Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 40 in G minor, KV. 550, 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.[1]
●
Composition
The 40th Symphony was completed on 25 July 1788. The composition occupied an
exceptionally productive period of just a few weeks in 1788, during which time
he also completed the 39th and 41st symphonies
(26 June and 10 August, respectively).[2]
●
Premiere
As Neal Zaslaw has pointed out,
writers on Mozart have often suggested—or even asserted—that Mozart never heard
his 40th Symphony performed. Some commentators go further, suggesting that
Mozart wrote the symphony (and its companions, #39 and #41) without even
intending it to be performed, but rather for posterity; as (to use Alfred Einstein's
words), an "appeal to eternity".[3]
Modern scholarship suggests that these conjectures are not correct. First, in
a recently discovered 10 July 1802 letter by the musician Johann Wenzel
(1762-1831) to the publisher Ambrosius Kühnel in Leipzig, Wenzel refers to a
performance of KV. 550 at the
home of Baron Gottfried van
Swieten with Mozart present, but the execution was so poor that the composer
soon left the room.[4]
There is strong circumstantial evidence for other, probably better,
performances. on several occasions between the composition of the symphony and
the composer's death, symphony concerts were given featuring Mozart's music for
which copies of the program have survived, announcing a symphony unidentified by
date or key. These include:[5]
Most important is the fact that Mozart revised his symphony (the manuscripts
of both versions still exist).[7]
As Zaslaw says, this "demonstrates that [the symphony] was performed, for Mozart
would hardly have gone to the trouble of adding the clarinets and rewriting the
flutes and oboes to accommodate them, had he not had a specific performance in
view."[8]
The orchestra for the 1791 Vienna concert included the clarinetist brothers Anton and Johann
Nepomuk Stadler; which, as Zaslaw points out, limits the possibilities to
just the 39th and 40th
symphonies.[8]
Zaslaw adds: "The version without clarinets must also have been performed,
for the reorchestrated version of two passages in the slow movement, which
exists in Mozart's hand, must have resulted from his having heard the work and
discovered an aspect needing improvement."[9]
Regarding the concerts for which the Symphony was originally intended when it
was composed in 1788, Otto Erich Deutsch
suggests that Mozart was preparing to hold a series of three "Concerts in the
Casino", in a new casino in the Spiegelgasse owned by Philipp Otto. Mozart even
sent a pair of tickets for this series to his friend Michael
Puchberg. But it seems impossible to determine whether the concert series
was held, or was cancelled for lack of interest.[2]
Zaslaw suggests that only the first of the three concerts was actually held.
● The
music
The symphony is scored (in its revised version) for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings. Notably missing
are trumpets
and timpani.
The work is in four movements, in the usual
arrangement (fast movement, slow movement, minuet, fast movement) for a classical-style
symphony:
- ● Molto allegro,
2/2
- ● Andante,
6/8
- ● Menuetto. Allegretto – Trio, 3/4
- ● Finale. Allegro
assai, 2/2
Every movement but the third is in sonata form; the minuet and
trio are in the usual ternary form.
The first movement begins darkly,
not with its first theme but with
accompaniment, played by the lower strings with divided violas. The technique of beginning
a work with an accompaniment figure was later used by Mozart in his final piano
concerto (KV. 595) and later became a favorite of the Romantics (examples
include the openings of Mendelssohn's Violin
Concerto and Sergei
Rachmaninoff's Third
Piano Concerto).
The first theme is well known, and it also appears in the cadenza in the first movement of
his 21st Piano
Concerto, which he had written 3 years before this symphony, in 1785.
The second movement is a lyrical work in 6/8 time, in E flat major, the submediant
major of the overall G minor key of the symphony.
The minuet begins with an angry, cross-accented hemiola rhythm and a pair of
three-bar phrases; various commentators have asserted that while the music is
labeled "minuet," it would hardly be suitable for dancing. The contrasting
gentle trio section, in G major, alternates the playing of the string section
with that of the winds.
The fourth movement opens with a series of rapidly ascending notes outlining
the tonic triad illustrating what is commonly referred to as the Mannheim rocket. The
movement is written largely in eight-bar phrases, following the general tendency
toward rhythmic squareness in the finales of classical-era symphonies. A
remarkable modulating passage,
which strongly destabilizes the key, occurs at the beginning of the development section,
in which every tone but one in the chromatic scale is
played. The single note left out is in fact a g-natural (the tonic).
●
Reception
This work has elicited varying interpretations from critics. Robert Schumann regarded
it as possessing "Grecian lightness and grace". Donald Francis
Tovey saw in it the character of opera buffa. Almost
certainly, however, the most common perception today is that the symphony is
tragic in tone and intensely emotional; for example, Charles Rosen (in The
Classical Style) has called the symphony "a work of passion, violence, and
grief."
Although interpretations differ, the symphony is unquestionably one of
Mozart's most greatly admired works, and it is frequently performed and
recorded.
●
Influence
Ludwig van
Beethoven knew the symphony well, copying out 29 bars from the score in one
of his sketchbooks.[10]
It is thought that the opening theme of the last movement may have inspired
Beethoven in composing the third movement of his Fifth
Symphony.[citation
needed]
