Summary
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, K. 421/417b is the second of the Quartets dedicated to Haydn and the only one of the set in a minor key. Though undated in the autograph,[1] it is believed to have been completed in 1783, while his wife Constanze Mozart was in labour with her first child Raimund.[a] Constanze stated that the rising string figures in the second movement corresponded to her cries from the other room.[3]
Structure edit
Average performances of the whole string quartet vary in length from 23 to 33 minutes. It is in four movements:
- Allegro moderato
- Andante (F major)
- Menuetto and Trio (the latter in D major). Allegretto
- Allegretto ma non troppo
The first movement is characterized by a sharp contrast between the aperiodicity of the first subject group, characterized by Arnold Schoenberg as "prose-like," and the "wholly periodic" second subject group.[4] In the Andante and the Minuet, "normal expectations of phraseology are confounded."[5] The main part of the Minuet is in minuet sonata form,[6] while "the contrasting major-mode Trio ... is ... almost embarrassingly lightweight on its own ... [but] makes a wonderful foil to the darker character of the Minuet."[7] The last movement is a set of variations. The movement ends in a picardy third.
Notes edit
- ^ "There is an anecdote, reported by Constanze to Vincent and Mary Novello in 1829, that Mozart wrote the D minor quartet while she was in labour with their first child, Raimund, and therefore around 17 June 1783."[2]
References
- ^ Finscher 2007, p. X.
- ^ Irving 1998, p. 13
- ^ Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Mozart. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1977, 1985): "...we are probably right in assuming that it was the sudden forte of the two octave leaps and the following minor tenth (bars 31–32 of the andante), a brief uproar that quiets down, in a syncopated passage, to piano. These are figures that otherwise do not occur in Mozart."
- ^ Irving 1998, p. 33
- ^ Irving 1998, p. 35
- ^ Rosen 1988, pp. 112–114
- ^ Irving 1998, p. 36
Sources edit
- Irving, John (1998). Mozart: The 'Haydn' Quartets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58475-2.
- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (2007). Ludwig Finscher (ed.). The Ten Celebrated String Quartets. Translated by Anderson, Kinloch. Kassel: Bärenreiter. ISMN 9790006201181.
- Wilks, Alexa Vivien (2015). The Biography of a String Quartet: Mozart's String Quartet in D minor, K. 421 (417b) (PDF) (D.M.A). University of Toronto. Retrieved 2018-01-14.
- Rosen, Charles (1988). Sonata Forms. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393302196.
External links edit
- String Quartet No. 15: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
- String Quartet No. 15: Score and critical report (in German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
- Performance of String Quartet No. 15 by the Borromeo String Quartet from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format
