Salzburg and its Orchestra
Some time between 1772 and 1777 the musician and writer Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart visited Salzburg and reported:
'For several centuries this archbishopric has served the cause of music well. They have a musical endowment there that amounts to 50,000 florins annually, and is spent entirely in the support of a group of musicians. The musical establishment in their cathedral is one of the best manned in all the German-speaking lands. Their organ is among the most excellent that exists: what a pity that it is not given life by the hand of a Bach!...
'Their [Vize]kapellmeister Mozart (the father) has placed the musical establishment on a splendid footing. He himself is known as an esteemed composer and author. His style is somewhat old-fashioned, but well founded and full of contrapuntal understanding. His church music is of greater value than his chamber music. Through his treatise on violin playing, which is written in very good German and intelligently organized, he has earned great honour...
'His son has become even more famous than his father. He is one of the most precocious musical minds, for as early as his eleventh year he had composed an opera [La finta semplice] that was well received by all the connoisseurs. This son is also one of the best of our [German] keyboard players. He plays with magical dexterity, and sight-reads so accurately that his equal in this regard is scarcely to be found.
'The choirs in Salzburg are excellently organized, but in recent times the ecclesiastical musical style has begun to deteriorate into the theatrical - an epidemic that has already infected more than one church! The Salzburgers are especially distinguished in wind instruments. One finds there the most admirable trumpet- and horn-players, but players of the organ and other keyboard instruments are rare. The Salzburger's spirit is exceedingly inclined to low humour. Their folk songs are so comical and burlesque that one cannot listen to them without side-splitting laughter. The Punch-and-Judy spirit shines through everywhere, and the melodies are mostly excellent and inimitably beautiful'.
(One must keep in mind in reading this account that the Archbishop of Salzburg was both a clergyman and a temporal ruler; hence the church and court musicians were one and the same.)
During the same period that Schubart visited Salzburg, Charles Burney published a report sent from there in November 1772 by an unidentified writer who (whatever else he may have been) was clearly not an admirer of  Mozart's orchestral music:
'The archbishop and sovereign of Saltzburg [sic] is very magnificent in his support of music, having usually near a hundred performers, vocal and instrumental, in his service. This prince is himself a dilettante, and good performer on the violin; he has lately been at great pains to reform his band, which has been accused of being more remarkable for coarseness and noise, than delicacy and high-finishing. Signor Fischietti, author of several comic operas, is at present the director of this band.
“The Mozart family were all at Saltzburg last summer; the father has long been in the service of the court, and the son is now one of the band... I went to his father's house to hear him and his sister play duets on the same harpsichord... and... if I may judge of the music which I heard of his composition, in the
orchestra, he is one further instance of early fruit being more extraordinary than excellent'.
Mozart's opinion of the Salzburg orchestra was far from enthusiastic. He had heard the great orchestras of Mannheim, Turin, Milan, and Naples, and he knew that the Salzburg orchestra, although moderately large for its time, was too often second-rate in its execution. Writing to his father from Mannheim in 1778, he compared the fabulous orchestra there with their own:
'Ah, if only we too had clarinets! You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes, and clarinets. I shall have much that is new to tell the Archbishop at my first audience, and perhaps a few suggestions to make as well. Ah, how much finer and better our orchestra might be, if only the Archbishop desired it. Probably the chief reason why it is not better is because there are far too many performances. I have no objection to the chamber music, only to the concerts on a larger scale'.
The truth about the quality of the Salzburg orchestra undoubtedly lay somewhere between Schubart's glowing appraisal and Mozart's frequent complaints. As for its strength, the official roster of court musicians published in the Salzburger Hofkalender für 1775 shows Joseph Lolli and Dominicus Fischietti, both Kapellmeister, Leopold Mozart, Vizekapellmeister, Michael Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart, both Conzertmeister, as well as 3 organists, 8 violinists, 1 cellist, 3 double bass players, 2 bassoonists, 3 oboists, and 3 hunting horn players. Even a casual examination of this list suggests that something is missing, for Mozart's Salzburg works often include parts for flutes, trumpets, and timpani, as well as divided viola parts and an additional horn. It appears that several of these 33 musicians played more than one instrument, and there were others who could be - and were - called upon to supplement the orchestra. These included the town waits, the trumpet - and kettle-drum players of the Archbishop's army, and various amateur performers whose principal posts at court were non-musical. Thus the make-up of the Salzburg orchestra varied widely from season to season and from occasion to occasion. As we have reconstituted the orchestra for these recordings, it is as it may have been heard at festive occasions during the year: the strings 9-8-4-3-2, and the necessary woodwind, brass, kettle drums and harpsichord, with 3 bassoons doubling the bass line whenever obbligato parts for them are lacking.

The Symphony as a Genre
After Beethoven, the symphony was the most important large-scale instrumental genre for the Romantic composers. Their conception of the symphony as an extended work of the utmost seriousness, intended as the centrepiece of a concert, is very far from what the musicians of the second half of the 18th century had in mind for their symphonies. This can be seen by comparing the large number of symphonies turned out then with the handful written by the major 19th-century symphonists. It can also be seen in the small number and brevity of passages devoted to symphonies in the newspaper accounts, memoires and correspondence of the period. And it can be seen in the uses to which 18th-century symphonies were put.
'Sinfonia' and 'overtura' or 'ouverture' were synonymous terms and concepts then. Planelli writing in 1772 gave a typically simple Italian definition: 'All the symphonies that serve [operas] as overtures are cast from the same die, and are inevitably made up of a solemn grouping of an allegro, a largo, and a dance'.
The French naturalist and composer Étienne de la Ville, Comte de Lacépède, a decade later began by elaborating on essentially the same definition: 'A symphony is ordinarily made up of 3 movements: the first is more noble, more majestic, more imposing; the second slower, more touching, more pathetic or more charming; and the third more rapid, more tumultuous, more lively, more animated or more gay, than the other two'. He then presented a characteristic French notion that a good symphony must be dramatic and even programmatic: ‘The first movement, that which we call the allegro of the symphony, should present, so to speak, its overture and the first scenes; in the andante or the second movement, the musician should place the portrayal of terrible happenings, dangerous passions, or charming objects, which should serve as the basis for the piece; and the last movement, to which we commonly give the name presto, should offer the last effort of these frightful or touching passions. The dénouement should also be shown here, and one should see subsequently the sadness, fright and consternation that a fatal catastrophe inspires, or the joy, happiness and ecstasy to which charming and happy events give birth...' Then follow several pages in this vein, suggesting how the scenarios of such programmatic symphonies might be handled.
From Germany Schubart embellished the basic Italian definition in a different way: 'This genre of music originated from the overtures of musical dramas, and came finally to be performed in private concerts. As a rule it consists of an allegro, an andante, and a presto. However, our artists are no longer bound to this form, and often depart from it with great effect. Symphony in the present fashion is, as it were, loud preparation for and vigorous introduction to hearing a concert'. In Mozart's case the most familiar departure from the 3-movement format was the insertion of a minuet and trio between the andante and the finale. This is a characteristic Austrian development, and Mozart not infrequently converted one of his Italian symphonies to an Austrian one by the simple expedient of adding a minuet and trio.
Mozart wrote his symphonies as curtainraisers to plays, operas, cantatas, oratorios, and private and public concerts. He sometimes also used them to end concerts, or even to begin and end each half of a long concert. Judging by the number of symphonies he wrote in Salzburg (or those that he wrote for Italy and then used in Salzburg), there must have been a steady demand for them there. During the 4-year period 1770-73 alone he wrote 28 symphonies. This outpouring can be explained at least in part by the death of the Archbishop Sigismund Christoph von Schrattenbach in December 1771, which meant that a period of mourning prohibited theatrical entertainments during Fasching (carnival) and that concerts would have provided a substitute form of entertainment. It also meant that much new music would have had to be provided for the festivities surrounding the installation in March of the new archbishop, the despised Hieronymus Joseph Franz de Paula Graf Colloredo. A further explanation for the surprising number of symphonies during this period is that Mozart was officially promoted from rank-and-file member of the orchestra to the status of Konzertmeister on August 1772. (Was this perhaps part of the new archbishop's 'great pains to reform his band', which Burney's informant mentioned?) Mozart's efforts to prove himself worthy of the appointment, and the responsibilities of the post once assumed, may well explain in part his need to write so many symphonies. These include - in addition to those that, because we know of no specific occasion for their creation, we (rightly or wrongly) consider to have originated as concert symphonies - a number of other concert symphonies that Mozart fashioned from works in other genres. Among the latter were opera overtures detached unchanged from their operas and put into circulation, opera overtures provided with new finales to bring them up to the customary 3 movements, and groups of 3, 4, or even 5 movements drawn from orchestral serenades.
With the arguable exception of the last few, Mozart's symphonies were perhaps intended to be witty, charming, brilliant, and even touching, but undoubtedly not profound, learned, or of great significance. The main attractions at concerts were not the symphonies, but the vocal and instrumental solos and chamber music that the symphonies introduced. Approaching Mozart's symphonies with this attitude in mind relieves them of a romantic heaviness under which they have all too often been crushed. Thus unburdened, they sparkle with new lustre.

Performance Practice
The use of 18th-century instruments with the proper techniques of playing them gives to the Academy of Ancient Music a clear, vibrant, articulate sound. Inner voices are clearly audible without obscuring the principal melodies. Rhythmic patterns and subtle differences in articulation are more distinct than can usually be heard with modern instruments. The use of little or no vibrato serves further to clarify the texture. At lively tempos and with this luminous timbre, the observance of all of Mozart's repeats no longer makes movements seem too long. A special instance concerns the da capos of the minuets, where, an ancient oral tradition tells us, the repeats are always omitted. But, as we were unable to trace that tradition as far back as Mozart's time, we experimented by including those repeats as well. Missing instruments understood in 18th-century practice to be required have been supplied: these include bassoons playing the bass-line along with the cellos and double basses, kettle drums whenever trumpets are present (except in the 'little' G-minor symphony, K.183, where chromaticism renders their use less idiomatic) and the harpsichord continuo. No conductor is needed, as the direction of the orchestra is divided in true 18th-century fashion between the concertmaster and the continuo player, who are placed so that they can see each other and are visible to the rest of the orchestra. Following 18th-century injunctions to separate widely the softest and loudest instruments, the flutes and trumpets are placed at opposite sides of the orchestra. And the first and second violins are placed at the left and right respectively, making meaningful the numerous passages Mozart wants tossed back and forth between them.

Musical Sources and Editions
Until recently performers of Mozart's symphonies have relied upon the editions drawn from the old complete works, published in the 19th century by the Leipzig firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. During the past quarter century, however, a new complete edition of Mozart's works (NMA) has been slowly appearing, published by Bärenreiter of Kassel under the aegis of the Mozarteum of Salzburg. The NMA has been used for almost all the symphonies from K.128 to K.551. For the early symphonies not yet published in the NMA, editions have been created especially for these recordings, drawing on Mozart's manuscripts when they could be seen, and on 18th- and 19th-century copies in those cases where the autographs were unavailable. (14 of Mozart's symphonies are among musical manuscripts formerly in the Berlin library but now being held in Poland and inaccessible to Western musicologists.)

The first edition of Ludwig Ritter von Köchel's Chronological-Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Works of Wolfgang Amaadé Mozart was published in 1862 (=K1). It listed all of the completed works of Mozart known to Köchel in what he believed to be their chronological order, from number 1 (infant harpsichord work) to 626 (the Requiem). The second edition by Paul Graf von Waldersee in 1905 involved primarily minor corrections and clarifications. A thoroughgoing revision came first with Alfred Einstein's third edition, published in 1936 (=K3). (A reprint of this edition with a sizeable supplement of further corrections and additions was published in 1946 and is sometimes referred to as K3a.) Einstein changed the position of many works in Köchel's chronology, threw out as spurious some works Köchel had taken to be authentic, and inserted as authentic some works Köchel believed spurious or did not know about. He also inserted into the chronological scheme incomplete works, sketches, and works known to have existed but now lost. These Köchel had
placed in an appendix (=Anhang, abbreviated Anh.) without chronological order. Köchel's original numbers could not be changed, for they formed the basis of cataloguing for thousands of publishers, libraries, and reference works. Therefore, the new numbers were inserted in chronological order between the old ones by adding lower-case letters. The so-called fourth and fifth editions were nothing more than unchanged reprints of the 1936 edition, without the 1946 supplement. The sixth edition, which appeared in 1964 and was edited by Franz Giegling, Alexander Weinmann, and Gerd Sievers (=K6), continued Einstein's innovations by adding numbers with lower-case letters appended, and a few with upper-case letters in instances in which a work had to be inserted into the chronology between two of Einstein's lowercase insertions. (A so-called seventh edition is an unchanged reprint of the sixth). Hence, many of Mozart's works bear two K numbers, and a few have three.
Although it was not Köchel's intention in devising his catalogue, Mozart's age at the time of composition of a work may be calculated with some degree of accuracy from the K number. (This works, however, only for numbers over 100). This is done by dividing the number by 25 and adding 10. Then, if one keeps in mind that Mozart was born in 1756, the year of composition is also readily approximated.
The old Complete Works of Mozart published 41 symphonies in 3 volumes between 1879 and 1882, numbered 1 to 41 according to the chronology of K1. Additional symphonies appeared in supplementary volumes and are sometimes numbered  42 to 50, even though they are early works.

The 11 symphonies presented here, written between the time that Mozart was 16 years, 2 months old and the time that he was 17 years, 8 months, may be divided into 3 groups: 4 symphonies (K.130-134) written in Salzburg before Mozart's third trip to Italy, 2 having connections with both Salzburg and Italy (K.135, 141a), and 5 more written after the return home (K.161a, 161b, 162, 162b, 173dA). The 11 symphonies may also be divided into two groups; Germanic concert-symphonies with minuets and repeated sections in all movements, each lasting around 20 to 25 minutes (K. 130, 132, 133, 134, 161b); and Italianate overture-symphonies, without minuets and mostly without repeats, each lasting around 8 or 9 minutes. (K. 135, 141a, 161a, 162, 162b, 173dA). The 3 movements of the Italianate overture symphonies are usually linked by incomplete cadences and played without pause, and the third movement is often based upon a transformation of the opening of the first movement at a faster tempo.
None of the symphonies of 1772-73 were printed during Mozart's lifetime, although they are easily the equals of hundreds of symphonies which did issue from the presses. It might appear that this was the result of a deliberate policy, for in 1778 Leopold Mozart wrote to Wolfgang that ’... I have not given any of your symphonies to be copied, because I knew in advance that when you were older and had more insight, you would be glad that no-one had got hold of them, though at the time you composed them you were quite pleased with them. One gradually becomes more and more fastidious'. Leopold's remarks, however, may have been hypocritical, for in 1772 he had written to the Leipzig publisher J. G. I. Breitkopf, 'Should you wish to print any of my son's compositions...  you have only to state what you consider most suitable. He could let you have [various compositions including] symphonies for two violins, viola, two horns, two oboes or transverse flutes, and bass'. And again 3 years later: ‘As I decided some time ago to have some of my son's compositions printed, I should like you to let me know as soon as possible whether you would like to publish some of them, that is symphonies land various other works'. The symphonies offered to Breitkopf must be among those here recorded. But Mozart's symphonies were not to appear in the Breitkopf catalogue until 1785-87, and then only in editions purchased from other publishers.

Symphony in F major, K. 130
Many commentators, following Saint-Foix, have considered this to be the earliest of Mozart's truly great symphonies. Admittedly it is an excellent work, but does it really contain better ideas, better worked out, than several other of his symphonies of this period? It was written, according to Mozart's father's inscription on the autograph, 'a Salisburgo nel Maggio 1772'. Mozart began the first movement with only a pair of horns in F in mind. In the second movement he had the players switch to a pair of Bb horns. By the time he began the minuet, however, he had decided to add another pair of horns, found in this movement and the finale, and he then went back and wrote the additional horn parts on blank staves in the first and second movements. This change may have been associated with the return to Salzburg from a European tour of Mozart's friend (for whom he was later to write the horn quintet and horn concertos), the horn virtuoso Ioseph Leutgeb. This symphony is the first of only four symphonies (K. 130, 132, 183, 318) in which Mozart used 4 rather than the customary 2 horns.
The first movement, in sonata form, begins quietly without the usual fanfare. The opening motive - heard also at the end of the exposition, in the development section, and at the beginning and end of the recapitulation - prominently features a rhythm known in some circles as the 'Lombardic' rhythm and in others as the 'Scotch snap'. It is also omnipresent in Hungarian folk music, some of which Mozart may well have encountered in his travels.
Mozart's first attempt at an andante movement was abandoned after only 8 bars. The cancelled beginning has a more complex texture than the completed andante. Could this be the result of Leopold looking over Wolfgang's shoulder and urging him (as he once did in a letter) to write something 'only short-easy-popular'? In any case, the completed andantino grazioso is a serene, cantabile movement in 3/8 and in binary form. The violins are muted, the cellos and basses pizzicato; the violas, however, are without mutes, confirming that there were very few of them in the Salzburg orchestra. Landon points out what may or may not be a coincidence: Joseph Haydn first wrote 3/8 andante movements in 4 symphonies from the years 1770-72 (Hob. l: 22bis, 39, 42, and 45); could Mozart have known and imitated any of these in his andante?
The minuet is wittily constructed around a canon between the violins (in octaves) and the bass-line, with the violas adding a rustic drone wobbling back and forth from C to B# (despite the F-major harmonies). This leads to a trio filled with highjinks: quasi-modal harmonies and stratospherically high horn writing. Here was something special for the recently returned Leutgeb, and a bit of Punch and Judy in the bargain! Lest the gay exterior of this movement deceive us about the craft behind it, however, it should be noted that Mozart crossed out and rewrote a 10-bar passage in the trio to achieve the unassuming perfection of his final results.
The energetic finale, molto allegro, is of a length and weight to balance the opening movement, and also in sonata form, thus departing from the short dance-like finale of the Italians. This buffo movement is filled with rushing scales, sudden changes of dynamics, tremolos, and other happy noises much favoured by the symphonists of the Mannheim school. Leopold Mozart called this sort of music 'nothing but noise', a judgment that did not prevent his son
from making brilliant use of the style.

Symphony in Eb major, K. 132
Mozart's father labelled this autograph ‘nel Luglio 1772 à Salisburgo'. The opening triadic figure with trill bears a striking resemblance to the beginnings of two other pieces in the same key: the doubtfully authentic sinfonia concertante for winds (K. Anh. C14.01) and the thoroughly authentic piano concerto, K. 482. The notation of the horns presents a peculiar problem: Mozart marked the pairs of horns ‘2 Corni in E la fa alti, 2 Corni in E la fa bassi', that is, 2 horns in high Eb, 2 horns in low Eb. But the valveless horns that are known to us from the period have crooks enabling them to play in the following keys only: low Bb, low C, D, Eb, E, F, G, Ab, A, high Bb, and high C. Three possible solutions present themselves; (1) a low-Eb crook combined with the old Baroque clarino technique, enabling the part to be played an octave higher; (2) an experimental instrument, perhaps brought to Salzburg by Leutgeb, which has not survived; or (3) the shortest crook (high C) and elimination of the usual tuning bits, thus inserting the mouthpiece further up the horn than is customary. This last procedure, discovered by experimentation during rehearsals for these recordings to yield an instrument pitched in high Eb, was the one used here.
Two complete slow movements survive for this symphony - an andante in 3/8, found in the normal location between the first movement and the minuet, and a substitute andantino grazioso in 2/4, written into the manuscript following the finale. Mila finds Mozart's second attempt superior to the first, while most other commentators (and the writer of these notes) find precisely the opposite. Plath has recently pointed out that the 3/8 movement is based at least in part upon borrowed materials. The opening melody reproduces the incipit of a Gregorian melody for the Credo.
The significance of this quotation is unclear, but we must mention that Joseph Haydn quoted Gregorian chant in the slow movements of 2 of his symphonies (26, 60). Later in the movement there appears a variant of a popular mediaeval German Christmas carol, a tune that Mozart had used once before in a first version of his Gallimathias musicum, K 32. Here is the beginning of the carol in the 1599 version of Erhard Bodenschatz. Is Mozart trying his hand at Lacépède's programme symphony?
The andantino grazioso, entirely original as far as is known, features a beautiful cantilena shared between the violins and the oboes and making an effective dialogue with the rest of the orchestra.
The minuet begins with a lively canonic exchange between the first and second violins. The tune is soon imitated by the bass instruments and then heard in one voice or another throughout the piece, including after a humourously timed pause just before the return of the beginning in the middle of the second section. The trio (and that of K 130) has been called 'daring and bizarre' by Wyzewa and Saint-Foix, while Abert too noted a 'tendency toward eccentricity'. It also brings to mind Lacépède's notion of a programmatic symphony, for it appears to be based upon a melody in the style of a psalm tone, set in imitation of the stile antico of a post-Renaissance motet. A brief outburst of ball-room gaiety at the beginning of the second section is the only intrusion of the secular world into the sanctimony of the psalmody. (Mozart's psalm tone is performed here one on a part, acknowledging that many German court orchestras of the period divided their rosters into highly paid soloisten and poorly paid ripienisten.) Was this Mozart's commentary on the mixture of secular and sacred concerns at the court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg? Was this symphony destined for sacred rather than secular use? Could Haydn have once again pointed the way with the Gregorian melody in the trio of his Symphony 45 ('Farewell')? We may never know the answers to these intriguing questions.
The finale is a substantial piece in the form of a gavotte or contredanse en rondeau. This is as French as Mozart's music ever becomes, and filled with a kind of mock naïveté of which, one imagines, those of the French nobility who enjoyed playing at shepherd and shepherdess would have approved. Mozart, however, was not fond of most French music (he exasperatedly called it 'trash' and 'wretched'), and wrote of some of his Salzburg symphonies, '...most of them are not in the Parisian taste'.

Symphony in D major, K. 133
Written in July 1772, the work opens with 3 tutti chords, after which a characteristic rising sequential theme follows in the strings. Flourishes in the kettle drums and trumpets, as well as the other winds, inform us that this is a festive work. A lyrical section of the exposition features the 'Lombardic' rhythm found in several other syrnphonies of the period. An exceptionally well-worked-out development section returns to the tonic key without presenting the opening theme. That theme Mozart saves for the end, where it is heard in the strings and then, in a grand apotheosis, is heard again doubled by the trumpets.
The graceful, binary andante in 2 is scored for strings (once again violins muted and the bass instruments pizzicato) with the addition of a solitary 'flauto traverso obligato'. We should not imagine the poor flautist sitting disconsolately during the other 3 movements with nothing to play. Rather, we should imagine a player of another instrument picking up a flute for this movement.
The minuet is typically Austrian, that is, short, simple, and fast, in contrast to Italian minuets which, Mozart tells us, 'generally have plenty of notes, are played slowly and are many bars long'. The trio once again provides an opportunity for Mozart to shake a few tricks from his sleeve, in this case syncopations, suspensions, and other devices of learned counterpoint, or precisely the opposite of the homophonic texture normally found in dance music. The finale is an enormous 1/8/2 jig in sonata form that, once launched, continues virtually without rest to its breathless conclusion.

Symphony in A major, K. 134
Written in August 1772, this symphony eschews the customary march-like 4/4 opening in favour of one in 3/4. The orchestra is at its smallest - strings and pairs of flutes and horns (with bassoons and harpsichord added) - and Saint-Foix finds the whole 'astonishingly imaginative and poetic'. The first movement is as close as Mozart comes to writing a monothematic sonata-form movement. (Haydn was much fonder than Mozart of monothematicism, and less attached to the insertion of contrasted themes.) Perhaps the approach to monothematicism is the reason that Mozart felt the need, rather unusually for him at this period, to add an 18-bar coda in which, after a brief allusion to the principal theme, a few triadic flourishes assure even the most inattentive listener that the close has been reached.
The andante opens with a melody that Mozart was surely inspired to write by Gluck's famous aria for Orpheus, 'Che farò senza Euridice?'. The cantabile beginning is spun out at some length into a sonata-form movement of considerable subtlety. The texture is especially carefully thought out, with an elaborate second violin part and divided violas.
The minuet has a Haydnesque brusqueness about it. A Punch-and-Judy tendency again shows in the trio, with its virtually melodyless first strain and in the second strain antiphonal chords tossed between the wind and the violins pizzicato over a drone in the violas, arriving at a peculiarly chromatic passage to prepare the return of the opening 'non-melody'.
The finale begins with a bourrée which, however, is subjected to full development in sonata form with coda. Despite the scale on which the movement is written, the spirit of the dance everywhere peers through the symphonic facade.

Symphony in D major, K. 135
In 1771 Mozart was granted the scrittura (commission) to write the first opera for Milan for carnival 1773. By October of 1772 he had received the libretto of Giovanni da Gamerra's Lucio Silla. As he could not begin composing arias until he had heard the principal singers and knew their capabilities, he began by thinking about those numbers that he could compose in advance: the recitatives, choruses and overture. On 24 October he and his father left for Milan where they arrived 10 days later. By 14 November Leopold could report to his wife that only one of the principal singers had thus far arrived in Milan: 'Meanwhile Wolfgang has got much amusement from composing the choruses, of which there are three, and from altering and partly rewriting the few recitatives which he composed in Salzburg... He has now written all the recitatives and the overture'. That 'overture' is the 3-movement symphony recorded here.
Lucio Silla was a success and received about 20 performances following its première on Boxing Day 1772. Upon his return to Salzburg, Mozart was unable to have his opera performed, as Salzburg had no opera house, but he did extract certain arias to use as concert pieces, and the overture circulated as a concert symphony (as we leam from its presence in an early-19th-century Breitkopf & Härtel manuscript catalogue). We have chosen to perform the symphony as it may have been heard after Mozart's return to Salzburg, rather than with Milanese forces.
The work opens with a typically festive, Italianate molto allegro. The andante is in a galant vein, avoiding the more worked-out part-writing of several of the andantes written for Salzburg. This leads to another molto allegro, a kind of 3/8 jig in which running semiquavers throughout much of the movement create the impression of a moto perpetuo.

Symphony in D major, K. 141a (161/ 163)
For the ceremonies surrounding the installation of the new archbishop, Mozart set the textof a 'Serenata drammatica' by Metastasio, Il sogno di Scipione, and this was performed apparently in early May 1772. The overture of the work consisted of an allegro moderato in alla breve and an andante in 3/4. Perhaps anticipating the need to produce quickly a symphony while in Milan, Mozart must have taken those two movements with him to Italy, for (according to the Köchel catalogue) the finale, a 3/8 presto, was composed in Milan at the end of 1772. It was the Mozarts' custom partially to finance their tours by giving concerts in each city they visited. Undoubtedly something of the sort was planned for Milan, even though Leopold reported that 'It is not so
easy to give a public concert here and it is scarcely any use attempting to do so without special patronage, while even then one is sometimes swindled out of one's profits'. If this symphony was not created for such a public concert, then perhaps it was created for a private one of the sort described by Leopold: 'On the evenings of the 21st, 22nd and 23rd December great parties took place in Count Firmian's house at which all the nobles were present. On each day they went on from five o'clock in the evening until eleven o'clock with continuous vocal and instrumental music. We were among those invited and Wolfgang performed each evening'.
The 3 movements, linked by incomplete cadences, are played without break, and the finale even begins on a dominant rather than tonic chord. Tagliavini has noted a striking resemblance between the subsidiary theme of the first movement and that of J. C. Bach's overture to the opera Alessandro nell'Indie (Naples, 1762).

Symphony in Eb major, K. 161a (184)
Every commentator has remarked on the dramatic character of this work, which is dated Salzburg, 30 March 1773. Saint-Foix, for instance, in his characteristically extravagant diction, states, 'The violence of the first movement followed by the infinite despair of the andante (in the minor), and the ardent and joyous rhythms of the finale mark this symphony as something quite apart; romantic exaltation here reaches its climax...' The work seems filled with familiar ideas. The intense opening gesture of the molto presto later served Mozart as a model for the more relaxed openings of two other Eb pieces: the sinfonia concertante, K. 364, and the wind serenade, K. 375. The subsidiary theme of the same movement bears a resemblance to a theme heard in the first movement of Haydn's Symphony 52. The poignant C-minor andante is filled with appogiaturas and other effects borrowed from tragic Italian arias. The theme of the jig-like finale is remarkably like that of the rondo of Mozart's horn concerto, K. 495, also in Eb. Throughout the 3 movements, the concertante writing for winds is especially well handled.
Although we do not know why this exceptionally serious symphony was written, we do know that in the 1780s it was used (apparently with Mozart's consent) by the travelling theatrical troupe of his acquaintance Johann Böhm as the overture to Lanassa by the Berlin playwright Karl Martin Plümicke. This play - a German adaptation of Antoine-Marin Lemierre's La Veuve du Malabar about a Hindu widow who, unable to resign herself to her husband's death, flings herself onto a funeral pyre - was also decked out with Mozart's incidental music for Thamos, King of Egypt, K. 345, to which new texts had been set. This is undoubtedly why it is sometimes stated (probably erroneously) that the present symphony was intended as an overture for Thamos itself.

Symphony in G major, K. 161b (199)
Dated 10 or 16 April 1773 (the date is partially illegible), the symphony opens with a 3/4 allegro in a small-scale but perfectly proportioned sonata-form movement filled with high spirits. The serene andante, with its parallel sixths and thirds and gracefully flowing triplets, has only a touch of chromaticism occasioned by augmented-6th chords toward the end of each strain to suggest that the world might contain any darkness. The finale begins with some notentirely-convincing counterpoint, which rubs shoulders uneasily with more galant notions. The subject of the finale's fugato (G-C-F#-G) is drawn from the opening theme of the first movement. (Saint-Foix describes the opening as 'a sort of fugato that soon takes on a waltz rhythm'.) Mozart himself later commented wryly on this sort of writing in the finale of his Musical Joke, K. 522. It must be admitted that the short-windedness of the opening is somewhat redeemed by the more extended version of the same material that Mozart offers us at the recapitulation, where it serves as both main theme and retransition. But counterpoint aside, the movement jogs as nice a jig as could be wanted circa 1773 to bring a symphony to a happy conclusion.

Symphony in C major, K. 162
The date at the beginning of this symphony has been defaced and cannot be confidently deciphered. The date '19 or 29 April 1773' in the Köchel catalogue is therefore somewhat speculative, although the work clearly dates from this period.
The opening gestures of the first movement in common time establish the festive character of the entire movement. When the brief development section leads back to C major at the recapitulation, the first 12 bars are missing. These ideas Mozart saves for the end, where they serve as an effective closing section. This is not the last we hear of these ideas, however, for, transformed into 6/8, they also open the finale, which is again treated in a highly concise sonata form. The intervening andantino grazioso, featuring obbligato writing for oboes and horns, is reminiscent of certain movements in Mozart's orchestral serenades of this period.

Symphony in D major, K. 162b (181)
Dated Salzburg, 19 May 1773, the work opens with a flourish reminiscent of the opening of the C-major symphony, K. 162. The movement is an essay in orchestral 'noises' used to form a coherent and satisfying whole. That is, there are few memorable melodies, but rather a succession of instrumental devices, including repeated notes, fanfares, arpeggios, sudden fortes and pianos, scales, syncopations, dotted rhythms, etc. Descriptions and explanations of musical form tend to fall back on linguistic analogies. In this case, however, such an analogy would lead us into the absurd position of having to imagine meaningful prose composed entirely of articles, conjunctions and prepositions! Responding to this, Schultz refers to the movement as 'purely decorative'. Schultz's reaction, Leopold Mozart's 'nothing but noise', the failure of the linguistic analogy, and Lacépède's need for programmes in symphonies all point to the same phenomenon: an inability of aesthetic theory to deal with an art of abstract sounds unsupported by verbal ideas. (A parallel may be drawn with the difficulties surrounding the acceptance of non-representational painting in the 20th century.)
The second movement, linked to the first, in some sense atones for the lack of beautiful melody in the allegro by presenting a moving oboe solo in the style of a siciliano. This leads straight into a cheerful rondo in 2/4 in the style of a contradance or march, to which Saint-Foix correctly applies the 18th-century appellation 'quick step'.

Symphony in Bb major, K. 173dA (182)
Dated Salzburg, 3 October 1773, this work was apparently still thought highly of by Mozart in the final decade of his life. This emerges from a letter he wrote in 1783 from Vienna to his father in Salzburg, asking to be sent this work (along with others) for use in concerts in Vienna. The opening movement is nearly as full of orchestral 'noises' as that of the D-major symphony, K. 162b, although a few themes of note emerge including one in which the 'Lombardic' rhythm features prominently. The andantino grazioso is of sharply contrasted timbre, due to the muted violins, the change of key to Eb, and the substitution of a pair of flutes for the oboes. This movement is a simple cantilena in AABA form. The lively, jig-like finale which concludes this Dionesian work is pure opera buffa from start to finish.

Copyright © 1979 by Neal Zaslaw