Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s final three symphonies, Nos. 39, 40, and 41, were composed in nine weeks during the summer of 1788. Even for Mozart this rate of output is remarkable, especially given the high quality of all three works.
Nothing is definitively known about why Mozart composed these symphonies, although it is likely Mozart wrote them for a series of concerts he planned to present in Vienna in the summer of 1788, or for an upcoming trip to London (which he never made), or perhaps both. There are no surviving records to prove these concerts in fact took place, but the amazing speed with which Mozart composed these symphonies suggests he was facing an imminent deadline.
Classical period composers like Mozart and Joseph Haydn rarely conveyed personal emotional feelings in their music; that convention did not become common until the early 19th century. However, the Symphony No. 40 can be heard as a reflection of Mozart’s state of mind in the summer of 1788. He was in dire straits, financially and personally. Desperate for money, Mozart wrote a series of anguished letters to his friend and fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg, pleading for loans. More devastating still was the death of Mozart’s six-month-old daughter Theresa, on June 29. One day after he completed Symphony No. 39, Mozart wrote to Puchberg, “I have done more work in ten days … than in two months … and were I not visited so frequently by black thoughts (which I must forcibly banish), I should do still better.”
Many listeners discern a distinctly personal voice in this music. There are a number of unexpected harmonic shifts, achieved by means of chromatic transitions wholly outside the bounds of standard Classical harmonic conventions. Mozart’s “black thoughts” are most clearly linked with the G minor key of Symphony No. 40. Minor-key symphonies were not usual for him; additionally, Classical symphonic convention dictates that when a work begins in a minor key, it modulates to a related major key by the final movement. The opening movement remains firmly in G minor throughout, as do the Menuetto (its accompanying Trio is in major) and the Finale. The mood of the Andante, in E-flat major, is calmer and more reflective, offsetting the agitation of the other three movements, but its development section also ranges far afield from the usual spectrum of Classical harmonies. In places, the Andante explores heart-rending dissonances that suggest great anguish and outpourings of grief. The gentle descending hiccups in the winds and upper strings could be interpreted as sobs, while the agitation of the outer movements hints at inner turmoil.
© Elizabeth Schwartz