Notes for: July 24, 2012
The years 1777 and 1778 were among the most disillusioning of Mozart’s life. On reaching his 21st birthday, he realized that he could no longer trade on his reputation as a wunderkind. The easiest course would have been to settle down like his father as a court musician in Salzburg, his hometown, but the ruling archbishop was a petty man of limited musical taste. Mozart asked for leave to perform at other courts, but the archbishop refused, saying he did not want his servants running around like beggars. In desperation, Mozart resigned and, accompanied by his mother, he set off on a tour of several European cities to find a new post as a composer, teacher or instrumentalist.
The tour was largely a disaster. First in Munich, and then in Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris and Strasbourg, Mozart was welcomed by audiences and other musicians, but he found no patrons interested in paying permanently for his services. In Mannheim, then the instrumental capital of Europe, he spent several months composing and performing, but was unable even to gain admittance to the Elector’s palace. Then in Paris, his mother became ill and died in his arms. Finally, in January 1779, he returned to Salzburg, depressed and with a foretaste of the financial hardships that were to dog him the rest of his life.
While the primary purpose of the trip was frustrated, it was brightened by a few commissions for new works. One such commission came in Mannheim in December 1777, from a wealthy Dutch merchant whom Mozart called “De Jean” -- probably a corruption of “Dejong.” An amateur flutist, Ferdinand De Jean offered Mozart 200 gulden to write “three short, simple concertos and a couple of quartets for the flute,” the latter being works for flute plus three strings.
Mozart found the commission an uphill battle, writing his father:
“It is not surprising I’ve been unable to finish all the pieces for Monsieur De Jean. I never have a single quiet hour here, so that I can only compose in the late hours of the night. Then, of course, I cannot get up early as well. Besides, one is not always in the mood for working. I could, to be sure, scribble off things the whole day long, but a composition of this kind goes out into the world, and naturally I do not want to be ashamed of my name on a title page. Moreover, you know I become quite powerless whenever I must write for an instrument I cannot bear!”
Eventually, Mozart delivered one new concerto for the flute, a second adapted from an existing oboe concerto, one quartet of three movements, and one shorter quartet of two movements. In return, De Jean paid only 96 of the 200 gulden. K. 285 is the three-movement quartet. Whether Mozart truly disliked the flute or was merely making an excuse for indolence, the instrument did not inspire him in the same degree as the piano, the violin and later the clarinet. The flute quartets are more divertimentos than serious chamber works, with an emphasis on casual entertainment rather than subtle musical thought. In his quartet writing, moreover, Mozart had not yet learned from Haydn how to give equal attention to each of the four parts, and here, as might be expected, the flute overshadows the strings.
The first movement of K. 285, allegro, is in the usual sonata form, but with a lovely dip into the minor mode in the development, and the third movement is a tuneful rondo. The strongest movement by far is the adagio; only 35 measures long, it was described by Alfred Einstein, Mozart’s biographer, as “of the sweetest melancholy, perhaps the most beautiful accompanied solo ever written for the flute.”