String Quartet No. 15 (Mozart)

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, K. 421/417b is the second of the Quartets dedicated to Haydn and the only one of the set in a minor key. Though undated in the autograph, [1] it is believed to have been completed in 1783, while his wife Constanze Mozart was in labour with her first child Raimund. [lower-alpha 1] Constanze stated that the rising string figures in the second movement corresponded to her cries from the other room. [3]

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Structure

Notes

  1. "There is an anecdote, reported by Constanze to Vincent and Mary Novello in 1829, that Mozart wrote the D minor string quartet while she was in labour with their first child, Raimund, and therefore around 17 June 1783." [2]

References

  1. Finscher 2007, p. X.
  2. Irving 1998, p. 13
  3. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Mozart  [ de ]. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1977, 1985): "...we are probably right in assuming that it was the sudden forte of the two octave leaps and the following minor tenth (bars 31–32 of the andante), a brief uproar that quiets down, in a syncopated passage, to piano. These are figures that otherwise do not occur in Mozart."
  4. Irving 1998 , p. 33
  5. Irving 1998 , p. 35
  6. Rosen 1988 , pp. 112–114
  7. Irving 1998 , p. 36

Sources

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