Piano Sonata No. 8 (Mozart)

• 1. Introduction

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  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310/300d, in the summer of 1778. That summer stands out as one of the hardest periods in his life. The mood lines up with a key he almost never touched elsewhere in his keyboard writing. A manuscript from that same season survives today, carrying quiet clues about how and where he worked. What happened to him in these months, and what does the paper he wrote on reveal about his life at the time?

• 2. A Rare Minor Key

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  Just one other Mozart piano sonata was ever written in a minor key: the Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457. This A minor sonata stands as the first of the two, composed in 1778 as his mother died.

  Composed alongside the Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor, K. 304/300c, it shares its darker character with a companion piece from the same period. Some have suggested that his mother's sudden death is what pushed both works toward their more sombre tone. Mozart said almost nothing about any of this in writing, leaving the manuscript itself to tell the rest of the story.

• 3. A Manuscript's Quiet Trail

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  Unlike the earlier Sonata in C major, K. 309/284b, this sonata rarely surfaces in Mozart's surviving letters. Little is known about exactly why or how he wrote it, since he left few other traces in writing.

  The manuscript itself is written on the same type of paper Mozart used for the Symphony No. 31 in D major, K. 297/300a. He had bought that paper stock while staying in Paris, tying this sonata's physical pages to his time in the French capital. Today, the autograph score is kept at the Morgan Library & Museum. The music itself unfolds in three movements, a performance that runs about 22 minutes.