Symphony No. 39 (Mozart)

• 1. Introduction

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  Mozart's Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543, was completed on the 26th of June 1788. Within six weeks of finishing it, Mozart had written two more symphonies. Together, these three works stand as the last symphonies he would ever write. What drove a composer to produce three monumental orchestral works in the space of a single summer? And did anyone hear them performed while he was still alive? Those questions have shadowed this music for more than two centuries.

• 2. A Summer of Three Symphonies

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  Mozart completed the 39th Symphony on the 26th of June 1788. No. 40 followed on the 25th of July, and No. 41 came on the 10th of August. The pace was extraordinary: three large-scale symphonies finished in less than seven weeks. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt has argued that the three were conceived as a single unified work rather than three separate pieces. He points to a telling structural clue: the Symphony No. 39 opens with a grand introduction written in the manner of an overture, yet the work ends without a coda. That absence of a coda at the close suggests the symphony was not designed to stand alone.

  Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein proposed that Mozart modeled the 39th on Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 26, a score Mozart had obtained a copy of in 1784. Musicologist Neal Zaslaw acknowledged the possible influence but noted that Mozart had so far surpassed his model as to make comparisons virtually meaningless. During this same summer, Mozart was also at work on piano trios in E-flat major and C major (K. 542 and K. 548), his Sonata facile (K. 545), and a violin sonatina (K. 547). The symphony emerged from a period of intense, wide-ranging creative activity.

• 3. The Vanished Premiere

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  No documentary record has survived to tell us when, or even whether, Symphony No. 39 was ever performed during Mozart's lifetime. Around the time he wrote the work, Mozart was organizing a series he called "Concerts in the Casino," to be held at a new casino on the Spiegelgasse owned by Philipp Otto. Mozart sent a pair of tickets for this series to his friend Michael von Puchberg. Whether those concerts ever took place, or were cancelled for lack of interest, cannot be determined from the evidence that survives.

  Mozart also took part in various other concerts in the years before his death, at some of which an unidentified symphony was on the program. Any one of those occasions could have been the premiere of the 39th, but none can be confirmed. The earliest eyewitness account that has come down to us describes not a premiere but a memorial concert.

• 4. Hamburg, March 1792

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  Iwan Anderwitsch attended an all-Mozart memorial concert in Hamburg in March 1792 and left the earliest known written description of the symphony in performance. His account of the opening is remarkable. He wrote that the introduction was so majestic that it surprised even the coldest, most insensitive listener, preventing even those who wanted to chat from being inattentive. He described what followed as fiery, full, and rich in ideas, with striking variety across nearly all the parts. He wrote that it was nearly impossible to follow so rapidly with ear and feeling, and that one was nearly paralyzed. Anderwitsch noted that this actual paralysis became visible in various connoisseurs and friends of music in the room, and that some admitted they would never have imagined hearing something like that performed so splendidly in Hamburg.

  The account stands as the earliest surviving testimony to what the symphony could do to a live audience. The symphony now belongs to the core of the orchestral repertoire and is regularly performed and recorded.

• 5. Inside the Score

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  The symphony is scored for flute, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. Its four movements open with an Adagio introduction followed by an Allegro in sonata form. The first movement's writing distinguishes itself from Mozart's earlier symphonies in specific ways: the winds operate more independently, the parts interact more freely, and the second theme group contains several distinct themes rather than the practically trivial second groups of the earlier works. Among these themes is what the source describes as a particularly felicitous walking theme.

  The slow second movement, marked Andante con moto, is in abridged sonata form, meaning it has no development section. It begins quietly in the strings before expanding into the full orchestra. Its main material is quiet, while the transitions are energetic and somewhat agitated. The key is A-flat major, the subdominant of E-flat major.

  The third movement, the Menuetto, is set off by a trio that functions as an Austrian folk dance called a Ländler. It features a clarinet solo, and the second clarinet plays arpeggios in its low chalumeau register, giving the trio an unusual tint. The melody underlying this folk dance derived from drinking songs that were popular in Vienna during the late 18th century.

  The finale is another sonata form. Its main theme, like that of a later string quintet in D that Mozart would write, is built mostly on a scale, here moving both upward and downward. The development section is dramatic. Both the exposition and the section from the development through the end of the recapitulation are repeated. Like the first movement, the finale carries no coda.

• 6. The Score at Auction

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  The autograph manuscript of the symphony was contained in a single volume holding nine Mozart symphonies in Mozart's own hand. In 1987, a private buyer sold this volume at Sotheby's in London to an unknown collector. The sale price was two and a half million pounds, equivalent at the time to approximately four point seven million dollars. That figure set a record for any non-medieval manuscript sold at auction up to that point. The identity of the collector who purchased the volume has never been publicly disclosed.