The so-called
Symphony No. 37 in G major,
K.The Köchel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which was originally created by Ludwig von Köchel. It is abbreviated K or KV. For example, Mozart's Requiem in D minor was, according to Köchel's counting, the 626th piece Mozart composed....
444/425a, is an introduction by
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as...
to a symphony in G by
Michael HaydnJohann Michael Haydn was an Austrian composer of the classical period, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn.-Life:...
.
The complete symphony was for a long time believed to be a work by Mozart, but is now known to have actually been mostly written by Michael Haydn, being his
Symphony No. 25The Symphony No. 25 in G major, Perger 16, Sherman 25, MH 334 is a classical symphony that was composed by Michael Haydn in 1783. It is scored for flute , 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings....
in G major, Perger 16, Sherman 25, MH 334. The true authorship was discovered by Lothar Perger in 1907. Modern commentators find it "difficult to comprehend how the editors of the Breitkopf edition of Mozart could have considered the three movements of the G major Symphony as the immediate successor of the
'Linz' SymphonyThe Symphony No. 36 in C major, KV 425, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz on his and his wife's way back home to Vienna from Salzburg in late 1783. The entire symphony was written in four days to accommodate the local count's announcement, upon...
; the infinitely simpler and more archaic art of the Salzburg master offers such a contrast that one might well suppose this symphony to date much earlier than 1783" if Mozart had been the one to write it.
The introduction was probably composed in late 1783 to be performed in the same concert in
LinzLinz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately 30 km south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube...
, in which Mozart's
Symphony No. 36The Symphony No. 36 in C major, KV 425, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz on his and his wife's way back home to Vienna from Salzburg in late 1783. The entire symphony was written in four days to accommodate the local count's announcement, upon...
received its premiere.
Mozart probably copied out the score in order to learn from it, but he wrote a new
Adagio maestoso introduction for it (few of Haydn's symphonies have slow introductions).
The so-called
Symphony No. 37 in G major,
K.The Köchel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which was originally created by Ludwig von Köchel. It is abbreviated K or KV. For example, Mozart's Requiem in D minor was, according to Köchel's counting, the 626th piece Mozart composed....
444/425a, is an introduction by
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as...
to a symphony in G by
Michael HaydnJohann Michael Haydn was an Austrian composer of the classical period, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn.-Life:...
.
History
The complete symphony was for a long time believed to be a work by Mozart, but is now known to have actually been mostly written by Michael Haydn, being his
Symphony No. 25The Symphony No. 25 in G major, Perger 16, Sherman 25, MH 334 is a classical symphony that was composed by Michael Haydn in 1783. It is scored for flute , 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings....
in G major, Perger 16, Sherman 25, MH 334. The true authorship was discovered by Lothar Perger in 1907. Modern commentators find it "difficult to comprehend how the editors of the Breitkopf edition of Mozart could have considered the three movements of the G major Symphony as the immediate successor of the
'Linz' SymphonyThe Symphony No. 36 in C major, KV 425, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz on his and his wife's way back home to Vienna from Salzburg in late 1783. The entire symphony was written in four days to accommodate the local count's announcement, upon...
; the infinitely simpler and more archaic art of the Salzburg master offers such a contrast that one might well suppose this symphony to date much earlier than 1783" if Mozart had been the one to write it.
The introduction was probably composed in late 1783 to be performed in the same concert in
LinzLinz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately 30 km south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube...
, in which Mozart's
Symphony No. 36The Symphony No. 36 in C major, KV 425, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz on his and his wife's way back home to Vienna from Salzburg in late 1783. The entire symphony was written in four days to accommodate the local count's announcement, upon...
received its premiere.
Mozart probably copied out the score in order to learn from it, but he wrote a new
Adagio maestoso introduction for it (few of Haydn's symphonies have slow introductions). Mozart's introduction in triple time ends with a fermata on a V
7 chord, which leads into a tonic chord beginning Haydn's work. Saint-Foix considers the introduction "an expressive prelude, which, moreover, is by no means entirely in key with the movement it is intended to prepare."
Mozart did not copy the rest of the work verbatim: he removed a bassoon solo from the middle
Andante sostenuto movement, and "appears to have reduced the colla parte writing in the winds throughout the work," according to Gary Smith.
The numbers for Mozart's Symphonies Nos.
38The Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in late 1786. It was premiered in Prague on January 19, 1787, a few weeks after Le nozze di Figaro opened there. It is popularly known as the Prague Symphony...
through
41Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, on 10 August 1788. It was his last symphony.The work is nicknamed the Jupiter Symphony...
have not been adjusted.
According to the
Breitkopf & HärtelBreitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf . The catalogue currently contains over 1000 composers, 8000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on music. The "Härtel" was added to the name when Gottfried...
edition, the score calls for flute, 2 oboes, 2 horns and strings; performances tend to include bassoons (always in unison with the celli except for significant passages in the adagio), which were part of Michael Haydn's original score but left out by Mozart, and a harpsichord playing
figured bassFigured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and nonchord tones, in relation to a bass note...
based on the cello line. The flute is only used for the first section of the slow movement.
External links
- The Classical Archives
Classical Archives is a large classical music commercial website on the Internet.It has, as of December 10, 2006, 40,055 full-length classical music files by 2,093 composers....
have Mozart's introduction is in a separate file in the Mozart page.