Ridente la calma K.152

An Chloe K.524

Abendempfindung an Laura K.523

Un moto di gioia K579

Although Ridente la calma (Peace smiles on my soul) is far from original Mozart - his part in it was restricted to putting new words to Josef Mislivecek’s canzonetta Il caro mio bene in about 1772 - it is not difficult to understand how it has for so long been accepted as a genuine item in the canon. In its melodic charm and its sensitive setting of the Italian words for soprano voice it has much in common with early Mozart. On stylistic grounds alone there would be little reason to question its authenticity.

Most of Mozart’s thirty or forty songs are in German, however, several of the best of them being prophetic examples of the Lied form later to be perfected by Schubert. If An Chloe (To Chloe), an urbane rondo based on artfully amorous words by Johann Georg Jacobi, doesn’t come into the latter category, Abendempfindung (Evening feelings), a poetic setting of valedictory verses thought to be by Joachim Heinrich Campe, certainly does. Written on the same day as An Chloe in June 1787, Abendempfindung is 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. While it clearly anticipates Schubert, the Strauss of Zueignung is not far away either.

Un moto di gioia (A surge of joy) is, strictly speaking, an aria rather than a song since it was written, probably to words by Lorenzo da Ponte, to replace Susanna’s Venite inginocchiatevi when Le nozze di Figaro was revived with a new cast in Vienna in 1789. In Mozart’s own arrangement with piano accompaniment it is just as delightful outside its operatic context as it is within it.