Serenades for Orchestra

Abstract

Mozart wrote a large amount of what can best be described as "entertainment" music: music that was not intended to be listened to piously in a concert room, theatre or church, but is an agreeable background to eating, drinking and conversation on celebratory or other social oc¬casions, often in the open air. Most of it dates from •^c earlier part of his career, while he was based in lis native city of Salzburg and in the service of its -Archbishop, rather than during his years as a free¬lance musician in Vienna (from 1781 until his death jr 1791), and it falls into three main categories: nusic for orchestra, music for chamber groups of about half-a-dozen players and music for wind «semble. (Mozart's huge quantity of dance music s a rather different matter, since it was meant to be ianced to, not merely heard.) k is with the first of these groups that this album is concerned. The bulk of it is contained in a series of line large-scale serenades, divertimentos or cassations (the terms seem to have been freely inter¬changeable) composed bciwtm 1769 and 1779 and all but two of them in the traditionally festive key of D major. Most of them seem to have been designed to accompany celebrations marking the end of the academic year in Salzburg's University, and were known as Finalmusiken. Mozart's sister Nannerl recorded an account of one in her diary for August 1775: "The Finalmusik took place on the ninth. It left our house at half-past eight, played in the Mirabell [the Archbishop's town residence] until a quarter to ten, and thence to the Colegio [Univer¬sity], where it continued until after eleven." The serenades are substantial pieces, in as many as six to eight movements and usually with an introductory (and sometimes concluding) march. The individual movements are in a variety of different forms and styles, with a sonata-form Allegro to open and another quick movement, in sonata or rondo form, to finish, and usually two minuets with trios, interspersed with other movements in slow or fast tempo; they make concertante, soloistic use of various instruments, notably the violin, which on most occasions would have been played by Mozart himself. Some of them were later shortened and adapted as symphonies during Mozart's years in Vienna, and all display the impeccable craftsmanship that is the hallmark of Mozart's music.