Mozart

[Mahlerian]

Is there any Mozart piece more brazenly dissonant throughout than the Minuet in D K355?  Such a strange little piece, but a fascinating one.

https://www.youtube.com/v/bAKd4YP5oeM

[Baron Scarpia]

According to the first web page I landed on, there is no manuscript, it is not in Mozart's own catalog, the central section is confirmed to be lifted from another composer's work, and it first surfaced 10 years after Mozart's death.

https://www.allmusic.com/composition/minuet-for-piano-in-d-major-k-355-k-576b-mc0002370268

It doesn't sound like Mozart to me, although that doesn't mean much.

[Mandryka]

Is there any Mozart piece more brazenly dissonant throughout than the Minuet in D K355?  Such a strange little piece, but a fascinating one.

https://www.youtube.com/v/bAKd4YP5oeM

See what you think of this

https://www.youtube.com/v/nOGEwKWih1o

or this

https://www.youtube.com/v/S8TlGT0BQ3E




There's also the fantasy K 608. Leonhardt recorded 355.

[Mahlerian]

According to the first web page I landed on, there is no manuscript, it is not in Mozart's own catalog, the central section is confirmed to be lifted from another composer's work, and it first surfaced 10 years after Mozart's death.

https://www.allmusic.com/composition/minuet-for-piano-in-d-major-k-355-k-576b-mc0002370268

It doesn't sound like Mozart to me, although that doesn't mean much.

That "central section" is not in the link I gave, nor is it in most published editions of the piece.  It was published as a Minuet by Mozart with a trio by Stadler (attributed as such), and the trio is generally not performed or recorded.

It doesn't sound out of line with many of Mozart's other late chromatic/contrapuntal pieces.  In addition to the ones Mandryka gave, there's also the Gigue in G major.

In the two essays here, one of the scholars doesn't question the piece's attribution at all and praises its subtle motivic working out, while the other questions only the return of the A section in the last part and thinks that Mozart would have done more to vary it.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/843298

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

The chromaticism doesn't seem out of line with some of Mozart's other music, although I'm curious about the '355' because I doesn't exactly sound like something he would write in the early 1780s....more like the late 1780s to early 1790s? I guess this could be an example of Mozart trialling some more experimental ideas in a piano miniature before applying them to more substantial works, possibly?

[Baron Scarpia]

An explanation put forth is that it was a bit of theater music Mozart produced in 1790 or 91, which got lost and somehow rediscovered in 1801 when it was published in Vienna.

https://sites.google.com/site/mozartdocuments/documents/1791-juenger

With no manuscript and its omission from Mozart's own catalog of works there is a lot of room for speculation.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Whatever the case is, it has to be the work of a remarkably creative mind.

[Gurn Blanston]

The commentary in my Koechel listing (obsolete, of course due to the NMA) is this:

Composed probably 1789 in Vienna; Einstein thought was 3rd movement Menuet to K 576; although K6 doubts this, it is still placed in connection to this Sonata; M. Stadler added a Trio.

So yes, even if it isn't a "3rd movement Menuet to K 576", it is likely composed about then, which probably accounts for the Stadler addition, since they were very tight at the time, and Constanze relied on Stadler to sort out all that music after WAM died. Nothing authoritative that I found so far doubts its authenticity, but I'm going to check out what the NMA is saying about it.

[Gurn Blanston]

So I went to the NMA (Neue Mozart Ausgabe) and indeed, it is still listed there, as NMA IX (9 is piano music)/27/2, and I was able to download a pdf of the score. They clearly delineate where Stadler's trio section is by him. I still haven't figured out how to access the commentary there, but I'm working on it. I've been tied up with Haydn for so long I haven't got after this one (yet!).

[Gurn Blanston]

I would be delighted if one of our German speakers would kindly translate this, it is the critical report on this piece, but the NMA is in German only. The only thing I know is 'unbekannt' means lost or unknown.

[Mahlerian]

As far as I can tell it's recounting the publication history, and thus the sources for the NMA edition of the score.  First published in Vienna in 1801.

[Madiel]

Yes, it's basically the publication history.

[Baron Scarpia]

I'd like to see a facsimile of the Tranquillo Mollo publication of 1801. Mollo was a publisher who eventually specialized in maps, but who also had music publishing business.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquillo_Mollo

I'm curious whether the Trio was attributed to Mozart by Mollo. One source seems to claim that the trio was only later discovered to be identical to a work by Statler.

This link says:

The Minuet in D Major, K. 355, was first published in Vienna by Tranquillo Mollo in 1801. No autograph or manuscript copy from Mozart's lifetime is known to survive, and the piece is not listed in Mozart's Verzeichnüß. Even so, the attribution to Mozart has never been seriously questioned. (Mollo's edition includes a Trio explicitly attributed to Maximilian Stadler.)

while this link says

Very little is known for certain about the Minuet in D major for piano, K. 355, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). The autograph score is lost and Mozart never entered the piece in his catalog of works, so its date and place of composition are unknown. Since the work was published in Vienna in 1801, it has been discovered that its central B minor trio was composed by Abbe Stadler and the certainty that the outer sections were composed by Mozart is questionable. Still, the Minuet is a wanly charming little work that might possibly have been written by Mozart in a moment of compositional weakness so it is still included among his oeuvre

I guess the music should be judged on its merits.

[SurprisedByBeauty]

I would be delighted if one of our German speakers would kindly translate this, it is the critical report on this piece, but the NMA is in German only. The only thing I know is 'unbekannt' means lost or unknown.

Sources considered: A) An autograph from an unknown source. B) First printing

Other sources, not used for this edition but mentioned for completeness' sake: C) & D) Early prints...

[Madiel]

How can you have an autograph from an unknown source?

If it's not written by Mozart then it's not an autograph.

I think you're interpolating words into your translation that aren't in the German text.

[Baron Scarpia]

After some work (looking through my CD inventory, rummaging through boxes) I find I have a recording of the piece, and even listened to it some time ago.

[asin]B00004LMPR[/asin]

Indeed a strange work with a lot of chromaticism in the A section and jarring dissonances in the B section. Hard to know what to make of it. (The next track on the disc is the kleine gigue K574, what a miraculous little gem and a great performance!)

The notes to the recording quote Wolfgang Plath of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe, who comments that it may have been a fragment from Mozart that Statdler completed or transcribed from another source (a quartet is suggested). This is something Satdler had apparently done before.

Maybe it's by Mozart, but I don't particularly like it. Comparable dissonances are not uncommon in Mozart, but it strikes me as uncharacteristically clumsy.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

After some work (looking through my CD inventory, rummaging through boxes) I find I have a recording of the piece, and even listened to it some time ago.

[asin]B00004LMPR[/asin]

Indeed a strange work with a lot of chromaticism in the A section and jarring dissonances in the B section. Hard to know what to make of it. (The next track on the disc is the kleine gigue K574, what a miraculous little gem and a great performance!)

The notes to the recording quote Wolfgang Plath of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe, who comments that it may have been a fragment from Mozart that Statdler completed or transcribed from another source (a quartet is suggested). This is something Satdler had apparently done before.

Maybe it's by Mozart, but I don't particularly like it. Comparable dissonances are not uncommon in Mozart, but it strikes me as uncharacteristically clumsy.

It still uses a very orthodox approach to voice leading. Perhaps the jarring thing about the dissonances is that they aren't set up in an obvious way.

[Baron Scarpia]

It still uses a very orthodox approach to voice leading. Perhaps the jarring thing about the dissonances is that they aren't set up in an obvious way.

Well, it's those two minor seconds in the first two phrases of the B section that strike me as entirely too blatant. Maybe they would go down better if they came from a piece of chamber music where they were played by different instruments, somewhat deflecting the conflict. The counterpoint that follows does resonate as a particularly acerbic example of Mozartian counterpoint. Perhaps that's the origin of the transcription theory.

[Florestan]

How can you have an autograph from an unknown source?

If it's not written by Mozart then it's not an autograph.

I think you're interpolating words into your translation that aren't in the German text.

Actually, they say that the autograph itself is unknown.

[Florestan]

I'm curious whether the Trio was attributed to Mozart by Mollo.

According to NMA, Mollo published it as Menuetto and Trio for Pianoforte by W. A. Mozart and M. Stadler, so he attributed it to Stadler, not to Mozart.