Classical Period

Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major: David Oistrakh in Concert in 1968

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Mozart’s earliest childhood performances as a violinist were recounted humorously by Johann Andreas Schachtner. In a 1792 letter to Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna, or “Nannerl,” Schachtner, a close friend of the family, recalled an occasion when he was invited to play second violin for an informal chamber music session at the Mozart house. Little Wolfgang asked to be allowed to play second violin. As he hadn’t had any lessons yet, your Papa …

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Schubert’s Third Symphony: Effortless Music from a Miraculous Year

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1815 has been called Franz Schubert’s “miracle year.” In those twelve months, while working as a full-time schoolteacher, the 18-year-old composer wrote more than 20,000 bars of music. Among other works, he completed two symphonies (Nos. 2 and 3), two masses, a string quartet, two piano sonatas, and 145 songs (including the famous Erlkönig). Schubert’s biweekly composition lessons with Antonio Salieri during this period remind us that, even for the most intuitive …

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Beethoven’s Mass in C Major: Gentleness, Cheerfulness, and Humanity

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Completed in 1807, Beethoven’s Mass in C Major came seventeen years before the premiere of the monumental Missa solemnis. In its way, it is a work which is equally mould-shattering. Beethoven, who seldom attended church, considered music to be “the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life…the one spiritual entrance into the higher world.” His Mass in C Major moves away from dogma to embrace the free, all-encompassing sanctity of the individual. A serene, …

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Haydn’s Symphony No. 60 in C Major, “Il Distratto”: Music for the Comic Stage

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Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 60 in C Major, Il Distratto, (“The Absent-Minded Gentleman”) has been called “the funniest piece of symphonic music ever written.” (Kenneth Woods) The six-movement Symphony was conceived originally as incidental music for a 1774 German-language adaptation of Le Distrait, a farcical comedy by the French playwright, Jean François Regnard. The play centers around the buffoonish misadventures of a man who is so absent-minded that he nearly forgets …

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Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 in C Major, “Linz”: A Hurriedly Written Masterpiece

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In 1783, Mozart traveled to Salzburg with his new bride, Constanze, in an attempt to reconcile with his father, who did not approve of the marriage. On the return trip to Vienna, the couple spent three weeks in the Upper Austrian town of Linz as guests of Count Johann Thun-Hohenstein, an old friend of the Mozart family. In a letter dated October 31, Mozart wrote to his father, When we reached the …

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Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto: A Swan Song

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The Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 has been called Mozart’s swan song. His last completed work, it was first performed on October 16, 1791 in Prague, less than two months before the composer’s death at the age of 35. At the time, the clarinet was a young instrument still in development, and a newcomer to the orchestra. When the 22-year-old Mozart visited Mannheim, a progressive musical center far ahead of provincial …

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Mozart’s Kyrie in D Minor: An Enigma

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The impetus for Mozart’s Kyrie in D minor, K.341 remains a fascinating enigma. Initially, it was believed that Mozart completed this sublime choral fragment in Munich in early 1781. The occasion for which it would have been composed remains unclear. The full instrumentation (which includes two clarinets) suggests that the Kyrie may have been intended for a large-scale Mass which remained unfinished. Sketches from the composer’s final years (1787-91) show that he was …

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