Violin Concerto No. 5 (Mozart)

• 1. Introduction

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  Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219, carries a nickname that has nothing to do with the Ottoman Empire and everything to do with a burst of theatrical strangeness buried in its final movement. Written in 1775 and premiered during the Christmas season that year in Salzburg, this concerto is the last of Mozart's five violin concertos. It is also his longest. A typical performance runs about 28 minutes. What makes the fifth concerto remarkable is not just its length or its key, but the choices Mozart made that break his own patterns. The very first thing the solo violin plays is a quiet, sweet adagio in A major that no other Mozart concerto ever attempts at that point in its structure. And deep in the finale, the meter shifts, the key darkens, and something strange arrives. The questions the concerto raises are worth following: what is the "Turkish" music that gave it its nickname, and what does that section actually sound like? Why was the date on Mozart's own manuscript scratched out and changed more than once? And why did Mozart later write a whole new slow movement to replace the one he had already composed?

• 2. A Manuscript with Crossed-Out Dates

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  Mozart composed the majority of his concertos for string instruments between 1773 and 1779. The circumstances behind most of them remain unclear. No one knows for whom they were written or what occasions prompted them. Even pinning down when each work was composed has proved difficult. Analysis of Mozart's handwriting, along with the papers and watermarks used for the manuscripts, revealed that all five violin concertos were re-dated multiple times. The fifth concerto is a telling example. The year "1775" was physically scratched out on the manuscript and replaced with "1780", then changed back again to "1775". The autograph score, with all its revisions visible, is now preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The key Mozart chose for this concerto, A major, also carries a particular weight in his output. He would not return to A major for a solo concerto until the Piano Concerto No. 12, K. 414, years later.

• 3. The Unusual First Movement

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  The concerto is scored for two oboes, two horns, and strings, with the horns shifting from A to E for the slow movement. The first movement carries the marking "aperto", a term that appears rarely in Mozart's instrumental music. Two of his piano concertos, the Piano Concerto No. 6 in B-flat major and the Piano Concerto No. 8 in C major, share it, as does his Oboe Concerto in C major. In his operas the term shows up far more often. Aperto signals that the music should feel broader and more majestic than a plain allegro tempo would suggest. The movement opens with the orchestra presenting the main theme. Then the solo violin enters with a short dolce adagio passage in A major, backed by a simple orchestral accompaniment. This is the only time in all of Mozart's concertos that a slow adagio interlude of this kind appears at the moment of the soloist's first entry. After that passage, the violin transitions back to the main theme, now playing a different melody over the orchestra's presentation. The movement runs about 10-11 minutes.

• 4. The Turkish Finale

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  The rondo finale builds on a minuet theme that returns several times across the movement. Then, in the middle of the movement, something shifts. The meter changes, and a passage Mozart's audiences and later listeners have called "Turkish music" takes over. It moves from A major into A minor. The texture changes with it: unison chromatic crescendos rise through the ensemble, very short musical figures repeat obsessively, and the cellos and double basses switch to col legno playing, meaning they strike the strings with the wooden back of the bow rather than the hair. These grotesque elements, as the score itself suggests, are the source of the concerto's nickname, "The Turkish Concerto". Mozart would return to the same key and similar musical ideas in the Rondo alla Turca from his Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, one of his most recognized keyboard pieces.

• 5. A Replacement Movement

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  The story of this concerto does not end with the premiere. At some point after completing the work, Mozart wrote the Adagio in E major for Violin and Orchestra, K. 261, specifically as a substitute slow movement for this concerto. The reasons are not spelled out in the source, but the fact that he created a standalone replacement movement suggests the original slow movement did not always satisfy whatever performance context the concerto was being played in. K. 261 stands as its own work today, a direct outgrowth of the fifth concerto, carrying a different key signature than the concerto's outer movements and shaped to fit exactly where the original slow movement had been.