Mozart’s Premature Testament
The symphony was a genre on the rise, a form that occupied the minds of composers everywhere, thanks in large part to Haydn’s pioneering work, and Mozart was no exception. The trouble was that in Vienna he did not hold a position as a Kapellmeister of a large orchestra or anything of the sort. As a result, he generally had no reason to write symphonies during his years in Vienna. Whenever he did turn to the genre, it was always outside the city. This is how the Linzer Symphony and the Prague Symphony came about.
In 1788, things were different. Over the course of just six weeks, Mozart suddenly wrote three symphonies back-to-back: Nos. 39, 40 and 41. Were they intended for performance in Vienna? We have no idea, and we don’t even know whether Mozart ever heard these works performed himself. We assume he did, because shortly after his death the three works were already widely known. That could only have happened if someone had copied them for a specific purpose. Mozart may, for example, have conducted the works when he travelled to Frankfurt in 1790.
Those three symphonies were Mozart’s final ones, although of course he could not have known that at the time. In the summer of 1788, he was only 32 and still perfectly healthy. He also hoped to eventually become Kapellmeister, since his career as a freelance musician was no longer bringing in much money. The craze for piano concertos, which had made him extremely wealthy in previous years, had collapsed. That might have been a reason for him to return to the symphony.
The three works are closely related, sharing obvious similarities while also displaying clear differences. The mature Mozart no longer wanted to write interchangeable music. A musical problem was never to be solved in exactly the same way twice. This is already apparent from the opening movements. No. 39 opens with a stately, slow introduction, in which there is barely a melody to be found and the drama is conveyed instead through often highly dissonant harmony. No. 40 is an agitated but highly melodic minor-key work, looking back to the Sturm und Drang and ahead of Romanticism. No. 41, meanwhile, derives its nickname, the ‘Jupiter Symphony’, from the grandeur of its major-key music.
One thing the symphonies have in common is that all three contain a minuet. In his previous symphony, the Prague, Mozart had limited himself to three movements. In this case, he returned to Haydn’s four-movement model, with the minuets themselves showing different approaches. The minuet of No. 39 is the closest to Haydn and is essentially a German dance. The minuet of No. 40 is just as anguished as the rest of the symphony: its polyphonic phrases frequently overlap in dissonance, making it anything but graceful dance music. In this respect, the third movement of No. 41 is the closest to a traditional minuet.
Today’s programme features two of the three late symphonies. We’ll start with No. 40, without a doubt the most famous work in Mozart’s symphonic repertoire. Then we’ll turn to No. 39, to round off the morning on a cheerful note. Both performances are from the Complete Mozart Edition, performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
