String Quartet No. 15 (Mozart)

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 15 in D minor K. 421, the second of the Quartets dedicated to Haydn and the only one of the set in a minor key, is believed to have been completed in 1783[1] It is in four movements:

  1. Allegro moderato
  2. Andante (F major)
  3. Menuetto and Trio (the latter in D major). Allegretto
  4. Allegretto ma non troppo

The first movement is characterized by a sharp contrast between the aperiodicity of the first subject group, characterized by Arnold Schoenberg as "prose-like," and the "wholly periodic" second subject group.[2] In the Andante and the Minuet, "normal expectations of phraseology are confounded."[3] The main part of the Minuet is in minuet sonata form,[4] while "the contrasting major-mode Trio ... is ... almost embarrassingly lightweight on its own ... [but] makes a wonderful foil to the darker character of the Minuet."[5] The trio's melody, however, is used in the Suzuki method for violin, Volume 7. The last movement is a set of variations.

[edit] Discography

It is easiest to find this piece recorded on sets of Mozart's Haydn Quartets, or of all his string quartets. When put on a single CD, it is usually paired with the G major Quartet, K. 387, as the Klenke Quartet does for their Profil release, or the Cleveland Quartet on Telarc, or the Emerson String Quartet on Deutsche Grammophon. The Franz Schubert Quartett on Nimbus Records instead pairs the K. 387 with the A major Quartet, K. 464. Naxos Records is unusual in that they chose to record the Éder Quartet playing this one together with the earlier Quartets K. 170 and K. 171.

[edit] References

  1. ^ John Irving, Mozart: The 'Haydn' Quartets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1998): 13. "There is an anecdote, reported by Constanze to Vincent and Mary Novello in 1829, that Mozart wrote the D minor quartet K.421 while she was in labour with their first child, Raimund, and therefore around 17 June 1783."
  2. ^ Irving (1998): 33
  3. ^ Irving (1998): 35
  4. ^ Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms. New York: W. W. Norton (1988): 112 - 114
  5. ^ Irving (1998): 36
v • d • e
Six Quartets Decicated to Haydn by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


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