Symphony No. 6 (Mozart)

Music#

The instrumentation for the first performance was two flutes, two oboes, bassoon, two horns, strings, and continuo. For the first time in a symphony, Mozart uses two obligatory viola parts. This is Mozart’s first four-movement symphony, in which he introduces the minuet and trio for the first time, a feature common in many of his symphonies thereafter. The movements are: The Andante movement uses a theme from Mozart’s early Latin opera Apollo et Hyacinthus, K. 38, in which “muted violins sing over pizzicato seconds and divided violas, a ravishing effect”. : \relative c’ \set Staff.midiInstrument = #“french horn” \key f \major \tempo “Allegro” \tempo 4 = 144 f4\f a8. f16 c'4 c c4( a8.) f16 c4 r8 c f8-. r g-. r a-. r bes-. r c4.( a8 bes4) g8( e) f8-. r

First performance#

The symphony was included in a concert arranged by a brother of Sigismund von Schrattenbach, Archbishop of Salzburg, given by the Mozart family (Leopold Mozart, the eleven-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus, and the fifteen-year-old Nannerl) on 30 December 1767 at the Taverna in Brno. A local clergyman recorded: “I attended a musical concert in a house in the city known as the ‘Taverna’, at which a Salzburg boy of eleven years and his sister of fifteen years, accompanied on various instruments by inhabitants of Brno, excited everyone’s admiration.”

Discography#

Below is an incomplete list of recordings of the symphony:

Sources#

• Brown, A. Peter: The Symphonic Repertoire (vol. 2). Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London 2002 . <!–
• Giglberger, Veronika: (Preface), translated by J. Branford Robinson. In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Die Sinfonien I.

External links#

• “Work details, sound file”, Köchel-Verzeichnis, International Mozarteum Foundation
• , Danish Chamber Orchestra, conductor: Ádám Fischer (2013)