Mozart at St Martin-in-the-Fields

Mozart (1756 – 1791)
by Ian Lush

I Marcia

II Menuetto

III Rondo

Mozart wrote this serenade, which he called Serenata Notturna, in January 1776, for the orchestra in Salzburg of which he was the leader. By this stage in his career, aged 20, Mozart was beginning to resent the shackles of the conditions of his employment by Archibishop Colleredo in Salzburg, and also the overbearing presence of his father, Leopold. He longed to escape and try to establish himself on his own, but it was to be another five years before he finally made the break and moved to Vienna, where he spent the last ten years of his life.

Mozart wrote his serenades for celebrations and ceremonial occasions at the court, and they were often intended as background music. Despite this, Mozart lavished great care on their composition, and chose original and unusual orchestral groupings to add variety. This work is no exception, and is scored for string orchestra plus five soloists: two violins, viola, double bass (rather than the expected cello) and, in a touch of great originality and humour, timpani.

The opening movement is a march, which has a certain ironic pomposity to it – perhaps even a dig at Mozart’s employer. In the Menuetto the solo instruments play with the rest of the orchestra, but they have the Trio of the Menuetto to themselves, with a particularly prominent role for the second violin. The last movement is a Rondo, a musical form in which one main theme is repeated several times with intervening sections known as ‘episodes’; its tempo indication is a graceful allegretto, although the episodes include adagio and allegro sections.

Mozart (1756 – 1791)

by Stefan de Haan

I Allegro aperto

II Adagio

III Tempo di Menuetto

Mozart composed his five violin concertos at the age of 19, during the period when he was the leader of the orchestra in Salzburg. He loved the violin and played it frequently as a soloist, though virtuosity for its own sake did not appeal to him (‘you don’t know how well you play the violin’, his father wrote to him two years later). His compositions of that time included, as a matter of course, a great deal of solo work for the violin and it was only when he settled in Vienna as a freelance composer that he abandoned the instrument in favour of the piano.

All five violin concertos were completed between March and December 1775. The Concerto in A, K219, the last of these, is dated 20 December. It has the traditional three movements, but as regards the musical ideas the concerto contains a number of unusual features and happy inventions. The first entry of the soloist is not, as expected, a continuation of the orchestral exposition, but an entry of new Adagio of surprising beauty. The second movement recalls the lyrical mood of this Adagio and the finale also has its surprises, notably the noisy and amusing episode of Turkish music based on a ballet written by Mozart in 1772 and the wistful, unexpected ending.

Mozart (1756 – 1791)

by Stefan de Haan

I Allegro moderato

II Andante

III Menuetto

IV Allegro con spirito

Count Hieronymus Colloredo, whom Mozart served as the leader of his orchestra, was elected Archbishop of Salzburg in March 1773. The happy atmosphere that had distinguished the reign of his predecessor was a thing of the past. Colloredo lost no time in curtailing the comparative freedom of his musicians and the other members of his miniature court. Mozart’s father soon began looking for a more liberal employer, not so much for himself (he also played violin in the Salzburg orchestra) as for his son Wolfgang. During their concert tour in Italy in 1772 he had tried hard to secure a post for him, but without success. He had no better luck in Vienna where he went with his son in the summer holidays of 1773. Since none of the plans materialised, there was nothing left for them but to return to Salzburg.

However, Mozart was 17 years old at the time, and conditions of employment were not his main concern. While in Vienna, he was too busy listening to new music to worry about the future. He heard the latest compositions of Gluck and Dittersdorf, and the new instrumental works of Haydn left a profound and lasting impression on him.

Back in Salzburg Mozart produced a number of masterpieces in rapid succession. They included a group of four symphonies, among them Symphony No. 29. Most of his earlier symphonies had consisted of three movements in the tradition of the Italian overture. Now, in this symphony, he adopted the new Viennese form by adding a minuet and trio and by enlarging the proportions of the other three movements. Of these, the Andante is like an aria, played in long tender phrases by muted violins, while the final Allegro deserves the additional indication con spirito as much as any of Mozart’s symphonic movements. As a whole the work has such well-balanced proportions and is so full of the happiest inventions that it does not give the impression of being the result of an experiment. Indeed, it sounds as if Mozart had already spent a lifetime in perfecting the musical form of the Viennese symphony.