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Listen to Mozart |
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Listen to a contemporary recording of Mozart's penultimate symphony, played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conducted by Joseph Swensen.
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In the summer of 1788, after supervising the first Viennese production of Don Giovanni, Mozart composed three symphonies in quick succession. Although he was to live another three years, they were to prove his last essays in the form.
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They must have been intended for a subscription series which he was planning for that year; but as far as we know (the Viennese records are far from complete) this never took place. However, Mozart would have had opportunities to perform them on his visits to Leipzig in 1789 and Frankfurt in 1790, in charity concerts in Vienna in 1791, and probably on other occasions as well.
The character of each symphony is defined largely by Mozart's choice of two inter-related elements, key and scoring. No. 40, in G minor and without trumpets and drums, is intense and tragic; No. 41, in C major and without clarinets, is open and brilliant. As for No. 39, it is in the key of E flat major, which for Mozart implied warmth and solidity, even solemnity (in 1791 it was to be the home key of his ‘Masonic’ opera The Magic Flute).
And these qualities are matched by the scoring for strings, with cellos and basses frequently separated and violas occasionally divided, and a wind section of flute, two clarinets (the newer instruments replacing the more usual oboes), two bassoons, two horns, and two trumpets with their associated timpani.
The full and warm sound of these instruments in this key is evident at once in the slow introduction, which opens with sonorous dotted rhythms, and includes some harsh dissonances before a quiet transition to the fast Allegro movement. One other significant feature of this introduction is the sweeping downward scales in the violins, which are echoed (consciously or unconsciously) in the Allegro, and in different forms in the slow movement and the finale.
The A flat major Andante does not reveal all of its character at once: the serene surface presented at the opening is at first merely ruffled by two bars of minor-key colouring, and only then disturbed by a violent outburst in F minor, which later returns even more vehemently in the remote key of B minor.
The trumpets and drums, absent from the second movement, return to add weight to the Minuet. The Trio, in Ländler time (based on a traditional dance tune), is dominated by the clarinets, the first demonstrating the instrument’s singing quality while the second plays an accompanying pattern in the lower 'chalumeau' register.
The closing Allegro is one of Mozart’s most Haydnesque movements, resembling many of his older friend’s finales in its perpetual-motion energy, with only occasional, telling halts, and in the way all its material is spun out of the opening idea – right up to the witty ending.
Programme note by Anthony Burton © BBC; adapted for the web by Graeme Kay
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