Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756-91)
String Quintet in C major, K. 515
Mozart wrote six string quintets in his career, the first coming at the ripe old age of sixteen. By the time he returned to the genre in 1787, he was at the height of his powers and popularity: the C major and G minor quintets, written successively, follow immediately on the heels of the triumphant Prague performances of The Marriage of Figaro and the Symphony no. 38.
In each of Mozart’s quintets, he followed the same instrumentation, doubling the violas instead of the cellos (in contrast, Schubert, in his String Quintet in C, added a second cello). This was a surprising choice, given the expectations of the era: late-18th-century audiences generally anticipated lean textures and, even when the string quartet was expanded, it didn’t necessarily mean greater interaction between the parts.
But by the late 1780s, Mozart wasn’t really writing Classical music (that is, with a capital “C”) anymore. His fascination with Bach, to whose music he was introduced in depth shortly after moving to Vienna in 1781, resulted in a new focus on counterpoint and chromaticism that deepened his expressive palate over what turned out to be the last decade of his life. Similarly, Mozart’s friendship with Haydn and familiarity with his older contemporary’s masterful symphonies and quartets unlocked an outpouring of technical and harmonic creativity in the younger composer, both in his contributions to those genres and beyond. And, of course, by the time The Marriage of Figaro premiered in 1786, Mozart, always a natural dramatist, had hit his stride as an operatic composer.
All of these influences feed into the C-major String Quintet.
The first of its four movements is striking for several reasons. First, it is long: in terms of timing and measure numbers, this is one of the longest sonata form movements of the 18th century, fully anticipating Beethoven in its expanded dimensions. Second, it features striking harmonic shifts, touching on a wide range of often unexpected key areas. Beginning in C major, the music moves abruptly to C minor, D minor, F major, and D-flat major, but always returns to C. Of course, you don’t need to know the specifics of what’s going on to catch its overall drift: the effect of moving between these key areas serves to create musical drama and tension, and to separate out the “pure” C major.
Instead of following the first movement with a slow movement (as was customary), Mozart opted to place the minuet as his second movement. It offers the perfect respite for what has immediately preceded it, filled with buoyant charm and phrases of all sorts of odd-lengths (or at least unpredictable durations). The chromaticism of the opening movement creeps in again during the trio, but things resolve peaceably before the movement wraps up.
If there’s one characteristic that applies to all of Mozart’s instrumental music, it is probably the deeply lyrical quality of his writing: regardless of genre and instrument, he possessed the unique ability to make non-vocal instruments sing. The slow, third movement of the String Quintet demonstrates this gift with great refinement, as the first violin and first viola engage in a heartfelt duet. The writing here recalls the middle movement of the glorious Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola written in 1779, but here the music is imbued with the aching expressivity of Mozart’s late style.
The finale is a tour-de-force rondo of high spirits and brilliant energy, featuring ecstatic solos (at one point or another) for each member of the ensemble. Though it begins rather straightforwardly, the movement is filled with hints that something more complex is lurking: stretches of counterpoint that sound so simple yet are, in fact, as rigorous as anything Bach wrote; a marvelously unexpected detour into the submediant, A-flat major (which is something Beethoven and the Romantics would later make a habit of doing); and so forth. It’s a movement Mozart’s biographer Alfred Einstein described as “godlike and childlike,” an overstatement, perhaps – but, if so, not by much.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
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