Notes for: July 20, 2010
In the Mozart literature, his Quintet K. 452 is a mystery piece. The known facts about it can be summarized in two sentences: First, from the indication on the manuscript, Mozart completed the work on March 30, 1784. Second, the first performance was given two nights later at the Imperial National Court Theater in Vienna with Mozart at the piano.
Beyond that, nothing is known about the circumstances of the work’s composition or its first performance – not even the identity of the other players. Further, no one before Mozart had written music for such an unusual combination of instruments – piano plus oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon – and why it attracted Mozart at this point remains an unsolved riddle.
In more general terms, we know that at the time Mozart was making a living mainly as a concert pianist, and he was understandably preoccupied with composing music for his own performance. It was the period of his great piano concertos -- he wrote no fewer than six (Nos. 14 through 19) in 1784 and three more each in 1785 and 1786. The quintet was one of six works during the period in which Mozart carried his personal interest in the piano into chamber music, the others being three trios and two quartets, all for piano and strings.
Mozart had a particularly high assessment of the quintet, writing his father shortly after the first performance:
“I consider it the best thing I have written in my life. I wish you could have heard it, and how beautifully it was performed. To tell the truth, I grew tired from the mere playing at the end, and it reflects no small credit on me that my audience did not in any degree share my fatigue.”
While the quintet is, indeed, a work of considerable intrinsic merit, Mozart’s satisfaction with it may have resulted as much from his skill in solving a number of technical problems inherent in combining the piano with wind instruments.
Unlike string instruments, which are, after all, larger or smaller versions of one basic design, wind instruments are highly varied in their construction and have distinctive tone qualities. As a result, composing chamber music for winds presents special difficulties in the effective blending and contrasting of timbres, and when the instruments are played as a group the combined sound can become cloying.
Wind instruments, moreover, have a number of technical limitations not found in strings – for example, the players need to breathe, making it difficult for them to sustain a prolonged melodic line, and they appreciate occasional rests to take the pressure off their lips. Further, the piano – even the piano of Mozart’s day – can produce greater sonorities than winds and can play many lines at once, with the resulting risk that it may overshadow its partners.
In the K. 452 quintet, Mozart solved these problems in a number of ways. First, he cast his melodic lines in short phrases, facilitating their playing by the wind instruments, and then assigned the phrases to continuously changing instrumental combinations to vary the tone color. Again, by alternating passages between the piano and the winds as a group, he achieved a balanced contrast in sonorities, and he found further contrasts among the winds. And while he left no doubt that the piano was the featured instrument, he also explored the technical and tonal resources of each wind and gave each player moments of prominence with material conceived specially for his instrument.
The first movement begins with a long introduction in which the composer demonstrated the range of tonal resources that he had available from his five instruments. The main section of the movement is marked by the inventive blending of the wind instruments in groups of two, three and four, balanced by solo passages for the piano. The development is only 16 measures long and is based entirely on the first two measures of the first theme, but Mozart achieves surprising impact by leading this brief material through a number of key changes.
The dialog between the piano and the winds continues into the lyrical slow movement, but the second theme provides greater opportunity for the individual wind instruments. A contrasting middle section is more dramatic, and the movement reaches its high point with an abrupt change to the minor mode and agitated piano phrases against soft chords in the winds.
The third movement is a rondo, with a repeated high-spirited refrain separated by contrasting episodes. About two-thirds of the way through, just as we are expecting a return to the refrain, Mozart introduces a cadenza a tempo in which all five instruments seem to improvise together at some length. Eventually an oboe trill signals the cadenza’s end, the refrain at last reappears, and the quintet concludes with a rollicking, opera buffa coda.
Notes for: August 9, 2016
Mozart’s Quintet K.452 is a mystery piece. From the indication on the manuscript, Mozart completed the work on March 30, 1784. The first performance was given two nights later at the Imperial National Court Theater in Vienna with Mozart at the piano. No one before Mozart had written music for such an unusual combination of instruments – piano plus oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon – and why Mozart chose them is unknown.
At that time, Mozart was making a living mainly as a concert pianist, and he was therefore composing music for his own performance. This quintet was one of six works where Mozart focused his personal interest in the piano in his chamber music, the others being three trios and two quartets, all for piano and strings.
Mozart was particularly satisfied with this quintet, having used his skill to solve a number of technical problems inherent in combining the piano with wind instruments. He solved these problems in a number of ways. First, he used short phrases for the melodic lines, which were easier for the wind instruments to play. Then he assigned these phrases to continuously changing instrumental combinations to vary the tone color. Again, by alternating passages between the piano and the winds as a group, he achieved a balanced contrast in sonorities, and he found further contrasts among the winds. And while the piano was clearly the featured instrument, he also explored the technical and tonal resources of each wind, giving each player material conceived specially for that instrument.
In a long introduction, Mozart uses the first movement to demonstrate the range of tonal resources of his five instruments. The main section uses an inventive blending of the wind instruments in groups of two, three and four, balanced by solo passages for the piano. The development, only 16 measures long, is based entirely on the first two measures of the first theme, but Mozart achieves great impact with this brief passage by making a number of key changes.
The dialog between the piano and the winds continues into the lyrical slow movement, with the second theme concentrating more on the individual wind instruments. The contrasting middle section is more dramatic, reaching a high point where it abruptly changes to the minor mode, and agitated piano phrases contrast with soft chords in the winds.
The third movement is a rondo, with a repeated high-spirited refrain. About two-thirds of the way through, just as we are expecting a return to the refrain, Mozart introduces a cadenza a tempo in which all five instruments seem to improvise together at some length. Eventually, an oboe trill signals the cadenza’s end, the refrain at last reappears, and the quintet concludes with a rollicking opera buffa coda.
Notes for: July 11, 2023
From the time he arrived in Vienna in 1781, Mozart was determined to prove that he could make a handsome living as a composer and performer. As compositions poured out of him, musical engagements poured in. By 1784 he had become a successful performer-impresario, raising money by staging marathon subscription concerts that featured his own compositions and himself as soloist, and that drew the cream of Viennese society. In 1784 alone he gave four subscription concerts, in addition to 18 private concerts in aristocratic salons. Mozart composed one piano concerto after another for these concerts – six in 1784 alone. In addition, for a concert at the Burgtheater in April 1784 he wrote the Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452. Mozart was especially happy with the Quintet. “I myself consider it to be the best work I have ever composed,” he told his father.
The Quintet is scored for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn – an unusual combination of instruments, and a challenge: how to create a true partnership among instruments that don’t naturally blend. Mozart met the challenge brilliantly, for “the particular charm of this work consists in its feeling for the tonal character of each of the four wind instruments, of which none is disproportionately prominent,” as Alfred Einstein wrote. The opening Largo establishes that this will be a work filled with elegant melodies and ingenious interplay among all five instruments. From the opening measures, short phrases pass gracefully and seamlessly from one instrument to another, with each wind getting a brief solo. Early on, as just one wonderful example, a short descending scale passes, step by step, from bassoon to horn to clarinet to oboe before it is picked up and amplified by the piano. The Largo leads into a cheerful Allegro moderato where Mozart continues his ingenious ability to suit motifs to each instrument. Throughout, changing interactions produce new and varied sonorities.
The winds have beguiling solos in the second movement, an elegant Larghetto. Again there are intricate, shifting groupings, with the interaction between piano and winds being especially striking: In one beautiful long passage the winds pass an extended solo back and forth over graceful piano arpeggios. Also striking are the surprising harmonic modulations at the end of the middle section. The Quintet ends with a joyful Rondo that overflows with high-spirited themes, good-humored interactions, a surprise cadenza for all five instruments, and an impish piano flourish at the end that brings the work to a rousing close.
Beethoven purportedly was paying tribute to Mozart’s Quintet when he wrote his Quintet in E Flat for Piano and Winds, Op. 16, which was in the same key, used the same combination of instruments, and followed the same design.