Symphony No. 41 (Mozart)
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony No. 41 in C major (K. 551) on 10 August, 1788.[1] It was his last symphony.
The work is nicknamed the Jupiter Symphony. This name stems not from Mozart but rather may have been coined by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in an early arrangement for piano.
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[edit] Composition and premiere
The 41st Symphony is the last of a set of three that Mozart composed in rapid succession during the summer of 1788. No. 39 was completed 26 June and No. 40 25 July. [2] Around the same time, Mozart was writing his piano trios in E and C major, his sonata facile, and a violin sonatina.
It is not known whether the 41st Symphony was ever performed in the composer's lifetime. According to Otto Erich Deutsch, around this time Mozart was preparing to hold a series of "Concerts in the Casino", in a new casino in the Spiegelgasse owned by Philipp Otto. Mozart even sent a pair of tickets for this series to his friend Michael Puchberg. But it seems impossible to determine whether the concert series was held, or was cancelled for lack of interest.[3]
[edit] Movements
The four movements are arranged in the traditional symphonic form of the Classical era:
A remarkable characteristic of this symphony is the five-voice fugato (representing the five major themes) at the end of the fourth movement. But there are fugal sections throughout the movement either by developing one specific theme or by combining two or more themes together, as seen in the interplay between the woodwinds. The main theme consists of four notes:
Four additional themes are heard in the "Jupiter's" finale, which is in sonata form, and all five motifs are combined in the fugal coda. In a 1906 article about the Jupiter Symphony, Sir George Grove wrote that "it is for the finale that Mozart has reserved all the resources of his science, and all the power, which no one seems to have possessed to the same degree with himself, of concealing that science, and making it the vehicle for music as pleasing as it is learned. Nowhere has he achieved more." Of the piece as a whole, he wrote that "It is the greatest orchestral work of the world which preceded the French Revolution."[4]
Scholars are certain Mozart studied Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 28 in C major, which also has a fugato in its finale. Charles Sherman speculates that Mozart also studied Haydn's Symphony No. 39 in C major since he "often requested his father Leopold to send him the latest fugue that Haydn had written."[5] The Haydn No. 39, written only a few weeks before Mozart's, also has a fugato in the finale, the theme of which begins with two whole notes. Sherman has pointed out other similarities between the two almost perfectly contemporaneous works.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Deutsch 1965, 320
- ^ Deutsch 1965, 320
- ^ Deutsch 1965, 320
- ^ Grove 1906
- ^ C. Sherman, Foreword to score of Sinfonia in C, Perger 31 Vienna: Doblinger K. G. (1967)
[edit] References
- Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965) Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- George Grove (January 1906). "Mozart's Symphony in C (The Jupiter)" (in English). The Musical Times Vol. 47 (No. 755): pp. 27-31. doi:.
[edit] External links
- Sinfonie in C KV 551: Score and critical report (German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
- Performance Audio--David Bernard conducting the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Symphony No.41, KV 551 "Jupiter", with notes by Elizabeth Schwarm Glesner
- Jupiter in the Age of Enlightenment, Program Notes on Symphony No. 41 by Ron Drummond
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