The autograph manuscript of this work is dated 6 April 1774. Much of what was stated about the previous symphony could be repeated about this one, including the agitated and serious character of the first and last movements, the use of sonata form in 3 of the 4 movements, the contrasted character of the andante (in this case noble serenity rather than longing), the symphonic rather than dance quality of the minuet, and so on. The thoroughgoing excellence of this symphony has long been recognized, and it and the previous work are the only symphonies from this period that have entered the regular repertories of many of the major symphony orchestras.

The first movement begins piano, without the more usual loud chords or fanfare. The opening theme consists of an octave drop and a group of forward-moving quavers leading to the next octave drop, and so on in a rising sequence, the whole being repeated an octave higher, tutti, and in canon between the violins and the lower strings. Several attractive subjects of contrasted character appear in the dominant, leading to a vigorous closing section filled with repeated notes and arpeggios. The compact development section, bustling with scale-wise passages, repeated notes, modulations and syncopations, leads to a literal recapitulation. Both halves are repeated, and the coda, based upon the opening theme in canon, brings the finely-crafted movement to a jubilant close.

The andante and minuet have in common the prominent use of dotted and double-dotted rhythms. Such rhythms, characteristic of marches and of the slow sections of French ouvertures, were thought to convey stateliness, nobility and even godliness, and were used for that purpose in numerous 18th-century operas and oratorios.

Despite its fully-worked-out sonata form including a development section that Einstein described as “the richest and most dramatic Mozart had written up to this time”, the finale has the character of a chasse. That is to say, it is a piece based upon the spirit of the hunt and replete with repeated notes and other fanfare-like motives idiomatic to hunting horns. (Listeners familiar with the finales of Mozart’s horn concertos will know what is meant by this.) At the ends of the exposition, the development, the recapitulation and the coda, Mozart gives the violins a rapid ascending scale. One could hardly ask for clearer aural signposts to articulate the formal structure of the movement.

We are amusingly reminded of the perils of ascribing intentions to composers in their abstract instrumental music by the fact that while the British biographer of Mozart, Dyneley Hussey, is quite certain that this symphony is imbued with “tragic nobility”. Otto Jahn has no doubt whatever that it is “full of cheerful humour from beginning to end”.

Symphony No. 30 in D major, K. 186b [K. 202]

1. Molto allegro
2. Andantino con moto
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Presto

In this symphony, dated 5 May 1774, Saint-Foix and other commentators detect a retrenchment, a return to the sheer entertainment and galanterie of the earlier symphonies after the exceptional seriousness of the symphonies K. 182 and 183. Whether this is a cause for regret or pleasure depends upon one’s aesthetic; for Saint-Foix it was the former. But why should a festive work in D major with trumpets be “serious”? Who knows what gala occasion in Salzburg may have required just such music as this?

The first movement is a tightly-knit sonata form movement with interesting manipulation of the common-coin trill figure

K 202

which occurs unobtrusively on D in the fourth bar, with more emphasis on E some 21 bars later, then 11 bars 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, sounding for all the world like a hive of bumblebees trying to sing polyphony.

The andantino con moto, in diminutive sonata form and for strings alone, masks by the apparent simplicity of its graceful cantabile melodies the great care Mozart took to make all four voices active and interesting.

The minuet exudes the spirit of the ball room, but if we compare it with the 16 minuets, K. 176, which Mozart wrote for the carnival of 1774, we see at once some striking differences: the actual ball-room minuets are shorter, more homophonic, and always omit violas. Apparently the simpler textures and more foursquare phrase structures of K. 176 were designed to be easily perceptible in a noisy social setting, whereas the more elaborate symphony minuet was meant to have closer attention paid it.

The presto, which begins with an idea derived from the opening of the first movement, is also in sonata form with both halves repeated and a coda. The movement displays an attractive mixture of serious and not-so-serious ideas. The opening fanfare in dotted rhythms is in the spirit of a “quick step”. This march is however contrasted 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 delightful way in which the coda simply evaporates rather than offering a “proper” ending reminds us that the composer was an 18-year-old with a well-developed sense of humour.

Symphony in D major, K. 189b [K. 203]

1. Andante maestoso – Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Prestissimo

This symphony was extracted from an orchestral serenade. That was a perfectly logical procedure given that the occasions for serenades and symphonies were different and that the serenades were cast in a composite form made up of symphony and concerto movements prefaced by a march. Salzburg serenades were usually written either for such private occasion s as parties celebrating weddings, birthdays or name days, and investitures, or for the public celebrations of the end of the summer term at Salzburg University. Symphonies, as we have seen, were generally for the church, theatre, or concert hall. Mozart found a means of making one work serve two purposes. In the present case the interpenetration of the two genres is as follows (movements used in the symphony are starred):

1. Marcia
*2. Andante maestoso – Allegro assai
3. (Andante)
4. Menuetto
5. (Allegro)
6. Menuetto
*7. (Andante)
*8. Menuetto
*9. Prestissimo

Symphonic movements: 2 Andante maestoso – Allegro assai; 6 Menuetto; 7 (Andante); 8 Menuetto; 9 Prestissimo
Violinconcerto movements: 3 (Andante); 4 Menuetto; 5 (Allegro)

This is one of 5 Mozart serenades that exist in symphony versions. In 3 of the 5 instances there are sets of orchestral parts at least partially in Leopold or Wolfgang Mozart’s hand, making clear that they themselves were involved in the metamorphosis from serenade to symphony. In the remaining 2 cases (including the present one) we have only copyists’ manuscripts, but there seems every reason to suspect that those may stem from originals coming from Mozart or his circle.

The serenade from which this symphony is drawn was composed in Salzburg in August 1774. The stately introduction to the first movement is a feature found only in a handful of Mozart’s late symphonies, other than in those originating as Serenades. (Haydn was much fonder than Mozart of this way of beginning symphonies.) Perhaps Mozart was slow to appreciate the possibilities of the slow introduction, for in 1777 in a letter to his father he criticized the Mannheim symphonists for beginning “always in the same manner, with an introduction in slow time and in unison”. The practice may be a vestige of the French baroque ouverture, which customarily began with a noble grave section leading in to a longer one in a rapid tempo. Whatever its origins, the 7-bar andante maestoso here serves to set off the allegro assai that follows just as the cool shine of a gold setting shows off the brilliant sparkle of a diamond.

The allegro assai itself is a sonata form movement in common time with both halves repeated. It contains a couple of especially lovely lyrical themes contrasting with the general bustle of the movement, and has a stormy, contrapuntally-conceived development section.

The andante in 2/4 that follows is also in sonata form. The violins are muted, with the cantabile melody of the firsts accompanied by the whirring demisemiquaver figures of the seconds. A solo oboe makes its plaintive appearance in each half of the movement as well as in the coda. This pastoral tranquillity is broken only by 3 fortissimo unison outbursts in the development section, each serving to announce the sudden arrival at a new key.

The minuet sparkles with pomp and circumstance (though hardly of the Elgarian variety) while the trio, in which the solo oboe reappears, is as simple as the minuet is pompous. The stately and festive style of the minuet combined with its repeated use of the rhythm give it the character of a polonaise.

K 203

The prestissimo, in 2/4 and again in sonata form with both halves repeated and a coda, goes by so rapidly that it can hardly be believed that, counting repeats, this finale is some 538 bars long! The marvellous gestures in the exposition and recapitulation, where the orchestra lands on and holds a chromatically altered note, are reminiscent of some of the quirkier moments in C. P. E. Bach’s symphonies, even though the rest of the movement would appear to be under the more southerly influence of opera buffa.

Symphony No. 28 in C major, K. 189k [K. 173e-K. 200]

1. Allegro spiritoso
2. Andante
3. Menuetto (Allegretto) & Trio
4. Presto

This work is dated 17 November 1774 according to the sixth edition of the Köchel catalogue and according to Landon, but as someone attempted to obliterate the date, it is difficult to read. The Köchel catalogue admits that it could be read as 12 November, and Einstein deciphered the year as 1773. If the date 17 November 1774 is correct, then this symphony brings to an end the great burst of symphonies composed by Mozart for Salzburg in the early 1770s. After this he was not to write another symphony proper until the great Paris symphony of 1778. (The 4 additional symphonies found in our chronology between this work and the Paris symphony are reworkings of serenades or of opera overtures.)

As this work is in a format very similar to those of the previous few symphonies, we may forego a movement-by-movement description in order to take note of the fact that several commentators have heard echoes of other music in this piece. Wyzewa and Saint-Foix hear J. Haydn’s infIuence in the first movement. Abert points to the similarity between this movement and the first movement of the B flat symphony, K. 182/173dA. Wyzewa and Saint-Foix judge the opening idea of the andante to be in the style of a German popular song. They consider 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.) In the finale Hocquard is reminded of The Magic Flute, finding here what he calls “the Monostatos motive”.

This game of “find the tune” and “locate the influence” is difficult to resist and, as several major studies have been devoted largely to it, we should try to understand what lies behind it. Composers of the period in question were not so interested in originality per se as were those of a later period. Rather than originality they sought suitability. Or, to put it another way, more attention was paid to craft and less to inspiration. The greatest works could be based upon the most common materials. We may compare this to the attitude of a fine cabinet maker commissioned to build a table. His choice of materials (wood) and shape (rectangular) need not be novel for the table to be beautiful to look at and well-functioning to use, provided he knows how to pick the right wood and what to do with that wood.

Symphony in D major, K. 207a [K. 196-121]

1. Allegro molto
2. Andante grazioso
3. Allegro

Mozart’s comic opera La finta giardiniera (“The pretended gardener-girl”), K. 196, was first performed in Munich on 13 January 1775, that is, during carnival. At some later date he composed a 3/8 finale to turn the 2-movement overture in to a 3-movement symphony. There is every reason to hypothesize that the finale was added in Salzburg in 1775, although the manuscript is undated. Unlike the previous 5 symphonies, which were Germanic concert-symphonies with minuets, repeated sections in all movements, and lasting around 25 minutes, this symphony is an Italianate overture-symphony without minuet or repeated sections and lasting one quarter as long. A brief plot summary of La finta giardiniera will serve to suggest why the first movement is so gay and the second movement so galant. (The finale, a bright jig, picks up where the opening movement left off, as far as its spirit is concerned.)

David Ewen summarizes the tangles of La finta giardiniera’s love-intrigues thus: Marchesa Violante has been slighted by the man she loves, Count Belfiore. She and her valet disguise themselves as gardeners and seek employment at the palace of the Podestà, ruler of Lagonero. The Podestà finds Violante most charming; and the Podestà’s maid is strongly attracted to the valet. Meanwhile, Count Belfiore is about to marry the Podestà’s niece who, in turn, is being pursued by Ramiro. Thus the various love-plot threads become hopelessly entangled. Before the final curtain, however, Violante and the Count, the valet and the maid, and Ramiro and the Podestà’s niece are joined together in pairs by mutual love. Only the Podestà himself remains without a mate.

Mozart’s symphony is of course not programmatic. But it was his practice to write the overture of an opera late in the proceedings and certainly long after he had familiarized himself with the story, and, as Kirnberger tells us, an overture-symphony must “have a character that puts the listener in the proper frame of mind for the piece to follow”.

Symphony in D major, K. 213a [K. 204]

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Andantino grazioso – Allegro

Like the symphony K. 203/189b discussed above, this work is drawn from an orchestral serenade and comprises (not counting the march) movements 1, 5, 6 and 7 of the larger work. The autograph manuscript of the serenade reads li 5 d’agosto 1775, and the work is believed to have been written to provide a musical finale to ceremonies marking the end of the term at the University of Salzburg. The symphony version appears to have been better known than the serenade itself and survives in a number of later-I8th and early-19th-century manuscripts. One of these, a set of orchestral parts with corrections in Mozart’s hand, was in his possession at the time of his death. In a letter to his father of 4 January 1783 Mozart had asked to be sent this symphony, and the urgency of his request makes it clear that he was intending to perform it in Vienna.

The allegro assai, an energetic sonata form movement, begins with 3 tutti chords. Such beginnings were believed to have been the invention of Lully, who wanted to show off the good ensemble of his orchestra from the very first chord. This was the famous premier coup d’archet. After arriving in Paris in 1778, Mozart made fun of this notion in a letter to his father: “What a fuss the oxen here make of this trick! The devil take me if I can see any difference! They all begin together, just as they do in other places”. The andante which follows shows clearly its serenade origins in the lovely concertante writing for a flute, an oboe, a bassoon, and a pair of horns. The solo flute also reappears in the trio of the minuet. The finale has an idiosyncratic structure alternating between an andantino grazioso in 2/4 and an allegro in 3/8, with each appearing 4 times. This interesting experiment was repeated by Mozart only two months later in the finale of his violin concerto, K. 218, in which an andante grazioso in 2/4 and an allegro ma non troppo in 6/8 alternate 5 times. The finale of the violin concerto is marked “rondeau”, and this gives us a clue to the interpretation of the finale at hand: it is an original sort of rondo structure, handled with aplomb and a touch of wit.

Mozart and the symphonic traditions of his time

Salzburg and its Orchestra

The picture of Salzburg painted by Mozart in his letters is unflattering in the extreme, as a series of excerpts from the years 1775-81 will show:

14 January 1775: “I fear that we cannot return to Salzburg very soon and Mamma must not wish it, for she knows how much good it is doing me to be able to breathe freely.”

4 September 1776: “My father has already served this court for 36 years, and as he knows that the present Archbishop cannot and will not have anything to do with people who are getting on in years [Leopold was 56], he doesn’t allow it to worry him, but has taken up literature, which was always a favourite study of his.”

1 August 1777: “Your Grace [the Archbishop] will not take this petition [to leave Salzburg] amiss, seeing that when I asked you for permission to travel to Vienna 3 years ago, you graciously declared that I had nothing to hope for in Salzburg, and would do better to seek my fortune elsewhere.”

23 September 1777: “... our Mufti [Archbishop] H[ieronymus] C[olloredo] is a bastard ...”

26 September 1777: “They were both amazed and absolutely refused to believe that my late lamented salary used to be all of 12 gulden, 30 kreutzer [a month] ... I am always in my very best spirits, for my heart has been as light as a feather ever since I got away from all that chicanery! – what is more, I have become Fatter.”

30 September 1777: “... Salzburg is no place for me, truly it is not.”

10 December 1777: “... a town where one is accustomed to having stupid enemies, [or] weak and silly friends who, because Salzburg’s bread of affliction is indispensable to them, are always toadying and are consequently one thing one day and another the next.”

19 February 1778: “... Salzburg, where we are not in the habit of contradicting anyone ...”

9 July 1778: “... one of my chief reasons for detesting Salzburg [is] those coarse, slovenly, dissolute court musicians. Why, no honest man of good breeding could possibly live with them! Indeed, instead of wanting to associate with them, he would feel ashamed of them. It is probably for this very reason that musicians are neither popular nor respected among us. Ah, if only the orchestra were organised as they are at Mannheim. Indeed, I would like you to see the discipline which prevails there and the authority which Cannabich wieIds. There everything is done seriously. Cannabich, who is the best director I have ever seen, is both beloved and feared by his subordinates. Morever he is respected by the whole town and so are his soldiers. But certainly they behave quite differently from ours. They have good manners, are well dressed, and do not go to pubs and swill. This can never be the case in Salzburg, unless the Prince will trust you or me and give us full authority as far as the music is concerned – otherwise it’s no good. In Salzburg everyone – or rather no one – bothers about the music. If I were to undertake it, I should have to have complete freedom of action. The Chief Steward should have nothing to say to me in musical matters, or on any point relating to music. For a courtier can’t do the work of a Kapellmeister, but a Kapellmeister can well be a courtier.”

7 August 1778: “Now for our Salzburg story. You, most beloved friend, are well aware how I detest Salzburg-and not only on account of the injustices which my dear father and I have endured there, which in themselves would be enough to make one want to forget such a place and blot it out of the memory for ever! But let us set that aside, if only we can arrange things so as to be able to live there well. To live well and to live happily are two very different things, and the latter I could not do without having recourse to witchcraft ... I have far more hope of living pleasantly and happily in any other place. Perhaps you will misunderstand me and think that Salzburg is too small for me? If so, you are greatly mistaken. I have already given some of my reasons to my father. In the meantime, content yourself with this one, that Salzburg is no place for my talent. In the first place, professional musicians there are not held in much consideration, and, secondly, one hears nothing, there is no theatre [this statement is not strictly accurate], no opera, and even if they really wanted one, who is there to sing? For the last five or six years the Salzburg orchestra has always been rich in what is useless and superfluous, but very poor in what is necessary, and absolutely destitute of what is indispensible; and such is the case at the present moment.”

11 September 1778: “To tell you my real feelings, the only thing that disgusts me about Salzburg is the impossibility of mixing freely with the people, and the low estimation in which the court musicians are held there – and – that the Archbishop has no confidence in the experience of intelligent people who have seen the world ... If the Archbishop would only trust me, I should soon make his orchestra famous; of this there can be no doubt.”

15 October 1778: “Consider it yourself – put yourself in my place! At Salzburg I don’t know how I stand. I am everything – and yet – sometimes – nothing! Nor do I ask so much nor so little – I just want something – I must be something!”

12 November 1778: “... the Archbishop cannot pay me enough for that slavery in Salzburg! As I said before, I feel the greatest pleasure at the thought of paying you a visit – but only annoyance and anxiety when I see myself back at that beggarly court!”

3 December 1778: “Ah, how much finer and better our orchestra might be, if only the Archbishop desired it. Probably the chief reason why it is not better is because there are far too many performances. I have no objection to the chamber music, only to the concerts on a larger scale.”

8 January 1779: “I swear to you on my honour that I cannot bear Salzburg or its inhabitants (I mean, the natives of Salzburg). Their language – their manners are quite intolerable to me.”

16 December 1780: “... Upon my honour, it is not Salzburg itself but the Prince and his noble disdain which become every day more intolerable to me.”

8 April 1781: “... to waste one’s youth in inactivity in such a beggarly place is really very sad – and also unprofitable.”

16 May 1781: “... even if I had to beg, I could never serve such a master again; for, as long as I live, I shall never forget what has happened.”

26 May 1781: “... in Salzburg – for me at least – there is not a farthing’s worth of entertainment. I refuse to associate with a good many people there – and most of the others do not think me good enough. Besides, there is no stimulus for my talent! When I play or when any of my compositions are performed, it is just as if the audience were all tables and chairs. If at least there were a theatre there worthy of the name.”

The historian’s task is not only to publish interesting documents, but also to interpret them. In this instance we must deal with three aspects of Mozart’s polemics against Salzburg: the people, the Archbishop, and the orchestra.

It is perhaps true that the people of Salzburg were, as the musician Schubart wrote in the 1770s, “exceedingly inclined to low humour. Their folk songs are so comical and burlesque that one cannot listen to them without side-splitting laughter. The Punch-and-Judy spirit shines through everywhere ...”. The irony of this, however, is that Mozart himself, despite his superior education and haughty attitude, was very much of the same persuasion. His letters are filled with Salzburg dialect, local puns, and coarse jokes. And his strong complaints could easily obscure the fact that the Mozarts also had dear friends and strong supporters in their native city. The clue here lies in Leopold’s snobbery, for he had raised his son to be socially ambitious and to avoid unnecessary contact with the lower classes. Hence his displeasure at Wolfgang’s choice of wife and his delight at arranging for Nannerl to marry into a higher social class. The son was trying to please the father when he wrote that he refused “to associate with a good many people”, but he was expressing his own anguished predicament – the predicament of a lad raised as a bourgeois in the midst of Salzburg’s vestigial feudalism where the middle class was small and powerless – when he added, “and most of the others do not think me good enough”. The Mozarts’ profound disillusionment arose not only from the Archbishop’s bad treatment and poor pay, but from the contrast with their treatment elsewhere. During their extensive travels the Mozarts, because they dressed well, spoke well, and came well-introduced, were accepted as near equals by the upper classes of dozens of European courts and cities. But a prophet may be without honour in his own land, and at home Leopold and Wolfgang were merely liveried servants.

The Archbishop may well deserve the hatred of generations of Mozart worshippers but, as is so often the case, there is another side to the story. It is true, for instance, that the able Leopold was passed over time and again for the position of Kapellmeister, and died still only Vizekapellmeister. But he had been away on tour a good deal of the time, and his best energies had gone into raising his son and not into serving the Archbishop and working toward advancement at home. In Wolfgang’s case, it is instructive that, although many of the Viennese nobility admired him greatly, none offered him a permanent post after he settled there, for he could be difficult, haughty, defensive, mercurial, and painfully conscious of his unusual gifts – in short, not the personality to make a good courtier or the head of a large musical establishment. The contrast with Joseph Haydn is striking, for although Haydn inevitably fought unjust treatment at the hands of his Lords, the Princes Esterházy, he never forgot his station in life and he aspired to serve well and loyally. Most of Mozart’s potential employers evidently preferred as their Kapellmeisters any one of a hundred competent but uninspired musicians to the brilliant but uppish Mozart.

As for the Salzburg orchestra, it was indeed going through a difficult period in which there was even for a time, in the late 1770s, no Kapellmeister at all. Discipline was undoubtedly less than ideal. But it was a good-sized, active organization that gave several performances a week (too many, Mozart tells us), and while it may not have been up to the standards Mozart had encountered in Mannheim and a few other European musical centres, it was far better than many of the other orchestras he heard on his traveIs. (It should be noted that the Mozarts were seldom generous with their praise of music or musicians.) The official roster of the Salzburg court orchestra in the early1780s included Luigi Gatti, Kapellmeister, Leopold Mozart, Vizekapellmeister (and violinist), Johann Michael Haydn, Konzertmeister (and violist and organist), 2 other organists, 11 other violinists, 1 other violist, 2 cellists, 4 double bass players, 2 bassoonists, 3 oboists, 2 horn players, and 3 trombonists. Many of these musicians played more than one instrument, and they were supplemented on important occasions by additional performers drawn from the town waits, the trumpet and kettledrum players of the local militia, and various amateur performers at court. Thus the composition of the Salzburg orchestra varied widely from season to season and from occasion to occasion. As reconstituted for these recordings, the orchestra is as it may have been heard at festive events during the year: the strings 9-8-4-3-2, and the necessary woodwind, brass, kettledrums and harpsichord, with 3 bassoons doubling the bass line whenever obbligato parts for them are not indicated.

The Symphonies of 1775-83

During the years 1770-75 Mozart had an attack of what Massimo Mila has charmingly called “symphony fever”, for during that 6-year span he created no fewer than 36 symphonies. In the following 8 years the fever had subsided, however, and we record only 9 symphonies. This reduced production is undoubtedly in part due to Mozart’s disillusionment with Salzburg which is so painfully documented in his letters. He was no longer so interested in impressing his compatriots, and must often have fallen back on his large stock of older works when a symphony was called for. Even after Mozart’s move to Vienna, however, where there were numbers of potential employers among the nobility whom Mozart hoped to impress, the production of symphonies remained small. He was by then much more interested in piano concertos in which he could display his considerable skill as a soloist, and above all in opera, the domain in which he hoped to make his principal reputation.

The symphony based on the overture to Il re pastore and those drawn from the Posthorn serenade and from the 2 works for the Haffner family were the last works in which Mozart engaged in such refurbishment. On the one hand, after settling in Vienna he abandoned the Salzburgian genre of the orchestral serenade. On the other hand, the overtures to his great operas had apparently evolved to the point at which he no longer considered them interchangeable with concert symphonies.

Symphony in C major, K. 213c [K. 102]

1. Molto allegro
2. Andantino
3. Presto assai

This symphony is derived from Mozart’s opera Il re pastore (“The shepherd king”), a famous libretto by Metastasio set by a number of composers of the period, including Gluck. Mozart composed the opera in the space of about 6 weeks prior to its première in Salzburg on 23 April 1775. The opera had been commissioned to celebrate a visit to Salzburg by the Archduke Maximilian, youngest son of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. As Salzburg had no opera house, this work may well have been given in concert form, and indeed the Archduke’s travel diary speaks only of attending a “cantata”. The plot concerns the conflict between love and duty in a foundling prince who, having been raised as a shepherd, is reluctant to give up his rustic life for the burdens of the throne. Mozart’s one-movement “overtura” to the opera begins with the same three chords with which his previous symphony (K. 213a) began, but there follows in this case a movement much more concise and Italianate. This leads without a break to 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 a new ending 8 bars long, which leads, again without pause, into a totally new finale. This movement, presto assai in 2/4, is an extended rondo in the style of a country dance.

The aria upon which the middle movement of the symphony is based finds Aminta with flute in hand wondering what fate holds for him and his shepherdess. The text reads:

Intendo. amico rio,
quel basso mormorio,
tu chiedi in tua favella;
il nostro ben dov’è?

(I understand, o friendly brook,
your low murmuring,
you are asking in your way
where our beloved is.)

Mozart took this symphony with him on his trip to Paris in 1778, using it on the way to close a concert at the house of the Mannheim composer, Christian Cannabich, on 13 February 1778. The rest of the concert consisted of a symphony by Cannabich; Mozart’s piano concerto in B flat, K. 238, played by Cannabich’s daughter Rosa; Mozart’s oboe concerto in C, K. 314; 2 arias from Lucio Silla, K. 135, sung by Mozart’s current love and future sister-in-law Aloysia Weber; Mozart’s piano concerto in D, K. 175, performed by himself; and a half hour of his extemporisation at the fortepiano.

Symphony in D major, K. 248b [K. 250]

1. Allegro maestoso – Allegro molto
2. Menuetto galante & Trio
3. Andante
4. Menuetto & 2 Trios
5. Adagio – Allegro assai

Mozart’s Haffner serenade is a much-loved work (not to be confused, however, with the Haffner symphony, K. 385, discussed later). The Haffners and the Mozarts were friends of long standing in Salzburg, and when Maria Elisabeth (“Liserl”) Haffner was to marry, it was to be expected that the 20-year-old Mozart should be asked for some suitable music to celebrate the occasion. The serenade which resulted received its first performance at an eve-of-the-wedding party, and the Salzburg court councillor von Schiedenhofen who was present entered in his diary:

“21 July 1776: After dinner I went to the bridal music that young Herr Haffner ordered to be put on for his sister Liserl. It was by Mozart, and done at their summer house in Loreto Street.”

Like most of Mozart’s orchestral serenades, this work consists of a march followed by a mixture of symphony and concerto movements (in this instance, a three-movement violin concerto). At some later date Mozart or his father ordered a copyist to extract a set of orchestra parts containing only the symphonic movements. To this Leopold added a part for the kettledrums (lacking in the serenade score), and Wolfgang looked through the set of parts and entered a number of corrections and clarifications. At yet a later date, these corrected parts were used by another copyist who added a second set of string parts. The resulting set of 16 orchestral parts was in Mozart’s possession at his death, which suggests that he used them for his concerts in Vienna. Furthermore, it is likely that this symphony was one of 6 that in 1784 Mozart hoped to have published, the set to be dedicated to Prince von Fürstenberg. (In the event, however, only 2 appeared – K. 319 and 385 – and without the proposed dedication.)

The symphony version may perhaps have been created as early as 1776-77, for we know that in preparation for his departure for Mannheim and Paris, Wolfgang, in September 1777, assembled a large collection of orchestral parts of his recent symphonies. In any case, the symphony was in existence by September 1779, for an entry in Nannerl’s diary in Wolfgang’s hand on the 24th of that month mentions a performance in Salzburg of “the Haffner music”. This could, of course, be taken to refer to the serenade version, except that on 18 March 1780 Mozart again entered the details of a concert programme into his sister’s diary, and the first of the nine items listed is clearly designated “A symphony (namely the Haffner music)”. As a serenade was designed to fill an entire occasion while a symphony was to introduce other works, this was most probably the symphony version.

The opening, allegro maestoso in common time, is little more than an extended fanfare moving from tonic to dominant, spread over 35 bars and filled with lovely orchestral figurations. After a brief pause, the allegro molto alla breve opens unisono, a texture which recurs several times during the movement with good dramatic effect. The movement is on a large scale for a symphony movement of the late 1770s, with an unusually extended and chromatic development section based on material from the allegro maestoso introduction. Differences between this version and the serenade include (aside from the written-out kettledrums) the omission of the repeat of the exposition and the addition of a fanfare for oboes, horns and trumpets at the end where there had been a grand pause.

Menuetto galante is an unusual designation, and perhaps best rendered “fashionable minuet”. Fashionable or not, it is a particularly long and beautiful minuet. The trio is not without its touches of pathos. Mozart rewrote this trio for the symphony version, changing a broken-chord triplet accompaniment in the second violins (as in Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata) to repeated notes, and adding oboes and bassoons to what was originally for strings only.

The andante which follows was taken over unchanged from the serenade. It reveals its origins by its sprawling dimensions. The movement is of a particularly original formal design, perhaps best described as an elaborate rondo influenced by the double theme-and-variations format favoured by Joseph Haydn for his symphony andantes. It is difficult to listen to this movement without imagining (Italian) words, for the melodies and rhythms are reminiscent of many arias of the period. It is perhaps this aspect of the movement that prompted Della Croce to hypothesize a nuptial programme. He hears “the characterization of the two spouses, who correspond respectively to the principal theme, pensive and angelic, and a second, more ingratiating theme, nearly always entrusted to the oboes”. This analysis, however, leaves us to guess what (or whom) several other themes may represent.

Two or three minuets and minuets with two or three trios were common in Salzburg orchestral serenades but uncommon (although not unheard of) in symphonies. Certain late 18th and early 19th century manuscripts of this symphony have the “superfluous” movements excised, suggesting the growth of a concept of symphonic format more rigid than that which Mozart himself held in the 1770s. A pair of flutes replace the oboes in the second minuet and its 2 trios. In an attractive touch of rustic drone near the end of the minuet’s second section, Mozart hints at the sound of the hurdy-gurdy, while the first trio features a flute and bassoon duet and the second gives the entire wind band a chance to shine.

The finale opens with a 16-bar adagio of great beauty, leading into a large-scale jig movement in sonata form with both halves repeated and a coda. The music is similar in character to the finale of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 8 – a movement entitled “La Tempesta”. If these storms are a bit too big to fit into a teacup, they are nonetheIess among the most genial storms one will ever have to weather.

Saint-Foix comments upon “the abnormal length of the movements, their variety, their brilliance” and Della Croce calls the work “one of the richest, most solid and most elaborate symphonies” that Mozart had thus far composed. It must have been popular, judging by the dozens of manuscript copies dating from the 18th and early 19th centuries as well as André’s edition of 1792. During this period the serenade from which the symphony was drawn remained virtually unknown.

Symphony No. 32 in G major, K. 318

1. Allegro spiritoso
2. Andante
3. Tempo primo

Dated 26 April 1779, this was the first symphony that Mozart composed after his abortive trip to Paris. Because the format of this work is unlike Mozart’s other symphonies but similar to some Parisian opéra comique overtures by Grétry Mozart’s biographers have exerted themselves trying to guess for which stage work this “overture” may have been intended. Hermann Deiters suggested that it was for Thamos, King of Egypt (K. 345/336a) while Einstein thought that it was for the untitled and never completed Singspiel now known as Zaide (K. 344/336b). But the work’s date of composition is too late for the first version of Thamos and too early for Zaide or for the second version of Thamos. If in fact the work was destined for something other than the usual church, court or chamber concerts in Salzburg, then it was perhaps written for the theatrical troupe of Johann Heinrich Böhm. This troupe of nearly 50 actors, dancers and singers performed various of Mozart’s works, including Thamos and a German version of La finta giardiniera (K. 196) entitled Die verstellte Gärterin. Böhm’s troupe was to be resident in Salzburg during the winter of 1779-80, but in April 1779 it was still in Augsburg, and Mozart (through the good offices of his Augsburg cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, known as “Das Bäsle”) was in correspondence with Böhm about providing additional music for his productions.

All editions of the Köchel catalogue as well as the new Mozart edition have subtitled this work “ouverture”. There is no authority for this label, which is apparently intended to make a distinction between concert symphonies and theatrical overtures – a distinction that hardly existed at the time. Mozart himself headed his score simply “Sinfonia”. That he approved of its use in the theatre (as he probably would have done with any of his symphonies) is not in question, as he provided it (along with 2 new vocal numbers, K. 479 and 480) as the overture for a Viennese production of Bianchi’s opera buffa La Villanella rapita in 1785. And it was as the overture to La Villanella rapita that this work was published and known to the 19th century.

The symphony calls for pairs of flutes, oboes and bassoons, with 4 horns and strings. The trumpets and kettledrums do not appear in the original score, but were copied in separate parts by Mozart at some later date, perhaps for La Villanella rapita in 1785.

The opening allegro spiritoso is a beautifully crafted sonata form movement with especially fine handling of orchestral sonorities. In several passages, for instance, the basso of Baroque tradition is resolved into independent parts for bassoon, cello and double bass, creating novel timbral effects. At the point in the movement where the recapitulation might be expected, the allegro breaks off and an andante of considerable poignancy and scope is heard. This leads without pause to a primo tempo which, after a few bars of transition, places us not at the beginning of the recapitulation but rather 6 bars before the return of the so-called “second subject”. Then follows the rest of the recapitulation with the “missing” opening of the recapitulation reserved as a brilliant coda.

Symphony No. 33 in B flat major, K. 319

1. Allegro assai
2. Andante moderato
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro assai

The autograph is marked Salzburg, 9. Juli 1779. Unfortunately the pages from Nannerl’s diary covering the period between 16 June and 14 September of that year are missing, and no other document gives us a clue to the reason for Mozart writing this symphony. The work originally contained only 3 movements; the minuet was added later in Vienna, perhaps for one of the concerts Mozart gave there in 1782. This symphony is one of the 6 that Mozart ear-marked for publication in 1784, and it did in fact appear the following year. In 1786 it was among 12 works that Mozart offered to Prince von Fürstenberg for his exclusive use. Mozart’s double deception – representing a seven-year-old work as recent and offering it for exclusive use when it had already been published – was soon uncovered, but the Prince, in an apparent display of noblesse oblige, paid Mozart the amount originally agreed upon.

The allegro assai in 3/4 is a sonata form movement without repeats, filled with lively ideas of a much more conventional stripe than those of the previous symphony. To Saint-Foix the movement has a pastoral character and a Viennese lilt, and the latter point is supported by Abert, who compares the movement to Schubert. In the development section the attentive listener will note the appearance of the famous 4-note motto (do-re-la-mi) with which the finale of the Jupiter symphony opens. This motto, used by dozens of composers before and after Mozart, originated in sacred vocal polyphony, but does not appear to have been associated with any particular words. Mozart himself, for instance, used it in one Mass (K. 192) for the words “Credo, credo” and in another (K. 257) for the words “Sanctus, sanctus”.

The andante moderato is in the form A-B-A1-B1-A-Coda, with the A1 section especially nicely handled imitatively, first in the strings in the dominant and then in the winds in the tonic. This cantabile movement is dominated by the strings in rather a chamber-music vein, with the dynamic nuances marked with particular care by Mozart.

Saint-Foix and Larsen both remark upon the supposed Viennese character of the minuet (would they have done so had they not known the movement to have been composed in Vienna instead of Salzburg?), by which they undoubtedly refer to the conciseness of the whole and especially to the Ländler-like trio.

The finale begins as if it were simply one more brisk jig-finale, but Mozart has a few tricks up his sleeve. The jig’s triplets alternate with a march’s duplets (and occasionally the two overlap), the wind writing is exceptionally felicitous, and the development section is a fine example of pseudo-counterpoint, which, while never exceeding two real voices at any moment, creates the illusion of many-layered polyphony.

Symphony in D major, K. 320

1. Adagio maestoso – Allegro con spirito
2. Andantino
3. Presto

Dated Salzburg, 3 August 1779, the serenade from which this symphony was drawn was written, according to Mozart’s Prague acquaintance Niemetschek, for Archbishop Colloredo’s name-day (30 September). However, Mozart seldom wrote down a piece so far in advance of a deadline, and he himself referred to this work in a letter by the term “Finalmusik”. The so-called “Final-Musiken”, usually given on a Wednesday since there was a school holiday on Thursdays, were serenades which the students of Salzburg University’s philosophical faculty offered at the end of the academic year (which fell in early August) to the Prince-Archbishop at his summer residence “Mirabell” and to their professors in front of the University. Mozart created the symphony by omitting the serenade’s march, its two movements for concertante winds, and both of its minuets with their trios.

A set of parts for the symphony version of this work preserved at Graz has corrections in Mozart’s hand. It appears to be of Viennese origin, suggesting performances of the symphony there in the 1780s. The symphony was a popular one, judging from the many manuscripts of it found in European libraries and archives, and was perhaps one of the 6 that Mozart hoped to publish in 1784. In fact, however, it was published only in 1792.

The first movement begins majestically with a 6-bar adagio maestoso introduction, leading directly into a brilliant allegro con spirito in sonata form without repeats. An interesting and effective feature of the movement is found at the recapitulation f where the adagio material reappears in a slightly recomposed version and without a tempo change. This Mozart accomplishes by doubling the note values, so that a minim in allegro is precisely equal to a crotchet in adagio.

The andantino in D minor is exceptionally profound for a serenade or a symphony of this period, in which we usually find less chromaticism, a more songful attitude, and a major key (most often the subdominant). The movement is a fully fledged sonata form movement with both sections repeated.

The finale, presto alla breve, is, like the other movements, in sonata form, here without repeats. It begins unisono and hurtles through its nearly 300 bars in a decidedly light-hearted manner. Mozart saves some especially attractive bits for the oboes in the development section which, despite its thematic manipulation and imitative style, maintains the buffo character of the rest of the movement.

Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338

1. Allegro vivace
2. Andante di molto più tosto allegretto
3. Allegro vivace

This is Mozart’s last symphony written in Salzburg, although not the last written for Salzburg (for which, see K. 385 below). He labelled the autograph Sinfonia di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart m[anu] pr[opria] le 29 d’Agosto, Salsbourg [sic] 1780. We learn from Nannerl’s diary that her brother played at court on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of September; one of these occasions may therefore have seen the première of this symphony. Furthermore, Wolfgang already knew that he was to leave for Munich on 5 November to oversee the preparation of ldomeneo, and he may have wanted a new symphony in his baggage in case an opportunity to present himself in a concert there were to materialize. This symphony remained in Mozart’s affections, for it was probably performed in Vienna on 3 April 1781 by the Tonkünstler-Societät and on 26 May 1782 at the Augarten, it was among 6 symphonies ear-marked for publication in 1784 (but did not actually see print until 1797), and was among 12 works offered to Prince von Fürstenberg for his exclusive use in 1786. Indeed, a set of parts for this work with corrections in Mozart’s hand is still in the Fürstenberg collection at Donaueschingen.

The first movement (Mozart originally headed it allegro but later added to that vivace) is in sonata form without repeats. It opens with conventional fanfare materials, but Mozart, by inserting echoes and extensions of that material, gives it a special shape and considerable individuality. One soon senses in this movement Mozart’s interest in longer musical sentences, and paragraphs in which a more sustained musical logic begins to replace the shorter-breathed, patchwork-quilt designs of his earlier symphonies.

As a second movement there was originally a minuet, but for unknown reasons Mozart tore it from the manuscript, and it is lost except for the first 14 bars which were written on the back of the final page of the opening movement. The notion promulgated by Einstein that the symphonic minuet, K. 409, in C major was written to be added to this symphony is incorrect. K. 409 is far too long to fit this symphony, and it calls for different forces.

The slow movement is labelled in the autograph score andante di molto, but Mozart must have found that this was interpreted slower than he wished it, for in the concertmaster’s part in Donaueschingen he added più tosto allegretto. This movement for strings (with divided violas) and bassoon doubling the bassline, is in binary form, or as some prefer to call it, sonata form without development section. Larsen hears nothing here but opera, including anticipations of Susanna and Zerlina. Saint-Foix finds “a delicacy and emotion ... unparalleled even in the work of Mozart”, but to Della Croce the movement is archaic, filled with melodic clichés, and not worthy of the movements flanking it. Thus our uncertain progress across the quicksands of musical criticism.

The finale, allegro vivace, is another huge jig in sonata form, with both sections repeated. Mozart gives a special concertante role to the oboes. The increased breadth of conception of the first movement is audible again here.

Symphony No. 35 in D major, K. 385 (“Haffner”)

March K. 408 No. 2 [K. 385a]
1. Allegro con spirito
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Presto

The circumstances surrounding the creation of this work are more fully documented than those for any other of Mozart’s symphonies. In mid-July 1782 Mozart’s father wrote to him in Vienna requesting a new symphony for celebrations surrounding the ennoblement of Mozart’s childhood friend Siegmund Haffner the younger. On 20 July Mozart replied:

“Well. I am up to my eyes in work. By Sunday week I have to arrange my opera [The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384] 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 can I do so? You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange a work of this kind for wind instruments, so that it suits them and yet loses none of its effect. Well. 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 Mozart was prone to procrastination and to making excuses to his father, in this instance his complaints may well have been justified, for having just completed the arduous task of launching his new opera (the première was on 16 July). Mozart moved house on 23 July in preparation for his marriage. By 27 July he 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 from the Haffner music [K. 249], which is quite unknown. I have composed my symphony in D major, because you prefer that key.”

On 29 July Siegmund Haffner the younger was ennobled and added to his name “von Imbachhausen”, On the 31st, however, Mozart could still only write:

“You see that my intentions are good – only what one cannot do, one cannot! I won’t 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 despatch it all together, for then it will cost only one fee. What I have sent you has already cost me three gulden.”

On 4 August Mozart and Constanze Weber were married in Vienna without having received Leopold’s approval, which arrived grudgingly the following day. In the meanwhile the other movements must have been completed and sent off, for on 7 August Mozart 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.”

Precisely when the party celebrating Haffner’s ennoblement occurred, and whether the new symphony was received in time to be performed on that occasion, is not known, for Leopold’s letter reporting the event is lost. The fact that in a later letter Wolfgang was unsure whether or not orchestral parts had been copied (see below) suggests that the symphony had not arrived in time. Be that as it may, at some time prior to 24 August, Leopold must have written his approval of the work, for on that day Wolfgang responded, “I am delighted that the symphony is to your taste”.

Three months later the symphony again entered Mozart’s correspondence. On 4 December he wrote to his father, in a letter that went astray, asking for the score of the symphony to be returned. When it had become clear that his father had not received that letter, he wrote again on the 21st, summarizing the lost letter, including, “If you find an opportunity, you might have the goodness to send me the new symphony that I composed for Haffner at your request. Please make sure that I have it before Lent, because I would very much like to perform it at my concert”. On 4 January he again urged his father to return the symphony, stating that either the score or the parts would be equally useful for his purposes. On the 22nd he again reminded his father, and on the 5th of February yet again with new urgency; “... 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 copies 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”. The usually punctilious Leopold’s delay is mute testimony to the anger and frustration he felt over what he considered to be his son’s foolish choice of a wife. In any case, by 15 February Wolfgang could write, “Most heartfelt thanks for the music you have sent me ... 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 sent from Salzburg by putting aside the march, eliminating one of the minuets, deleting the repeats of the two sections of the first movement, and adding pairs of flutes and clarinets in the first and last movements, primarily to reinforce the tuttis and requiring no change in the existing orchestration of those movements.

The “academy” (as concerts were then called) duly took place on Sunday, 23 March, in the Burgtheater. Mozart reported to his father:

“... the theatre could not have been more crowded and ... every box was taken. 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 theatre; 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 report is confirmed by a review of the concert:

“The Concert was honoured with an exceptionally large crowd, and the two new concertos and other fantasies which Herr 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 unanimous applause as has never been heard of here. The receipts of the concert are estimated to amount to 1,600 gulden in all.”

The programme was typical of Mozart’s “academies” and demonstrates the role that symphonies were expected to fill as preludes and postludes framing an evening’s events:

1. The first 3 movements of the Haffner symphony (K. 385)
2. “Se il padre perdei” from Idomeneo (K. 366)
3. A piano concerto in C major (K. 415)
4. The recitative and aria “Misera, dove son! – Ah! non son’ io che parlo” (K. 369)
5. A sinfonia concertante (movements 3 and 4 from the serenade K. 320)
6. A piano concerto in D major (K. 175 with the finale K. 382)
7. “Parto m’affretto” from Lucia Silla (K. 135)
8. A short fugue (“because the Emperor was present”)
9. Variations on a tune from Paisiello’s I filosofi immaginarii (K. 398) and as an encore to that,
10. Variations on a tune from Gluck’s La Rencontre imprévue (K. 455)
11. The recitative and rondo “Mia speranza adorata – Ah, non sai, qual pena” (K. 416)
12. The finale of the Haffner symphony (K. 385)

Which of us wouldn’t give a great deal to be temporarily transported in one of science-fiction’s time machines to the Burgtheater on that Sunday in March 1783 to hear such a concert led by Mozart at the fortepiano?

The Haffner symphony was among the 6 symphonies that Mozart planned to have published in 1784 and in the following year the work was indeed brought out in Vieuna by Artaria, in the four-movement version but without the additional flutes and clarinets. The fuller orchestration appeared in Paris published by Sieber with a title page bearing the legend “Du répertoire du Concert spirituel”. (The work had been given at the Concert spirituel apparently on 17 April 1783.) Despite the symphony’s wide availability, Mozart included it among pieces that he sold to Prince von Fürstenberg “for performance solely at his court” in 1786.

Having dwelt at some length on the history of the Haffner symphony, we shall be content to let the music speak for itself – which it does so eloquently – without further description or analysis. This recording is the first to be made of the original, Salzburg version of K. 385 and is lacking only the second minuet and trio, which are no longer extant. Mozart and his father consistently referred to this work as a symphony, even though the configuration of movements of this Salzburg version brings it into a close relationship with the works we know as orchestral serenades.

Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425 (“Linz”)

1. Adagio – Allegro spiritoso
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Presto

Mozart’s letters 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, however, not only because Mozart was keenly aware that his father and sister disapproved of his choice of a wife, but also because he feared the possibility of his being arrested in Salzburg for having left the archbishop’s service without official permission. Upon being reassured by his father concerning the latter, Wolfgang and Constanze finally set out, arriving in Salzburg toward the end of July 1783 and remaining there until the end of October. It is clear from what little we know of the visit, that it was a difficult one for all concerned.

On the return trip to Vienna Wolfgang and Constanze had to pass through the town of Linz. An excerpt from Mozart’s letter to his father from there on 31 October is self-explanatory:

“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 [Amand 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 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 theatre here and, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at break-neck speed, which must be finished by that time. Well, I must close, because I really must set to work ...”

There we have it. Between 30 October and 4 November Mozart conceived and wrote out a new symphony, had parts copied, and may or may not have rehearsed the orchestra in the work. (Recall here Kirnberger’s statement made in the 1770s that the symphony “will not be practised like the sonata but must be sight-read”. That symphonies were fortunate to receive a single rehearsal and often had none is confirmed by numerous anecdotes from the biographies of Mozart, Haydn, Dittersdorf, and others.) We know nothing of the orchestra at Linz (perhaps the same one that played for the unidentified opera a few days earlier), but the evidence of the symphony itself suggests that it was of respectable size, lacking only clarinets. As for the programme, it seems that a G major symphony by Michael Haydn for which Mozart provided a slow introduction and which long passed as a work entirely by Mozart (K. 444/425a) may also have been performed. And as Mozart’s “academies” seldom failed to include one or two of his piano concertos, some arias, and some solo improvisations at the keyboard, this programme was perhaps similar.

The Linz symphony was taken to Vienna by Mozart where he performed it again at his “academy” of 1 April 1784 in the Burgtheater. On 15 May he sent his father a score for the symphony; Leopold reported a performance under his direction at a concert in Salzburg on 15 September, referring to it in a letter to Nannerl as “your brother’s excellent new symphony”. Mozart included this “excellent” symphony among the 6 planned for publication in 1784, although in fact it did not reach print until 1793. Beginning in 1785 the Viennese copyist Johann Traeg offered manuscript sets of parts of K. 425 for sale, which however did not prevent Mozart from brazenly offering it for the “exclusive” use of Prince von Fürstenberg the following year. Mozart also apparently performed the Linz symphony in Prague in October and November of 1787, where he had gone to oversee the première of Don Giovanni. One performance was probably given by the private orchestra of Count Thun (who had a residence in Prague in addition to that in Linz) and another at an “academy” given by Mozart for his own benefit with the assistance of the Prague opera orchestra. Niemetschek, who was present at the second occasion, recalled that the symphonies (probably K. 425 and 504) appeared to be “true masterpieces of instrumental music, full of startling transitions; they have a rapid, fiery progression, and they attune the soul to expectation of something exalted”.

From the moment we hear the noble, double-dotted rhythms of the adagio introduction we begin to grasp what Niemetschek may have meant by “expectation of something exalted”. In an instant we are plunged into the world of Mozart’s late masterpieces. Only one other composer writing in 1783 was capable of a symphony to compare with this, and that was Joseph Haydn. And several commentators have sensed Haydn’s spirit hovering over the first movement in several features, and especially the slow introduction which was a Haydn trademark but rare in Mozart. The large scale of the first movement, its perfectly proportioned form, the brilliance of its orchestration – none of these give the slightest clue to the hurried circumstances under which the work was created.

The andante offers novelty – the presence of the usually silent trumpets and kettledrums – that changes what might have been simply an exquisite cantilena into a movement of occasionally almost apocalyptic intensity. Beethoven must have taken note of the effectiveness of this innovation when he decided to use the trumpets and kettledrums in similar ways in the same key in the slow movement of his first symphony.

The minuet and trio form the most conventional of the 4 movements. The pomp of the minuet is nicely set off by the mock innocence of the oboe and bassoon duet in the trio. None of the highjinks here that Mozart often put in to his trios for local Salzburg consumption.

The finale is akin to that of the Haffner symphony and, similarly, was undoubtedly meant to go as fast as possible. As a foil to the brilliant homophonic texture that dominates this spirited movement, Mozart inserts passages of the kind of pseudo-polyphony which we have already noted in the finale of K. 319.

Knowing nothing of the orchestral forces in Linz, we have chosen to record this work as it may have been heard in Salzburg. It was the sound of the Salzburg orchestra that was freshest in Mozart’s mind as he sat down on 30 October 1783 to begin this splendid work, a work which, for unknown reasons, has been consistently underrated in comparison with the 4 symphonies that Mozart was still to compose in the few years remaining to him.

Mozart and the symphonic traditions of his time

When Mozart wrote an aria, he tailor-made it to exploit the strengths and circumvent the weaknesses of the singer for whom it was destined. He usually refused to compose an aria until he was familiar with the singer who was to perform it, and when there was a change in the cast of an opera, he sometimes inserted or substituted new arias. In this he was a man of his times, a craftsman who sought to please the singers, the audience and himself with well-wrought creations that would make their intended effect. Mozart’s concern – one might even call it an obsession – for providing the right music for each circumstance in which he found himself is well documented in his letters. When he composed symphonies, their style was likewise influenced to some degree by the strengths and weaknesses of a particular ensemble and the tastes of a certain audience. It is for that reason that this series of recordings has for the first time recreated the types of ensemble for which Mozart composed his symphonies, enabling us to hear differences between these orchestras that Mozart and his contemporaries thought significant, and to learn what influence those differences may have had upon the style of the music. The ensembles range from the tiny orchestras that Mozart heard at private concerts and small courts to the large opera orchestras that performed his symphonies in Italy, from the small but accomplished Prague orchestra that was so devoted to Mozart and his music to the fifty-seven-member orchestra of the Concert spirituel, from string sections whose balance was similar to that of a modem chamber orchestra to string sections in which the double basses greatly outnumbered the cellos and where there were hardly any violas. Each of these characteristic sounds may be heard among the more-than-sixty symphonies in this collection.

Symphony No.31 in D major, K. 300a [K. 297] (“Paris”)

(1st version)
1. Allegro vivace
2. Andante
3. Allegro
(2nd version)
1. Allegro assai
2. Andante
3. Allegro

Despite an extensive literature about Mozart’s stay in Paris in 1778, many questions remain concerning his activities there. The twenty-two-year-old composer and his mother arrived in the French capital on 23 March of that year, in search of a position worthier of his talents than that which he had held at Salzburg. His time in Paris was to prove a disaster; not only did Mozart fail to find regular employment, to make much money by his freelance activities or to produce many compositions, but his mother died.

By common report, the best orchestra in Paris in 1778 was not the orchestra of the well-established Concert spirituel, but rather that of the newer Concert des amateurs, founded in 1769 by Gossec. The Concert des amateurs flourished until January 1781, when one of its principal patrons withdrew his support, ending the series abruptly, apparently much to the regret of everyone involved. Performances were held at the Hôtel de Soubise two or three times a week in the autumn and the spring. In order best to present his symphonies to the Parisian public, Mozart should have approached the director of the Concert des amateurs (in 1778 the violinist and composer Joseph Boulogne, le chevalier de Saint-Georges). And he probably had some such plan in mind, for in a letter written to his father from Mannheim on 3 December 1777 he reported hearing from musicians there (who would have been in a position to know, as several Mannheim composers had had symphonies published and performed in Paris) that the Concert des amateurs paid five louis d’or for a new symphony. In the event, however, Mozart was introduced to Joseph Le Gros, director of the Concert spirituel, and it was for that organization that he composed a symphony.

The history of this work is documented in Mozart’s letters. It is the well-known Symphony in D major, K. 300a/297, the so-called Paris symphony, which Mozart must have completed – at least in his head if not necessarily on paper – by 12 June, on which date he wrote to his father reporting that earlier in the day he had played through it at the keyboard for the singer Anton Raaff and Count Sickingen, minister of the Palatinate, after lunch at the latter’s house. The symphony had its première at the Concert spirituel on Corpus Christi (18 June) after only one rehearsal – the usual 18th-century practice – on the previous day. Mozart reported (3 July):

“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. I 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 certainIy 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 well, for it is all to His greater honour and glory; and behold, 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 favour, 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-sections only, piano for the first eight bars – followed instantly by a forte; the audience, as I expected, said ‘Shh!’ at the soft beginning, and as soon as they heard the forte which 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.”

There was a single, brief review of the concert, stating of Mozart only that “This artist, who from the tenderest age had made a name for himself among harpsichordists, can today be placed among the ablest composers”.

Mozart’s description of the orchestra of the Concert spirituel can be supplemented from other sources. In the period between Mozart’s previous visits to Paris (1763-64 and 1766) and the visit which concerns us here, the orchestra of the Concert spirituel went through a series of reforms, undoubtedly occasioned by the fact that the orchestra had been formed in 1725 to perform a repertory of French music in the style of Delalande, whose motets were mainstays of their concerts. Gradually the Concert spirituel came to perform less French and more Italian and German music, less archaic and more modem music, to which new tasks it was at first ill suited. The orchestral reforms were also surely motivated by invidious comparisons with the Concert des amateurs, whose orchestra was from the start designed to perform “modern” music. In March 1777 there was the latest of many changes of management at the Concert spirituel: following the death of Leduc, Gaviniès and Gossec resigned as directors, Le Gros was appointed to replace them, and the membership of the orchestra was once again reformed. According to the Almanach des spectacles de Paris for 1779, the composition of the orchestra that gave the première of Mozart’s K. 300a/297 on 18 June 1778 was 11 first and 11 second violinists, 5 violists, 8 cellists, 5 double bass players, 6 men who played flute, oboe and clarinet, 4 bassoonists, 6 men who played horn and trumpet, and 1 timpanist, or a total of fifty-seven musicians. This orchestra has been precisely duplicated for the present recording. We do not know the seating plan used by the orchestra of the Concert spirituel, but as the orchestra had been reformed several times in imitation of that of the Concert des amateurs, we have obeyed the advice recorded by the violinist J. J. O. de Meude-Monpas, based upon his experience with the latter organization:

“The orchestra’s disposition counts for much, and one must observe the following rules, namely: put the second violins opposite and not alongside the firsts; place the bass instruments as near as possible to the first violins (for in harmony the bass is the essential part of the chords); finally, bring together the wind instruments, such as the oboes, flutes, horns, etc; and finish it off with the violas.”

Certain aspects of this orchestra deserve comment: one is the large number of bassoons, a feature of several orchestras of the period, which gives the bass line a characteristic “etched” sound quite different from that of a modern orchestra’s bass line. Because the upper woodwind were double-handed, it was possible to play French motets, ouvertures and dances with three first and three second oboes, or to play works with “modern” orchestration, like Mozart’s symphony, with pairs of flutes, oboes and clarinets. Another noteworthy feature is the apparent absence of a keyboard continuo player. The roster of the orchestra of the Concert spirituel contained an organist up to and including the 1772-73 season, after which no keyboard player was listed. One notices among the directors in the 1770s and 80s, however, persons qualified to play keyboard continuo. Works containing recitative continued to appear on the programmes of the Concert spirituel, and we must therefore suppose that someone was available to play continuo for such works even if a newer practice may have eliminated the continuo instrument for most or even all other types of music. (The Paris symphony is performed here without continuo.) Finally, all evidence suggests that when German or Italian orchestras of the period had string sections this large, the wind would nearly always have been doubled. The sound of our recreated “Paris” orchestra (in which only the bassoons and horns are doubled) is the most string-dominated and hence the most like that of a modern orchestra of all those recreated for this series of recordings.

Following the performance of his symphony, Mozart fell out with Le Gros, due to the latter’s failure to arrange for a performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante, K. 297B/A9. On 9 July, however, the two men had a chance encounter at which, as Mozart reported to his father on that very day, Le Gros commissioned another symphony and gave Mozart his opinion of K. 300a/297:

“... the symphony was highly approved of – and Le Gros 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 Le Gros 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 August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption, my symphony is to be performed for the second time – with the new Andante.”

And, in fact, not only is the performance of a Mozart symphony at the Concert spiritual on 15 August 1778 confirmed by notices in the Parisian newspapers, but there is indeed a second andante for K. 300a/297, for the Berlin manuscript contains one slow movement while the Parisian first edition has an entirely different one (see illustrations). There seems to be general agreement today as to which was the original slow movement and which the movement written to replace it. The latest edition of the Köchel Catalogue states the matter as though it were beyond doubt: “The Andantino is the original version’s middle movement; the middle movement (Andante) subsequently performed in Paris is found only in the first edition”. By the “Andantino” the editors of K6 meant the movement in 6/8 metre consisting of 98 bars (called “Andantino” in a draft but “Andante” in the final score); the movement found in the first edition is in 3/4 metre and consists of 58 bars. To avoid the possibility of confusion, we shall refer to them by their metres. The view stated in K6 that the 3/4 movement is the later of the two has been held by several reputable Mozart scholars in recent years: for instance, by Hermann Beck, Otto Erich Deutsch, and J. H. Eibl. It is also to be found in Alfred Einstein’s 1947 Supplement to K3, and was perhaps first voiced by Georges de Saint-Foix in 1936. On the other hand, at the time of K3 Einstein thought that the two movements were the other way round, following the opinion found in the first two editions of that venerable catalogue and also held by E. H. Mueller von Asow and Hans F. Redlich. In fact, recent research by Alan Tyson (see bibliography) strongly supports the notion that the 3/4 movement was the original and the 6/8 movement the substitute.

There are three modem editions of the Paris symphony which contain the 3/4 andante movement. Anyone who takes the trouble to compare these editions will notice that the solo bassoon part differs from edition to edition as well as from the one heard on this recording. These discrepancies exist because the sets of engraved orchestral parts of the first edition (which provide the only source of this movement) surviving in various libraries lack their bassoon parts; the editors of the three editions were forced therefore to supply a conjectural bassoon part based on incomplete cues in the cello part. Fortunately, however, another copy of the first edition, which includes the hitherto missing bassoon part, is in the private library of Alan Tyson, who has generously made it available, thus enabling this graceful movement to be heard, for the first time in the 20th century, as Mozart wrote it.

Although the finales of the Paris symphony are nearly identical in the printed editions and in the autograph manuscript (in which the finale has been provided in the hand of a copyist. unlike the other two movements which are in Mozart’s own hand), the first movements of the manuscript and of the printed editions differ in a number of details of dynamics, phrasing, and voicing of chords, and both versions have therefore been recorded here.

K. 300a/297 was the first of Mozart’s symphonies to employ clarinets, an instrument for which he had great affection, but which was found in few orchestras in the 1770s. When in Mannheim he had written to his father (with the Salzburg orchestra in mind), “Ah, if only we too had clarinets! You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes, and clarinets”. In Paris Mozart had his chance, yet the writing for the clarinets is conservative, as if he perhaps did not quite trust the players on whom he had to depend.

Since Le Gros apparently commissioned another symphony and since Mozart in a letter of 3 October 1778 mentioned “2 ouverturen”, there have been several attempts to sort out the identity of this apparently lost second “Paris” symphony. A number has even been assigned to it in the Köchel Catalogue (K. 311A/A8), and the almost certainly spurious Ouverture in B flat major, K. Anh. C11.05/311a, has been proposed. I am convinced, however, that the so called “second Paris symphony” was merely an earlier work that Mozart took with him from Salzburg (see my article on the Paris symphonies listed in the bibliography). That Mozart had symphonies from Salzburg with him on his trip is clearly documented in several letters prior to his arrival in Paris, and on the eve of his departure from the French capital, when he was trying to sell quickly a number of pieces to publishers in order to raise cash for his journey home, he wrote (11 September), “As for the symphonies, most of them are not to the Parisian taste”, in order to explain to his father why they could not be sold.

And what did Mozart and his father think the Parisian taste in symphonies to be? According to Leopold (29 June 1778):

“To judge by the Stamitz symphonies which have been engraved in Paris, the Parisians must be fond of noisy music. For these are nothing but noise. Apart from this they are a hodge-podge, with here and there a good idea, but introduced very awkwardly and in quite the wrong place.”

And Mozart wrote of his Paris symphony K. 300a/297:

“I have been careful not to neglect le premier coup d’archet – and that is quite sufficient. What a fuss the oxen here make of this trick! The devil take me if I can see any difference! They all begin together, just as they do in other places.”

If we add to orchestral “noises” and le premier coup d’archet Mozart’s remark that “all last as well as first Allegros begin here with all instruments playing together and generally unisono”, we have the Mozarts’ impression of Parisian taste in symphonies in 1778. To this we might add a preference for major keys and for three rather than four movements (that is, omitting the minuet). Mozart’s K. 300a/297 fits this composite description, with the exception (which he himself noted) of the way in which the finale begins.

Furthermore, it has been plausibly suggested by Robert Münster that Mozart had not only a good general idea of what would please Parisian audiences, but perhaps also a specific model, namely, a D major symphony (Riemann no. D-11) by the Mannheim composer Carl Joseph Toeschi, which had enjoyed great success in Paris a few years earlier. Mozart arrived in Paris fresh from hearing the brilliant Mannheim orchestra and filled with tales of the successes that Mannheim composers had had in Paris – successes he hoped to reproduce for himself. His use of a model in such circumstances should not be surprising. Aside from sharing the same key and general movement structure, the Paris symphonies of Mozart and Toeschi exhibit another striking similarity: the exceptionally frequent repetition of musical phrases. No other symphony of Mozart’s has this feature to such a degree.

Symphony No.35 in D major, K. 385 (“Haffner”, Second Version)

1. Allegro con spirito
2. [Andante]
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Finale (Presto)

The circumstances surrounding the creation of this work are more fully documented than those for any other of Mozart’s symphonies. In mid-July 1782 Mozart’s father wrote to him in Vienna requesting a new symphony for celebrations surrounding the ennoblement of Mozart’s childhood friend Siegmund Haffner the younger. On 20 July Mozart replied:

“Well, I am up to my eyes in work. By Sunday week I have to arrange my opera [The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384] 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 can I do so? You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange a work of this kind for wind instruments, so that it suits them and yet loses none of its effect. Well, 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 Mozart was prone to procrastination and to making excuses to his father, in this instance his complaints may well have been justified, for having just completed the arduous task of launching his new opera (the première was on 16 July), Mozart moved house on 23 July in preparation for his marriage. By 27 July he 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 from the Haffner music [K. 249], which is quite unknown. I have composed my symphony in D major, because you prefer that key.”

On 29 July Siegmund Haffner the younger was ennobled and added to his name “von Imbachhausen”. On the 31st, however, Mozart could still only write:

“You see that my intentions are good – only what one cannot do, one cannot! I won’t 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 despatch it all together, for then it will cost only one fee. What I have sent you has already cost me three gulden.”

On 4 August Mozart and Constanze Weber were married in Vienna without having received Leopold’s approval, which arrived grudgingly the following day. In the meanwhile the other movements must have been completed and sent off, for on 7 August Mozart 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.”

Precisely when the party celebrating Haffner’s ennoblement occurred, and whether the new symphony was received in time to be performed on that occasion, is not known, for Leopold’s letter reporting the event is lost. The fact that in a later letter Wolfgang was unsure whether or not orchestral parts had been copied (see below) suggests that the symphony had not arrived in time. Be that as it may, at some time prior to 24 August, Leopold must have written his approval of the work, for on that day Wolfgang responded, “I am delighted that the symphony is to your taste”.

Three months later the symphony again entered Mozart’s correspondence. On 4 December he wrote to his father, in a letter that went astray, asking for the score of the symphony to be returned. When it had become clear that his father had not received that letter, he wrote again on the 21st, summarizing the lost letter, including, “If you find an opportunity, you might have the goodness to send me the new symphony that I composed for Haffner at your request. Please make sure that I have it before Lent, because I would very much like to perform it at my concert”. On 4 January he again urged his father to return the symphony, stating that either the score or the parts would be equally useful for his purposes. On the 22nd he again reminded his father, and on the 5th of February yet again with new urgency; “... 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 copies 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”. The usually punctilious Leopold’s delay is mute testimony to the anger and frustration he felt over what he considered to be his son’s foolish choice of a wife. In any case, by 15 February Wolfgang could write, “Most heartfelt thanks for the music you have sent me. ... 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 sent from Salzburg by putting aside the march, eliminating one of the minuets, deleting the repeats of the two sections of the first movement, and adding pairs of flutes and clarinets in the first and last movements, primarily to reinforce the tuttis and requiring no change in the existing orchestration of those movements.

The “academy” (as concerts were then called) duly took place on Sunday, 23 March, in the Burgtheater. Mozart reported to his father:

“... the theatre could not have been more crowded and ... every box was taken. 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 theatre; 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 report is confirmed by a review of the concert:

“The Concert was honoured with an exceptionally large crowd, and the two new concertos and other fantasies which Herr 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 unanimous applause as has never been heard of here. The receipts of the concert are estimated to amount to 1,600 gulden in all.”

The programme was typical of Mozart’s “academies” and demonstrates the role that symphonies were expected to fill as preludes and postludes framing an evening’s events:

1. The first 3 movements of the Haffner symphony (K. 385)
2. “Se il padre perdei” from Idomeneo (K. 366)
3. A piano concerto in C major (K. 415)
4. The recitative and aria “Misera, dove son! – Ah! non son’ io che parlo” (K. 369)
5. A sinfonia concertante (movements 3 and 4 from the serenade K. 320)
6. A piano concerto in D major (K. 175 with the finale K. 382)
7. “Parto m’affretto” from Lucio Silla (K. 135)
8. A short fugue (“because the Emperor was present”)
9. Variations on a tune from Paisiello’s I filosofi immaginarii (K. 398) and as an encore to that,
10. Variations on a tune from Gluck’s La Rencontre imprévue (K. 455)
11. The recitative and rondo “Mia speranza adorata – Ah, non sai, qual pena” (K. 416)
12. The finale of the Haffner symphony (K. 385)

Which of us wouldn’t give a great deal to be temporarily transported in one of science-fiction’s time machines to the Burgtheater on that Sunday in March 1783 to hear such a concert led by Mozart at the fortepiano?

The Haffner symphony was among the six symphonies that Mozart planned to have published in 1784 and in the following year the work was indeed brought out in Vienna by Artaria, in the four-movement version but without the additional flutes and clarinets. The fuller orchestration appeared in Paris published by Sieber with a title page bearing the legend “Du répertoire du Concert spirituel”. (The work had been given at the Concert spirituel apparently on 17 April 1783.) Despite the symphony’s wide availability, Mozart included it among pieces that he sold to Prince von Fürstenberg “for performance solely at his court” in 1786.

Having dwelt at some length on the history of the Haffner symphony, we shall be content to let the music speak for itself – which it does so eloquently – without further description or analysis.

Symphony No.38 in D major, K. 504 (“Prague”)

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Andante
3. Presto

Mozart’s relations with the citizens of Prague form a happy chapter in the otherwise sad story of his last years. At a time when Vienna was growing indifferent to Mozart and his music, Prague couldn’t have enough of either. Mozart’s Prague acquaintance Franz Xaver Niemetschek, who after Mozart’s death was entrusted with the education of his son Carl, has left us the best account of the premiere of the Prague symphony and of Mozart’s special relationship with the Prague orchestra. His account, although written after the fact and somewhat idealized, can be shown to be generally accurate:

“I was witness to the enthusiasm which [The Seraglio] aroused in Prague equally among those who were connoisseurs and those who were not. It was as if what had hitherto been taken for music was nothing of the kind. Everyone was transported – amazed at the novel harmonies and at the original, unprecedented passages for wind instruments. Now the Bohemians began to seek out his works, and in the same year [1782], Mozart’s symphonies and piano music were to be heard at all the better concerts. From now on the Bohemians’ predilection for his works was established! The greatest connoisseurs and artists of our capital were also Mozart’s greatest admirers, the most ardent ambassadors of his fame.

... [Figaro] was staged in the year 1787 by the Bondini Company and at the first performance received an ovation such as can be compared only to that given to The Magic Flute at a later date. It is the absolute truth when I state that this opera was performed almost without a break throughout the winter and that it greatly alleviated the straitened circumstances of the manager. The enthusiasm shown by the public was without precedent; they could not hear it often enough. A piano version was made by one of our best masters, Mr. Kucharz: it was arranged for wind instruments, as a quintet, and for German dances: in short, Figaro’s tunes echoed through the alleys and parks, and even the harpist in the alehouse had to play ‘Non piu andrai’ if he wanted to be listened to at all. This phenomenon was admittedly due mostly to the excellence of the work; but only a public which had so much feeling for the truly beautiful in music and which included so many real connoisseurs could immediately have recognized the value of art like this; in addition, there was the incomparable orchestra of our opera house, which understood how to execute Mozart’s ideas so accurately and diligently. For on these worthy men, who were mostly not soloists, but all the more knowledgeable and capable for that, the new harmony and fiery eloquence of the singing made the most immediate and lasting impression! The well-known orchestra director, Strobach, since deceased, often declared that at each performance he and his colleagues were so excited that they would gladly have started from the beginning again despite the hard work. Admiration for the composer of this music went so far that Count Johann Thun, one of our principal noblemen and a lover of music, who himself retained a first-class orchestra, invited Mozart to come to Prague and offered him board and lodging and every comfort in his own home. Mozart was too overjoyed at the effect that his music was having on the Bohemians, too eager to become acquainted with such a music-loving nation, not to seize the opportunity with delight. [Mozart came to Prague on 4 October 1787. Ten days later] Figaro was performed and Mozart was there. At once the news of his presence spread in the stalls, and as soon as the overture had ended everyone broke into welcoming applause.

In answer to a universal request, he played the piano at a large concert in the opera house [on 19th January]. The theatre had never been so full as on this occasion; never had there been a more fervent, unanimous delight than that awakened by his heavenly playing. We did not, in fact, know which to admire more: his extraordinary powers of composition or his extraordinary playing; together they made such an overwhelming impression on us that we felt we had been sweetly bewitched! But when at the end of the concert Mozart improvised alone on the piano for more than half an hour and had transported us to the highest degree of rapture, this enchantment dissolved in a loud torrent of applause. And indeed his improvisations exceeded anything that could be imagined in the way of piano-playing, as the highest degree of the composer’s art was combined with the most accomplished dexterity in playing. It is certain that, just as this concert was a unique occasion for the people of Prague, Mozart likewise counted this day as one of the happiest of his life.

The symphonies [sic] that he wrote for this occasion are true masterpieces of instrumental composition, full of unexpected transitions, and have élan and a fiery momentum, so that they immediately incline the soul to expect something sublime. This applies particularly to the great Symphony in D major [K. 504], which is still a favourite in Prague, although it has probably been heard a hundred times.

... [Mozart] had learned how much the Bohemians appreciated his music and how well they executed it. This he often mentioned to his friends in Prague: he enjoyed in any case being in Prague, where a responsive public and real friends lionized him, as it were. 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 performances.”

The Prague symphony is also known in Germany as “the symphony without minuet”, because it is the only one of Mozart’s last six symphonies lacking that movement. The autograph manuscript is among those formerly in Berlin and now at Kraków. As the Kraków autographs were until recently inaccessible, the NMA was forced to rely upon other sources. Now that the Kraków autographs are once again accessible, we have – with the generous assistance of László Somfai, who edited the Prague symphony for the NMA – revised the score for this performance. The upper right-hand corners of the first five pages of the autograph have been cut off, removing in the process Mozart’s signature and his inscription of place and date. However, in the catalogue of his works that Mozart kept at that time, the Prague symphony is entered as “Vienna, 6 December 1786”. Mozart probably had his new symphony in mind not only for his forthcoming trip to Prague, but for four Advent concerts in Vienna that he planned but perhaps never gave.

The Prague symphony differs considerably from the sixty-odd symphonies that Mozart had previously written by being much more difficult; that is to say, it is more difficult to perform and more difficult conceptually. In the intervening years since 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 crucial years, had forged entirely new methods of orchestration unique to himself. (His brilliant use of the wind was at the time much criticized, but subsequently formed the basis for the orchestration of Haydn’s late orchestral works and those of Beethoven, of Schubert and of many lesser lights.) In addition, his style had deepened, becoming generally more contrapuntal in conception. 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 being assigned to symphonies, which were now expected to exhibit artistic depth rather than merely serve as happy noises to open and close concerts.

Three decades later, in 1815, a writer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung could look back and recall the revolution in orchestral playing that began in the 1780s:

“As far as the difficulty of the music is concerned, many of us can still remember a time when few orchestras had clarinets and none had trombones, when pieces that today any little orchestra can play easily almost at sight had to be laboriously studied, and other works that are now played everywhere simply for pleasure were rejected as impossible to perform. Indeed, we know very well, and it is fresh in our memories, that Mozart’s music was at first indignantly cast aside by many orchestras, and that those orchestras that prefer Italian music to anything else still distrust it today.”

Evidence suggesting that Mozart may have been aware of the “difficulty” of his Prague symphony survives in the form of sketches related to all three movements. Sketches survive for only a few of Mozart’s symphonies, and for no other symphony in such quantity as for the Prague. In addition, there is some indirect evidence that Mozart first thought of re-using the finale of the Paris symphony for the Prague (both are in D major); perhaps it was the conventionality of the former that led him to reject that time-saving measure. Another attempt to begin a finale –

K 504

– was likewise rejected before the finale we know was hit upon. This opens in a most remarkable manner which, as any experienced conductor will tell you, is not easy to begin accurately and in the correct tempo.

The famous Prague orchestra was a tiny one, at quite the other extreme from the orchestra of the Concert spirituel. In the 1780s and 90s it apparently had a string section containing 3 or 4 first and 3 or 4 second violins, 2 violas, 1 or 2 cellos and 2 double basses, with the necessary wind one to a part and a harpsichord. Those forces have been recreated for this performance.

While in Prague in 1787, Mozart probably also gave a concert with the private orchestra of Count Thun, who had residences there and in Linz. It was for Count Thun that Mozart had written his so-called Linz symphony, K. 425, in the space of five days in 1783. Thus, when Niemetschek wrote in the plural of “symphonies” written for Prague, he was probably referring to the Linz and Prague symphonies. His description of the effect that those two symphonies made nearly 200 years ago still rings true today: they seemed to him “true masterpieces of instrumental composition, full of unexpected transitions, and have élan and a fiery momentum, so that they immediately incline the soul to expect something sublime”.

The Final Trilogy

In the vast literature about Mozart’s life and music, there are several monographs, dozens of articles, hundreds of book chapters, and thousands of programme notes devoted to the last three symphonies (K. 543, 550 and 551), which were completed in 1788 in the space of about three months. What one gleans from reading a generous sample of these writings may be summarized thus: we do not know for what orchestra or what occasion the three works were composed, so they were probably the result of an inner artistic compulsion rather than an external stimulus; the three works were intended as a trilogy; these masterpieces were never performed during his lifetime and this shows how unappreciated he was by his contemporaries. An investigation of these assertions shows two of the three to be misleading.

Anyone who has examined the psychology of Mozart’s pace of composing knows that, although he could sometimes compose with lightning speed, he was also given to procrastination, on occasion he was depressed and found it difficult to compose, and he was often painfully busy giving lessons and concerts to support his family. There are plenty of documented instances suggesting that he seldom launched a large-scale work without a clear use for it in mind, and that, when a commission or opportunity for performance or publication dried up, he would sometimes abandon a work in mid-course. That being the case, we should be surprised if Mozart had composed three large symphonies with no practical goals in mind, and in this instance, we can suggest three such possible goals.

Perhaps the most immediate goal in composing some if not all of the three symphonies was that Mozart had scheduled a series of subscription concerts for June and July 1788. It seems that only the first of these concerts actually took place after which, owing to an insufficient number of subscribers, the rest were cancelled. This was to be the last time that Mozart attempted to put on a public concert in Vienna.

Another goal is revealed by the number three itself. Sets of symphonies were customarily sold in manuscript or engraved editions in groups of three (for larger symphonies) or in groups of six (for smaller ones). Mozart and his father had prepared several sets of six symphonies each earlier in his career, and in 1784 Mozart himself had made up a set of three for publication. We cannot doubt that he hoped to publish K. 543, 550 and 551 as an “opus”, although in fact they remained unpublished until after his death.

The final goal was that in 1788 Mozart was trying to arrange (and not for the first time) a trip to London. It was well-known among musicians on the Continent that a talented composer-performer could make more money in London than anywhere else, and – as Haydn was to show by his visits to London in the early 1790s – producing good symphonies was an important element in such a venture.

When the English tour failed to materialize, Mozart’s three symphonies provided music for a German tour he made in 1789 to give concerts and to seek patronage and perhaps a permanent post. An examination of what is known of Mozart’s orchestral concerts on this tour and of those after his return to Vienna undermines the notion that the last three symphonies remained unperformed during his lifetime.

At the Dresden Court (14 April) Mozart performed a piano concerto, and, although the rest of his programme is unknown, this concert may very well have also included at least one symphony. A reaction to this event survives, for the Russian ambassador attended Mozart’s concert and later summarized the objections of some contemporaries to the composer – objections which he himself apparently did not share:

“Mozart is very learned, very difficult, consequently he is very much esteemed by instrumentalists; but he seems never to have had the good fortune to have loved. No modulation ever issued from his heart.”

A copy of the programme of Mozart’s concert of 12 May in the Leipzig Gewandhaus survives. It is reproduced below with indications of the probable identity of the pieces.

Part I
Symphony
Scena. Mme. Duscheck (K. 505)
Concerto, on the Pianoforte (K. 456)
Symphony

Part II
Concerto, on the Pianoforte (K. 503)
Scena. Mme. Duscheck (K. 528)
Fantasy, on the Pianoforte (K. 475)
Symphony

Although it would be tempting to suppose that Mozart’s last three symphonies were all performed on this occasion (raising interesting questions about the endurance of the orchestra and the audience), it is more likely that Mozart followed the custom of some of his Viennese concerts, dividing a symphony and using the opening movements at the beginning of the concert and the finale at the end. Thus Leipzig probably heard only one, or perhaps two, of the last symphonies. The Leipzig music critic Johann Friedrich Rochlitz, who met Mozart and attended this concert and the rehearsal for it, later published a reminiscence of the occasion in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, of which he was for many years the editor:

“When I went into the rehearsal the next day ... I noticed to my astonishment that the first movement being rehearsed – it was the allegro of a symphony of his – he took very, very fast. Hardly twenty bars had been played and – as might easily be foreseen – the orchestra started to slow down and the tempo dragged. Mozart stopped, explained what they were doing wrong, cried out ‘Ancora’, and began again just as fast as before. The result was the same. He did everything to maintain the same tempo; once he beat time so violently with his foot that one of his finely-worked steel shoebuckles broke into pieces: but all to no avail. He laughed at this mishap, left the pieces lying there, cried out ‘Ancora’ again, and started for the third time at the same tempo. The musicians became recalcitrant toward this diminutive, deathly pale little man who hustled them in this way: incensed, they continued working at it, and now it was all right. Everything that followed, he took at a moderate pace. I must admit: I thought then he was rushing it a bit, insisting he was right, not through obstinacy but in order not to compromise his authority with them right at the beginning. But after the rehearsal he said in an aside to a few connoisseurs:

‘Don’t be surprised at me; it wasn’t caprice, but that I saw that the majority of the musicians were already fairly old people. The dragging would never have stopped if I hadn’t first driven them to their limit and made them angry. Now they did their best through sheer irritation.’

As Mozart had never before heard this orchestra play, that shows a fair knowledge of human nature; so he was not after all a child in everything outside of the realm of music – as people so often say and write.”

One would dearly love to believe this amusing anecdote, if only Rochlitz didn’t have such a terrible reputation for publishing trumped-up documents.

In 1790 Mozart, still searching pathetically for patronage and a suitable post, travelled to Frankfurt at his own expense to be present at the festivities surrounding the coronation of Leopold II. A concert he gave there on 15 October (see illustration) is documented by the fullest eye-witness account of any such event that we possess, written by Count Ludwig von Bentheim-Steinfurt in his diary:

“At 11 o’clock in the morning there was a grand concert by Mozart in the auditorium of the National Playhouse. It began with the fine (1) Symphony by Mozart which I have long possessed. (2) Then came a superb Italian aria, ‘Non so di chi’, which Madame Schick sang with infinite expressiveness. (3) Mozart played a Concerto composed by him which was of an extraordinary prettiness and charm; he had a fortepiano by Stein of Augsburg which must be supreme of its kind and costs from 90 to 100 pounds. Mozart’s playing is a little like that of the late Klöffler, but infinitely more perfect. Monsieur Mozart is a small man of rather pleasant appearance; he had a coat of brown marine satin nicely embroidered; he is engaged at the Imperial Court. (4) The soprano Cecarelli sang a beautiful scena and rondeau, for bravura airs do not appear to be his forte; he had grace and a perfect method; an excellent singer but his tone is a little on the decline, that and his ugly physiognomy; for the rest his passage work, ornaments and trills are admirable ...

In the second act, (5) another concerto by Mozart, which however did not please me like the first. (6) A duet which we possess and I recognized by the passage ‘Per te, per te’, with ascending notes ... It was a real pleasure to hear these two people, although La Schick lost by comparison with the soprano in the matter of voice and ornaments, but she scored in the passage work at least. (7) A Fantasy without the music by Mozart, very charming, in which he shone infinitely, exhibiting all the power of his talent. (8) The last symphony was not given for it was almost two o’clock and everybody was sighing for dinner. The music thus lasted three hours, which was owing to the fact that between the pieces there were very long pauses. The orchestra was no more than rather weak with five or six violins, but apart from that very acccurate. There was only one accursed thing that displeased me very much: there were not many people ...”

During Mozart’s last years in Vienna, his concert activities were much reduced compared to those in the early 1780s, and we are poorly informed about these concerts because, Mozart’s father having died, we do not have a series of informative letters. In fact, the only documented occasion on which a symphony was performed took place on 16 and 17 April 1791 at the “Society of Musicians” annual benefit concert, when a large orchestra under the direction of Antonio Salieri performed a “grand symphony” by Mozart. As Mozart’s friends the clarinettists Johann and Anton Stadler were in the orchestra, the symphony played may have been either K. 543 or the second version of K. 550. The very existence of versions of K. 550 with and without clarinets demonstrates that the work was performed, for Mozart would hardly have gone to the trouble of adding the clarinets and rewriting the flute and oboes to accommodate them, had he not had a specific performance in view. And the version without clarinets must also have been performed. for surely the re-orchestrated version, which exists in Mozart’s hand (see illustration), of two passages in the slow movement can only have resulted from his having heard the work and discovered an aspect needing improvement. Even though the alternative version of the two passages in the Andante must represent Mozart’s final thoughts, it is missing from most editions of the symphony and relegated to an appendix in the NMA. But because it gives every sign of being the definitive version, we have used it for this recording of the version of K. 550 without clarinets.

If we add to the concert activities documented above the evidence of surviving contemporaneous sets of manuscript parts of the last three symphonies, we can confidently lay to rest the myth that these works remained unperformed during his lifetime.

Symphony No. 39 in E flat major, K. 543

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Menuetto & Trio (Allegretto)
4. Finale (Allegro)

The autograph manuscript, also in Kraków, bears no inscription at all, but in Mozart’s catalogue of his own works it is dated Vienna, 26 June 1788. This symphony is the least well known and performed of the last six symphonies. As K. 543 exhibits no lack of fine workmanship or first-rate inspiration, we must speculate on the possible reasons for its relative neglect. Could it be due to the fact that the other late symphonies have nicknames to characterize them in the minds of conductors and audiences, while the E flat major symphony does not? Could it be that the kinds of ideas Mozart chose to explore in this work survive the translation from the lean, clear sound of 18th-century instruments to the powerful, opaque sounds of modem instruments less well than do the more muscular, proto-Romantic ideas of the “Great G minor” and Jupiter symphonies? Could it be that the flat key, which yields a relatively muted sound compared to the brilliance of C major (K. 425, 551) and D major (K. 504), makes less of an impression in large modem halls on 20th-century instruments than it did in small 18th-century halls with period instruments? This recording has as one of its goals to provide a living laboratory to seek answers to such questions, and each listener must judge for himself what the results of the experiment may be.

It has been suggested that K. 543 was consciously modelled on Michael Haydn’s E flat major symphony, Perger no. 17, a work which Mozart in fact acquired in 1784. If so, Mozart so far surpassed his “model” as to make comparison virtually meaningless. More likely is the influence of the symphonies of brother Joseph Haydn, noticeable especially in the stately slow introduction to the first movement and the serene Andante con moto. The first allegro is an interesting case of strong ideas presented in a deliberately understated way. The courtly minuet is set off by a trio based on an Austrian landler, given out by a favourite Alpine village instrument, the clarinet, complete with oom-pah-pah accompaniment. The perpetual motion of the finale exhibits a great deal of the kind of mischievous good humour for which Joseph Haydn’s finales are famous.

Symphony No.40 in G minor, K. 550 (“Great”, First Version)

1. Molto allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio (Allegretto)
4. Allegro assai

The autograph manuscripts of both versions of this work (as well as a corrigenda leaf discussed above) are found in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, given to that institution by Brahms. K. 550, was probably dubbed “the Great” to distinguish it from the “Little G minor” symphony, K. 173dB/183, itself an extraordinary work. As the “Great G minor” symphony was first published in 1794 and the “Little G minor” in 1798, the pair of nicknames must have arisen in the 19th-century. That the designation “Great” stuck to K. 550 was probably due to the other meaning of the word – that is, “magnificent, outstanding, remarkable” and not simply “large” – for of all of Mozart’s symphonies this was the one that most interested the musicians and critics of succeeding generations. The work’s intensity, unconventionality, chromaticism, thematic working-out, profusion of ideas – all of these endeared it to the Romantics. Nonetheless, there was no agreement about its meaning, for some found it imbued with tragedy (even with premonitions of Mozart’s early death) while others thought it had the classical balance, proportions and repose of a Greek vase.

There were of course those who understood the work immediately; for instance, Joseph Haydn, who quoted from its E flat major slow movement in his oratorio The Seasons in the E flat major aria, no. 38, where winter is compared to old age. The quotation occurs following the words “... exhausted is thy summer’s strength ...” by which Haydn simultaneously offers us an interpretation of Mozart’s music, commemorates the loss of his younger colleague, and perhaps also comments upon the approaching end of his own career. Schubert also took note of K. 550, basing the minuet of his Fifth Symphony on its minuet.

It was largely Richard Wagner’s towering influence as a conductor of Beethoven’s symphonies that changed the way in which works like K. 550 were performed. In the 19th-century the size of both string and wind sections was gradually increased, to match the increase in the size of concert halls and opera houses. These enlarged string sections tended to be too powerful when the wind were reduced to Mozart’s smaller forces. In addition, the playing style and the way in which instruments were being built (or, in the case of string instruments, also rebuilt) had gradually come to favour legato playing rather than detached playing – the performance-practice equivalent of unendliche Melodie. Finally, with the rise of virtuoso orchestral conductors – and here Wagner’s example was most influential – the tempo of a movement was understood to be in a state of continual flux. Indeed, this continuous moulding of the tempo during performance came eventually to be one of the principal points by which a conductor’s interpretation was judged. The present performances do away with these encrustations of Romantic tradition and approach the symphonies from a more objective, 18th-century point of view.

Symphony No.41 in C major, K. 551 (“Jupiter”)

1. Allegro vivace
2. Andante cantabile
3. Menuetto & Trio (Allegretto)
4. Molto allegro

Like so many other precious Mozart autographs, the manuscript of K. 551 is in the material formerly in Berlin and now at Kraków. On the autograph Mozart wrote only Sinfonia, while a later hand added “10 Aug. 1788”, taken undoubtedly from the entry in Mozart’s catalogue, which reads Vienna, 10 August 1788. The work’s nickname, Jupiter, seems to have originated in London. Mozart’s son W. A. Mozart fils, told Vincent and Mary Novello that the sobriquet was coined by Haydn’s London sponsor, the violinist and orchestra leader Johann Peter Salomon. And indeed the earliest edition of the work to employ the subtitle Jupiter was a piano arrangement made and published by Muzio Clementi in London in 1823. During the first half of the 19th-century in the German-speaking world, however, K. 551 was known as “the symphony with the fugal finale”. The designation Jupiter was probably inspired by the pomp of the first movement which, with its prominent use of trumpets and kettledrums and stately dotted rhythms, was calculated to evoke images of nobility and godliness in the 18th-century mind.

The Andante cantabile, with its muted violins and subdominant key, tums 180 degrees from the lighter realms of the first movement toward a darker region. The minuet and trio hide beneath their politely galant exteriors a host of contrapuntal and motivic artifices, which impart to the pair an exceptional unity. And the famous fugal finale? Modern theorists, raised on Bach fugues, will tell you that it is not a fugue at all, but their definition of the genre is certainly not that of the late 18th- and early 19th-centuries. The movement is, to be sure, in sonata form with both repeats and a vast coda in which occurs one of the great miracles of Western music: a triumphal fugato in which the main melodic ideas of the movement are brought together in various combinations and permutations in invertible counterpoint, in a way that has everything to do with the summation and conclusion of a dynamic symphonic movement and nothing at all to do with dry lessons in counterpoint. Joseph Haydn, perhaps the only contemporary of Mozart’s able fully to comprehend him during his lifetime, paid this work the ultimate compliment of quoting from its slow movement in the slow movement of his Symphony no. 98, and of modelling the finale of his Symphony no. 95 on that of the Jupiter.

Mozart and the symphonic traditions of his time

Vienna’s Orchestras

Perhaps the most important turning point in Mozart’s life came at the age of twenty-five, when he already had to his credit a corpus of music that many a lesser talent would gladly have accepted as the fruits of a lifetime. He decided to break with his father and the Archbishop of Salzburg, and to remain in Vienna as a free-lance teacher, performer and composer – a decision which had far-reaching implications for his music and, hence, for the evolution of the Viennese classical style as a whole. We have already offered ample documentation, in the programme notes for volumes 2-5 of this series, of Mozart’s disaffection towards Salzburg. The Archbishop was stingy and insufficiently appreciative. Leopold Mozart was continually looking over his son’s shoulder and passing judgment. Musical life was circumscribed and tastes conservative in Salzburg, and Mozart’s opportunities to show what he could do in his favourite genres – piano concerto and opera – were extremely limited. He joyously described Vienna to his father as “keyboard land” (which it was); he might with equal justification have called it “orchestra land”.

Charles Burney was only one of many visitors to Vienna who commented upon the excellence of the orchestral playing there. During his 1772 visit he attended performances at the two principal theatres and gave this expert testimony:

“The orchestra [at the German theatre] has a numerous band, and the pieces which were played for the overture and act tunes, were very well performed, and had an admirable effect; they were composed by Haydn, Hofman[n], and Vanhall.

The orchestra here [at the French theatre] was fully as striking as that of the other theatre, and the pieces played were admirable. They seemed so full of invention, that it seemed to be music of some other world, insomuch, that hardly a passage in this was to be traced; and yet all was natural, and equally free from the stiffness of labour, and the pedantry of hard study. Whose music it was I could not learn; but both the composition and performance, gave me exquisite pleasure.”

Even if testimony such as Burney’s had not come down to us, we would have been able to guess the calibre of the Viennese players by the ever-increasing difficulty of Mozart’s orchestral writing in his piano concertos and operas. These difficulties were the object of complaint in other parts of Europe, and in Italy well into the 19th century his operas were considered impossible to perform.

Vienna did not have a single large orchestra of international reputation, comparable to, for example, the Mannheim orchestra, the opera orchestras of Milan and Turin, or the orchestra of the Concert des amateurs in Paris. Unlike in Paris and London, there was no flourishing music-publishing industry in Vienna. The Imperial Court Orchestra was in a period of severe decline. But Vienna was the economic, political and cultural centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which encompassed not just Austria and Hungary, but substantial portions of present-day Czechoslovakia, northern Italy, Yugoslavia and Rumania. Many wealthy noble families from those regions maintained homes in Vienna. A surprising number of them were musically literate and demanded a steady flow of music of the highest quality. It was thus no coincidence that, along with dozens of lesser composers, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven – none of whom were natives of Vienna – preferred that city to all others.

Mozart’s decision to stay in Vienna in 1781 was based not only on its reputation but on first-hand experience. He had spent almost three months in Vienna in 1762 when he was six, more than a year there in 1767-68 when he was twelve, and two months in 1773 when he was seventeen. There are no symphonies from the first visit, for even the precocious Wolfgang did not write symphonies at the age of six. By 1767, however, he had several symphonies to his name, and during the 1767-68 visit to Vienna contributed a few more to the genre. He may have written a symphony during his brief stay in 1773, but in any case he was inspired by what he heard to write several after his return to Salzburg (see the notes to volume 4 of this series). And, of course, it was after settling permanently in the Imperial capital that he wrote his most famous essays in the genre: the Haffner, the Prague, the Linz, the Symphony in E flat, K. 543, the “Great” G minor Symphony, and the Jupiter. Thus, however much the formation of Mozart’s symphonic style owed to the Italian sinfonia, to the “English” symphonies of J. C. Bach and C. F. Abel, to the brilliant orchestral writing of the Mannheim composers, and to local Salzburg traditions, there was also an early and continuing Viennese influence, culminating in the final flowering of symphonic masterpieces.

The theatre orchestras of Vienna needed a constant supply of symphonies to serve as overtures to plays, Singspiele, and operas. High Mass in Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, and perhaps in some of the other large churches of the City, was sometimes embellished with symphonies. During Lent, Advent and on holy festivals of the liturgical calendar, stage works were replaced by oratorios and concerts (called “academies”) requiring further symphonies. (There were no concert halls as such; the academies took place in the theatres and in large rooms found in palaces, in taverns and in other commercial buildings.) The nobility and the court had their private concerts which, when they were orchestral, also needed symphonies. Finally, another of Vienna’s charms was a surprising amount of outdoor music-making – events of a sort that leave no historical traces in the form of newspaper announcements, posters or programmes. A description from the early 1790s serves to suggest that this too was an arena in which Mozart’s symphonies may have been heard:

“During the summer months ... one will meet serenaders in the streets almost daily and at all hours ... They do not, however, consist as in Italy or Spain of a vocal part with the simple accompaniment of a guitar or mandolin ... but of trios, quartets (most frequently from operas) of several vocal parts, of wind instruments, frequently of an entire orchestra; and the most ambitious symphonies are performed ... It is just these nocturnal musicales which demonstrate ... the universality and the greatness of the love of music; for no matter how late at night they take place ... one soon discovers people at their open windows and within a few minutes the musicians are surrounded by a crowd of listeners who rarely depart until the serenade has come to an end.”

The variety of occasions on which symphonies were performed goes a long way to explaining why so many hundreds of Viennese symphonies survive from the 18th century.

Having suggested the influence of Vienna’s orchestral traditions and of its vigorous symphonic school on Mozart’s symphonies, the matter must at once be qualified. The Haffner symphony was written for Salzburg, the Linz and Prague for the cities whose names they bear, and the final trilogy possibly for an aborted trip to England. All were, in the event, presumably pressed into use for Viennese concerts; but it seems that, although Mozart felt the need constantly to write new piano concertos for his own use, when in need of symphonies he remained content most of the time to perform his own older works, or sometimes those by other composers. Thus, for instance, we find him writing to his father in January 1784, asking to be sent four of his symphonies from 1773-77 for his concerts in Vienna.

As there was no single orchestra dominating Viennese musical life and with which Mozart’s symphonic activities there can be connected, we have for these performances recreated a typical Viennese ensemble, avoiding both the extremely small groups that not infrequently performed at private concerts and the huge groups occasionally gathered together for special events. In the latter category a concert of 1781 is usually mentioned, at which a symphony of Mozart’s was performed by an orchestra whose strings were 20-20-10-8-10, and the wind all doubled except for the bassoons, which were tripled! (This exceptionally large orchestra was a traditional part of the annual Lenten benefit concert given by the “Society of Musicians” to aid the widows and orphans of musicians. It was a feature of this special event that every available performer should join in supporting the cause.) Mozart reported to his father that “the symphony went magnificently and had every success”. A great deal of rubbish has been written about the possible implications of this event, suggesting that if Mozart was so very pleased, then this must have been the sort of orchestra he would have preferred but usually could not muster. However, one must reckon with the extreme defensiveness of Mozart’s letters to his father, in which he can be observed constantly striving to be entertaining and to make his affairs sound more brilliant than they in fact were. Then we must remember that, even if the symphony “went magnificently and had every success”, we do not therefore have Mozart’s opinion about what sort of an orchestra he would have preferred to lead on a regular basis. He must have been keenly aware that in enlarging an orchestra one traded clarity, flexibility and intimacy for power and brilliance, and in the long run he may or may not have wanted such an exchange. Finally, the orchestras upon which Mozart’s training and taste were formed and for which he most often composed, in Vienna and elsewhere, were usually of middling size, rather than the tiny private groups or the occasional mammoth extravaganzas. (The exception was the small but distinguished Prague orchestra, with whom Mozart developed a special relationship.) He was a practical musician who wrote for the customary performing conditions of his day, and we should not foist upon him exceptional circumstances which can be seen with hindsight to prefigure later trends. Thus, for our recordings of the “Viennese” symphonies, we have employed strings numbering 7-6-4-3-3, a pair each of the necessary woodwind and brass, and kettledrums.

Symphony in F major, K. 42a [K. 76]

1. Allegro maestoso
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

Although the attribution of this attractive symphony to Mozart is fraught with problems, the work’s authenticity has apparently never previously been seriously challenged. There is no autograph manuscript or other reliable source stemming from Mozart or his circle. The symphony’s sole source was a set of 18th-century manuscript parts found in the archives of the Leipzig music publishers, Breitkopf & Härtel. In accepting this work, Köchel followed his friend Otto Jahn, who in his great Mozart biography reported that in the Breitkopf archives he had found a collection of twenty symphonies attributed to Mozart. Ten of these were also listed in Johann André’s collection of Mozartiana, which, as it had been received directly from Mozart’s widow, was not to be questioned. (The assumption of the total reliability of the André holdings has subsequently proved to be not entirely correct.) A further two of the twenty were symphony versions of the overtures to Lucia Silla and Il sogno di Scipione. The remaining eight, owing to the company in which they were found, could therefore be adjudged genuine. Jahn dated the symphony “177?” while Köchel ventured “perhaps 1769” – both presumably on stylistic grounds. On the weighty authority of Jahn and Köchel, the symphony was published in a supplementary fascicle of the Old Complete Works in 1881, the only edition the work has ever had.

In their detailed survey of Mozart’s output, Wyzewa and Saint-Foix placed K. 42a in Salzburg between 1 December 1766 and 1 March 1767. They suggested – on the basis of perceived similarities between the first movement of this work and the overture to Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, K. 35, and on the basis of comparisons with Mozart’s earliest symphonies – that K. 42a,

“... was composed before the overture, perhaps around the month of December 1766. It is the great piece that the child wrote, with extreme effort and care, when, returning to Salzburg [from his grand tour to Paris, London and Holland], he wished to show his master and his compatriots everything he had learned during his travels”.

To call this “speculation” is perhaps too generous; it is sheer fantasy.

The great Mozart biographer Hermann Abert examined the arguments of Wyzewa and Saint-Foix and, while questioning the similarities they had proposed between K. 42a and the overture to K. 35, agreed with them that the work must be earlier than Köchel had thought. Finally, in the third edition of the Köchel Catalogue (K3), Einstein gave as the supposed date of this orphaned work, “autumn 1767 in Vienna”, The basis for this judgment was not explained, but a seemingly unrelated remark may reveal his line of reasoning. The minuet of this symphony, Einstein wrote, “is of a relatively so much greater maturity than the other three, primitive movements, that we may accept that it was composed later”. As Einstein claimed that Viennese symphonies were nearly aIways in four movements (which is not nearly as firm a principle as he would have us believe) and that Mozart was in the habit of adding minuets and trios to three-movement symphonies written for other places to tailor them for Vienna, he must have thought that the (hypothetical) addition of a minuet and trio to K. 42a associated it with one of Mozart’s visits to the Imperial capital. In any case, this rootless symphony has retained the assignment “allegedly in autumn 1767 in Vienna” in K6 (the sixth edition of Köchel’s Catalogue), and we have kept it there for lack of better information. At present, further documentary study of K. 42a is impossible, for there are no known primary sources of the work, and the sole secondary source (the parts in the Breitkopf archives) was lost or destroyed during World War II. Unlike some other symphonies uncertainly attributed to Mozart, this one at least does not have a conflicting attribution to another composer. If, however, we are indeed to judge it by the company it kept in the Breitkopf archives, then we must report that seven of the twenty symphonies mentioned by Jahn remain to this day without autographs or other reliable sources.

A striking feature of the first movement is the prominence of the wind, which, in addition to the usual pairs of oboes and horns, include a pair of obbligato bassoons. Wyzewa and Saint-Foix singled out for mention “the oboe and bassoon solos, the constant exchanges of melodic ideas between the wind and strings”. In regarding this as a progressive trait, they must have had in mind the brilliant and innovative concertante wind writing in Mozart’s late operas, symphonies and piano concertos. Perhaps they considered K. 42a a step in that direction. But they failed to notice how very uncharacteristic this wind writing was for Mozart, for this or any other time. In his early symphonies, the expositions of the first movements typically begin and end tutti, forte, often with semiquaver tremolos in the strings adding to the bustle. In the middle of the exposition, however, quieter, lyrical sections usually appear, corresponding with the arrival of the dominant, at which some or all of the wind fall silent. This use of orchestration serves several important functions: it highlights the movements’ dynamics by the wind reinforcement of the tuttis, it underlines the contrast of character that is a hallmark of the galant style, it clearly signals to the ear the movement’s structure, and it gives the wind players a breathing space. This arrangement was an absolutely standard part of Mozart’s style of that period. In the first movement K. 42a, however, the wind never stop blowing, thereby giving the movement an uncharacteristically uniform timbre throughout. Have we the right to deny Mozart an experiment? Of course not. We revel in his experiments. But was this one of them?

The alluring andante, with its sustained bassoons and mandoline-like pizzicato passages, would have been very much at home as a serenade in a sentimental opéra comique of the period, as Della Croce suggests. The particular excellence of the minuet has already been mentioned. The trio, rather unusually, is based on an idea drawn from the minuet – an idea with a slightly exotic contour. The opening idea of the finale bears a striking resemblance to a popular gavotte from Rameau’s Temple de la gloire (Act III, scene iii), as Wyzewa and Saint-Foix were the first to point out; but for the rest the two movements are entirely dissimilar.

Symphony No.6 in F major, K. 43

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

With this work we escape from the bibliographical swamps of the previous symphony and find ourselves again on terra firma. The autograph manuscript – a beautifully-written fair-copy found among the manuscripts formerly in Berlin but now in Kraków – bears the heading Sinfonia di Wolfgango Mozart à Vienne 1767. Above “1767” was written (apparently in Leopold Mozart’s hand) “à olmutz 1767”, but this was subsequently crossed out. The Mozarts visited the North Moravian town of Olmütz, or Olomouc, on only one, unhappy occasion, between approximately 26 October and 23 December 1767. They had fled there from Vienna in the vain hope of avoiding an outbreak of smallpox, to which however both Wolfgang and Nannerl eventually succumbed, and from which both recovered. From the inscriptions on the autograph, Einstein in K3 concluded that K. 43 must have been begun either 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 indeed leave Olomouc around 23 December, they reached Vienna only on 10 January of the new year. The reason for the slowness of their journey was this: in the course of their flight from Vienna they had stopped at Brno (Brünn), where the Count von Schrattenbach (the Archbishop of Salzburg’s brother) had arranged that they give a concert. Leopold wanted his children even further from Vienna’s smallpox epidemic, however, so he postponed the concert until their return trip. Hence the Mozarts returned to Brno on Christmas Eve, and on 30 December they 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 Brünn, excited everyone’s admiration; but he could not endure the trumpets, because they were incapable of playing completely in tune with one another.”

The report of Wolfgang’s reaction has the ring of truth to it, for his 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 polite enough to hide the fact, for the leader of the Brno waits reported that:

“Mr Mozart, Kapellmeister of Salzburg, was completely satisfied with the orchestra here and would not have believed that my colleagues could accompany so well at the first rehearsal.”

We propose the following hypothetical scenario for K. 43: it was composed in Vienna between 15 September and 23 October 1767, copied over in Olomouc after Wolfgang’s recovery from smallpox, and may have received its premiere on 30 December in Brno. But what could the trumpets have been playing? As they come down to us, none of the symphonies composed by Wolfgang prior to the end of 1767 calls for trumpets. Among his other orchestral works, only a pastiche keyboard concerto, K. 40, an offertory, K. 34, and a recitative and aria, K. 33i (36), call for trumpets. An offertory would not have been performed at a concert in a tavern, and in any case there is indirect evidence suggesting that the Mozarts had brought none of these three works with them on tour. The most likely explanation, therefore, is that at least one of Mozart’s earliest symphonies did once have trumpet parts, which, as was sometimes the case with Mozart and his contemporaries, were optional and notated separately from the score. This suggestion is made the more plausible by a document written by Nannerl (and reproduced in the introduction to K. 16 in volume 1 of this series) in which she recalled that Wolfgang’s “first” symphony employed trumpets. K. 43 would not have been one of the symphonies with optional trumpets, however, for Mozart’s usual trumpet keys were C, D, and E flat major.

As the provenance of the previous work is so uncertain, we may provisionally regard K. 43 as Mozart’s first four-movement symphony, all of the earlier ones having been in three movements.

The first movement opens with a fanfare identical to that used by J. C. Bach, Johann Stamitz, and Dittersdorf to launch symphony movements. Then follows a so-called Mannheim 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 the recapitulation of the rest of the exposition.

The andante presents a striking change of orchestra colour, created by a new key (C major), flutes replacing oboes, first violins muted, second violins and bass instruments pizzicato, and violas, divisi, murmuring in semiquavers. The movement is an arrangement of the eighth number of Mozart’s Latin comedy Apollo et Hyacinthus (concerning which see the discussion of K. 38). The Greek legend of Apollo and Hyacinth relates that both Zephyr and Apollo loved a youth, Hyacinth, who, however, cared only for Apollo. When out of jealousy Zephyr killed Hyacinth, Apollo turned his blood into the flower that to this day bears his name. The duet, which serves as the second movement of the present symphony, occurs near the end of the opera after the story’s action is finished. Two subsidiary characters muse in a rather abstract, allegorical vein about divine anger and loss of grace. The eleven-year-old prodigy, perhaps finding little specific in the words to inspire him, seems to have set the situation rather than the text, composing a movement of almost sublime serenity.

A particularly luminous minuet and quirky trio prepare us for the energetic 6/8 finale. The symphony appears to have been written con amore throughout, and is one of the best works produced by the eleven-year-old Wolfgang.

Symphonies No. 7 in D major, K. 45

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Finale

Symphonies in D major, K. 46a [K. 51]

1. Molto allegro
2. Andante
3. Molto allegro

The existence of two versions of the same symphony offers us a precious opportunity to learn something further about the conditions under which the youthful composer worked. The autograph of K. 45, now in West Berlin, 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 chronicled in the notes to the previous work. There is no record of the Mozarts giving a public concert at this time, so we must assume that this symphony was written for one of Vienna’s many private concerts. The Mozarts had a two-and-a-half-hour-long audience with Maria Theresa and her son, the recently crowned Emperor Joseph II, only three days after the completion of K. 45. Music was discussed during the audience and Wolfgang and Nannerl performed, but as none of the court musicians were present no orchestral music can have been played. It was apparently on this occasion that Joseph suggested that Wolfgang write an opera for Vienna – an opera that will feature in this tale of two symphonies.

The earliest occasion on which, as far as we know, 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”. The precise date and contents of this programme are not known, but the Mozarts’ usual custom was to begin and end with symphonies, filling the middle of the event with arias, concertos, chamber music, two- and four-hand keyboard music played by Wolfgang and Nannerl, and keyboard improvisations by Wolfgang. K. 45 is, like K. 43, in the four-movement format favoured in Vienna for concert purposes.

By the time of the Russian ambassador’s concert, Leopold Mozart had already 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 that he had not returned to Salzburg was that – following the Emperor’s suggestion – Wolfgang had indeed composed a comic opera, La finta semplice, K. 46a (51), but its production was repeatedly delayed as a result of jealous intrigues on the part of several Viennese musicians. Rumours were being circulated that Wolfgang was a fraud, and that his father did his composing for him. Leopold, a man with an acute sense of honour, felt that he could not leave Vienna before he and his son were vindicated. Yet although he battled valiantly against his opponents, even to the point of appealing directly to the Emperor, the opera remained unperformed in Vienna. (The Mozarts were able to retreat with their honour intact only because Wolfgang was permitted to compose, and direct the performance of, the music for the consecration of a new church, a gala occasion at which the entire court was present.) The overture for the ill-fated La finta semplice was a re-working of Wolfgang’s last symphony, K. 45.

The changes he wrought in turning a concert- or chamber-symphony into an overture-symphony are revealing. He omitted the minuet and trio. He altered the orchestration, adding pairs of flutes and obbligato bassoons to the original pairs of oboes and horns, while dropping the trumpets and kettledrums. The additions were perhaps to be expected, for, as we can easily imagine, the opera house in Vienna had at its disposal larger orchestral resources than had most private concerts; but the dropping of the trumpets is surprising, since operas of the period so often call for them to lend verisimilitude to ceremonial and military scenes. Perhaps a comic opera could dispense with these accoutrements of the nobility. Wolfgang also added a considerable number of phrasing and dynamic indications to the re-worked symphony. Whether these represent a spelling-out of ideas implicit in K. 45 (and conveyed in rehearsal to the orchestra by Wolfgang leading from the harpsichord) or whether they represent a re-thinking of the piece, cannot be ascertained. But in the preparation of the versions recorded here, care was taken that the members of the Academy of Ancient Music rehearsed and recorded K. 45 before looking at K. 46a, so that ideas that Wolfgang may not yet have thought of at the time he conceived the former could not be added to the latter through unhistorical hindsight. He also altered the metre of the andante from C to ¢, and the melody’s quavers to dotted quavers and semiquavers. Finally, Wolfgang added two additional bars of music to the first movement and four to the finale. It would be nice to think that in the addition of these bars we catch a glimpse of him refining the symphony’s proportions, but the truth may be something more mundane. In the case of the first movement, a bar that was present in the exposition had been lacking in the recapitulation while an entirely different bar that was present in the recapitulation had been lacking in the exposition. Wolfgang merely brought the exposition and recapitulation into conformity and the differences between them may simply have been the results of a lapse of memory, rather than a new artistic discovery. In the finale, the changes were to the ending. The last two bars of K. 45 were replaced first with two bars that led directly into the opera’s opening chorus and then, when Wolfgang wanted to use the overture of K. 46a as an autonomous work, with a concert ending that incorporated the two original bars, the two new bars, and two additional ones.

The finale is based on a tune that was to enjoy considerable popularity in London around 1800 under the name “Del Caro’s Hornpipe”. A similar tune also appears in the Intrada of Leopold Mozart’s Musical Sleigh-ride. The origins of this tune-type are undoubtedly lost in the mists of oral tradition.

Symphony in G major, K. 45a, “Alte Lambach”

1. Allegro maestoso
2. Andante
3. Molto Allegro

Symphony in G major, G16, “Neue Lambach”

1. Allegro
2. Andante un poco allegretto
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

The Benedictine monastery at Lambach, near Wels in Upper Austria, was a convenient resting place 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 travellers, and maintained an orchestra to ornament its liturgy and to provide entertainment. Amand Schickmayr, a friend of Leopold Mozart from the days when both men were students at Salzburg University, had been at Lambach since 1738 and had become abbot of the monastery in 1746. At the beginning of January 1769 the Mozart family, returning to Salzburg from their second trip to Vienna, stopped at Lambach. We do not know how long they remained there on this occasion, as the visit is not mentioned in the family’s letters or diaries, and in fact is known to us solely from inscriptions on two musical manuscripts.

The manuscripts in question are sets of parts for two symphonies in G major, one inscribed Sinfonia/a 2 Violini/2 Oboe/2 Corni/Viola/e/Basso./Del Sig[no]re Wolfgango/Mozart./Dono Authoris/4ta Jan. 769, and the other bearing an identical inscription except that in place of “Wolfgango” there appears “Leopoldo”. For convenience of reference, the symphony ascribed to Wolfgang at Lambach will be referred to here as “K. 45a”, and that ascribed to Leopold as “G16”. Until 1982 the two symphonies were thought to survive only in the Lambach manuscripts, neither of which is an autograph. Both were preserved in the monastery’s archives where they were discovered by Wilhelm Fischer, who, in 1923, published K. 45a. Prior to that, however, K. 45a had appeared in K1 and K2 as Anh. 221, one of ten symphonies known to Köchel solely by the incipits of their first movements, found in a Breitkopf & Härtel Manuscript Catalogue.

In K3 Einstein placed the rediscovered Symphony in G major, 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 1767-8 sojourn in Vienna, he assigned it the number 45a, representing the beginning of 1768. The editors of K6 accepted Einstein’s and Fischer’s opinion of the authenticity of K. 45a/Anh. 221, as did Georges de Saint-Foix and many others who wrote about Wolfgang’s early symphonies, and Einstein’s dating of the work to early 1768 was generally accepted too.

In 1964, however, Anna Amalie Abert published a startling new hypothesis about the two G major symphonies. She had come to believe that – like the accidental interchange of infants that underlines the plots of a number of plays and operas and is given such a delightful sendup in O’Keefe’s comedy Wild Oats – the two works had been mixed up, perhaps by a monkish librarian at Lambach. Abert based her opinion on a close examination of the two symphonies, and on comparisons between them and other symphonies thought to have been written by Leopold and Wolfgang at about the same time.

Abert’s stylistic analysis suggested that K. 45a was written in a more archaic style than G16, and her aesthetic evaluations suggested that the former was less well written than the latter. She then reasoned that, as Leopold was the older, the more conservative, and the less talented of the two composers, he must have been the author of K. 45a and Wolfgang of G16. Comparing formal and stylistic characteristics of the first movements of the two symphonies with those of the first movements of other symphonies of that period by Leopold and Wolfgang, Abert found that the first movement of K. 45a seemed to resemble Leopold’s first movements while the first movement of G16 seemed to resemble Wolfgang’s. She also pointed out the (relative) monothematicism of the first movement of K. 45a, which is considered an archaic trait, and therefore likely to have come from the older composer. Certain aspects of K. 45a’s construction – the adding together of many two-bar phrases and the over-use of sequences – Abert considered to be characteristic of Leopold’s works; while the more spun-forth and varied melodic ideas of G16 struck her as akin to Wolfgang’s technique. Her doubts about K. 45a had to do, “above all with the remarkable plainness and monotony of the second and third movements, which immediately catch the eye of the close observer of the symphonies K. 16 to 48”. Accordingly, she edited the previously unpublished G16 as a work of Wolfgang’s, and it has since been frequently performed, recorded and discussed as such.

Abert’s hypothesis is not quite as high-handed as it might at first appear to anyone unaware that a large number of 18th-century symphonies survive with incorrect attributions. For example, leaving aside the Lambach symphonies, some seven symphonies exist with attributions to both Wolfgang and Leopold.

In 1977-8, when this series of recordings was being planned, I studied Abert’s arguments, found them convincing, and decided that we should record G16 rather than K. 45a. However, in the autumn of 1981, in the course of research for these notes and for a book-in-progress about Mozart’s symphonies, I re-examined Abert’s evidence as well as some evidence overlooked by her, and was forced to conclude that the original attributions were correct. A brief summary of the evidence follows.

(1) Abert found that the stringing of two-bar phrases in K. 45a was atypical of Wolfgang, yet according to Ludwig Finscher, “... the technique of many minor composers of the 1760s and 1770s – including Mozart – was to place two-bar, four-bar, and eight-bar sections in a row, sometimes adding a bar, or changing the order of sections”. Besides, as the more spun-forth style (Fortspinnungstypus) of G16 was a late-Baroque trait and the more segmented style (Liedtypus) of K. 45a a galant trait, this distinction, far from supporting Abert’s new attributions, contradicts them.

(2) The manuscripts of both Lambach symphonies prove to be in the hand of the Salzburg copyist and friend of the Mozarts’, Joseph Richard Estlinger. (This fact was known to Abert, but not to Einstein.) This means that the symphonies must have been copied in Salzburg before the Mozarts’ departure for Vienna in September 1767. The earlier that we think K. 45a was composed, the less surprise we should experience at finding the apprentice-composer writing in an “archaic” style. In particular, Abert’s comparisons of K. 45a and G16 with K. 43 and 48 are much weakened by an earlier dating of K. 45a, for if the latter was composed in 1766 or the first part of 1767, then its “immaturity” of style in comparison with works from the end of 1767 and the end of 1768 is not surprising. This was after all a period during which Wolfgang’s musical knowledge and craft were growing by leaps and bounds.

(3) Mozart himself immodestly claimed to be able to write in any style, and his boast is in same measure borne out by the manner in which he assimilated musical styles and ideas during his tours.

(4) Although Leopold was a generation older than his son and may not have had his son’s originality, he was nonetheless an able, well-informed musician. Let us not forget that he too made the tours and heard the latest musical styles of western Europe. In the 1760s, he was a thoroughly up-to-date composer, while Wolfgang had yet to find his distinctive “voice”. It is thus not difficult to believe that during that period father and son may have written symphonies in which the father’s style was in some aspects more modem than the son’s. And is it not reasonable to suspect that some of Leopold’s mature works may have been better constructed than some of his son’s childhood works, in the genesis of which he so often took part as teacher, advisor, editor, and copyist?

(5) In accepting Vienna as the place of K. 45a’s creation, commentators were made uncomfortable by the fact that it was in the three-movement format of the earliest symphonies written in London and Holland rather than the four-movement format which, as we have seen, was favoured in Vienna and used by Wolfgang in the symphonies (K. 43, 45 and 48) that can confidently be assigned to the 1767-68 sojourn there.

(6) Then we must ask ourselves, how plausible is it that the manuscripts of the two symphonies were interchanged? After all, the titles and the inscriptions “Del Sig[no]re Wolfgango [or “Leopoldo”] Mozart” on the manuscripts of K. 45a and G16 respectively were written by the Salzburg scribe. Only the final words on each manuscript, “Dono Authoris 4ta Jan. 769” are in a different hand, undoubtedly that of one of the Lambach monks. Are we to believe that these two manuscripts were accepted from a copyist well known to the Mozarts, carried around by them for more than a year, used for performances, and presented to the Lambach monastery, without the usually punctilious Leopold having corrected these supposedly incorrect attributions?

(7) Finally, in 1767 Leopold Mozart assembled six of Wolfgang’s early symphonies to have copied and sent to the Prince of Donaueschingen. New evidence now suggests that these six were probably K. 16, 19, 19a, 19b, 38 and 45a. If so, then K. 45a is certainly by Wolfgang and must have been completed prior to the Mozarts’ departure for Vienna on 11 September 1767.

Having reached these conclusions in the autumn of 1981, I worked out my arguments in an article for a volume honouring my former professor, Paul Henry Lang (see bibliography). Then, in February 1982, the confusion was resolved when the Munich Staatsbibliothek announced the discovery of the original parts for K. 45a, comprising first and second violin in the hand of a copyist, “basso” part in the hand of Mozart’s sister Nannerl, and the rest in Leopold’s hand. The title page in Leopold’s hand is virtually identical to that on the Lambach copy but ends “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 Mozarts were enthusiastically received. These two symphonies may have been written (with the Galimathias musicum, K. 32) for the investiture of Prince William of Orange. In that case they were what Leopold referred to in a letter when he wrote that Wolfgang “had to compose something for the Prince’s concert” of 11 March 1766.

Comparison of the Hague and Lambach manuscripts reveals that K. 45a was revised in Salzburg in 1767: no bars of music were added or removed and no new ideas introduced; rather, dozens of details were altered, especially in the inner parts. The revision of K. 45a suggests its performance in Salzburg between December 1766 and October 1767, after which the work was taken on tour to Vienna.

The first movement of K. 45a begins with the melody in the bass and tremolo in the violins, a texture that Mozart usually reserved for near the ends of expositions and of recapitulations. In a number of his early symphonies the incipits of the first and last movements have similar melodic contours; in K. 45a, however, the second or lyrical subjects of those movements are so related. The 3/8 finale is so much of a piece with the 3/8 finales of the other early symphonies, K. 16, 19, 19a and 22, that all may be said to belong to the same general conception. As for the andante, the Lambach version is the first of Mozart’s symphonies to use a favourite orchestral texture found in the andantes of eight later symphonies: the wind are silent or reduced, violins muted, and cellos and basses play pizzicato. But mutes and pizzicato are not indicated in the Hague version, and the occasional slur in the bass line shows that pizzicato was not intended by the ten-year-old composer.

This is the first recording of the original version of K. 45a. The Symphony in G major, G16, is also presented here, in accordance with our original plan.

Symphony in B flat major, K. 45b [K. Anh. 214]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

This is another of the ten symphonies known to Köchel solely by a first-movement incipit, taken from the Breitkopf & Härtel Manuscript Catalogue. Prior to the publication of K3 Einstein had located a set of 18th-century parts for this work in the Berlin library bearing the title Synfonie Ex Bb, a 2 Violini, 2 Oboe, 2 Corni, Viola è Basso/Del Sig. Cavaliere Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart Maestro di concerto di S. A. à Salisburgo. Wolfgang received the unpaid post of “maestro di concerto” to the Salzburg Court on 14 November 1769, and earned the right to call himself “Cavaliere” on 5 July 1770, when he was decorated in Rome with the Order of the Golden Spur. But Einstein felt (presumably on stylistic grounds) that this symphony could not have been written later than the beginning of 1768, and thus he arrived at the Köchel number 45b. In Einstein’s opinion, therefore, the Berlin manuscript constituted a later copy of an earlier work, and this may indeed be correct. As an indirect consequence of World War II, K. 45b was published twice, once in Leipzig, edited by Müller von Asow, and once in New York, edited by Einstein.

The discussion of the previous symphony having clearly revealed the pitfalls of dating and attribution on stylistic grounds, perhaps nothing further need be said on that point other than that the time and place of creation of K. 45b, and perhaps even its author, remain in question.

The first movement is written in a type of sonata form in which the ideas presented in the exposition recur in reverse order in the second part, a mirror-image technique of which Mozart was later to make brilliant use (for example, K. 133, first movement). Much has been made of the presence in the bass line of K. 45b of the famous motive do-re-fa-mi of the Jupiter symphony’s finale, but little has been said of the fact that it appears too often, sometimes awkwardly transposed to different scale degrees.

In the andante, another sonata form movement but in E flat major, the horns are silent; the violins, occasionally joined by the oboes, play their duets far above the bass line. An eminently danceable minuet is contrasted by a trio in F major for strings only. The final allegro in 2/4 is also in sonata form; it brings the symphony to a cheerful if conventional conclusion.

Symphony No. 8 in D major, K. 48

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro

Why, virtually on the eve of his departure from Vienna after a stay of more than a year, did Wolfgang write another symphony? Was there a farewell concert or a private commission? (We know of none.) Was something needed immediately upon the return to Salzburg? (But surely the other symphonies written in Vienna could have served?) The autograph manuscript of this work, now found in West Berlin, is inscribed Sinfonia/di W: Mozart/1768/à Vienna/den 13ten dec:. On the very next day Leopold Mozart wrote to a friend in Salzburg his final letter from Vienna, but no forthcoming event that might explain the need for a new symphony is mentioned. In that letter Leopold remarked:

“As very much as I wished and hoped to be in Salzburg on His Highness the Archbishop’s consecration day [21 December], nonetheless it was impossible, for we could not bring our affairs to a conclusion earlier even though I endeavoured strenuously to do so. However, we will still set out from here before the Christmas holiday ...”

As we have seen, the Mozarts were long overdue at Salzburg, and Leopold’s pay was being withheld. We might expect, under these circumstances, that they would have left Vienna almost immediately after Wolfgang’s triumph on 7 December, when he led his own mass (K. 47a/139), offertory (K. 47b) and trumpet concerto (K. 47c) in the presence of the Imperial Court and a large crowd of onlookers. Yet something held the Mozarts in Vienna for more than a fortnight after that. That “something” may have been the unknown occasion for which K. 48 was written, perhaps a farewell concert in the palace of one of the nobility.

Like K. 45, K. 48 is in the festive key of D major 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, in 3/4 rather than the more customary common time, begins with a striking idea featuring dotted minims, alternately forte and piano. In the space of a mere six bars this melody covers a range of two-and-a-half octaves. It is soon followed by nervous quavers in the bass line and running semiquavers in the violins, which, with an occasional comment from the oboes and one dramatic silence, lead the energetic exposition to its conclusion. The movement, like all four in this symphony, has both halves repeated. The development section, exceptionally for this period in Mozart’s life, is nearly as long as the exposition; in the course of its modulations it reviews the ideas already heard. The recapitulation gives them again in full, and the movement thus provides a lucid demonstration of James Webster’s seemingly paradoxical description of sonata form as “a two-part tonal structure, articulated in three main sections” (The New Grove).

The andante, in G major 2/4 for strings alone, is a charming little song in binary form. The peculiar character of the opening idea is owing to its harmonization in parallel 6-3 chords and the rather sing-song quality of its melody, which almost reminds one of the tune to a nursery rhyme. This leads, however, to a second, more Italianate, idea, which, with its larger range and insistent appogiaturas, conveys a much more operatic impression.

The minuet reinstates the wind, 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 movement and the Dionysiac finale, which in this case is a 12/8 jig in a large, binary design.

Symphony in B flat major, K. Anh. C11.03 [K. 74g, K. Anh. 216]

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro molto

The story behind this symphony is just as peculiar as that of the Lambach symphonies. Like K. 45a and 45b, this work was known to Köchel only by its incipit in the Breitkopf Manuscript Catalogue. Sometime shortly after the turn of the 20th century, however, a set of parts was discovered in the Berlin library, and the work was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1910. According to a detailed list in K6 showing the contents of the Old Complete Works, this edition formed the final fascicle of the supplementary volumes, as “Serie 24, No. 63”. And indeed, like other Mozart scores published by Breitkopf as offprints from the Complete Works, the copy of K. 74g available to me has at the top of the first page “Mozarts Werke” and at the bottom “Stich und Druck von Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig”. However, also at the top is the incomplete indication “Serie 24 No. ”, perhaps suggesting some confusion about the work’s status. In any case, most copies of the Complete Works lack the fascicle containing K. 74g including apparently the copy used by Einstein as the basis for the slightly revised reprint edition of the Complete Works published in Ann Arbor after World War II. Thus copies of K. 74g are extremely hard to locate and it has sunk into obscurity; and although in K3 Einstein had expressed no doubts about the authenticity of K. 74g, K3 relegated it to the appendix of doubtful and spurious works, without offering any explanation.

Although he did not say so in as many words, Einstein thought that he heard in this work sounds that Mozart had absorbed during his travels in Italy in 1770, and the number 74g therefore represents the early summer of 1771 when Mozart spent a little over four months in Salzburg between his first and second trips to Italy. We will not repeat here our cautions about the dangers of such methods of dating and authentication. Instead we must pursue another line of reasoning, the main points of which we owe to a closely-reasoned article by G. Allroggen (see bibliography).

The situation of K. 74g is similar to that of several other symphonies that were at first known only by their incipits, and then rediscovered in non-authoritative copies. In two cases (K. 19a and 45a) authoritative sources have reappeared confirming Wolfgang’s authorship. In another case (K. Anh. C11.06/Anh. 219) a lost symphony re-emerged in a source strongly suggesting that it was the work of Leopold Mozart. A few more are still missing. In addition, several others – some listed in the Breitkopf Manuscript Catalogue, some not – available to Köchel only through non-authoritative manuscript copies, he placed among the authentic works (K. 42a/76, 73l/81, 73m/97, 73n/95, 73q/84, 75 and 111b/96). The important point here is this: the reasons for accepting or rejecting the authenticity of the last-named seven symphonies and the subsequently rediscovered K. 45b are the same as those for accepting or rejecting K. 74g: while the style of all these works is close enough to Mozart’s not to rule out his authorship out of hand, their provenance remains unclear. By any principles of logical consistency, therefore, either all of these symphonies must be placed among the doubtful works, or K. 74g must be included among the probably authentic ones. For purposes of this recording project, we have chosen the latter option.

The listing of K. 74g in the Breitkopf Manuscript Catalogue indicates that the symphony calls for two flutes and two horns, whereas the Berlin parts that constitute the work’s only surviving source have oboes in place of flutes. Since no autograph exists to resolve this discrepancy, for this recording – apparently the first to be issued of this unjustly neglected work – we have used flutes in the andante and oboes in the other movements, following a practice found in a few other Mozart symphonies (K. 43, 73, 75b/110, 173dA/182).

Symphony No. 37 in G major, K. 425a [K. 444, K. Anh. A53]

1. Adagio maestoso
2. Andante sostenuto
3. Finale (Allegro molto)

Here is yet another symphony with an odd history. Among Mozart’s papers at his death was the score of a symphony, containing a slow introduction, the following allegro and half of the andante in Mozart’s hand, but the rest of the andante, the minuet and trio, and the finale in another hand. The work appeared in K1 as number 444, and was published in the Old Complete Works as Symphony No. 37. It has been frequently performed as such in the 20th century, despite the fact that as early as 1907 the work – minus its slow introduction – was shown by Perger to be a symphony by Michael Haydn, written for the installation of a new abbot at the Michaelbeuern Monastery in May 1783.

Jahn and Köchel stated that Mozart wrote K. 425a during his visit to Linz in 1783, when on the return journey to Vienna from Salzburg he unexpectedly had to give a concert. There he composed a symphony in a few days because, as he wrote to his father, “I do not have a single symphony with me”. (If we take this statement literally then Mozart did not have Michael Haydn’s symphony with him either.) But the origin of the notion that K. 425a was written in Linz was that André thought that it was the Linz symphony. By the time the true Linz symphony (K. 425) was identified, everyone had lost track of why K. 425a had originally been connected with Linz, and a myth was born. Thus every Mozart biography, as well as K6, place K. 425a in Linz (as we ourselves have done in previous volumes). Our rejection of this idea is supported by the researches of Alan Tyson, which show that K. 425a is written on a type of paper used by Mozart immediately after his return from Salzburg to Vienna. The previously unquestioned association of K. 425a with Linz is thus specious, and we must search for another explanation as to how and when Mozart acquired the work and why he provided it with a slow introduction.

Mozart needed many symphonies for the extraordinary number of concerts he gave in Vienna in the early 1780s. We know that he not only used both recent and older symphonies of his own, but also symphonies by other composers. Adalbert Gyrowetz, for instance, related in his (third-person) autobiography that when, as a young man, he arrived in Vienna in 1785, he visited Mozart,

“... and was received by him in the friendliest way; cheered by his affability and kindness, he asked him to cast a glance at his youthful works, which consisted of six symphonies, and to give him his opinion of them. Mozart, like the kind-hearted man that he was, agreed to his request, looked the pieces through, praised them, and promised the young artist that he would have one of these symphonies performed at his concert in the music room in the Mehlgrube, where Mozart was giving six subscription concerts; this took place on Thursday. The symphony was performed in the music room in the Mehlgrube by the full theatre orchestra, and received general applause. Mozart with his innate goodness of heart took the young artist by the hand and presented him to the audience as the author of the symphony ...”

Leopold Mozart, who was present at the first of these Lenten concerts in the MehIgrube, reported to Nannerl that, “The concert was incomparable, the orchestra splendid. In addition to the symphonies, a female singer of the Italian theatre sang two arias. Then there was a splendid new piano concerto by Wolfgang ...”.

Mozart’s search for new symphonies was undoubtedly the reason for his jotting down the incipits of three symphonies by Joseph Haydn on the back of a sheet of music paper upon which he had written out a cadenza for the slow movement of the C major piano concerto, K. 387b/415 (and not K. 246, as stated in K6), which dates from the winter of 1782-3. K6 suggests that Joseph Haydn incipits are connected with a letter of 15 May 1784 in which Wolfgang remarked to Leopold, “I really have his [Haydn’s] three newest symphonies”. But Mozart’s three incipits are of symphonies dating from c1779, 1772 and c1780 (nos. 75, 47 and 62 respectively), which can hardly be called Haydn’s newest; the Hoboken catalogue of Haydn’s works would suggest that the symphonies mentioned in Mozart’s letter should be nos. 76, 77 and 78, all dating from 1782. However, the statement in Mozart’s letter is part of a discussion of the untrustworthiness of Salzburg copyists who apparently made additional copies for their own use. If Mozart gave as proof of the dishonesty of Salzburg copyists (one of whom he names) the fact that he had been able to obtain illicit copies of the newest symphonies of “Haydn”, we must of course understand that he meant the Salzburg Haydn: Michael, not Joseph. Michael Haydn’s three newest symphonies as of May 1784 were these:

Symphony in G major, Perger no. 16, dated 23 May 1783
Symphony in E flat major, Perger no. 17, dated 14 August 1783
Symphony in B flat major, Perger no. 18, dated 12 March 1784.

I believe that these three symphonies were the ones that Mozart obtained as the result of dishonest Salzburg copyists. The first of them is the very one for which we provided a slow introduction (K. 425a); if he lacked the time or inclination to write a new symphony for his Viennese concerts, he could hardly have chosen a finer work by someone else to spruce up. This symphony helps us to understand the high regard in which Mozart and his father held Michael Haydn’s music.

Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550

1. Molto allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto & Trio
4. Allegro assai

In the vast literature about Mozart’s life and music, there are several monographs, dozens of articles, hundreds of book chapters, and thousands of programme notes devoted to the last three symphonies (K. 543, 550 and 551), which were completed in 1788 in the space of about three months. What one gleans from reading a generous sample of these writings may be summarized thus: we do not know for what occasions the three works were composed, so they were probably the result of an inner artistic compulsion rather than an external stimulus; the three works were intended as a trilogy; Mozart never heard these masterpieces performed during his lifetime and this shows how unappreciated he was by his contemporaries. However, an investigation of these assertions shows that some of them are incorrect or at least misleading.

Anyone who has examined the psychology of Mozart’s methods of composing knows that, although he could sometimes compose with lightning speed, he also had problems with procrastination, on occasion was depressed and found it difficult to compose, and frequently was painfully busy giving lessons and concerts to support his family. There are plenty of documented examples suggesting that he seldom launched a large-scale work without a clear use for it in mind, and that, when a commission or opportunity for performance or publication dried up, he would sometimes abandon a work in mid-course. This being the case, it would be surprising if Mozart had composed three large symphonies with no practical goal in mind, and in this instance, we know of three such possible goals.

Perhaps the most immediate goal in composing some if not all of the three symphonies was that Mozart had scheduled a series of subscription concerts for June and July 1788. It seems that only the first of these concerts actually took place after which, owing to an insufficient number of subscribers, the rest were cancelled. This was to be the last time that Mozart attempted to put on a public concert in Vienna.

Another goal is revealed by the number three itself. Sets of symphonies were customarily sold in manuscript or engraved editions in groups of three (for larger symphonies) or in groups of six (for smaller ones). Mozart and his father had prepared several sets of six symphonies earlier in his career, and in 1784 Mozart himself had made up a set of three for publication. We cannot doubt that Mozart hoped to publish K. 543, 550 and 551 as an “opus”, although in fact they remained unpublished until after his death.

The final goal was that in 1788 Mozart was trying to arrange (and not for the first time) a trip to London, perhaps at the urging of his British friends Anna and Stephen Storace, Thomas Attwood, and Michael Kelly. It was well-known among musicians on the Continent that a talented composer-performer could make more money in London than anywhere else, and – as Haydn was to show in his visits to London in the early 1790s – producing good symphonies was an important element in such a venture.

When the English tour fell through, Mozart’s three symphonies provided music for a German tour he made in 1789 to give concerts and to seek patronage and perhaps a permanent post. An examination of what is known of Mozart’s orchestral concerts on this tour and those after his return to Vienna will lay to rest the notion that the last three symphonies were not performed during his lifetime.

A concert at the Dresden Court (14 April) included a piano concerto, and, although the rest of the programme is unkown, it may very well also have included at least one symphony. A reaction to this event survives, for the Russian ambassador attended Mozart’s concert, engaged him to compete on the organ and fortepiano with a local keyboard-player named Hässler, and later summarized the objections of some contemporaries to Mozart – objections which he himself apparently did not share:

“Mozart is very learned, very difficult, consequently he is very much esteemed by instrumentalists; but he seems never to have had the good fortune to have loved. No modulation ever issued from his heart.”

A copy of the programme of Mozart’s concert of 12 May in the Leipzig Gewandhaus survives. It is reproduced below with indications of the probable identity of the pieces:

Part I
Symphony
Scena. Mme. Duscheck (K. 505)
Concerto, on the Pianoforte (K. 456)
Symphony

Part II
Concerto, on the Pianoforte (K. 503)
Scena. Mme. Duscheck (K.528)
Fantasy, on the Pianoforte (K.475)
Symphony

Although it would be tempting to suppose that Mozart’s last symphonies were all performed on this occasion (raising interesting questions about the endurance of the orchestra and the audience), it is more likely that Mozart followed a custom of some of his Viennese concerts, dividing a symphony and using the opening movements at the beginning of the concert and the finale at the end. Thus Leipzig probably heard one or perhaps two of the last symphonies.

The Leipzig music critic, Johann Friedrich Rochlitz, who met Mozart and attended this concert and the rehearsal for it, later published a reminiscence of the occasion in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, of which he was for many years the editor:

“When I went to the rehearsal the next day, I noticed to my astonishment that the first movement being rehearsed – it was the allegro of a symphony of his – he took very, very fast. Hardly twenty bars had been played and – as might easily be foreseen – the orchestra started to slow down and the tempo dragged. Mozart stopped, explained what they were doing wrong, cried out ‘Ancora’, and began again just as fast as before. The result was the same. He did everything to maintain the same tempo; once he beat time so violently with his foot that one of his finely-worked steel shoebuckles broke into pieces: but all to no avail. He laughed at this mishap, left the pieces lying there, cried out ‘Ancora’ again and started for the third time at the same tempo. The musicians became recalcitrant towards this diminutive, deathly pale little man who hustled them in this way: incensed, they continued working at it and now it was all right. Everything that followed he took at a moderate pace. I must admit: I thought then he was rushing it a bit, insisting he was right, not through obstinacy, but in order not to compromise his authority with them right at the very beginning. But after the rehearsal he said in an aside to a few connoisseurs:

‘Don’t be surprised at me – it wasn’t caprice. But I saw that the majority of the musicians were fairly advanced in years. The dragging would never have stopped if I hadn’t first driven them to the limit and made them angry. Now they did their very best through sheer irritation.’

As Mozart had never before heard this orchestra play, that showed a fair knowledge of human nature; so he was not, after all, a child in everything outside the realm of music – as people so often say and write.”

One would dearly love to believe this charming anecdote, if only Rochlitz didn’t have such a terrible reputation for publishing trumped-up documents.

In 1790 Mozart, still searching pathetically for patronage and a suitable post, travelled to Frankfurt at his own expense to be present at the festivities surrounding the coronation of Leopold II. A concert he gave there on 15 October is documented by the fullest eye-witness account of any such event that we possess, written by Count Ludwig von Bentheim-Steinfort in his diary:

“At 11 o’clock in the morning there was a grand concert by Mozart in the auditorium of the National Playhouse. It began with the fine (1) Symphony by Mozart which I have long possessed. (2) Then came a superb Italian aria, ‘Non so di chi’, which Madame Schick sang with infinite expressiveness. (3) Mozart played a Concerto composed by him which was of an extraordinary prettiness and charm; he had a fortepiano by Stein of Augsburg which must be supreme of its kind and costs from 90 to 100 pounds; this instrument belonged to the Baroness de Frentz. Mozart’s playing is a little like that of the late Klöffler, but infinitely more perfect. Monsieur Mozart is a small man of rather pleasant appearance; he had a coat of brown marine satin nicely embroidered; he is engaged at the Imperial Court. (4) The soprano Cecarelli sang a beautiful scena and rondeau, for bravura airs do not appear to be his forte; he had grace and a perfect method; an excellent singer but his tone is a little on the decline, that and his ugly physiognomy; for the rest his passages, ornaments and trills are admirable ...

In the second act, (5) another concerto by Mozart, which however did not please me like the first. (6) A duet which we possess and I recognized by the passage ‘Per te, per te’, with ascending notes ... It was a real pleasure to hear these two people, although La Schick lost by comparison with the soprano in the matter of voice and ornaments, but she scored in the passage work at least. (7) A Fantasy without the music by Mozart, very charming, in which he shone infinitely, exhibiting all the power of his talent. (8) The last symphony was not given for it was almost two o’clock and everybody was sighing for dinner. The music thus lasted three hours, which was due to the fact that between all the pieces there were very long pauses. The orchestra was no more than rather weak with five or six violins, but apart from that very accurate: there was only one accursed thing that displeased me very much. There were not many people ...”

During Mozart’s last years in Vienna, his concert activities were much reduced compared to those early 1780s, and we are poorly informed about them because, Mozart’s father having died, we do not have a series of informative letters. In fact, the only known occasion on which symphonies were performed was on 16 and 17 April 1791 at the “Society of Musicians” annual benefit concert, when a large orchestra under the direction of Antonio Salieri performed a “grand symphony” by Mozart. As Mozart’s friends, the clarinettists Johann and Anton Stadler were in the orchestra, the symphony played was perhaps K. 543 or the second version of K. 550 (that recorded here).

If we add to the concert activities documented above the evidence of surviving contemporaneous sets of manuscript parts of the last three symphonies, we can confidently lay to rest the myth that these works remained unperformed during his lifetime.

Symphony in A minor, K. 16a [K. Anh. 220]

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andantino
3. Rondo: Allegro moderato

In February 1983 newspapers in many countries reported the discovery of a lost Mozart symphony. The facts as they later emerged were these: the librarian of the municipal orchestra in Odense, Denmark, was examining a collection of music which at the end of the eighteenth century had belonged to the local Collegium Musicum. Among several late-eighteenth-century symphonies, the librarian found the lost Symphony in A minor, K. 16a. According to an annotation on its title page, K. 16a came into the possession of the Collegium no later than 1793, but this set of parts was not new then for the watermark in the paper used reads “1779”. None of the hands in the Odense parts belongs to a copyist associated with the Mozarts or their circle.

How did it happen that a work previously unknown can have had a Köchel number waiting for it? The answer is that when, from around 1799, the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel attempted to collect Mozart’s works from his sister, his widow, and musicians, copyists and publishers all over Germany and Austria, they were sent this symphony. It was duly listed in their manuscript catalogue of Mozart’s works, with an incipit of four bars of the first violin part and the work’s source: “Westphal”. (This was the Hamburg music dealer Johann Christoph Westphal.) By Köchel’s time, this manuscript had vanished, and he placed the work in his appendix for lost works as Anhang 220. In the 3rd edition of the Köchel Catalogue, Einstein speculatively inserted such incipits of lost works into the chronological sequence of works. Solely on the evidence of the incipit, he guessed that the work’s style was Mozart’s earliest and closely related to that of J. C. Bach and C. F. Abel, whose symphonies Mozart studied in London in 1764-65. He therefore arbitrarily assigned it a number immediately following Mozart’s earliest surviving symphony, K. 16, of 1764.

With the music in hand, we may guess that the work is later. But even if it may be stylistically closer to Mozart’s symphonies of the later 1760s and early 1770s, without an authentic source it can be neither firmly attributed nor precisely dated. Indeed, many things about K. 16a are stylistically unlike any work of Mozart’s.

The opening allegro moderato presents two contrasting motives – a descending broken chord, sforzando and unisono, and a more lyrical idea, piano – organized into three-bar phrases and providing the material for the first thirty bars, which end (as expected) in C major. The second theme group begins with a new idea, and at bar forty-eight the exposition ends (astonishingly) in F major, with a closing theme derived from the lyrical idea of the opening. There is no repeat. The development section begins with the exposition’s closing theme and then offers a modulatory section leading to an incomplete recapitulation and closing ritornello.

The second movement, a short sonata form, opens with a songful theme that, like a few of Mozart’s other early symphony andantes, is reminiscent of “Che farò senza Euridice” from Gluck’s Orfeo.

The finale, like those of many of Mozart’s early symphonies, is a rondo. Its refrain has some of the “exotic” flavour that Mozart and his contemporaries called “Turkish”, which was apparently an imitation of music of Hungarian peasants who themselves parodied what they took to be Turkish music.

The Symphony as a Genre

By the time the ten-year-old Mozart came to write the earliest symphonies in this collection his first written in and for Salzburg, as far as we know – he had visited many of the major musical centres of Germany, Austria, France, England and the Low Countries. In those places he heard the latest symphonies, and wrote a few of his own in imitation of what he heard. But much of that which the child symphonist needed to learn could be learned nearer to home, for Salzburg had its own symphonists (Cristelli, Siedl, Anton Adlgasser (1729-77), Leopold Mozart himself, and especially Michael Haydn (1737-1806), who joined the Salzburg establishment in 1762), and by the 1760s, German-speaking composers were beginning to dominate symphonic production in all of Western Europe. This is evident from the large number of German symphonies published in Paris, Amsterdam and London, as well as from such remarks as these in a French essay of 1770, “Some Reflexions upon Modern Music”:

“While the French and the Italians were disputing which of them possessed music, the Germans learned it, going to Italy for that purpose. Before the Germans had the advantage of having any great men themselves, they had that of sensing the merit of their neighbours. The German artists filled the public conservatories of Naples; people of quality sent their sons to the most famous masters ... They had all the raw materials required of great musicians; they lacked only the discipline to organize those materials, and they had no trouble acquiring that ...

The Italians have for a long time divided their music into two genres: church music and theatre music. In the first they bring together all the forces of harmony, the most striking chord progressions – in a word, the effect; and that is what they seek to combine with melody, which they never abandon. Here it is that one finds such well worked-out double and triple fugues, those pieces for two choirs or for double orchestra – in fact, the most elaborate things that the art of music is capable of producing. The theatrical genre rejects all of these tours de force absolutely. Here the Italians employ nothing learned; everything devolves upon the melody ...

It is quite simple on this basis to teach composition to young people: one makes them work only on church music; one shows them matters of labour before showing them matters of taste. Upon leaving the schools, the Italian pupils remain in their own country. Those who intend their talents to be employed in the theatre learn its procedures and genres: in frequent examples they see what they must remember and what they must forget. The Germans, on the contrary, return to their country. They have carefully preserved their prodigious accumulation of [musical] science. They have tested the very fortunate use of wind instruments of which their nation makes much use, and they have known how to draw the most from them. If they wished to work for the theatre, they had only scores for models. Score-reading is not as seductive as live theatre ... They have realized that all expression does not suit vocal melody: that there are a thousand nuances which the orchestra is much more fit to render [than the voice]. They have tried, they have succeeded, and have raised themselves far above their masters, who now rush to imitate them. Here is what formed the likes of Hasse, [J. C.] Bach, Gluck, and Holzbauer. Let the Italians bring out symphonies of their best masters, and let them compare them with those of [J.] Starnitz, [C. J.] Toeschi, and Van Malder! Is not Monsieur Gossec himself – the only one among us French who can walk alongside these great men in the symphonic genre – a student of the German school?”

Our notions of the symphony, inherited from the 19th century, are quite different from those of the 18th century. After Beethoven, the symphony was the most important large-scale instrumental genre. The Romantic composers conception of the symphony as an extended work of great seriousness, intended as the centre-piece of a concert, is very far from what the musicians of the second half of the 18th century had in mind for their symphonies. This can be seen by comparing the large number of symphonies turned out then with the handful written by most of the 19th-century symphonists. It can also be seen in the small number and brevity of passages devoted to symphonies in the newspaper accounts, memoires and correspondence of the period. And it can be seen in the uses to which 18th-century symphonies were put.

A pair of contemporaneous German definitions and descriptions of the symphony may serve to illustrate how these works were viewed. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, who became acquainted with the Mozarts when he visited Salzburg in the 1770s, defined the symphony as follows: “This genre of music originated from the overtures of musical dramas, and came finally to be performed in private concerts. As a rule it consists of an allegro, an andante, and a presto. However, our artists are no longer bound to this form, and often depart from it with great effect. Symphony in the present fashion is, as it were, loud preparation for and vigorous introduction to hearing a concert.” In Mozart’s case the most familiar departure from the 3-movement format was the insertion of a minuet and trio between the andante and the finale. This is a characteristic Austrian development, and Mozart not infrequently converted one of his Italian symphonies to an Austrian one by the simple expedient of adding a minuet and trio.

“Sinfonia” and “overtura” or “ouverture” were synonymous terms and concepts then. Planelli writing in 1772 gave a typically simple Italian definition: “All the symphonies that serve [operas] as overtures are cast from the same die, and are inevitably made up of a solemn grouping of an allegro, a largo, and a dance.”

At roughly the same time, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, writing a definition for Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, gives a more substantial description of the classical symphony:

“One can compare the symphony to an instrumental chorus, as one does the sonata to an instrumental cantata. For the latter [the sonata], the melody of the principal part, played by one instrument, can be conceived so that improvised ornamentation can be tolerated and is often even required. In the symphony, on the other hand, where there is more than one instrument to a part, the melody must have reached its highest expression in the notes as written out, and in no part can the slightest ornamentation or coloratura be tolerated. Because it will not be practised like the sonata but must be sightread, it should contain no difficulties that cannot be met and performed clearly by several players simultaneously.

The symphony is particularly suited to the expression of greatness, solemnity, and stateliness. Its purpose is to prepare the listener for the important music that follows, or, in a concert in a hall, to exhibit all the pomp of instrumental music. If it is to carry out this purpose adequately and become part of the opera or church music that it precedes, then, besides an expression of greatness and solemnity, it must also have a character that puts the listener in the proper frame of mind for the piece to follow, and in the manner in which it is composed must show whether it befits the church or the theatre.

The concert symphony, which constitutes an independent entity with no notion of its serving to introduce other music, achieves its purpose solely through a sonorous, brilliant, and fiery manner of writing. The allegros of the best concert symphonies contain great and bold ideas: free treatment of counterpoint; apparent disorder in melody and harmony; strongly marked rhythms in various manners; powerful bass lines and unison passages; inner voices of melodic significance; free imitations; often a theme treated fugally; sudden shifts and modulations from one key to another, which are often all the more striking the more distant the relationship between the keys is; strong shadings of forte and piano, and especially the crescendo, which, when it accompanies both an ascending melodic line and an intensifying expression, is of the greatest effect ...”

The French naturalist and composer Etienne de la Ville, comte de Lacépède, a decade later began by elaborating on essentially the same definition: “A symphony is ordinarily made up of 3 movements: the first is more noble, more majestic, more imposing; the second slower, more touching, more pathetic or more charming; and the third more rapid, more tumultuous, more lively, more animated or more gay, than the other two.” He then presented a characteristic French notion that a good symphony must be dramatic and even programmatic: “The first movement, that which we call the allegro of the symphony, should present, so to speak, its overture and the first scenes: in the andante or the second movement, the musician should place the portrayal of terrible happenings, dangerous passions, or charming objects, which should serve as the basis for the piece: and the last movement, to which we commonly give the name presto, should offer the last effort of these frightful or touching passions. The dénouement should also be shown here, and one should see subsequently the sadness, fright and consternation that a fatal catastrophe inspires, or the joy, happiness and ecstasy to which charming and happy events give birth ...” Then follow several pages in this vein, suggesting how the scenarios of such programmatic symphonies might be handled.

Some decades after Kirnberger’s description of the first movement of a symphony, Koch still quotes it with approval and supplies us with helpful additional information: “The andante or adagio ... has no such fixed character, but is often of pleasing, sensitive, or mournful content; and is either in a form similar to but less extended than that of the first allegro, or it appears in rondo form or as variations up on a short andante or adagio melody commonly consisting of 2 parts of 8 bars each ...

[The] minuet [is] a dance that is distinguished by a charming and noble manner, and with which all social dances at one time were begun. ... In the middle of the past century in the southern regions of the German-speaking lands, they began to be carried over in to the symphony and into sonatas of two or more parts, a custom that has been preserved and has spread almost universally. But because minuets of this type are really not for dancing, composers have departed from the original conception of the minuet, not only with regard to its rhythm, but also its tempo, and it is bound to no definite number of bars nor to a homogeneous rhythm; it is also played in a much quicker tempo than can be danced to.

The final allegro has, for the most part, a cheerful or joking character, and appears most frequently in the form of the rondo.”

The Kirnberger-Koch composite description of a symphony needs only very slight modification to fit Mozart’s Salzburg symphonies. Mozart’s slow movements are in a flowing andante and not a slower, more serious adagio, and he showed little interest in the theme-and-variations format of which Joseph Haydn was so fond. Mozart’s finales are not infrequently in the same form as his first movements (the form later dubbed “sonata” form), and when he does write a rondo, it is often heavily influenced by sonata-form principles.

Mozart’s Salzburg symphonies served as curtain-raisers to plays, cantatas, oratorios, and private and public concerts. They may have been performed during church services. We know that they were sometimes used to end concerts, or even to begin and end each half of a long concert. Sometimes a symphony at the beginning of a concert would be performed without its finale, which would be saved to end the evening’s music! Judging by the number of symphonies he wrote in Salzburg (or that he wrote for other places and then re-used in Salzburg), there must have been a steady demand for them there. The Salzburg symphonies include – in addition to those that, because we know of no specific occasion for their creation, we (rightly or wrongly) consider to have originated as concert symphonies – a number of concert symphonies that Mozart fashioned from works in other genres. Among the latter were opera overtures detached unchanged from their operas and put into circulation, opera overtures provided with new finales to bring them up to the customary 3 movements, and groups of 3, 4, or even 5 movements drawn from orchestral serenades.

With the arguable exception of his last few, Mozart’s symphonies were perhaps intended to be witty, charming, brilliant, and even touching, but undoubtedly not profound, learned, or of great significance. The main attractions at concerts were not the symphonies, but the vocal and instrumental solos and chamber music that the symphonies introduced. Approaching Mozart’s symphonies with this attitude in mind relieves them of a romantic heaviness under which they have all too often been crushed. Thus unburdened, they sparkle with new lustre.

Performance Practice

The use of 18th-century instruments with the proper techniques of playing them gives to the Academy of Ancient Music a clear, vibrant articulate sound. Inner voices are clearly audible without obscuring the principal melodies. Rhythmic patterns and subtle differences in articulation are more distinct than can usually be heard with modern instruments. The use of little or no vibrato serves further to clarify the texture. At lively tempos and with this luminous timbre, the observance of all of Mozart’s repeats no longer makes movements seem too long. A special instance concerns the da capos of the minuets, where an ancient oral tradition tells us, the repeats are always omitted. But, as we were unable to trace that tradition as far back as Mozart’s time, we experimented by including those repeats as well.

Missing instruments understood in 18th-century practice to be required have been supplied: these include bassoons playing the bass-line along with the cellos and double basses, kettledrums whenever trumpets are present (except in the Symphony in E flat major, K. 184, where chromaticism renders their use less idiomatic), and (with the exception of the Paris symphony) the harpsichord or fortepiano continuo. No conductor is needed, as the direction of the orchestra is divided in true 18th-century fashion between the concertmaster and the continuo player, who are placed so that they can see each other and are visible to the rest of the orchestra. The absence of a conductor does not mean that there is no interpretation, but rather that quite a different type of interpretation, arrived at by different means, becomes possible.

Following 18th-century injunctions to separate widely the softest and loudest instruments, the flutes and trumpets are placed at opposite sides of the orchestra. And the first and second violins are placed at the left and right respectively, making meaningful the numerous passages Mozart wants tossed back and forth between them.

As there was wide variation in orchestral practice from region to region in western Europe, no all-purpose classical orchestra could be recreated; consequently, we have attempted to present the several kinds of ensembles for which Mozart wrote, whose peculiarities he had in mind when composing.

As there was then no single orchestra dominating Viennese musical life, we have for Mozart’s Viennese symphonies recreated a typical orchestra, avoiding the extremely small groups that sometimes performed at private concerts as well as the huge groups occasionally assembled for special occasions. For example, the orchestras of both the Kärntnerthor and Burgtheater in 1773 had 6 or 7 first and 6 or 7 second violins, 3 or 4 violas, 3 cellos and 3 double basses, with pairs of the necessary wind and brass, kettledrums and a harpsichord. For Mozart’s late symphonies, however, fortepiano continuo has been employed, on the grounds that as Mozart sat at that instrument to lead the orchestra and perform the solo part in his piano concertos, he probably did the same for his symphonies at those concerts.

Musical sources and editions

Until recently performers of Mozart’s symphonies have relied solely upon editions drawn from the old Complete Works, published in the nineteenth century by the Leipzig firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. During the past three decades, however, a new complete edition of Mozart’s works (NMA) has been appearing, published by Bärenreiter of Kassel in collaboration with the Mozarteum of Salzburg. The NMA has been used for those works for which it was available. For the other symphonies, editions have been created especially for these recordings, drawing on Mozart’s autographs when they could be seen, and on other eighteenth-century manuscripts in cases where the autographs were unavailable. For K. 425a the Diletto musicale edition by Charles H. Sherman was used; for K. 45b, Einstein’s C. F. Peters edition.

A note concerning the numbering of Mozart’s symphonies

The first edition of Ludwig Ritter von Köchel’s Chronological-Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Works of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart was published in 1862 (=K1). It listed all of the completed works of Mozart known to Köchel in what he believed to be their chronological order, from number 1 (infant harpsichord piece) to 626 (the Requiem). The second edition by Paul Graf von Waldersee in 1905 involved primarily minor corrections and clarifications. A thoroughgoing revision came first with Alfred Einstein’s third edition, completed in 1936 (=K3). Einstein changed the position of many works in Köchel’s chronology, threw out as spurious some works Köchel had taken to be genuine, and added as authentic some works Köchel had believed spurious or did not know about. Einstein also inserted into the chronological scheme incomplete works, sketches, and lost works. These Köchel had placed in an appendix (= Anhang, abbreviated “Anh.”) without chronological order. Köchel’s original numbers could not be reassigned, for they formed the bibliographical basis for innumerable library catalogues and reference works. The new numbers were therefore inserted in chronological order between the old ones by adding lower-case letters.

A reprint of the third edition with a sizeable supplement of corrections and additions was published by Einstein in 1946 and is usually referred to as K3a. The so-called fourth and fifth editions were nothing more than unchanged reprints of the 1936 edition, without the 1946 supplement. The sixth edition, which appeared in 1964 and was edited by Franz Giegling, Alexander Weinmann, and Gerd Sievers (=K6), continued Einstein’s innovations by adding numbers with lower-case letters appended, and a few with upper-case letters (e.g., the symphony in B flat major, K. 173dA/182), in instances in which a work had to be inserted into the chronology between two lower-case insertions. (A so-called seventh edition is an unchanged reprint of the sixth.) Hence, many of Mozart’s works bear two K numbers, and a few have three.

Although Köchel had no such intention in devising his catalogue, Mozart’s age at the time of composition of a work may be calculated with some degree of accuracy from the K number. (This works, however, only for numbers over 100.) To find Mozart’s age, divide the K number by 25 and add 10. Then, if one keeps in mind that Mozart was born in January 1756, the year of composition is also readily approximated.

The old Complete Works published 41 symphonies in 3 volumes between 1879 and 1882, numbered 1 to 41 according to the chronology of K1. Additional symphonies appeared in supplementary fascicles between 1881 and 1910, and are sometimes numbered 42 to 55, even though they are early works.

Bibliography

Abert, Anna Amalie: “W. A. Mozart, Sinfonie KV 84 = 73q. Echtheitsfragen”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1971-1972)

Abert, Anna Amalie: “Stilistischer Befund und Quellenlage: zu Mozarts Lambacher Sinfonie KV Anh. 221 = 45a”, Festschrift Hans Engel zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag (Kassel, 1964)

Abert, Anna Amalie: “Methoden der Mozart-forschung”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1964)

Abert, Hermann; W. A. Mozart, 7th ed. (Leipzig, 1955-66)

Allroggen, Gerhard: “Zur Frage der Echtheit der Sinfonie KV. Anh. 216 = 74g”, Analecta musicologica (1976), xviii

Anderson, Emily: The Letters of Mozart & His Family, 2nd ed. (London, 1966)

Anon., “Wiederauffindung einer verschoIlenen Jugendsinfonie Mozarts durch die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek”, Acta Mozartiana (1981), xxviii/l

Barblan, Guglielmo, et al.: Mozart in Italia (Milan 1956)

Beck, Hermann: “Zur Frage der Echtheit von Mozarts Sinfonie in D, KV 84/73q”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1972-73)

Biba, Otto: “Grundzuge des Konzertwesens in Wien zu Mozarts Zeit”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1978-79)

Bryan, Paul R.: “The Horn in the Works of Mozart and Haydn”, Haydn Year Book (1975), ix

Burney, Charles: The Present State of Music in Germany, The Netherlands and United Provinces (London, 1773)

Della Croce, Luigi: Le 75 sinfonie de Mozart (Turin, 1977)

Deutsch, Otto Erich: Mozart: A Documentary Biography, 2nd ed. (London, 1966)

Eibl, Joseph Heinz, et al.: Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Kassel, 1962-75)

Fischer, Wilhelm: “Eine wiedergefundene Jugendsymphonie Mozarts”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1923)

Framery, Nicolas Etienne: “Quelques réflexions sur la musique moderne”, Journal de musique historique, théorique, et pratique (May 1770)

Galeazzi, Francesco: Elementi teorico-pratici di musica con un saggio sopra l’arte di suonare il violono (Rome, 1791-96)

Hausswald, Günter. Mozarts Serenaden. Ein Beitrag zur Stilkritik des 18. Jahrhunderts. (Leipzig, 1951)

Koch, Heinrich: Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt, 1802)

Lacépède. Bernard-Germain-Etienne de: La Poétique de la Musique (Paris, 1785)

Landon, H. C. Robbins: “La crise romantique dans la musique autrichienne vers 1770: quelques précurseurs inconnus de la Symphonie en sol mineur (KV 183) de Mozart”, Les influences étrangères dans l’oeuvre de W. A. Mozart (Paris, 1958)

Larsen, Jens Peter: “The Symphonies”, The Mozart Companion (London, 1956)

Larsen, Jens Peter: “A Challenge to Musicology: the Viennese Classical School”, Current Musicology (1969), ix

LaRue, Jan: “Mozart or Dittersdorf – KV 84/73q”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1971-72)

Mahling, Christoph-Hellmut: “Mozart und die Orchesterpraxis seiner Zeit”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1967)

Mila, Massimo: Le Sinfonie de Mozart (Turin, 1967)

Mozart, Leopold: “Nachricht von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der Musik Sr. Hochfürstl. Gnaden des Erzbischoffs zu Salzburg im Jahr 1757”, Historisch-kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik (1757), iii

Münster. Robert: “Neue Funde zu Mozarts symphonischem Jugendwerk”, Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum (February 1982)

Niemetschek, Franz Xaver: Leben des k.k. Kapellmeisiers Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart nach Originalquellen beschrieben (Prague, 1798); 2nd ed. 1808; English translation by Helen Mautner (London, 1956)

Perger, Lothar H.: “Michael Haydn als Instrumentalkomponist”, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (1907), xxix

Planelli. Antonio: Dell’Opera in Musica (Naples, 1772)

Plath, Wolfgang: “Ein ‘geistlicher’ Sinfoniesatz Mozarts”, Die Musikforschung (1974), xxvii/1

Saint-Foix, Georges de: Les Symphonies de Mozart (Paris, 1932)

Scheurleer, Daniel Francois: Het Muziekleven in Nederland in de tweede helft der 18e eeuw in verband met Mozart’s verbliff aldaar (The Hague, 1909)

Schrnid, Ernst Fritz: “Zur Entstehungszeit von Mozarts italienischen Sinfonien”, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1958)

Schneider, Otto, and Anton Algatzy: Mozart-Handbuch (Vienna, 1962)

Schubart, Ludwig: Christ. Fried. Dan. Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Vienna, 1806)

Schultz, Detlef: Mozarts Jugendsinfonien (Leipzig, 1900)

Sulzer, Johann Georg: Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Berlin, 1771-74, 1778-79)

Terry, Charles Sanford: John Christian Bach, 2nd ed. By H.C. Robbins Landon (London, 1967)

Tyson, Alan: “The Two Slow Movements of Mozart’s Paris Symphony K297”, The Musical Times (January 1981), cxxii/1655

Wallner, Bertha Antonia: “Ein Beitrag zu Mozarts Londoner Sinfonien”, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft (1929-30), xii

Wyzewa, Teodore, and Georges de Saint-Foix: Wolfgang Amédée Mozart, sa vie musicale et son oeuvre (Paris, 1912-46)

Zaslaw, Neal: “Mozart’s Paris Symphonies”, The Musical Times (1978), cxix

Zaslaw, Neal: “The Compleat Orchestral Musician”, Early Music (1979), vii/1

Zaslaw, Neal: “Mozart, Haydn and the Sinfonia da Chiesa”, Journal of Musicology (January 1982), i

Zaslaw, Neal: “The ‘Lambach’ Symphonies of Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart”, Music and Civilization: Essays presented to Paul Henry Lang (New York,1983)

Zaslaw, Neal: “Toward the Revival of the Classical Orchestra”, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association (1976-77), ciii

Neal Zaslaw