Luogo e data di registrazione		St. Paul's, New Southgate, London (United Kingdom): - marzo 1979 (K, 202, 203, 200, 204) - giugno 1979 (K. 183, 201, 121)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Morten Winding / John Dunkerley & Simon Eadon
	Prima Edizione LP		Oiseau Lyre - D170D3 (3 LP's) - durata 58' 40" | 53' 17" | 57' 28" - (p) 1980 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		Oiseau Lyre - 417 841-2 (3 CD's) - durata 58' 40" | 53' 17" | 57' 28" - (c) 1987 - ADD
	Edizione Integrale CD		Decca (Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre) - 480 2577 (19 CD's) - (p & c) 2009 - ADD / DDD
	Note		-

Mozart and the symphonic traditions of his time by Neal Zaslaw 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 often 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 kettle-drum 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, kettle drums and harpsichord, with 3 bassoons doubling the bass line whenever obbligato parts for them are lacking. The Symphony as a Genre After Beethoven, the symphony was the most important large-scale instrumental genre for the Romantic composers. Their conception of the symphony as an extended work of the utmost seriousness, intended as the centrepiece 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 the major 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. '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'. The French naturalist and composer Étienne 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. From Germany Schubart embellished the basic Italian definition in a different way: '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. Mozart wrote his symphonies as curtainraisers to plays, operas, cantatas, oratorios, and private and public concerts. He sometimes also used them to end concerts, or even to begin and end each half of a long concert. Judging by the number of symphonies he wrote in Salzburg (or those that he wrote for Italy and then used in Salzburg), there must have been a steady demand for them there. During the 4-year period 1770-73 alone he wrote 28 symphonies. This outpouring can be explained at least in part by the death of the Archbishop Sigismund Christoph von Schrattenbach in December 1771, which meant that a period of mourning prohibited theatrical entertainments during Fasching (carnival) and that concerts would have provided a substitute form of entertainment. It also meant that much new music would have had to be provided for the festivities surrounding the installation in March of the new archbishop, the despised Hieronymus Joseph Franz de Paula Graf Colloredo. A further explanation for the surprising number of symphonies during this period is that Mozart was officially promoted from rank-and-file member of the orchestra to the status of Konzertmeister on August 1772. (Was this perhaps part of the new archbishop's 'great pains to reform his band', which Burney's informant mentioned?) Mozart's efforts to prove himself worthy of the appointment, and the responsibilities of the post once assumed, may well explain in part his need to write so many symphonies. These 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 other 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 the 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, kettle drums whenever trumpets are present (except in the 'little' G-minor symphony, K.183, where chromaticism renders their use less idiomatic) and the harpsichord 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. 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. Musical Sources and Editions Until recently performers of Mozart's symphonies have relied upon the editions drawn from the old complete works, published in the 19th century by the Leipzig firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. During the past quarter century, however, a new complete edition of Mozart's works (NMA) has been slowly appearing, published by Bärenreiter of Kassel under the aegis of the Mozarteum of Salzburg. The NMA has been used for almost all the symphonies from K.128 to K.551. For the early symphonies not yet published in the NMA, editions have been created especially for these recordings, drawing on Mozart's manuscripts when they could be seen, and on 18th- and 19th-century copies in those cases where the autographs were unavailable. (14 of Mozart's symphonies are among musical manuscripts formerly in the Berlin library but now being held in Poland and inaccessible to Western musicologists.) 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 Amaadé 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 work) 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, published in 1936 (=K3). (A reprint of this edition with a sizeable supplement of further corrections and additions was published in 1946 and is sometimes referred to as K3a.) Einstein changed the position of many works in Köchel's chronology, threw out as spurious some works Köchel had taken to be authentic, and inserted as authentic some works Köchel believed spurious or did not know about. He also inserted into the chronological scheme incomplete works, sketches, and works known to have existed but now lost. These Köchel had placed in an appendix (=Anhang, abbreviated Anh.) without chronological order. Köchel's original numbers could not be changed, for they formed the basis of cataloguing for thousands of publishers, libraries, and reference works. Therefore, the new numbers were inserted in chronological order between the old ones by adding lower-case letters. 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 in instances in which a work had to be inserted into the chronology between two of Einstein's lowercase 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 it was not Köchel's 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). This is done by dividing the number by 25 and adding 10. Then, if one keeps in mind that Mozart was born in 1756, the year of composition is also readily approximated. The old Complete Works of Mozart 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 volumes and are sometimes numbered  42 to 50, even though they are early works. Bibiography Anderson, Emily: The Letters of Mozart & His Family (London, 1966) 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) Eibl, Joseph Heinze, et al.: Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Kassel, 1962-75) Koch, Heinrich: Musilcalisches Lexikon (Frankfort, 1802) 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: 'A Challenge to Musicology: the Viennese Classical School', Current Musicology (1969), ix Mahling, Christoph-Hellmut: 'Mozart und die Orchesterpraxis seiner Zeit', Mozart-Jahrbuch (1967) Mila, Massimo: Le Sinfonie de Mozart (Turin, 1967) Saint-Foix, Georges de: Les Symphonies de Mozart (Paris, 1932) Schneider, Otto, and Anton Algatzy: Mozart-Handbuch (Vienna, 1962) Schubart, Ludwig: Christ, Fried. Dan. Schubart's Ideen zu einer Asthetik der Tonkunst (Vienna, 1806) Schultz, Detlef: Mozarts Jugendsinfonien (Leipzig, 1900) Sulzer, Johann Georg: Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Berlin, 1771-74) Zaslaw, Neal: 'The Compleat Orchestral Musician', Early Music (1979), vii/1 Zaslaw, Neal: 'Toward the Revival of the Classical Orchestra', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association (1976-77), ciii Copyright © 1979 by Neal Zaslaw		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 in G minor, K. 173dB [K.183] 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 Kimberger, 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 Ordoñez. Landon points out that in contrast to most symphonies of the previous decade these works have in common more frequent use of cotmterpoint, 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, Ordoñez and Dittersdorf) "forertmners" is antihistorical. These talented composers did not rise from their beds each morning in order to "forerun"; rather they composed music that was thoroughly modem 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 occured 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 (recorded in Box 2), 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 into 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 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 in A major, K.186a [K.201] 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 recognised, 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 in D major, K.186b [K.202] In this symphony, dated 5 May 1774, St. 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 St. 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 sonataform movement with interesting manipulation of the common-coin trill figure 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] 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 occasions as parties celebrating weddings, birthdays or name-days, and investitures, or for the public celebrations of the end of the summer term at Saltzburg 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): 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 into 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. 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 in C major, K.189k [K.173e - K.200] 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 St. Foix hear J. Haydn's influence 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 St. 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.) ln 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] 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 into 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] 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-18th 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 homs. 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. © 1980 by Neal Zaslaw