A few of Mozart's Last Masterpieces

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Don't misunderstand me: I do not mean to suggest either that Mozart wrote just a few masterpieces, or that they were all written at the end of his life.  I just want to talk about a few late ones.

The first is the Piano Concerto no. 23 in A major, Köchel 488.  This beautiful piece wafts in, like a soft breeze, and comes to an end like a happy smile, with one of his most modest codas.  (The "coda" is the last several chords and gestures at the end of a work, the blustery ending part which, in a Beethoven symphony, for instance, seems to go on for years...)

Here it is:

Note the opening few notes, the falling third as we describe it, from the fifth note of the scale to the third.  In this particular performance Malcom Bilson plays a fortepiano,  a gentler-voiced precursor to the modern piano, more appropriate to piano and orchestral pieces of this period, especially with a period orchestra, as that of the English Baroque Soloists (John Eliot Gardiner).  Note: this recording has been performed in a transitional style to bridge Baroque practice (the keyboard instrument plays throughout the work, and if it is a featured solo instrument, it is given special prominence during solo passages) and Classical practice (the solo keyboard sounds only during passages when it is explicitly scored for).  The constantly sounding fortepiano gives the music a certain "crunchiness" that might sound peculiar to those not accustomed to it.

This work is not only one of Mozart's most brilliant and beloved creations, but a jewel of all Western Art of all ages.  Though it does not contain an expression of great sorrow, or holy joy, it still manages to capture our ability to find pleasure in ordinary things.  John Eliot Gardiner describes Mozart's music as showing us what it means to be human, and I completely agree with this view.  The slow middle movement is lovely, with even painfully beautiful moments that interrupt its overall tranquility.

The same falling third is the opening figure of another beloved work of Mozart's, namely the immortal Clarinet Concerto in A, Köchel 622.  Equally well known and equally frequently played, the Clarinet Concerto has a wider range of emotions than the Piano Concerto. (Mozart wrote at least 27 piano concertos, but only one clarinet concerto has come down to us.)  The work ends with a definitely bubbly movement, in startling contrast to the problems with health, money and marriage that Mozart was thought to have been experiencing at the time at which the piece was written.  Mr Köchel's catalog is generally in chronological order or composition or publication--I'm not sure which, but we cannot really assume that the Clarinet concerto is as much a later work than the piano concerto as their respective catalog numbers would suggest.


The clarinet concerto too, has a beautiful slow (middle) movement which is simply gorgeous.  It comes out clearly, how much Mozart loved to write these slow movements, though the structure of the faster movements displayed his structural genius in more obvious ways.  In a slow movement it is impossible to hide behind structure, and your melodic inventiveness and your harmonic skill are painfully or happily exposed, as the case may be.  The falling orchestral "chorus" intersperses each solo essay by the clarinet, and Mozart uses poignantly different harmonies for the repeats.

At about the same time, Mozart also wrote his Clarinet Quintet, Köchel 581, for clarinet and string quartet.  This masterpiece (numbered between the other two, for whatever that's worth) features the same opening falling third as the other two works mentioned earlier.  Again, there is no fuss or drama here; it seems a pleasant conversation among friends, written by someone who had nothing to prove, except maybe that it is possible to write a perfectly satisfactory quintet with a clarinet as guest with a string quartet.


The slow movement of this one is every bit as delightful as those of the other two works; maybe even more lovely.  The intimacy possible with a string quartet is hard to compare with anything else. The phrases seem almost vocal, speech-like, earnest, ardent, eager, conversational.  Listen to the commentary by the string quartet to the opening statement of the clarinet!  Such perfect agreement!  The remaining two movements are jolly to the point of rowdiness, but that was Mozart all over.  Part of the wonder of the man was how such buffoonery and such ineffable elegance could reside within the same person.

These are among the greatest compositions within classical music of the past four centuries, but it is almost impossible to make a list of The Great Compositions of Mozart.  If you like these, there are many, many more, even if you want to give time for only the very best: the last five symphonies, the last five piano concertos, all the string quartets, the operas (most definitely Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, Cosi Fan Tutte), the masses, especially the Great Mass in C minor and the Requiem in D minor, the piano sonatas (especially K310, K330, my favorites); the five violin concertos, The Concerto for Flute and Harp K 299, the Gran Partita, K361, The Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola K 364, and The Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds K 287b.

[Note: the fact of the two opening notes being the same for the three works featured in this post should not be given any special significance; I merely mention it as a curiosity.  The opening themes of compositions of this period were constructed from arpeggios and scales, and it is easy to see how this particular choice of a germ of a theme would appeal to Mozart.]

Archimedes