Das Klavier, part 6. From: Mozart. Sein Charakter, sein Werk, by Alfred Einstein. (Zürich, Stuttgart 31953, S. 275-291. Permalink: www.zeno.org. Lizenz: Verwaist.)
________________________________________________________
Scores and recordings are available online in the excellent Digital Mozart Edition.
(A Project of the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg and the Packard Humanities Institute.)
___________________________________________________________________
Mozart. The Piano [6 – Conclusion].
… In 1789 Mozart produced his last piano sonata (D major, K. 576). Early in this year Mozart was in north Germany, and apparently believed he would find more generosity with the royal family in Prussia than he found at home, in Vienna. He was thinking of composing six quartets for the king, and six piano sonatas for his oldest daughter, Princess Friederike (letter to Puchberg, July 12-14, 1789): “… among which I’m writing six light piano sonatas for Princess Friederike and six quartets for the king, all of them to be printed by Kozeluch at my expense…”
However, as we know, only three quartets were completed, appearing a few days before Mozart’s death; and not published by Kozeluch, but in a miserable edition from Artarias. Also, only one piano sonata emerged, which did not arrive for the princess. The work was published posthumously. Yet the piece is not “light”; on the contrary, it is markedly contrapuntal, full of duet-like features. One might say: it is full of Johann Sebastianesque argumentation, a creative homage to the great predecessor, whose nearness was perceived on Mozart’s [northern] journey as he was in Leipzig; with this reflected also in the short and masterful 3-part gigue Mozart composed then, as a leaf in a family album for the court organist Engel. The sonata is a kind of tribute to Bach. In this work, there is little consideration for Prussian princesses, where in the finale there is a union between the sweetness of the piano’s resonance and the fine work of a string trio; and in the deep longing and consolation of the adagio. The only counterpart for this adagio is another of Mozart’s works: the Adagio in b minor, composed on March 19, 1788. It is one of his most perfect, sensitive, and disconsolate pieces. The intention of this work is difficult to clarify: the conclusion in major indicates its connection to a sonata in e minor. But why not state that such a work, without another “purpose”, simply flowed from his pen – in an hour that was both difficult and gracious? In the summer of 1790, Mozart again thought of these sonatas (to Puchberg, June 12, 1790): … in order to get some money in hand, in these circumstances … I’m also writing piano sonatas …” But this came to only a few measures of a sonata in F major (Anh. 27, 30, 37). It did result however in a complete first movement, of an Allegro in g minor (K. 312); that I placed incorrectly, unfortunately, when I located it among the “Munich” piano sonatas. The work is one of the “lighter” sonata movements, executed in a melding of styles and with a mastery that Mozart could not manage in 1774. That hardly anyone knows or plays the work, that it hardly ever appears in current editions, is no proof against this idea…
Translation by Edward Eggleston.
