Mozart - Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, K.364m
Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart—who began calling himself Wolfgango Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè about 1777 (he used “Amadeus” only in jest)—was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. He wrote this work in Salzburg during the summer or early autumn of 1779; we have no information about its early performance history.
In addition to the solo violin and viola, the score calls for just 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings. Mozart wrote the viola part for an instrument tuned a semitone (or half-step) higher than normal for a more brilliant sound (see below). Contemporary violists commonly perform the solo without retuning, which can be impractical on a larger viola. Others perform it with the raised tuning.
In 1779 Mozart was living and working in his hometown, charming Salzburg surrounded by Alps. This year found him composing busily, serving as Konzertmeister of the orchestra and court organist, with a good salary and a promise of someday becoming Kapellmeister, head of music in the town. For some eighteen years he had been one of the more famous people in the world. He was meanwhile depressed and disgusted.
From the age of 5, he with his virtuoso older sister Nannerl had toured as musical marvels, for the religious a miracle of God and for scientists a miracle of nature. By 20 or so he was one of the finest harpsichordists alive and an able performer on violin and viola. Educated and promoted entirely by his violinist father Leopold, Wolfgang had come out of an active court musical scene in Salzburg, but he also learned his trade in musical capitals around Europe and England.
Why was Mozart miserable? Most fundamentally, at age 23 he was no longer a prodigy but a young musician among many in need of a better job. Salzburg was a good place to learn music, but still a backwater in the larger world. He had recently come back from Paris, where he had gone with his mother looking for opportunity and found nothing but disaster: he had few performances or commissions, did not find a job, and in the middle of the visit his mother suddenly died. On the way back to Salzburg, his tail between his legs, he was jilted by the woman he loved.
The ruler of Salzburg, Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, was politically progressive and highly musical, also dictatorial, stingy, and unpopular. The Archbishop knew all about Mozart’s reputation, but as far as he was concerned this young man was a sullen, recalcitrant, generally troublesome servant. For men like Colloredo, servants were expected to do their job mainly for the glory of his court. Meanwhile, in the interest of shorter and more pious and less expensive church services, Colloredo had issued decrees limiting the amount of music in services and the length of Masses. This went hard on his musicians.
In response, Mozart did much of his court-assigned composing and playing as quickly as possible, relying on his longstanding facility, and concentrated on writing secular pieces for the busy amateur musical scene in town. Most music-making, including performances by small orchestras, was carried on in the parlors and music rooms of the aristocracy and well-to-do.
Among the few pieces Mozart had written in his Paris sojourn was one in a genre highly popular there: a sinfonia concertante for flute, oboe, horn, and bassoon accompanied by orchestra. It never got played and was eventually lost. The idea of the genre is a work for two or more soloists, modestly accompanied by orchestra. Unlike the concerto format, which featured a long orchestral introduction laying out the basic material before the soloist entered, the sinfonia concertante tended to have a vivacious but not all that tuneful introduction, and the soloists entered to dispense the main thematic material. The mood of these pieces was generally breezy and light, so they were usually in major keys.
Mozart had a tremendous facility and an equally tremendous ability to soak up the styles and influences around him. As an artist, his gift for mimicry was one of his most brilliant talents and one of his worst enemies: he was too good at convention. His maturity came slowly, partly because he had to pull himself out of convention as out of a briar patch.
All the same, en route to his full maturity he wrote some great and enduring works, and some of them emerged in Salzburg before his epochal move to Vienna in 1781. In early 1779 Mozart took up the sinfonia concertante again, writing one in A major that didn’t get far, but then completing the Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for violin and viola. It turned out as one of his most ineffably charming and touching instrumental works. On the whole it is an entirely recognizable piece in the genre and obeys most of its rules, though his orchestral accompaniment is unusually big and active. It’s what fills up the convention that takes this work far beyond its models.
The orchestra is typical for the period: strings plus two each of oboes and horns. A clue to what Mozart wants from the orchestra is found in the violas, which are written in two parts throughout. He wanted a rich, warm sound, even if he would probably have only two or three violas and a total of ten to twelve strings in the music-room bands of the day. He also takes up an unusual Salzburg convention in asking the viola to tune all four strings up a half-step, in what is called scordatura. The effect is to give the instrument a brighter sound, which is part of what makes the piece so striking—that, and the fact that both soloists are treated equally. In performances Mozart could have handled either of the solo parts.
The first movement is marked Allegro maestoso and begins, as expected, with a grand tutti. The ensuing introduction issues a string of little themes that prepare for a further stream when the soloists enter. Besides the divided violas enriching the orchestra, Mozart tends to write for the violins in octaves, which also creates a full sound. His concertos are famously profuse in themes; this work is even more so than usual. The soloists sneak in with a high E-flat in octaves that crescendos to the foreground and then breaks into a soaring theme of breathtaking élan and charm; from there the soloists keep slipping indefatigably from one new idea to another. The relationship of the soloists is as a virtual single voice, sometimes joining in octave lines, otherwise trading off ideas in chains of echoes. One thing that marks the generally bright mood is the occasional shadowy intrusion of C minor, which is going to be the key of the second movement.
That middle movement in C minor is perhaps the most striking of Mozart’s early maturity, and he would rarely surpass its poignancy and beauty. It is more or less in the vein of an operatic aria, one of great sorrow. Twice there is an orchestral refrain of heart-filling yearning and tenderness. This is one of the rare minor movements in a major-key concerto of Mozart’s, and its depth of expression has brought some to call it a memorial for his late mother. In any case, that depth is remarkable for a composer of 23, even a Mozart.
In his later orchestral music he would be more concerned than here with an overall consistency of tone. The rondo-ish finale does not so much banish care as forget about it entirely, in a darting and laughing romp of a movement that again tosses around ideas in abundance. From the soloists there is a recurring bit of skipping refrain in triplets that could be described as transcendently delightful, if there is such a quality.
Where did the joyfulness of this work come from? If you look at Mozart’s writings of this period, you find him as vivacious and raunchy as ever: in Nannerl’s diary he wrote, “at 7:30 I went to Mass, or something like that, then was at the Lodronpalais, or something like that.… Played cards at Countess Wicka’s, or something like that.” Mozart was fed up with his home town and later endured great sadness and disappointment, but there was a streak of bubbling joie de vivre that never entirely left him. It’s all over the Sinfonia concertante, along with the sadness. In any case, though he loved honor and applause, Mozart was happiest when he was alone with his muse, scratching notes onto the page. That, too, is part of the sparkle of this work.
Jan Swafford
Jan Swafford is a prizewinning composer and writer, author of such acclaimed books as Mozart: The Reign of Love, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, Johannes Brahms: A Biography, The Vintage Guide to Classical Music, and Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music. He is an alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied composition.
The first American performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola was conducted by Theodore Thomas on April 8, 1865, in New York. Thomas was also the solo violinist; the solo violist was George Matzka.
The first Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of the piece, in January 1892, was of just the first movement; Arthur Nikisch conducted, with Charles Martin Loeffler and Franz Kneisel as violin and viola soloists, respectively.