Mozart: The Symphonies

Product Information

Along with No. 25, Symphony No. 29 is one of the better known of Mozart’s “early” symphonies. The opening movement features a brilliant theme, graceful yet insistent. In the second Andante movement Mozart shows shows marked improvement from his earlier symphonies, shifting around the melody, keeping the slower stuff intriguing. The short Minuetto is not his strongest but the Allegro con Spirito makes up for it, passing melodies around the strings and daring shifts in tone to keep it exciting. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart spent the majority of his short life in Salzburg. His life in Vienna is documented in museums after he left Salzburg. One of the exhibits depicts the life of Europeans in the 1700s, as well as a slice of it. Cathedrals built during the Baroque can be found north of the Alps in Salzburg. The best acoustics are found in the pews immediately beneath the dome. Mozart’s second home is the setting for his residence. Mozart’s father, Le, is buried in Salzburg, whereas Mozart is buried in Vienna. Alte Mozart-Ausgabe, the full name of which was the "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Werke: Kritisch durchgesehene Gesamt ausgabe". There are no symphonies "GA 49" and "GA 53". Composing music in G minor might not sound like a controversial musical decision, but it was unusual at the time. With wide leaps in the tunes, and brisk rhythms in the strings, both symphonies are part of Mozart’s Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) music. Moving forward to Symphony No. 40, Mozart breaks boundaries once more – a symphony would normally end on a more positive note, in a major key, but No. 40 ends in G minor. It’s passionate and violent, and tragically beautiful. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart raised the symphony to heights that in many respects remain unsurpassed. Of his 50-odd symphonies, produced between 1764 and 1788, the earliest ones are conventional but precocious, reflecting influences of Johann Christian Bach, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and Joseph Haydn. An invigorating first movement predominates, followed by a light cantabile movement and a fast finale or minuet (minuets in his symphonies date mostly after 1767). The Symphony in B-flat Major, K 22 (1765; “K” or “Köchel” numbers—named for Ludwig, Ritter (knight) von Köchel, the scholar who catalogued Mozart’s musical corpus—are the standard way of identifying Mozart’s works) contains a lovely chromatic slow movement in the key of G minor.

Central Europe in the mid-18th century was going through a period of transition. The remnants of the Holy Roman Empire had divided into small semi-self-governing principalities. The result was competing rivalries between these municipalities for identity and recognition. Political leadership of small city-states like Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague was in the hands of the aristocracy and their wealth would commission artists and musicians to amuse, inspire, and entertain. The music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods was transitioning toward more full-bodied compositions with complex instrumentation. The small city-state of Salzburg would be the birthplace of one of the most talented and prodigious musical composers of all time. Mozart’s orchestral work spans 24 years from 1764 to 1788. According to the most recent investigations, Mozart wrote up to 68 complete works of this type. Mozart revised some of the symphonies (K.297, 385, and 550) after they had already been written. Piano sonatas and other piano pieces were Mozart’s first attempts at writing music. Mozart wrote 20 piano solo works between 1782 and 1786, including the piano solo classics (sonatas, variations, fantasias, suites, fugues, and rondo); the Horn Concertos are frequently performed by professional horn players. Almost everything he wrote for the piano was intended to be played solo. Mozart created over 100 types of dance for orchestra, such as Minuetto (more than 100), Contredanse, and Allemande. Mozart’s sacred music, which combines Gregorian choral elements with rigorous counterpoint, has a rich stylistic mosaic. All of his sacred music is distinguished by consistent styling and symmetry. The first and second movements together constitute the overture to the opera La finta giardiniera, K. 196. The third movement is listed separately as K. 121/207a.The symphonies K. 19b, 66c, 66d, 66e, Anh.C 11.07, and Anh.C 11.08 are lost, and it is uncertain whether they are Mozart's work: they have not been included in the list below. Unfortunately, Mozart has written a lot of symphonies that were either destroyed, unfinished, unpublished, or lost but, some are fortunately included in his list of symphonies. It was actually discovered that Mozart had written 52 symphonies. The most notable breakout for orchestration in Mozart’s development. Not only did he include an extended wind section but pushed it to the forefront, even over the strings in many sections. The symphony is in 3 movements, taking inspiration from older examples. The opening movement is a beast, with a lengthy, slow introduction and into endlessly repeating themes. The Andante is tame but clever with terrific melodies sliding across measure lines, between major and minor. The Presto is a wild, staccato movement, juggled between winds and strings. Many people probably think this is ranked too low, and it’s certainly one of the most important, it doesn’t speak to me the way of those ranked higher. Mozart and his father returned from their last stay in Italy in March 1773. His father’s benefactor, Archbishop von Schrattenbach had died and was succeeded by Hieronymus von Colleredo. Upon their return, the new archbishop appointed young Mozart as assistant concertmaster with a small salary. During this time, young Mozart had the opportunity to work in several different musical genres composing symphonies, string quartets, sonatas and serenades and a few operas. He developed a passion for violin concertos producing what came to be the only five he wrote. In 1776, he turned his efforts toward piano concertos, culminating in the Piano Concerto Number 9 in E flat major in early 1777. Mozart had just turned 21. The opening of the brilliant K133 (No 20) has a splendid swing, with its prominent trumpets, and a real sense of a big, symphonic piece. K184 (No 26) is duly fiery and its accents are neatly judged. K201 and K202 (Nos 29 and 30) are both very impressively done: an eloquent rather than a fiery account (though something of that too) of the opening movement of K201, with a particularly euphonious and shapely Andante.

It’s no secret that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the greatest, most prolific composers of all time. While he excelled in many different types of composition, including opera, chamber and piano works, it’s his symphonic work that best shows his musical genius. The symphonies spanned his entire career, from ages 8 to 32, showing his range and development, originally numbered as brilliant 41 works. Although some have since been identified as falsely attributed, the remaining number still ranks him as one of the most impressive of all the major symphonists, behind only Haydn who wrote an astonishing 106. The first, second, and fourth movements together constitute the overture to the opera Lucio Silla, K. 135. The third movement, a minuet, is listed separately as K. 61h No. 3; it is this movement whose authorship is doubtful.

Contributors

Recording by Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. A little slow for my taste but one of the best available on Youtube. Symphonies and operas were a lot more interchangeable in Vienna in 1767 than they are now. Mozart even rips off one of his themes from an opera he wrote that year, Apollo et Hyacinthus, in the second movement. You might be forgiven for thinking the symphony sounds a bit like an opera overture with Mozart’s fast shimmering strings and trademark fluttering flutes - it shares some of its lively characteristics with The Marriage of Figaro, composed 19 years later. Favorite Moment:Building off the comment on appogiaturas above, the third movement, the Minuet, can either be one of my favorite Mozart movements or a forgettable let down. In the Krips version I linked above, the appogiaturas are played as eight notes on the beat giving the lilt necessary for a dance piece and the rousing momentsa sense of grandeur (compare to this performance where the appogiatura are played as grace notes.) Mozart adopts a French style of orchestral music in this symphony, written in 1778. The string players are pushed to the fore and the wind section is larger than usual – he even uses clarinets. Rushing scales and lively dynamic changes give this symphony a playful character. This cycle also includes the rarely heard K 17 and K 18 (neither of which is by Mozart) and K 444 in its entirety (Mozart wrote only the slow introduction to this symphony by Michael Haydn). Better still, there are no repeats which is a blessing for those who’ve heard these works countless times.

Favorite Moment:While I the opening theme is a simple genius and I love the violin interplay in the fourth movement, my favorite section is this blending of winds and violins in the Andante; a precursor for the masterful orchestration in the Andantes of the later symphonies. Concert chamber music has grown in popularity in recent years, despite the fact that symphonies were originally composed for large orchestras. The reasons for this are simple: orchestral music is louder, and listeners are more easily able to identify individual instruments. The chamber music, on the other hand, is frequently subtler and allows the performer to fine-tune their technique. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musician capable of playing multiple instruments who started playing in public at the age of 6. Over the years, Mozart aligned himself with a variety of European venues and patrons, composing hundreds of works that included sonatas, symphonies, masses, chamber music, concertos and operas, marked by vivid emotion and sophisticated textures. Early Life Favorite Moment:The Adagio opening to the first movement is probably the most famous aspect of the symphony, but my favorite moment comes here at the end of the second movement. Mozart repeats a figure from earlier in the piece but switches up the orchestration building to the wonderfully melodic climax. Despite the large orchestration for this moment, the music retains a delicate air, giving a full but gentle sound fitting for the piece.Symphony No. 28 is, in my opinion, the most overlooked of his symphonic works. I admit on the surface nothing looks remarkable: the piece is in C, features Mozart’s typical instrumentation and is in a basic four movement structure. While nothing jumps out as genius, it is consistently engaging the listener with clever melodic writing, each movement making the most of it’s brief runtime. Interestingly, although recordings are much less frequent than his later symphonies, I find the 28th to have the most variation in interpretation. There are the typical Mozart differentiations, like inclusion of repeats and tempo, but most noticeable is the approach taken towards appogiaturas.