Einstein has to admit that a more prosaic occasion of an imminent concert series might have lain behind Mozart’s sudden turn to symphonic composition that summer; but the myth is so appealing, and also so thoroughly Romantic, that it had taken hold long before Einstein expressed it, and continues today. This triptych of symphonies is regarded as standing apart, in an elevated, mystical sphere. Sometimes they are seen as a single, vast, twelve-movement work, an idea promoted by the great Mozart interpreter Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and followed by Iván Fischer on the last occasion that the OAE presented this programme, in 2020, when he placed the interval exactly half-way through them, between the second and third movements of Symphony No. 40.

Recent scholarship, with its aversion to explaining the choices of a professional composer like Mozart on grounds of divine inspiration, has naturally produced plenty of evidence leaning towards a more financially-driven impulse for the composition of these masterful works. Mozart settled definitively in Vienna in November 1783,after his discharge from the service of Archbishop Colloredo “with a kick up the arse”, as Mozart put it in a letter to his father. From then on, he made a living as a freelance musician, taking pupils performing in public for a fee, or for the takings at subscription concerts, and increasingly through composition.

These three symphonies were written just after the first Viennese performance of Don Giovanni, although these seem not to have been as well received as the opera had been at its premiere in Prague the previous October (Emperor Joseph II, who attended the Viennese performance, commented that ‘Mozart’s music is too difficult for the singers’). Mozart was engaged in experimenting with new forms and approaches, and had noted the success of Haydn’s ‘Paris’ symphonies, written in 1785 – 86 and newly published in Vienna. These works were a new sort of symphony: the society that commissioned them wanted ‘learned’ works that appealed to the intellect, and could provide the centrepiece of a concert programme. What was new was the idea that an entirely instrumental work could carry this kind of weight, without a sung text, or a brilliant soloist, to be its focus. So, rather than relying on the piano concerto as the work to be the ‘main event’ of his concert programmes, Mozart seems to have followed his friend Haydn’s lead, and decided to turn to this new kind of symphony instead.

Mozart was short of funds (although far from destitute) and in search of a new way to exploit his reputation as a composer. He wrote the symphonies just after having had to move to the suburbs of Vienna in order to rent a cheaper apartment. He must have hoped to make money from these new, experimental, works, perhaps through publishing the scores (as he was trying to do with his String Quintets), and most likely through using them in concert programmes. It is possible that Mozart did indeed present them in a concert series he seems to have projected in Vienna in the Autumn of 1788 (the ‘Casino Concerts’, possibly at the Casino Trattner where he had presented concerts in 1784). We know of these plans from a letter of 1788, written to his friend and fellow Mason Michael Puchberg, from whom he was trying to borrow money. In it, Mozart says tickets are already being sold, so he only needs a short-term loan.2Unfortunately, our main sources of evidence for Mozart’s day-to-day activities, his letters to his father and his sister, had both ended by 1788; Leopold had died, and Mozart was somewhat estranged from Nannerl. So it is possible that the concerts had to be cancelled through lack of ticket sales, just as a projected tour of England (where he would have needed new symphonies to present) had also fallen through. However, Mozart definitely did present programmes including symphonies on a concert tour to Germany in 1789 (Figure 1). Frustratingly, the descriptions of the programmes that survive do not tell us much about which symphonies were played, but it seems more than likely that Mozart used one or more of these three new symphonies then. It would have been very uncharacteristic of him to finish large works like these without a specific performance opportunity in mind, or to have left them unperformed when such plans failed. Indeed, there are two versions of the Andante from Symphony No. 40, with and without clarinets, which strongly implies that Mozart reorchestrated it for a particular performance.

What we know of Mozart’s life and circumstances at the time he wrote these works in itself humanises them rather: they fit into a picture of Mozart as an entrepreneur as well as a brilliant performer, and it becomes ironic and sad that Mozart’s plans evidently did not quite come off, unlike Haydn’s two tours of England in 1791 and 1794, which he described as amongst the happiest times of his life, and which were extremely rewarding financially as well. Of course, piecing together the background of these works from the fragments of evidence that have survived does not detract from the fact that they are, indeed, supreme musical achievements. Hearing them all together in a single concert is not how Mozart would have presented them: indeed, it would seem a waste of the immense effort he went to in writing them. He would much more likely have wanted to present them one at a time during a concert series, or perhaps, as Haydn did, split up the movements of one, playing some to open a concert and the others to close its first half, and then presenting the whole of another symphony to close the second half. But as we listen to all three of them, without any other works, in a single concert tonight, we can not only marvel yet again at Mozart’s symphonic gifts, but also reflect on what might have been, had he had the fortune to continue to produce works in the new genre of the ‘grand symphony’.

So much has been written about these works, individually and as a group, and they are now so familiar to us, that I have chosen to spend most of these notes looking at their context rather than their effect. I shall close by pointing out just a few things that you may wish to listen out for as you revel in the OAE’s playing.

Symphony No. 39 in E flat K543

Symphony No. 39 has never attracted quite as much commentary as the two that follow it, and indeed in some respects it seems the most ‘Haydnesque’ of the three final symphonies. But that should not disguise its groundbreaking character. The very opening signals its weight, with a massive, slow introduction, more portentous than any by Haydn (who included slow introductions in three of his six ‘Paris’ symphonies). The double-dotted rhythm of the first bar, a glance towards the ‘French Overture’ style of Lully, announces that it introduces a substantial work. Mozart, however, is always full of surprises, leading seamlessly from this opening to a graceful, dance-like triple-metre theme to open the Allegro. Alfred Einstein speculates that the work carries ‘some secret, Masonic meaning’, on the grounds of the key (E flat, also used in Die Zauberflöte) and its overall tone. The three flats of the key, and the triple-metre of the Allegro, might possibly reflect the importance of the number three in Freemasonry. Haydn’s ‘Paris’ symphonies were, after all, commissioned by the Masonic ‘Loge Olympique’. But Einstein is also responding to something true of any work in the new ‘Grand Symphony’ style. The sense that the music carries meaning, but meaning of a kind only perceptible to those with the knowledge to find it, is inherent to the genre.

Symphony No. 40 in G minor K550

This symphony, more almost than any other of Mozart’s works, led to his being described by early historians of Romanticism, such as the Schlegel brothers, as the most Romantic of composers. One example of its inexhaustible drama will have to suffice here. Figure2 shows the curiously lop-sided opening to the third movement, in which a six-bar phrase is answered by an eight-bar phrase.

Quite apart from the phrasing, the number of beats tied over the bar lines make this a Minuet that would be extraordinarily difficult to dance. Which is, at least in part, Mozart’s point. This is not music to be danced to, nor even music evoking dance, as a baroque suite might; it has to be understood more as the musical equivalent of the statement, ‘Let me tell you a story about people dancing’. It shows how the Romantic symphony was to become invested with a power of story-telling not previously known to art music.

Symphony No. 41 in C major ‘Jupiter’ K551

Mozart’s final symphony, filling the whole of the second half of tonight’s concert, is the one most mythologised in Mozart literature, largely because it is the last one. It is often taken to be in a metaphorical or mystical sense the ‘last word’ in the Classical style, the astonishing display of contrapuntal work in its Finale simply unsurpassed and unsurpassable. In the words of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, ‘[…] this is a goal, a final destination. There is no going on after this.’ As I suggested above, however, it may be more true both to music history and to Mozart’s legacy to think of this symphony, along with the others, as a beginning rather than an end: an exploration of new possibilities in a newly transformed genre, one that would continue to exploit and transform its own history in the century following Mozart’s brief lifetime. If Symphony No. 39 is a fantasy on the expressive possibilities of the Style Galant, and Symphony No. 40 a fantasy on the new artistic movement of Romantic story-telling, then Symphony No. 41 is a fantasy on the possibilities of the ’learned style’, which Mozart had mastered so completely by the age of 32, and which lay behind the Emperor’s disparagement of his music as ‘difficult’ (a judgment shared by other critics of the time). And the counterpoint of the last movement is indeed amazing, as all five of the main themes are brought together. One of them, (Figure 3) even recalls the introduction of the first movement of Symphony No. 39 (Figure 4). Perhaps, after all, they do belong together, and hearing all three of these masterworks in the same concert is the best way to pay tribute to their creator.

Citations:

Einstein, A. (1946) Mozart : his character, his work. Translated by: Broder, N. and Mendel, A. London: Cassell, p. 234.

Anderson, E. (1986) The letters of Mozart and his family. 3rd edn. London: Macmillan, p.9153.

Zaslaw, N. (1989) Mozart’s symphonies: context, performance practice, reception. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 431.

Harnoncourt, N. (2014). Sleeve note to Sony Classical recording of Mozart Symphonies 39 – 41 with Concentus Musicus Wien.