Notes for: August 2, 2011
Biographies of Mozart generally tell you that he composed three string quartets on a commission from Frederick William II, the King of Prussia. Well, maybe not. According to Maynard Solomon’s recent and well received biography of the composer, that commission may have been a figment of Mozart’s imagination.
The winter of 1788-89 was an unusually depressing one for Mozart. With only a meager income from his position as composer of the royal court, he was constantly in debt. His wife’s poor health put a further strain on his financial and psychological resources, compelling him to appeal to friends and fellow Masons for emergency transfusions of funds.
In the spring, consequently, he responded more than willingly when a friend and pupil, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, offered to take him to Berlin and introduce him to Frederick William. His Highness was a skilled and enthusiastic cellist, and he maintained an excellent court opera and orchestra. Two years earlier Haydn had written six quartets on commission from the king, and Mozart understandably anticipated a generous series of commissions for himself.
As things turned out, Mozart was lionized at Dresden on the way to Berlin. There is conflicting evidence about what happened at Potsdam, the king’s palace and the alleged commission is a matter of some conjecture.
On the one hand, en route to Berlin Mozart wrote to his wife Constanza that he had been assured that the king was eagerly expecting him. After his arrival, he wrote her again that he had received two royal commissions – six quartets with a cello part for the king and six easy clavier pieces for young Princess Friederike – and payment of 100 friedrichs d’or. And on his return to Vienna, he reported the same commission to his Masonic friends, who had probably financed the trip.
On the other hand, a court record dated April 26, 1788, the date of Mozart’s arrival in Berlin, shows that, far from the king’s eagerly awaiting him, Mozart’s arrival at court was wholly unexpected:
“One named Mozart (who at his ingress declared himself to be a kapellmeister from Vienna) reports that he was brought hither in the company of Prince Lichnowsky, that he desired to lay his talents before Your Sovereign Majesty’s feet and waited the command whether he may hope that Your Sovereign Majesty will receive him.”
The king then wrote on the document the words, “Directeur du Port,” meaning that Mozart was to be referred to the court director of chamber music, the cellist Jean Pierre Duport, for whatever action Duport considered appropriate. On April 29, Mozart visited Duport, an old acquaintance, bearing a set of piano variations on a theme by Duport that he had produced for the occasion, but there is no indication that this meeting or goodwill gesture led to a royal audience.
Beyond this, according to biographer Maynard Solomon, no court records, letters, memoirs, newspaper accounts or documents of any kind have ever been found at Potsdam to confirm Mozart’s appearance at court, the award of any commissions, or the payment of any compensation.
Mozart’s own letters, then, are the only documentation for his “success” at Potsdam. How much of his account was a fiction to justify his arduous trip to Berlin to his wife and his Viennese friends?
The only thing we know for sure is that on his return to Vienna in June, Mozart immediately turned out one quartet, K. 575, which he earmarked for the Prussian king in his own thematic catalog, and after 11 months, two more quartets, K. 589 and K. 590. The remaining three quartets, if ever requested, were never written. Further, only one keyboard piece was composed for Princess Friederike.
If there was a commission for six quartets and six keyboard pieces, why would a hard-pressed composer have turned his back on a possible future source of income?
Here’s an alternative scenario: The king’s chamber-music director suggested to Mozart that he submit a string quartet for the king and maybe a little something for the princess. Mozart sent in the quartet and the sonata but heard nothing. Eleven months later he thought he’d try again, this time with two quartets. Still nothing – so he dropped the whole business.
At any rate, in June 1790, Mozart wrote to a Mason friend that he had sold the three quartets to a Vienna publisher “for a trifling sum just to get some money in hand.” The quartets were published, without any dedication to the king or anyone else, shortly after Mozart’s death the following year.
In musical content, the three quartets are consistent with Mozart’s claim that they were intended for the Prussian king. Their most conspicuous feature is the rich, often virtuoso, cello part that Mozart might well have written for royalty. The cello shares with the first violin the presentation of the main themes, and scale passages and rapid string crossings are written to show off the cellist’s technique.
Further, Mozart accomplished this without upsetting the string quartet’s inherent balance. For one thing, he offset the cello part by giving featured passages to the viola and the second violin. For another, he wrote most of the cello solos in the instrument’s upper register, often elevating the viola as well, and he thus created a new type of tonal brilliance in quartet writing.
In the first movement of K. 589, for example, the two lyrical subsidiary themes are assigned to the cello. The second theme, a wide-ranging melody, is seasoned by chromatics (half-steps). The two themes are linked by running triplet passages, which then play an important part in the development and lead to the recapitulation of the main themes.
The main section of the larghetto second movement is an arioso for the cello, which states the songlike first theme, echoed by the first violin. The violin introduces the lovely second theme, to be followed by a cello repeat.
In structural terms, the third movement minuet is the most unusual movement of the quartet, surpassing all of Mozart’s other chamber-music minuets in originality and brilliance. In the main section, the first violin has a concerto-like role. The ensuing trio, unusually long at 66 measures, then develops the main section of the minuet instead of introducing contrasting musical material. This complex structure is marked by an insistent rhythm played by pairs of instruments – one pair playing 8th notes and the other 16ths, and imposes virtuoso demands on all four musicians.
The concluding allegro begins on a lighthearted note, but turns serious in its use of contrapuntal passages and unexpected harmonic shifts. All this leads to a surprisingly quiet ending.