When Mozart returned home to Salzburg on March 13, 1773, both he and his father Leopold knew that his years of travel as a child prodigy were over. Mozart, now aged seventeen, had in his tours seen all the great cities of Europe, including Munich, Vienna, Brussels, Paris, London, Antwerp, Zürich, Milan, Rome, and many others. After visiting these cities and receiving the praise of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, King Louis XV of France, and King George III of Great Britain, Salzburg and its self-important archbishop seemed rather provincial. Exhausting his limited opportunities locally, Mozart travelled in autumn 1777 to Mannheim, accompanied by his mother. This city was renowned for its orchestra, which the English music critic, Charles Burney, famously called “an army of generals.” Now in Mannheim in 1777, he would meet and befriend many of the orchestra’s outstanding players, including its principal oboist Friedrich Ramm. Mozart and Ramm became quick friends, and, in his letters home, Mozart praised Ramm’s expressivity of tone. That summer, while still in Salzburg, Mozart wrote his Oboe Concerto for Ramm who premiered and. Though Mozart would make many connections while in Mannheim, he had no success finding a new post.

In the meantime, the Mannheim court and its orchestra had relocated to Munich. The friends and connections Mozart had made in Mannheim were now in this city, and he received in summer 1780 a commission for a new opera Idomeneo. That November, Mozart travelled to Munich to oversee the production, and there he was reunited with Ramm, and the Oboe Quartet was written shortly after. Oboes of that era had only two or three keys, making certain pitches much more difficult to play than others. Mozart’s Quartet demands a clarity of tone throughout the range of the oboe and, without the many keys of the modern oboe to ease tone production, eighteenth-century oboists had to possess incredible skill.

The Quartet is in three movements, according to the traditional fast-slow-fast pattern. In the sonata-form first movement Allegro, the oboe introduces the movement’s delightful first theme. At first the oboe clearly predominates over the strings, though their interactions will soon become more balanced. The transition to the second theme is subtle, occurring through the repetition of brief motives in both the oboe and strings. The development begins as a contrapuntal dialogue, initiated by the strings. The oboe joins in before it launches a darker solo section with some tonal ambiguity, followed shortly by return of the first theme. The second movement, Adagio is only thirty-seven bars in length. The strings open this movement, though they promptly recede into an accompaniment role when the oboe enters with its painfully expressive line. The movement, in ternary (or song) form with the oboe soaring over the strings in a truly operatic way, suggesting that Idomeneo was still fresh in the composer’s mind. The Rondeau. Allegro possesses a joyful hunting atmosphere with playful interaction between the oboe and the strings. After this pleasant game of chase, the work ends unassumingly and without fanfare.