Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, K. 421/417b is the second of his 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. [a] Constanze stated that the rising string figures in the second movement corresponded to her cries from the other room. [3]
Performances of the whole string quartet vary in length from 23 to 33 minutes. It is in four movements:
The first movement is characterized by a sharp contrast between the aperiodicity of the first subject group, characterized by Arnold Schoenberg as "prose-like", and the "wholly periodic" second subject group. [4] In the Andante and the Menuetto, "normal expectations of phraseology are confounded." [5] The main part of the Menuetto is in minuet and trio sonata form, [6] while "the contrasting major-mode Trio ... is ... almost embarrassingly lightweight on its own ... [but] makes a wonderful foil to the darker character of the Minuet." [7] The last movement is a set of variations. The movement ends in a Picardy third.
An arrangement of the Menuetto and Trio for violin and piano is in Suzuki Violin Volume 7. [8]
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