The Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in late 1786. It premiered in Prague on January 19, 1787,[1][2] during Mozart's first visit to the city. Because it was first performed in Prague, it is popularly known as the Prague Symphony. Mozart's autograph thematic catalogue records December 6, 1786, as the date of completion for this composition.[2]
Other works written by Mozart roughly contemporary with this symphony include the Piano Trio in B♭, K. 502 (completed November 18, 1786), the Piano Concerto No. 25, K. 503 (completed December 4, 1786), and scena and rondò Ch'io mi scordi di te?, K. 505, for soprano and orchestra (completed December 26, 1786).
Although Mozart's popularity among the Viennese waxed and waned, he was consistently popular among the Bohemians and had a devoted following in Prague. In spite of the fact that the Symphony No. 38 was first performed in Prague, it is not certain that it was actually written for Prague.[3] Much of the confusion surrounds the chronology of its inception. It is clear that Mozart was invited to Prague on the strength of the reception of his opera Le nozze di Figaro during the 1786–87 winter season of the National Theatre (now called the Estates Theatre) in Prague. It is not known, however, when the run started, possibly in November 1786, possibly in December. No mention of the overwhelming success of Le nozze di Figaro is recorded in the Prague press until December 11, 1786, five days after the symphony was completed. It is certain that the opera's run began before that week, but there is no documentation to confirm when. It is known from a letter of Leopold Mozart written in January 1787 that Mozart was invited to Prague by a group of musicians and patrons. It is possible that this invitation came through long before Le nozze di Figaro was actually performed in Prague, perhaps during the time of rehearsals, when the brilliance of the music would have been recognized already by the musicians playing it. It is also possible that the Prague Symphony was intended to be performed for the Advent instrumental concerts given in Vienna in December 1786 along with the Piano Concerto No. 25, but all that can be established for certain is that it was not performed in Vienna before it was performed in Prague.
The lavish use of wind instruments might offer a clue that the Prague Symphony was fashioned specifically with the Prague public in mind. The wind players of Bohemia were famed throughout Europe, and the Prague press specifically attributed the great success of the operas Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Le nozze di Figaro partially to their skillful deployment of wind instruments. It is also possible that the extensive use of winds in the Prague Symphony was simply the result of experiments with orchestration that Mozart had been cultivating in the orchestral accompaniments for his piano concertos for the previous two years and the new experience he had of writing for winds would have shown up in his symphonies regardless. No matter, the use of wind instruments in the Prague Symphony represents a major advance in Mozart's symphonic technique that was imitated in his last symphonies, and also by Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert. Indeed, it would be difficult to identify any earlier symphony by any composer not of a special type that contains so many passages in which no stringed instruments play at all, only various types of wind ensembles.
Form
The early classical symphonies of the eighteenth century were originally cast in three movements (fast–slow–fast) following their origins in Italian overtures. Then, starting in the 1750s, it was normal in Germany and Austria to include a minuet to create the format fast–slow–minuet–fast. The Prague Symphony has no minuet, however, something that would have been extraordinarily unusual for a symphony written in Vienna in the late 1780s. Mozart himself, who wrote many more symphonies in the old-fashioned fast–slow–fast format than Haydn did (because of his closer connections with Italy), never before wrote a three-movement symphony for Vienna, not even as a child in the 1760s, when three-movement symphonies were still common in many parts of Europe. Daniel E. Freeman has suggested that the three-movement format might have been chosen as a means to appeal to the musical public of Prague.[4] It so happens that the only symphonist from Prague that Mozart ever knew well was Josef Mysliveček, a close associate of the Mozart family between 1770 and 1778. As it happens, almost all of Mysliveček's symphonies are cast in the three-movement pattern favored in Italy, where he mainly worked throughout his adult life. Nonetheless, a definitive explanation for the three-movement format of the Prague Symphony is still lacking.
The first movement begins with a slow introduction (he does this in only two other symphonies, No. 36 ["Linz"] and No. 39). Daniel E. Freeman has noted that it is probably the longest and most sophisticated slow introduction written for any major symphony up to that time, perhaps to compensate for the length of the missing minuet in order to help bring the entire work into closer alignment with the customary length of a standard four-movement symphony.[6] The introduction gives way to the main portion of the movement, in which six melodies are developed and recapitulated in a very contrapuntal example of sonata-allegro form. Certain phrases in the first movement bear a resemblance to the overture to Die Zauberflöte. The allegro proper opens in a complicated manner with the "first theme" traded off between the second violins (who start it) and the first violins (who finish it off).
The second movement's structure is typical of Mozart symphonies dating from this period, although the music shifts to a minor key in a movement of contrasting moods.[citation needed] It is in the subdominant key of G major.
The third movement is a lively Presto in which the flute plays a prominent role, especially in counterpointing the main melody in the development section. This movement "shows Mozart in an unusual mood, nearer to Beethoven's boisterousness than his fastidious taste normally allowed him to go."[7]
Einstein, Alfred 1945, Mozart, his Character, his Work. London: Oxford University Press, (translated from the German by Arthur Mendel and Nathan Broder), LCCN 45001487
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as being one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture".
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts.
Sonata form is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th century.
The Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 is a symphony in four movements composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1812. Beethoven fondly referred to it as "my little Symphony in F", distinguishing it from his Sixth Symphony, a longer work also in F.
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1788. It is sometimes referred to as the "Great G minor symphony", to distinguish it from the "Little G minor symphony", No. 25. The two are the only extant minor key symphonies Mozart wrote.
The Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425, also known as the Linz Symphony, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz on his and his wife's way back home to Vienna from Salzburg in late 1783. The entire symphony was written in four days to accommodate the local count's announcement, upon hearing of the Mozarts' arrival in Linz, of a concert. The première in Linz took place on 4 November 1783. The composition was also premièred in Vienna on 1 April 1784. The autograph score of the "Linz Symphony" was not preserved, but a set of parts sold by Mozart to the Fürstenberg court at Donaueschingen in 1786 does survive.
Josef Mysliveček was a Czech composer who contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music. Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant compositional models in the genres of symphony, Italian serious opera, and violin concerto; both Wolfgang and his father Leopold Mozart considered him an intimate friend from the time of their first meetings in Bologna in 1770 until he betrayed their trust over the promise of an operatic commission for Wolfgang to be arranged with the management of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. His closeness to the Mozart family resulted in frequent references to him in the Mozart correspondence.
The Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, K. 191/186e, is a bassoon concerto written in 1774 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is the most often performed and studied piece in the entire bassoon repertory. Nearly all professional bassoonists will perform the piece at some stage in their career, and it is probably the most commonly requested piece in orchestral auditions – it is usually requested that the player perform excerpts from the concerto's first two movements in every audition.
The Symphony No. 39 in E♭ major of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 543, was completed on 26 June 1788.
Symphony No. 35 in D major, K. 385, also known as the Haffner Symphony, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1782. It was commissioned by the Haffners, a prominent Salzburg family, for the occasion of the ennoblement of Sigmund Haffner the Younger. The Haffner Symphony should not be confused with the eight-movement Haffner Serenade, another piece Mozart wrote on commission from the same family in 1776.
The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major K. 488 is a concerto for piano and orchestra written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was finished, according to Mozart's own catalogue, on March 2, 1786, two months prior to the premiere of his opera, Le nozze di Figaro, and some three weeks prior to the completion of his next piano concerto. It was one of three subscription concerts given that spring and was probably played by Mozart himself at one of these.
The Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219, often referred to by the nickname "Turkish", was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1775, premiering during the Christmas season that year in Salzburg. It follows the typical fast-slow-fast musical structure.
The Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503, was completed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on December 4, 1786, alongside the Prague Symphony, K. 504. Although two more concertos would later follow, this work is the last of what are considered the twelve great piano concertos written in Vienna between 1784 and 1786. Chronologically the work is the 21st of Mozart's 23 original piano concertos.
The Piano Concerto No. 22 in E♭ major, K. 482, is a work for piano, or fortepiano, and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composed in December 1785.
A solo concerto is a musical form which features a single solo instrument with the melody line, accompanied by an orchestra. Traditionally, there are three movements in a solo concerto, consisting of a fast section, a slow and lyrical section, and then another fast section. However, there are many examples of concertos that do not conform to this plan.
There is no question that the Praguers of the late eighteenth century exhibited a special appreciation for the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, even though, as recently pointed out by Daniel E. Freeman, confirmations of this fact attributed to Mozart himself in sayings such as "Meine Prager verstehen mich" have only come down to posterity second or third hand. Perhaps the most valuable direct testimony that attests to the discernment of the musical public in Prague with regard to Mozart's music comes from Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, which was first performed in Prague:
It is not easy to convey an adequate conception of the enthusiasm of the Bohemians for [Mozart's] music. The pieces which were admired least of all in other countries were regarded by those people as things divine; and, more wonderful still, the great beauties which other nations discovered in the music of that rare genius only after many, many performances, were perfectly appreciated by the Bohemians on the very first evening.
The Sinfonie di concerto grosso is the title of twelve works for flute, strings and basso continuo by Alessandro Scarlatti, composed in Naples from June 1, 1715 - the same year as the performance of his opera Tigrane, one of his greatest successes, and his oratorio La Santissima Trinità.
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