From the time he was very young, Mozart’s life was built on displaying his talents as a prodigious virtuoso performer at the keyboard or on the violin. It was the fuel that kept the machine of his career moving forward, but it did not fulfill him artistically. Professionally, his aspiration was to be hired as a kapellmeister, or music director, the highest prestige appointment for a musician of that era. Mozart’s true passion, however, was writing operas, a genre on which he increasingly focused throughout his short life, elevating it to a new standard with his brilliantly keen understanding of human nature and ability to set it to music.
For their first collaboration, Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, chose to adapt a play by Pierre Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro. The work was so controversial that it was banned in Paris until 1784 and censored in Vienna, where it could be read but not produced live. The plot, which threatened to scratch the itch for revolution, portrayed the upending of the social order with servants outwitting the nobles. Mozart and Da Ponte cleverly removed the overt revolutionary overtones, thus gaining permission to mount the production despite the ban. As a review winkingly observed, “‘What is not allowed to be said these days, is sung,’ one may say with Figaro.” While the opera did fine in Vienna, it exploded into a cultural phenomenon after it debuted in Prague, as recorded by Franz Niemetschek: “Figaro’s tunes echoed through the streets and the parks; even the harpist on the alehouse bench had to play ‘Non più andrai’ if he wanted to attract any attention at all.” As the craze hit fever pitch, Mozart was invited to visit, arriving in Prague on January 11, 1787. In a letter, he gushed to a friend, “Nothing is played, sung, or whistled but Figaro. No opera is drawing like Figaro. Nothing, nothing but Figaro. Certainly, a great honor for me!”
To this day, The Marriage of Figaro remains not only one of Mozart’s most beloved works, but has also become a cornerstone of the Western Classical repertoire. The action in the story takes place over the course of a single day—a whirlwind of interpersonal dynamics coming to the surface and threatening to interrupt the wedding of Figaro and Susanna, servants in the household of Count Almaviva. This is notable because it was highly unusual for audiences to see characters dealing with a contemporary domestic drama that could be happening in real time, rather than action set in faraway lands with gods and goddesses. In addition, Mozart rejected a standard practice where the musical overture was a pastiche of arias from the work. Instead, he wrote a truly freestanding work that dazzlingly sets the tone for the quick-paced action to follow with its bustling, joyous character.
Mozart’s life as a young adult played out in the tension between his capabilities and circumstances. By age 17, he had spent 10 years of his life touring Europe. The adjustment to living back in his hometown of Salzburg, with its limited musical scene in comparison to the great European capitals, was proving difficult. Making matters worse, his new employer, Archbishop Colloredo (at whose court his father also worked), was not interested in indulging the Mozarts with the level of autonomy they had enjoyed under his predecessor. By 1777, this led to the first fissure between Mozart and his Salzburg life, instigating his departure on a two-year tour to Mannheim and Paris. While the trip was artistically fruitful for Mozart, it was marred by the unexpected and tragic death of his mother, who had accompanied him. Upon his return home in 1779, he found the extended period of freedom made it even more difficult to endure Salzburg’s limitations. Two years later, he left for good.
The tour of Mannheim and Paris heavily influenced Mozart’s embrace of a trendy musical style sweeping both cities, the sinfonia concertante, and he wrote six of them as a result of the trip. The genre had grown in popularity throughout Europe, peaking between 1770 and 1830. Paris, one of the first major cities with a public concert series, was particularly fond of the sinfonia concertante. Essentially a concerto for more than one instrument, the form may have served a practical purpose in addition to entertainment. It had the added benefit of giving local soloists the opportunity to shine, earning them attention that could attract more private students. Because the sinfonia concertante so specifically served a unique epoch of time and place, it faded away as audiences began to shift their preferences to the touring virtuoso soloists who would come to dominate the Romantic era.
Mozart wrote his Sinfonia concertante, K. 364, after returning to Salzburg, indicating that even if he was committed to make a renewed effort at working for Colloredo (this time in a new position as court organist), his mind and spirit were longing to be elsewhere. You can hear Mozart’s enthusiasm recalling the extraordinary musicians he encountered in Mannheim and Paris as he sat in Salzburg, where the orchestra lacked clarinets. In the opening measures, listen for his use of the “Mannheim crescendo” technique, where the orchestra builds from soft to loud in a collective swell before the entrance of the soloists. The slow movement is uniquely expressive. Mozart wrote many beautiful melodies throughout his career, but here he expresses a heart-on-sleeve yearning that is not frequently heard in his output. A sunny mood returns in the third movement, a quick-paced rondo where the main theme alternates with contrasting variations.
In March 1781, Mozart departed Salzburg for Vienna with the rest of Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Graf Colloredo’s court retinue. While there, he begrudgingly carried out his duties as Colloredo’s court organist. At 25 years old, Mozart had gotten a taste for fame from his extraordinary childhood as the wunderkind of Europe, and was developing an increasingly strong appetite for creative autonomy. With his frustration running high, Mozart felt he was underpaid, was convinced Colloredo was treating him unfairly, and was impatient to embark on a career outside of the influence of his dominating father, Leopold. After openly pondering in letters home to Salzburg about the feasibility of remaining in Vienna as a freelancer, he acted on the impulse after a fiery break with Colloredo. Now a free agent, Mozart threw himself enthusiastically into establishing a musical life in the city, composing his German-language opera The Abduction from the Seraglio and performing frequently as a pianist, churning out piano concertos as vehicles for his own promotion.
In July 1782, Mozart received a letter from his father, asking him to write a piece of music to mark the auspicious occasion of Sigmund Haffner’s elevation to the nobility. Haffner was the son of a former mayor of Salzburg, and the two families had been close for many years. Mozart responded, flustered, “Well, I am up to my eyes in work … and now you ask me to write a new symphony! How on earth can I do so?” In the end, the work was completed, though it is unknown if it reached Salzburg in time. By December, Mozart wrote to his father, requesting that he return the score so that the symphony could be programmed on an upcoming concert in the spring. His father, however, intentionally delayed his reply, exerting one last modicum of control over his son. Delighted once he finally had it in hand, Mozart added an aside that the work was better than he remembered: “My new Haffner symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect.”
Though Mozart refers to the initial work as a symphony, his correspondence indicates its original form was like a serenade with more than four movements. Before presenting the work to the Viennese public, Mozart trimmed at least two movements (a march and a second minuet and trio) and enhanced the instrumentation by adding flutes and clarinets. Reflecting the prestige of the occasion, Mozart chose the historically regal key of D major for the “Haffner,” long associated with trumpets and fanfare.
—Kathryn Bacasmot