Die 5 Violinkonzerte Adagio - Rondos

Abstract

The Köchel numbers of Mozart's five official violin concertos (there exist sixth and seventh concertos that are surely by others' hands) suggest that they were all composed essentially as a group. While this is doubtless true of the last four, from the year 1775, it now seems very likely that this first violin concerto was actually a preparatory essay written in 1773. It was among the first concertos Mozart composed, which would account for the work's comparative lack of maturity. The mood of this concerto is joyous. It is rather simple in form, with good melodies. But those listeners alert to the usual subtlety of Mozart will notice, for instance, that the accompaniment to the violin's first melody in the concerto is really quite monotonous. The work is not very frequently performed in concert. Mozart's works for violin and orchestra were largely composed in Salzburg between 1773 and 1776. It is not known whether they were written for Mozart, a fine violinist himself, or a member of the Salzburg court orchestra. The oft-repeated assertion that they were composed for the Italian violinist Antonio Brunetti, the leader of the Salzburg orchestra, has been challenged on the grounds that Brunetti was not appointed leader until 1776, the year following the completion of the concertos. However, Brunetti is known to have performed them after taking the post, and the present Adagio is almost certainly that referred to by Leopold Mozart in a letter to his son as "the Adagio you wrote specially for Brunetti." Key relationships make it likely that the movement was intended as a substitute for the slow middle movement of the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, K. 219, which according to Leopold had been found "too artificial" by Brunetti. Dating from 1776, the serenity of the movement is enhanced by orchestral accompaniment scored for muted strings, with a pair of flutes replacing the oboes employed in the outer movements. In common with his cycle of five violin concertos, it is most probable that Mozart (who was himself an accomplished violinist) wrote the Rondo in C major, K. 373, for the leader of the Archiepiscopal Court Orchestra in Salzburg, the celebrated Italian virtuoso Antonio Brunetti. Although the precise circumstances surrounding the composition of the work remain a matter of conjecture, it is highly likely that the Rondo came into being after problems were encountered with a concerto by another unknown composer, which was due to be played at the Court by Brunetti. Its final movement was found either to be musically lacking, or possibly missing entirely, and so Mozart wrote this charming piece as a replacement for its original finale, thus enabling the performance to go ahead.

The Rondo is, however, a rather later creation than the five violin concertos which preceded it, all of which were written before Mozart's 20th birthday. The K. 373 Rondo for violin solo and orchestra is known to have been composed during April 1781—this at least can be established conclusively from the handwritten annotation on the cover page of the manuscript. It is a compact and entirely unpretentious creation, lasting just over six minutes in all. Cast in conventional Classical Rondo form, the work's predictable structure revolves around a highly expressive central episode in the minor mode. As Mozart specialist Misha Donat has observed, "the melody floats above an accompaniment of pizzicato violins and murmuring violas; and the piece ends in a spirit of smiling understatement, with the simplest of cadences quietly played by the soloist and wind instruments alone." Between the spring of 1773 and the end of 1775, Mozart composed five violin concertos. His only examples of the genre, they were composed in Salzburg. Although Mozart had been concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra since mid-1772, it is not known whether he composed them to play himself, although he certainly did in later years. In addition to the concertos, two independent movements also exist form this period, the present work and the Adagio in E, K261. While the existence of an autograph score for the latter work dates it from 1776, the Rondo can only be given a conjectural date of 1775 - 1777. It seems likely that both were intended as replacements for concerto movements, in the instance of the Adagio as the middle movement of the Concerto in A, K219, while the Rondo served a similar function as a replacement for the finale of the first of the concertos, K207 in B flat. According to Mozart family correspondence, both the Adagio and Rondo were composed for Antonio Brunetti, who was appointed first concertmaster at Salzburg in 1776. A letter of Mozart's father Leopold dated September 1777 refers to "the Adagio and Rondo you composed for [%Brunetti}," a coupling that led to them initially being erroneously published together as a single work. The orchestral accompaniment is scored for two oboes, two optional bassoons, two horns and strings. The Rondo may have been written to replace the original Presto in order that it conform more closely with the composer's later thinking, all four of the concertos that succeeded it having rondo finales. The appealing principal theme is one that obviously stayed in Mozart's mind since he planned to use it in a ballet written in Paris, a project that never came to fruition.