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Music of Wolfgand Amadeus Mozart

b. Salzburg, Austria / January 27, 1756; d. Vienna, Austria / December 5, 1791

Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527

The callous Spanish seducer Don Juan made the transition from figure out of folklore to crystallized dramatic character in 1630, through Tirso de Molina’s play The Seducer of Seville. His most celebrated musical incarnation appeared in Mozart’s magnificent opera Il dissoluto punito, ossia Il Don Giovanni (The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni), to give its full title.

After the smashing success that Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro won in Prague, the city’s music critics invited Mozart to come and hear the production for himself. After he arrived in January 1787, he gave a piano recital and conducted not only performances of Figaro but also the premiere of the Symphony No. 38 in D Major, later nicknamed the “Prague.” His visit was crowned by a commission to compose another opera, this one to be premiered in the Czech capital rather than Vienna.

He began work on Don Giovanni during the following summer. Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto draws substantially from, and vastly improves upon, the one that Giovanni Bertati had written for composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga’s version, which had premiered just six months previously. Where most earlier operatic versions of the story, including Gazzaniga’s, had needed a single act, Mozart and da Ponte’s desire to produce something grander led them to create a canvas sketched in two substantial acts running three hours.

Da Ponte gave it the subtitle dramma giocoso (playful drama), proclaiming plainly its combination of farcical and demonic materials. Rarely has the delicate juggling act required to mould such a multi-faceted creation been carried out so artfully, right through the climax, where the unrepentant rake is dragged down to hell by the living statue of the man he killed in the opening scene.

Additions and revisions continued right up to the opening night on October 29, 1788. The initial success was immense. Over the following decades, its provocative character destined it for lesser popularity than the more straightforward Figaro. On the other hand, many nineteenth century Romantic composers (especially Gustav Mahler, who conducted it frequently) recognized in it one root of their fantastic, super-emotional school.

Mozart composed the Overture during the night before the premiere. The sharp emotional contrasts within in mirror the opera itself. It begins with the stark, dramatic music associated with the “stone guest” who will lead Don Giovanni to his punishment in hell. A brisk, charming Allegro follows, depicting the Don’s amorous escapades.

Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622

Mozart spent the final decade of his life in Vienna, leaving behind the small town thinking of his native Salzburg for the bustle and opportunity of the Austrian capital. His first years there were the most successful of his career. Audiences adored his music and his piano playing, and a steady stream of students and commissions for fresh pieces came his way.

Viennese listeners proved fickle, however. In their eyes, the adult Mozart, no longer the child prodigy who had dazzled them in decades gone by, became just another musician. Poverty, despair and increasingly poor health filled his final years. His creative powers burned undimmed, however, and one masterpiece after another flowed from his pen.

The Clarinet Concerto, one of his final creations, displays his unsurpassed skill at creating balanced, mutually enriching dialogue between solo instruments and the orchestra. As had so often been the case, its inspiration came from a personal acquaintance. Mozart and clarinettist Anton Stadler first met in Salzburg, but it was only in Vienna that their personal and professional relationship came to full flower.

For Stadler, by then a member of the Austrian capital’s Imperial Court Orchestra, Mozart first composed a Quintet for clarinet and strings, then this Concerto. He probably began writing the Concerto immediately following the premiere of his comic opera The Magic Flute, on September 30, 1791.

The mellow, expressive voice of the clarinet proved to be the perfect medium to express what he must have been feeling at the time. The Concerto’s opening movement immediately establishes its gentle, wistful nature. Mozart’s familiar grace and charm are here tempered with recurring bouts of unease, and suggestions of deeper, darker emotions only thinly veiled by cheerfulness. The central Adagio is heartbreakingly sweet. One of its inspirations may have been the frequent absences of his beloved wife Constanze, who was undergoing out of town medical treatments during this period. The concluding Rondo maintains the Concerto’s essential nature, balancing the expected high spirits with a full measure of poetic restraint.

Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 “Jupiter”

Mozart could not have known that the three symphonies he composed between June 26 and August 10, 1788 would be his last. It is fitting, however, that his career as a symphonist should end with three such masterpieces. They are quite different from each other: No. 39 in E-flat Major is one of his most elegant creations, its successor in G Minor perhaps his most pathetic. And appropriately, No. 41 is the grandest and most joyous of all his symphonies.

A number of mysteries surround these works. No commission that would have inspired their creation has come down to us. Some writers speculate that he composed them strictly for his own pleasure. Others, such as the noted scholar Neal Zaslaw, feel otherwise: “The very idea that Mozart would have written three such symphonies, unprecedented in length, complexity, and seriousness, merely to please himself or because he was ‘inspired,’ flies in the face of his known attitudes to music and life and the financial straits in which he then found himself.”

Uncertainty also exists regarding their performance during Mozart’s lifetime. Circumstantial evidence points to one or more of them being played on several occasions: at a series of subscription concerts at the Vienna Casino later in 1788; during Mozart’s tours of Germany in 1788 and 1789; or in Vienna, conducted by Antonio Salieri in April 1791. In addition, Symphonies 40 and 41 were rapidly circulated, suggesting that they were performed during his lifetime.

The identity of the person who gave No. 41 the nickname “Jupiter” has been lost. One possibility was Johann Peter Salomon, the impresario who brought Mozart’s good friend Joseph Haydn to London. The earliest surviving published reference to it as such dates from the Edinburgh Festival of 1819. This subtitle, linking it with the most powerful of the gods of ancient Rome, seems altogether appropriate.

Mozart plunges us immediately into the joyous energy with which the opening movement abounds. For all its trumpet-and-drums brilliance, it still retains an unforced elegance. He drops the trumpets and drums for the slow movement. His tempo indication, cantabile (“singing”), describes this restful idyll perfectly. The Minuet is truly symphonic in scale and bearing, with a quieter Trio section at its heart. The Finale looks not only to the future – through its increased expressive weight – but also the past, specifically to the Baroque world of Bach and Handel, by incorporating elements of fugal writing. Learnedness and joy here join hands to conclude Mozart’s career as a symphonist in a burst of creative brilliance.

Program Notes by Don Anderson (c) 2008

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