2 Lieder

An Chloe K.524 (1787)

Abendempfindung an Laura K.523 (1787)

An Chloe and Abendempfindung an Laura were completed on the same day in June 1787, at about the same time as Mozart was working on Don Giovanni. For what singer or what occasion they were written we do not know but it is very likely that they were intended as a contrasting pair and, in fact, they were published together by Artaria in 1789. An Chloe is a delightul little rondo perfectly suited, in its urbane Viennese style, to the artful words of Johann Georg Jacobi. If the Cherubino of Le Nozze di Figaro (first performed only a year earlier) had a Viennese cousin this is what he would sing. Abendempfindung an Laura, on the other hand, is so serious that it has stimulated speculation that it might be a reflection on the recent death of the composer’s father. Although that seems unlikely, considering that he was also in a mood to write An Chloe, Abendempfindung remains one of the most inspired and most expressive of Mozart’s songs – through-composed and thoroughly spontaneous both in the freely melodious inflections of the vocal line and in the unpredictable directions taken by the harmonies. The continuity is in the piano part, which sustains the atmosphere of the dying day in its legato arpeggios and supports the construction by means of its recurring cadential figure.