String Quartet in C major, K.157

On their way from Salzburg to Milan for the first performances of Lucio Silla in 1772, Mozart and his father had to spend the night at Bolzano. Neither of them liked the place - it was a “pigsty” according to Wolfgang - and it is not at all unlikely that the young composer’s motives for writing a quartet in this “gloomy town” were indeed, as Leopold told his wife, “to while away the time.” That quartet might, on the other hand, have been the beginning of a more deliberate strategy. Certainly, the other five string quartets Mozart wrote on this particular trip were consciously designed to go with it in a coherent set: taken in the order in which Mozart himself numbered them, the six quartets represent in their respective tonalities a consistent cycle of fifths.

Unlike the next (and similarly cyclical) set of six quartets, which Mozart was to write under the influence of Haydn’s Op.17 and Op.20 in Vienna a year later, these Milanese quartets are frankly Italian in style. Modelled apparently on examples by Sammartini, they are all in three movements and, while there is much melodic charm in them, there is little counterpuntal interest. They lack nothing in textural variety or colour, however. In the first movement of the Quartet in C major, for example, the second subject, which passes its cheerful theme from first violin down through the whole ensemble, is delightfully scored, and so is the succeeding passage with its rapid fluctuations between forte and piano. The enterprising development section ignores neither of these features.

There is also a prominent operatic element in these works. The C minor slow movement of K.157 begins as a first-violin aria with just a hint of the cavatina Mozart was to write for Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro fourteen years later. Although the scoring is too sensitive to exclude the other instruments from sharing the melodic interest, an intimately expressive quality prevails throughout. As for the Presto finale, with its bizarre syncopations and its abrupt ending, it is a witty little rondo in buffo style.

Gerald Larner©