Eine kleine Nachtmusik

The Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K. 525 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787. The work is more commonly known by the title Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The German title means "a little serenade", though it is often rendered more literally but less accurately as "a little night music" The work is written for a chamber ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello with optional double bass, but is often performed by string orchestras.

Composition, publication, and reception

The serenade was completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787, around the time Mozart was working on the second act of his opera Don Giovanni. It is not known why it was composed. Hildesheimer (1991, 215), noting that most of Mozart's serenades were written on commission, suggests that this serenade, too, was a commission, whose origin and first performance were not committed to record.

The work was not published until about 1827, long after Mozart's death, by Johann André in Offenbach am Main. It had been sold to this publisher in 1799 by Mozart's widow Constanze, part of a large bundle of her husband's compositions.

Today the serenade is widely performed and recorded; indeed both Jacobson and Klein (2003, 38) and Hildesheimer (1992, 215) opine that the serenade is the most popular of all Mozart's works. Of the music, Hildesheimer writes, "even if we hear it on every street corner, its high quality is undisputed, an occasional piece from a light but happy pen."

Movements

• I. Allegro
• II. Romanze: Andante
• III. Menuetto: Allegretto
• IV. Rondo: Allegro

Allegro

(The first theme)

This first movement is in Sonata Allegro form, which aggressively ascends in a Mannheim rocket theme. The second theme is more graceful and in D major, the dominant key of G major. The exposition closes in D major and is repeated. The development section begins on D major and touches on D minor and C major before the work returns to G major for the recapitulation — a repetition of the exposition with both subjects in the same key, as is conventional. During the recapitulation, it is in G major with the primary themes from the exposition playing. The movement ends in its tonic key, G major.

Romanza

The second movement is a "Romanza", in Andante and contrasting and slower than the first movement. It is in a "section rondo form" and is similar to the sonata rondo form (A–B–A–C–A). The first theme (A) is graceful and lyrical. It is followed by a more rhythmical second theme (B). The first theme returns (A) and is followed by the third theme (C), which is darker than the first two and includes a touch of C minor. The first theme (A) returns to finish the movement. The key is in C major, which is the subdominant of G major.

Menuetto

The third movement is a minuet and trio (A–B–A). The movement is in the tonic key (G major) and is fairly quick with a tempo of Allegretto. It contains two themes, a minuet and a trio. The movement begins with the minuet (A), then the trio theme enters (B), and it ends with the minuet (A). It ends in G major.

Rondo

The fourth and last movement is in sonata rondo form. This finale returns with the liveliness of the first movement. The movement alters between two main themes during the exposition. In the development, it modulates through various keys and ends in G major. The two themes return in the recapitulation and finally ends in the coda, in which the first theme returns.

Possible extra movement

Mozart listed this work as having five movements in his own catalogue of his works. ("Allegro — Minuet and Trio. — Romance, Minuet and Trio and Finale.") The second movement in his listing, a minuet and trio, was long thought lost and no one knows if it was Mozart or someone else who removed it. Musicologist Alfred Einstein suggested, however, that a minuet in Piano Sonata in B-flat, K. 498a, is the missing movement. The sonata's minuet has been recorded in an arrangement for strings made by Jonathan Del Mar for Nimbus Records although music scholars are not certain that Einstein is correct.

Satire

Musicologist Peter Schickele composed a parody of this work named Eine Kleine Nichtmusik, recorded on the album Portrait of P. D. Q. Bach in 1977. The piece consists of Eine kleine Nachtmusik played in its entirety, along with snippets of dozens of famous tunes heard in counterpoint throughout the piece, taken from both American folk music and the classical repertoire. As his alter ego P. D. Q. Bach, Schickele wrote the opera in one irrevocable act A Little Nightmare Music, S. 35 (1983).

References

• Hildesheimer, Wolfgang (1991) Mozart. Translated by Marion Faber. Macmillan. ISBN 0374522987.
• Holoman, D. Kern (1992) Evenings with the orchestra: a Norton companion for concertgoers. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393029360.
• Jacobson, Julius H. (2003) The classical music experience: discover the music of the world's greatest composers, Volume 2, narrated by Kevin Kline, Sourcebooks, Inc. ISBN 1570719500.

External links

•  Serenade in G. Eine kleine Nachtmusik KV 525: Score and critical report (in German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
• Performance in MP3 format at Logos Virtual Library
• MP3 file of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik — First Movement
• Free scores by Eine kleine Nachtmusik at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Eine kleine Nachtmusik — Directory at the Werner Icking Music Archive