Symphony, K. 76 (Mozart)

Origins and authorship#

• Otto Jahn, in his Mozart biography, refers to the discovery of 20 symphonies attributed to Mozart in the archives of Breitkopf & Härtel. Köchel agreed with this view and considered K. 76 authentic Mozart. Jahn’s write-up was based on the “Mozartiana Collection” of Johann André, in which ten of the aforementioned 20 symphonies are included (indicating that they were considered authentic), because they were sent directly from Constanze Mozart, Mozart’s widow. Two of these works are symphonic versions of the overtures to Lucio Silla, K. 135 and Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126, increasing the likelihood that the other eight works are also authentic. Jahn dated K. 76 as “177?”, while Köchel dated it as “perhaps 1769”.
• Wyzewa and Saint-Foix (1912) dated the symphony between 1 December 1766 and 1 March 1767. They compared the first movement of the symphony with the overture to Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, K. 35, and Mozart’s earlier symphonies and concluded that K. 76 was written before the overture, perhaps in December 1766. They considered it to be “written with great care for his teacher and compatriots to prove what he had learned on the grand tour (to London, Paris, Holland, etc.)” However, Zaslaw stated that the minuet is relatively of much greater maturity than the primitive other three movements and was probably composed later. Viennese symphonies would almost always have four movements and Mozart would often adjust three-movement symphonies he composed for other places by later adding a minuet and trio, so Einstein concluded that minuet and trio was composed for a trip to Vienna.
• Gerhard Allroggen and Cliff Eisen suspect the true author of the symphony to be Leopold Mozart due to stylistic features. Zaslaw however speaks generally of “weakness”, the pizzicato passages in the second movement as “cumbersome” and the harmony in the minuet “clumsy”.