Symphony No. 41 (Mozart)

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Symphony No. 41 (Mozart)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always...
completed his Symphony No. 41 in C major (K.
Köchel-Verzeichnis

The K?chel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which was originally created by Ludwig Ritter von K?chel....
551) on 10 August 1788. It was his last symphony

Symphony

A symphony is a musical composition, often extended and usually for orchestra. "Symphony" does not imply a specific form. Many symphonies are tonality works in four movement with the first in sonata form, and this is often described by music theorists as the structure of a "Classical period " symphony, although even some symphonies by the ac...
.

The work is nicknamed the Jupiter Symphony. This name stems not from Mozart but rather may have been coined by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon

Johann Peter Salomon

Johann Peter Salomon was a German violinist, composer, conducting and musical impresario.He was born in Bonn and was the second son of Philipp Salomon, an oboist at the court in Bonn....
in an early arrangement for piano.

Composition and premiere
The 41st Symphony is the last of a set of three that Mozart composed in rapid succession during the summer of 1788.

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Encyclopedia

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Symphony

Johann Peter Salomon

Composition and premiere

The 41st Symphony is the last of a set of three that Mozart composed in rapid succession during the summer of 1788. No. 39

Symphony No. 39 (Mozart)

The Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K?chel number 543, was completed 26 June, 1788....
was completed 26 June and No. 40

Symphony No. 40 (Mozart)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K?chel-Verzeichnis. 550, in 1788.The 40th Symphony is sometimes referred to as the ?Great? G minor symphony, to distinguish it from the ?Little? G minor symphony, Symphony No....
25 July. Around the same time, Mozart was writing his piano trio

Piano trio

A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in European classical music chamber music....
s in E and C major, his sonata facile
Piano Sonata No. 16 (Mozart)

The Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K. 545 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is possibly his most famous piano sonata. It was described by Mozart himself in his own thematic catalogue as "for beginners," and it is sometimes known by the nickname Sonata facile or Sonata semplice....
, and a violin sonatina.

It is not known whether the 41st Symphony was ever performed in the composer's lifetime. According to Otto Erich Deutsch

Otto Erich Deutsch

Otto Erich Deutsch was an Austrians musicology. He is best known for compiling the first comprehensive catalogue of the works of Franz Schubert, first published in 1951 in English, new edition in 1978 in German....
, around this time Mozart was preparing to hold a series of "Concerts in the Casino" in a new casino in the Spiegelgasse owned by Philipp Otto. Mozart even sent a pair of tickets for this series to his friend Michael Puchberg. But it seems impossible to determine whether the concert series was held, or was cancelled for lack of interest.

Movements

The four movement

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession....
s are arranged in the traditional symphonic form of the Classical era:

Allegro
Tempo

In musical terminology, 'tempo' is the speed or pace of a given musical piece. It is an extremely crucial element of composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece....
vivace
Andante
Tempo

In musical terminology, 'tempo' is the speed or pace of a given musical piece. It is an extremely crucial element of composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece....
cantabile
Menuetto
Minuet

A minuet, sometimes spelled menuet, is a social dance of France origin for two persons, usually in time signature. The word was adapted from Italian language minuetto and French language menuet, meaning small, pretty, delicate, a diminutive of menu, from the Latin minutus; menuetto is a word that occurs only on musi...
: Allegretto
Tempo

In musical terminology, 'tempo' is the speed or pace of a given musical piece. It is an extremely crucial element of composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece....
- Trio
Molto allegro

A remarkable characteristic of this symphony is the five-voice fugato (representing the five major themes) at the end of the fourth movement. But there are fugal sections throughout the movement either by developing one specific theme or by combining two or more themes together, as seen in the interplay between the woodwinds. The main theme consists of four notes:

Four additional themes are heard in the "Jupiter's" finale, which is in sonata form, and all five motifs are combined in the fugal coda. In a 1906 article about the Jupiter Symphony, Sir George Grove wrote that "it is for the finale that Mozart has reserved all the resources of his science, and all the power, which no one seems to have possessed to the same degree with himself, of concealing that science, and making it the vehicle for music as pleasing as it is learned. Nowhere has he achieved more." Of the piece as a whole, he wrote that "It is the greatest orchestral work of the world which preceded the French Revolution."

Scholars are certain Mozart studied Michael Haydn

Michael Haydn

Johann Michael Haydn was an Austrian composer of the Classical music era, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn....
's Symphony No. 28 in C major

Symphony No. 28 (Michael Haydn)

Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 28 in C major, Opus 1 No. 2, Perger 19, Sherman 28, MH 384, was written in Salzburg in 1784, was the third in the set of the only three symphonies of Haydn's published in his lifetime....
, which also has a fugato in its finale. Charles Sherman speculates that Mozart also studied the younger Haydn's Symphony No. 39 in C major

Symphony No. 39 (Michael Haydn)

Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 39 in C major, Perger 31, Sherman 39, MH 478, written in Salzburg in 1788, is the last C major symphony he wrote, the sixth of his final set of six symphonies....
because he "often requested his father Leopold

Leopold Mozart

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. He is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gr?ndlichen Violinschule....
to send him the latest fugue that Haydn had written." The Michael Haydn No. 39, written only a few weeks before Mozart's, also has a fugato in the finale, the theme of which begins with two whole notes. Sherman has pointed out other similarities between the two almost perfectly contemporaneous works.

External links

, with notes by Elizabeth Schwarm Glesner
, Program Notes on Symphony No. 41 by Ron Drummond
Ron Drummond

Ronald Norman Drummond is an American writer, editor, and independent scholar....