A Frolic through Mozart's Symphony No 40
The Backstory
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550
I'm Mozart, and I'm happy to share with you the backstory of my Symphony No 40. You'll learn how this symphony came to life in the summer of 1788, in just a few weeks, with nobody asking me for it. If you'd like to recognize my pieces when they play, my fellow composers and I teach that on this site, so open the Trainer and try it.
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Three Symphonies And One Warm Summer
In the summer of 1788 I wrote three symphonies in less than two months, and this one is the middle child. I finished No. 39 on 26 June and No. 41 on 10 August, so the symphony you're asking about sits neatly between them. I entered it in my work catalog on 25 July, a bit like a baker writing down a fresh batch. That's a lot of music for a few weeks, but the ideas were coming and I let them.Nobody Asked, So I Did
Nobody commissioned this symphony, and I had no deadline hanging over me. My own catalog confirms that it came together within weeks. People like to ask why I wrote three symphonies that summer, and the honest answer is that nobody knows. Since no commission is documented, any reason you hear is only a guess.A Year That Asked A Lot
I won't pretend 1788 was an easy year, because I was in financial difficulty. I had also recently lost a baby daughter, which weighed on everything else. My opera Don Giovanni had been received only lukewarmly in Vienna that spring. Even so, I wrote about 30 new works that year, and you may hear something heavy in this symphony, though I'll leave that for you to decide.Dressed In A Minor Key
This symphony is in G minor, and a minor key is simply the shadowed sound, the one that feels more serious than a bright major key. I wrote only two symphonies in a minor key, so this one is a rare visitor in my catalog. The opening is unusually quiet and agitated, which is a surprising way to begin when audiences of my day expected something grand. Instead of a fanfare, you get a hush with a worried heartbeat inside it.Four Courses, One Meal
A symphony is divided into movements, which work like the courses of a dinner: each one is separate, but together they make a single meal. Mine opens with the Molto allegro, a very fast first course, and follows it with the Andante, which moves at an easy walking pace. The third course is the Menuetto, marked Allegretto, a dance with a stern face, and the last is the Allegro assai, which is very quick indeed. The whole meal takes about 26 to 27 minutes, and it ends in G minor, so there's no sunny dessert.The Clarinets Arrive Late
This symphony exists in two versions, and the difference is who gets invited to the party. The first version has no clarinets, only a flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and the strings. In a later revision I added two clarinets, probably in 1791, though the date is only somewhere between 1788 and 1791. The changes suggest I had a performance in mind, but that, too, is not certain.Did I Ever Hear It?
It's not certain that I ever heard this symphony performed, and I'll admit that's an odd thing to say about my own work. The first documented performance took place in April 1791 in Vienna, given by the Tonkünstler-Societät and conducted by Antonio Salieri. A letter from 1802 hints at a poor performance at Baron van Swieten's house that I may have attended. If I was there, I hope I kept my face polite.A Manuscript On Its Travels
My handwritten score did not vanish, and that makes me happy. After I was gone, my widow sold it around 1799 to the publisher Johann Anton André. Later Princess Anna of Hesse bought it and gave it to Brahms in 1864. Brahms left it to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, which holds it today.Brahms Reaches For A Pencil
Brahms did not just own my score, he studied it closely. He found a note that I had written wrongly, and he crossed it out in pencil. It's a little humbling to be corrected by a famous composer decades after the fact. Still, I'm glad someone read my pages that carefully.Two Ways To Hear It
In the early 19th century this symphony became popular and highly esteemed, and listeners loved its romantic qualities. Robert Schumann heard Grecian lightness and grace in it, which surprises me a little given the key. Charles Rosen called it a work of passion, violence and grief, and I can understand that view as well. I think both of them are right, because the music can hold lightness and sorrow at the same time.---
So, did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Symphony No 40? I hope it gave you a feel for that summer of 1788, when the music came quickly and nobody was waiting for it. It's a strange thing to look back on a piece like this. Nobody knows for certain whether I ever heard it performed, yet it kept finding listeners long after I was gone. Brahms even owned my handwritten manuscript for a time, and he studied it so closely that he corrected a single wrong note in pencil. I find it moving that people have gone on caring about every detail of these pages. There's still a lot more to discover in this symphony. The four movements each have their own character, from the restless opening to the stormy finale, and there's also the matter of the clarinets I added later. Listening is the best way to take all of that in, because the sighing tunes and sudden shifts of mood make much more sense when you hear them. If you'd like to go further, I invite you to click on the links provided and keep exploring Symphony No 40. I'd be glad to have you along.