WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
(1756–1791)

Divertimento in D major, K. 136
(1772)

By the age of 16, when he wrote this D-major divertimento, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had already spent more than two years away from his home town of Salzburg in Austria. He had lived in London and Paris and traveled throughout Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. In addition to giving concerts at court in order to fill his family’s pockets with gold rings, snuffboxes, and watches, he met many of the famous musicians of the time and had opportunities to study and hear their music. Musical styles and traditions were different in every country, and Mozart’s early compositions are often case studies of where his travels had most recently taken him. He wrote the three divertimentos, K. 136–138, in Salzburg, after the second of three extended trips to Italy. Not surprisingly, the Italian influence on Mozart’s writing—in particular, that of the Italian sinfonia—is strong. Indeed, K. 136—with its lyrical, independent first-movement violin line; gentle slow movement; and playful finale —is sometimes referred to (without firm evidence) as one of Mozart’s three early “Salzburg symphonies.