Symphony No. 30 (Mozart)

W. A. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote Symphony No. 30 in D major, K. 202/186b[1] in Salzburg, completing it on 5 May 1774.

The work is scored for two oboes, two horns and two trumpets in D (silent in the Andantino and Trio), timpani and strings, but the timpani part has been lost.[2] There has been at least one attempt to reconstruct the timpani part.[3]

\relative c''' { \override Score.NonMusicalPaperColumn #'line-break-permission = ##f \tempo "Molto allegro" \key d \major \time 3/4 <d d, d,>8.\f <d d,>16 q4 r | <a a,>8. q16 q4 r | g4-. fis-. e-. | cis8.\trill( b32 cis) d4 r | d'8\fp( cis b a) a-. a-. | b8( a g fis) fis-. fis-. | }

The work is in 4 movements:

  1. Molto allegro, 3
    4
  2. Andantino con moto (A major), 2
    4
  3. Menuetto and Trio (the latter in G major), 3
    4
  4. Presto, 2
    4

The first movement is in sonata form and opens with a falling, dotted fanfare motif.[4] A transitional section follows which contains a dialogue between violins and bass alternating between loud and soft dynamics and ending with a trill. The second theme a group of the sonata-form structure contains two sections. The first is a ländler scored for two violins against bass while the second is a minuet for the tutti featuring trills on almost every beat.[4] The expositional coda returns to the ländler style. The development focuses on the minuet style with the phrase-lengths elongated. Following the recapitulation, the movement coda returns to this minuet and regularizes its phrase lengths before the final cadence.[4]

In the trio of the minuet, the first violin is syncopated an eighth note ahead of the accompaniment.[4]

The finale starts with a falling dotted fanfare motif similar to the one that starts the opening movement. The answering phrase and the movement's second theme have a contradanse character.[4]

  1. ^ Ludwig Ritter von Köchel, Franz Giegling, Alexander Weinmann & Gerd Sievers, Chronologisch–thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts, 6th ed. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel (1964): 203.
  2. ^ Cliff Eisen, "Symphonies" The Mozart Conpendium, ed. H. C. Robbins Landon. London: Thames & Hudson (1990): p. 261
  3. ^ Robert Dearling. The Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Symphonies (Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), p. 203: "A reconstructed timpani part is provided in which the timpani plays in each of the movements except the slow movement."
  4. ^ a b c d e Brown, A. Peter, The Symphonic Repertoire (vol. 2). Indiana University Press (ISBN 025333487X), pp. 379–381 (2002).