Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart (1756-1791)
Violin Concerto No. 1
in B Flat Major, K. 207
Violin Concerto No. 2
in D Major, K. 211
Rondo in B Flat Major,
K. 269
Andante in F Major
(from Piano Concerto, K. 467)
Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756, the younger and second surviving child of
Leopold Mozart, a musician in the service of the ruling Archbishop. The same
year brought the publication of Leopold Mozart's book on violin-playing, a
compilation that won him a wide reputation. Nevertheless his career was
sacrificed before long to that of his son, whose genius he soon realised and to
the fostering of which he dedicated his energies. He remained until his death
in 1787 Vice-Kapellmeister in Salzburg, his final years darkened by his son's
departure for Vienna in 1781.
In his childhood
Mozart excelled as a keyboard-player, his skill shown in performance, in
sight-reading and in improvisation, and as a violinist. With his older sister
Nannerl he toured Europe, exciting wonder wherever he went. Adolescence proved
less satisfactory. In 1771 the old Archbishop of Salzburg, an indulgent patron,
died, and was succeeded by Count Colloredo, a son of the Imperial
Vice-Chancellor, a prelate with progressive views, coupled with a precise idea
of what was due to him from those in his employ. At the age of thirteen Mozart
had been appointed third concert-master of the court orchestra, unpaid. Under
the new Archbishop he was given the paid position of concert-master, but there
were now severe restrictions on his freedom, exercised in earlier years in
extended tours that had taken him to Paris, to London and on several occasions
to Italy. Salzburg, furthermore, could hardly satisfy Mozart's ambitions as a
composer, or his father's justified hopes for his son's material advancement.
In 1777 he was allowed to resign from the Archbishop's service, an option
offered also to his father, but prudently refused, in order to travel to
Mannheim and to Paris. The object of the journey, on which he was accompanied
by his mother, who fell ill and died during their stay in Paris, was to seek a
better appointment. In January 1779 he returned home, reluctantly accepting the
appointment of court organist in Salzburg.
In 1780 there came a
commission for a new opera for the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, staged early
in 1781, and this was followed by a visit to Vienna in the entourage of his
patron. Apparent restrictions on his freedom to perform as he wished in Vienna
led Mozart to quarrel with the Archbishop, a dispute that ended in his
dismissal. For the remaining ten years of his life he remained in Vienna,
encumbered by a wife and intermittently increasing family, but without the
security of a patron or the support of regular paternal advice. Initial success
in the theatre and as a keyboard-player, particularly in a magnificent series
of piano concertos he wrote for his own use, was followed by a period of
depression, when he found it increasingly difficult to meet the expenses of a
style of life to which he had been accustomed. In spite of his father's
admonitions from Salzburg, he no longer practised the violin, although he
played the viola in informal performances of chamber music in which he was
joined by Haydn, Dittersdorf and the composer Vanhal. By 1791 his fortunes
seemed to have taken a turn for the better, with the success of the German
opera The Magic Flute. He died after a short illness in December of the same
year.
If Mozart was
preoccupied with the fortepiano in Vienna in the 1780s, the previous decade in
Salzburg had found him giving much greater attention to the violin. He was
concert-master of the court orchestra and took the opportunity on a number of
occasions of appearing as a soloist, as he did in the autumn of 1777 in
Augsburg and in Munich at the beginning of his journey to Mannheim and Paris.
In a letter to his father from Augsburg, Leopold Mozart's native city, he
criticised the standard of violin-playing in the Augsburg orchestra and relates
how he has played a violin concerto there by Vanhal and his own so-called
Strassburg concerto, variously identified as K. 218, or possibly K. 216.
Mozart wrote his five violin concertos for his own use in Salzburg or
for the use of the Italian violinist Antonio Brunetti, a man Mozart was later
to stigmatise as a disgrace to his profession, a reflection on his manners and
morals. The concertos were also played in Salzburg by Johann Anton Kolb, for
whom Leopold Mozart implies one of the concertos had been written. In a letter
to his wife and son on 26th September 1777 Leopold Mozart describes a concert
given by Kolb for the foreign merchants and including a performance of one of
the violin concertos. After the concert he tells how they all got drunk and
pushed one another in procession round the room, succeeding in breaking the
central chandelier. Three weeks later he adds a description of a performance of
Mozart's Strassburg concerto by Brunetti in the theatre, while the actors were
changing their costume. From Paris in September the following year Mozart talks
of the possibility of revising his violin concertos and shortening them to suit
French taste, a task he never undertook.
The first of the five violin concertos, the Concerto in B flat major, K.
207, was written in the spring of 1773 in Salzburg, a more probable date than
the traditional 14th April 1775. It is scored for an orchestra with pairs of
oboes and horns, in addition to the usual strings. The concerto opens with a
statement of the principal theme by the orchestra, later taken up and developed
by the soloist. The slow movement has a principal theme of particular grace,
capped by the soloist, while the last movement, returning to the original key,
is introduced by the orchestra, followed by the soloist with a theme of simple
elegance.
Mozart completed his second violin concerto, the Concerto in D major, K.
211, on 14th June 1775, scoring it for the usual orchestra of oboes, horns and
strings. The first movement starts with a descending arpeggio figure proclaimed
by the whole orchestra, followed by a gentler complementary figure. The soloist
enters with the same call to the listener's attention, embellishing and extending the theme, before
embarking on the material of the subsidiary theme. The oboes and horns have
very little part to play in the G major slow movement, with its poignant
principal melody, taken up by the soloist after its first statement in the
orchestra. In the finale it is the soloist that first leads the way into a pert
little theme then repeated by the orchestra in a rondo of the greatest clarity
of texture.
Mozart's Rondo in B
flat for violin and orchestra, K. 269, seems to have been written in Salzburg
in the period before the composer's journey to Mannheim and Paris in the autumn
of 1777. In a letter to his son written in September that year Leopold Mozart
promises to send on the Adagio and the Rondo written for Brunetti, plausibly
identifiable as the Adagio K. 261 and the concertante B flat Rondo. Mozart was
to provide Brunetti with another Rondo during the last days of his employment
by the Archbishop of Salzburg in Vienna in 1781.
The F major Andante
was transcribed for violin and orchestra from the slow movement of the well
known Piano Concerto in C major, K. 467, by the 19th century French composer
Camille Saint-Saëns.