Written by Anna Vorhes

Born
January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria

Died
December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria

Instrumentation
Strings only

Duration
16 minutes

Composed
August 1787 (while working on Don Giovanni)

World Premiere
Unknown.  We don't know if it was ever performed during the composer's lifetime.

Something interesting to listen for
This serenade includes a plethora of melodies.  Mozart was at the top of his compositional career and melodies flowed with ease.  In this four movement work, the composer uses melody to outline form.  He begins with a sonata form first movement, with the clear contrast between first and second themes.  The first theme has wide leaps that strings do so well.   The contrasting second theme has an intricate downward trend.  Once the melodies have been presented in the exposition, the development plays with these melodies.  Listen for the recapitulation where you get the sense of starting at the beginning again.  The slower second movement has three melodies that intertwine as a rondo.  Melody A comes back again and again between melodies B and C: ABACA.  The third movement is a dance movement, minuet with its partner trio.  The minuet has two main melodies, followed by the trio with two more melodies.  Then the two minuet melodies return one more time.  Finally, the last movement erupts with even more melodies.  To be sure you really hear all the melodies, Mozart asks the orchestra to repeat each section of the last movement.  Enjoy listening for melodies to appear and reappear through Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Program Notes

This popular serenata notturno (to use the common term of the day) is a bit of a mystery.  Many of the things we know about this composition are from Mozart's catalog of his own works. He indicates he wrote a serenata notturno (night serenade, or in English "a little night music", or in Mozart's German "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik") as an entry into his catalog on August 10, 1787.  He shows the work having five movements, with a second movement that was another minuet and trio in addition to the third movement minuet.  Did the composer remove the first minuet and trio? Did it get lost before his wife turned the bundle of music, that included this, over to the publisher years after the composer's death? We don't know.  We also don't know why he wrote this light and popular piece for strings.  We don't know if it was performed during his lifetime.

During the summer of 1787, Mozart was working on the second  movement of Don Giovanni, the middle of the three operas he composed with Da Ponte as librettist.  With its dark plot, the opera premiered in October 1787, in Prague.  Where did this cheerful short serenade fit? One clue might be that Mozart himself talked about creating his most serious works when he was happy, and his happiest works during his most depressed times.  Could that be a clue? Was he overwhelmed by the complexity of Don Giovanni and needed to toss off something cheerful to counteract writing the demise of the Don? Whatever the reason for his interruption of his opera composition, we are left with a memorable composition that many of us whistle or hum for days after hearing.

This work was not published during Mozart's lifetime.  It seems to have been part of a bundle of scores his widow Constanza sold to publishing house Breitkopf and Hartel.  The first publication was in 1827.  The original second movement was lost by the time it was published.  Serenades were generally pieces for parties, usually performed outdoors by brass or wind instruments.  Mozart rarely wrote this type of music without a commission, yet we can find no evidence that this music was for a particular event or to fulfill a commission.

What Mozart composed is almost a miniature symphony without winds or brass.  This is written for strings only.  The four existing movements follow the format that Mozart and his peers made the standard for a symphony.  But he indicates that this had a fifth movement, which various conductors and composers have tried to reconstruct.  The melodic material and the cheerful viewpoint make this one of Mozart's most famous and most performed works, even with the sense of mystery surrounding it.