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NOTES ON THE PROGRAM By James M. Keller, Program Annotator The Leni and Peter May Chair

Divertimento in D major, K.125a/136 Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major, K.417 Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, Gran Partita, K.361/370a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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ust what is this piece supposed to be, anyway, this Divertimento in D major? It’s one of three roughly similar works that, in the composer’s manuscript, are headed with the words “di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart Salisburgo 1772.” That leaves no doubt that Mozart wrote all three in his hometown of Salzburg (Italianized as “Salisburgo”), and historical evidence suggests that they must date from the early months of that year — when he was 15 going on 16, and a decade along in his composing career. Each of the three pieces is also headed with the inscription Divertimento I (or II or III), but that is written in a hand other than Mozart’s. It was in no way unreasonable to call such pieces divertimentos; the term had no very specific meaning in the Classical period apart from describing compositions of a diverting nature. That’s all well and good but hardly precise, especially in the context of a prolific composer who produced diverting music at the drop of a tricorn hat. The two most commonly employed modern editions of these works present them under the competing names “Three Divertimentos” and “Three Salzburg Symphonies without Winds.” Either way seems acceptable. Each of these works is structured identically to coeval pieces Mozart did call symphonies, and if musicologists steeped in the vagaries of Classical instrumental music were shown this score with no title attached, they would have no reason to assume that it was anything other than a symphony. Still, Mozart did not actually label this piece as such, an omission that may or may not be significant.

Then, too, this work has long been claimed as a piece of chamber music, and among the available recordings music lovers will find readings by such revered ensembles as the

IN SHORT Born: January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria Died: December 5, 1791, in Vienna Works composed and premiered: Divertimento, composed early in 1772, in Salzburg; premiere unknown. Horn Concerto No. 2 completed in Vienna on May 27, 1783; premiere unknown. Serenade composed in Vienna, probably in late 1783 or early 1784; some movements were apparently premiered March 23, 1784, at the National Hoftheater in Vienna. New York Philharmonic premieres and most recent performances: Divertimento premiered February 11, 1971, Seiji Ozawa, conductor; most recently performed April 17, 1986, Christopher Hogwood, conductor. Horn Concerto No. 2, premiered January 27, 1973, Pierre Boulez, conductor, John Cerminaro, soloist; most recently played, December 12, 2008, Lorin Maazel, conductor, Philip Myers, soloist. Serenade premiered March 8, 1958, Leonard Bernstein, conductor; most recently performed December 20, 1988, Zubin Mehta, conductor Estimated durations: Divertimento, ca. 13 minutes; Horn Concerto No. 2, ca. 13 minutes; Serenade, ca. 45 minutes NOVEMBER 2015 | 27

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Amadeus, Kocian, and Talich quartets. Certainly the D-major work played here sounds like a proper string quartet when played by a proper string quartet. The sparkling figuration of 16th notes that fills the first violin part (and sometimes the second violin part as well) in the first movement seems to make more reasonable demands when aimed at a virtuoso soloist than an entire orchestral section — or, better put, it takes a very well-honed section of virtuoso violinists to make that movement flow fluently. If this piece was intended to be a string quartet, was it even for a standard string quartet as we know it, comprising two violins, viola, and cello? The score doesn’t actually mention a cello; the lowest line is simply labeled basso, which could refer to the fact that it functions as the bass line or perhaps that it was to be played by a double bass. The combination of two violins, viola, and double bass was a common ensemble in Mozart’s Austria, sometimes known, in fact, as a “divertimento quartet.” These chamber music assemblages may have a bearing on how one chooses to treat the piece even when it is presented in an orchestral guise; a conductor could dispense with cellos entirely and simply use multiple players of the “divertimento quartet” configuration, or consider it a scaled-up standard string quartet (with first

and second violin, viola, and cello sections but no double basses), or treat it as a symphony in all its fullness, with cellos and double basses doubling each other at the octave on that bottom line. For a piece that on the surface seems entirely guileless, this divertimento, or symphony, or whatever it is, raises some pretty basic issues, and a conductor has some decisions to make about how to present it. The character of the piece will certainly vary depending on the performing forces chosen, but its appeal remains, no matter what: a brilliant opening Allegro, a gentle Andante with an Italianate musical accent, and a sonata-form finale in which the contrapuntal pretensions of the development section are likely to make listeners smile broadly as they cheer the composer along the path toward his musical maturity. When Ludwig von Köchel put the finishing touches on his Chronological and Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Works of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart in 1862, he could do so with the contentment of someone who had made the best of a difficult job. His catalogue has gone through six editions since then and is poised to appear in a seventh one of these years. Each of these has updated the chronology of Mozart’s compositions (and, in some cases, rendered

A Career Progresses Alhough Mozart was only 15 or 16 when he wrote his Divertimento K.125a/136, he had already been composing for a full decade, and his expertise clearly exceeded the level of a journeyman. His great masterpieces still lay ahead, but in 1772 Mozart was making important strides and he had already gained considerable recognition. In 1770, Pope Clement XIV awarded him the Order of the Golden Spur, effectively an honorary knighthood; in 1771, during a trip to Italy, he had been honored by Milan’s musical elite for his exceptional work; and by the end of 1772 his opera Lucio Silla would mark an important breakthrough in his development as an opera composer. Although much of Mozart’s work from this period has fallen into the shadows, this divertimento is one of the very earliest that continues to hold sway in the repertoire. Mozart, wearing the Order of the Golden Spur, in a portrait from 1777

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decisions pro or con concerning their authenticity) to reflect the ongoing parade of musicological research. Much more is now known about the historical and bibliographical details of Mozart’s music than in 1862; and, accordingly, many of the hallowed “Köchel numbers” attached to Mozart’s works can no longer be taken to reflect the state of the art with regards to chronology. Mozart’s Horn Concertos are particularly problematic in this regard. He wrote four of them, plus (in March 1781) a Rondo in E-flat major that was apparently never attached to a larger concerto. The earliest, his Horn Concerto in E-flat major, dates from May 1783, and it is that work heard in this concert. Köchel, thinking it was the second one Mozart wrote, called it the Horn Concerto No. 2 and assigned it spot “K.417” in his catalogue. The next one, also in E-flat major, was composed in June 1786: Köchel thought it was Mozart’s Fourth, and assigned it the K. number 495. The “Third” Horn Concerto (again in E-flat major, K.447) may have been written as early as 1783 or as late as 1787–88. And then there is the so-called Horn Concerto No. 1 in D major (K.412), which consists of two completed movements from

sometime around 1786–88 plus a fragment of a finale from 1791, the composer’s final year. All of Mozart’s major compositions for horn — the concertos and the Horn Quintet (K.407/386c) — were written for his friend Joseph Leutgeb or, as the composer sometimes misspelled it in his letters, “Leitgeb.” Leutgeb (1732–1811) had known the Mozart family for many years — since 1762 or 1763, when he had begun playing with the Court Orchestra in Salzburg and was a colleague of Leopold Mozart and his precocious son. Like young Wolfgang, he enjoyed a busy career touring as a popular soloist in the musical capitals of Europe, but in 1777 he settled in his native Vienna to assume the day-to-day responsibilities of running the cheese shop his wife had inherited from her father. Leutgeb, it seems, flourished less as a cheesemonger than he had as a concert soloist, and at one point Mozart interceded to beg patience from his own tightfisted father, who had uncharacteristically extended a loan to their old friend. “I beg you to be patient a little while longer with poor Leutgeb,” wrote Wolfgang in May 1782, from Vienna, where he was also living. “If you knew his circumstances and saw how he has

The Waldhorn Mozart composed all of his horn music — including the Horn Concerto No. 2 — for what was later called the Waldhorn or natural horn, which refers to the valveless horns of the 18th and early-19th centuries. The Waldhorn consisted of a metal tube (coiled for convenience) into which replaceable sections, called crooks, could be inserted to effectively increase or decrease the length of the tube overall. Changing crooks was not an instantaneous process, so in the course of a movement a player was theoretically limited to playing only the notes making up the overtone series above whatever fundamental pitch was sounded when a given crook was installed. But intricate movements of the player’s hand within the horn’s bell (called “stopping”) could alter those harmonics and achieve more or less complete scales in various registers, opening the door to a solo repertoire that many other wind instruments already enjoyed. Even with the introduction and acceptance of valves that could alter the length of the instrument’s tubes (and, thereby, its chromatic possibilities) with the flick of a finger, some composers continued to champion the Waldhorn; as late as 1865 Brahms specified that it should be used in his Horn Trio.

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to struggle to make ends meet, you would, I am sure, feel sorry for him.” Mozart’s best friends knew they would have to endure practical jokes and other crudities from time to time. At the top of the manuscript for the K.417 Horn Concerto, for example, the composer inscribed, “Wolfgang Amadé Mozart has taken pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and fool, at Vienna, March 27, 1783.” (How Köchel missed this inscription when he misdated the score is hard to figure out.) Mozart related a specific prank in a letter he wrote to his wife on June 25, 1791, of which Leutgeb was almost surely the unnamed victim: a fallacious message was sent to him announcing the imminent arrival of a distinguished friend from Rome. Thus forewarned, Mozart continued, the poor man put on his best Sunday clothes and dressed his hair most splendidly — you

can imagine how we made fun of him — it’s true, I always need to make a fool of someone. The Serenade in B-flat major (K.361/370a) is often referred to as the Gran partita, a name that appears as its title on Mozart’s manuscript. The term “partita” was used more or less interchangeably with “serenade” in Mozart’s day, and a gran partita would be a large-scale, or “great,” example of one. That name, however, was added sometime after the music was written down, and it was inscribed in handwriting that is not Mozart’s — and, to put a fine point on things, it uses the less standard orthography gran partitta. Still, the nickname is useful, convenient, and appropriate. It is certainly more meaningful than calling the piece Mozart’s Serenade No. 10, as it sometimes is; another name often encountered, “Serenade for 13 Winds,” is downright inaccurate.

In the Rival’s Words Many Mozart aficionados get huffy at the mention of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus and the movie adaptation of it that was released in 1984. It is nonetheless a marvelous play, one that never pretended to be anything but a work of fiction, even if it incorporated some strands of fact. The crux of its drama lies in the presumed rivalry between Mozart and the Court Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri. In fact, Mozart could be suspicious of Salieri, and several of his letters underscore that he felt Salieri sometimes tried to undermine his endeavors. One cannot know whether his suspicions were well founded or not, but by Mozart’s last year things had gotten onto a more collegial track. In one of the play’s most poignant scenes, Salieri laments the insignificance of his own music when compared to Mozart’s, an assessment he finds inescapable when he ponders the Adagio of the Gran partita: Extraordinary! On the page it looked nothing! The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons, basset horns — like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly — high above it — an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing a voice of God.

F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri in the 1984 film Amadeus

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Mozart’s score is perfectly clear about the instruments required: pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassett horns (which are tenor clarinets), and bassoons, four horns, and for the 13th instrument, “Contra Basso,” which means today — and meant then — a double bass. A certain logic has compelled many music lovers to want to keep the instrumentation in the wind family, and to imagine that Mozart really meant for that lowest instrument to be a contrabassoon rather than a double bass. Indeed, when this piece was first published, posthumously in 1803, by the Viennese firm Bureau d’Arts et d’Industrie, the title page read “Grande Serenade pour deux Hautbois, deux Clarinettes, deux Cors de Bassette, quatre Cors, deux Bassons et grand Basson ou Basse” — that last bit allowing a choice between contrabassoon or double bass. And yet, Mozart’s musical manuscript provides no support for the idea of assigning a contrabassoon to the lowest line. Indeed, the part sometimes indicates that some passages are to be played pizzicato for a certain span, after which the player returns to bowing (arco), markings that are perfectly normal in a double-bass part but nonsensical for contrabassoon. This performance employs double bass, as indicated in Mozart’s manuscript. Less certain is the question of when Mozart wrote the piece. In his Chronological and Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Works of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, von Köchel assigned the date 1780, which (like the words “gran partita”) is inscribed on the manuscript by a hand that was not Mozart’s. Careful inspection reveals that the “8” is traced over what was originally a “7,”

and that the final “0” may have been adapted from a “1.” The third edition of the Köchel catalogue, which appeared in 1937, therefore reassigned the date of composition from 1780 to 1781, and changed the Köchel number from K.361 to K.370a, hoping to place it in the proper order of Mozart’s works as then understood. The date of 1781 seemed reinforced when later research found that the paper on which the manuscript is written corresponded to the paper used for some other Mozart pieces of 1781; but that argument grew shaky when the dating of the corresponding pieces was called into serious question. In any case, certain stylistic traits of the music seem to ally this piece instead with what Mozart was writing in 1783 and 1784. That happens to align nicely with an item that appeared in the Wienerblättchen newspaper on March 23, 1784, announcing an upcoming concert presented by Mozart’s clarinetist friend Anton Stadler, “at which will be given, among other well-chosen pieces, a great wind piece of a very special kind composed by Herr Mozart.” For all its historical complication, the Gran partita is unimpeachable as a musical achievement. It includes elaborate movements of symphonic proportions, irresistible dance sections, one of Mozart’s greatest Adagios, and a delectable set of six variations before reaching a rondo finale of fleet-fingered ebullience. Instrumentation: this Divertimento calls for string orchestra only. Horn Concerto No. 2 employs two oboes, two horns, and strings, in addition to the solo horn. Serenade calls for two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns, two bassoons, four horns, and double bass.

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