Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...
's String Quartet No. 15 in D minor,
K. 421/417b is the second of his
quartets dedicated to Haydn and the only one of the set in a
minor key. Though undated in the
autograph, it is believed to have been completed in 1783, while his wife
Constanze Mozart was in labour with her first child Raimund. Constanze stated that the rising string figures in the second movement corresponded to her cries from the other room.
Structure
Performances of the whole string quartet vary in length from 23 to 33 minutes. It is in four
movements:
# Allegro moderato
# Andante (
F major)
# Menuetto and Trio (the latter in
D major
D major is a major scale based on D (musical note), D, consisting of the pitches D, E (musical note), E, F♯ (musical note), F, G (musical note), G, A (musical note), A, B (musical note), B, and C♯ (musical note), C. Its key signature has two S ...
) – Allegretto
# Allegretto ma non troppo – Più allegro
The first movement is characterized by a sharp contrast between the
aperiodicity of the first
subject group, characterized by
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...
as "prose-like", and the "wholly periodic" second subject group. In the Andante and the Menuetto, "normal expectations of phraseology are confounded." The main part of the Menuetto is in
minuet and trio sonata form
The sonata form (also sonata-allegro form or first movement form) is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of t ...
, while "the contrasting major-mode Trio ... is ... almost embarrassingly lightweight on its own ...
utmakes a wonderful foil to the darker character of the Minuet."
The last movement is a set of
variations. The movement ends in a
Picardy third.
Arrangements
An arrangement of the Menuetto and Trio for violin and piano is in
Suzuki
is a Japanese multinational mobility manufacturer headquartered in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Shizuoka. It manufactures automobiles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), outboard motor, outboard marine engines, wheelchairs and a va ...
Violin Volume 7.
Notes and references
Notes
References
Sources
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Further reading
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External links
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Performance of String Quartet No. 15by the
Borromeo String Quartet at the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in
MP3 format
{{Authority control
#15
Compositions in D minor
1783 compositions
Music dedicated to students or teachers