K338 The Symphony in C and Menuet K409 MozartForum Articles

Dennis Pajot

Mozart's Symphony in C K338 (Nr. 34) consists of 3 movements (Allegro vivace; Andante di molto piu tosto allegretto; Finale.Allegro vivace), and is dated August 29, 1780 in Salzburg. His sister, Nannerl, reported Wolfgang played at court on September 2, 3, 4, 1780; so it is likely this symphony was first heard at one of these concerts. Some older authors/researchers believed Mozart's report in an April 11, 1781 letter that a symphony was performed with an orchestral setting of 40 Violins, 10 Violas, 8 Cellos and 10 Doublebasses, with all the winds doubled and the Bassoons even tripled, referred to K338. However this now is believed to refer to the "Paris" Symphony.

Having heard the symphony performed it is probable Mozart had some reservations on tempo in this work. At some point he added "vivace" to the original "Allegro" in the first movement. The middle movement in the autograph is headed "Andante di molto", but when Mozart sent this symphony to the Prince von Fürstenberg in Donaueschingen in 1786 he added "piu tosto allegretto" in the concertmaster's part.

In Mozart's autograph the first movement is followed by 14 fully scored measures of a Menuet movement. These measures are on the back page of the conclusion of the 1st movement, and crossed out--the remaining page(s) has been torn from the autograph. Thus there is no way of knowing if Mozart finished this Menuet or if it was fragmentary, how much further he composed. Friedrich Schnapp in the 1970 volume of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe believed Mozart completed the movement and 2 sheets were removed from the autograph. If each sheet contained 10 to 14 measures, thus 30 to 42 measures would be missing--Schnapp reasoning the last side of sheet two would be empty or not filled up.

A foreign hand (George Nissen or J.A. Andre?) placed the year 1782 (later deleted) on the autograph of the Menuet K409. J.A. Andre had this to say about the Menuet K409: "It appeared that Mozart had written this Menuet as an interlude for his 1782 in Vienna given Academies, as in the whole decade of the 1780s it was customary to present such musical pieces as interludes in the concerts".

The idea that the Menuet K409 could have been written to be added to the Symphony K338 goes back to George Nissen, who believed at least time-wise this connection was possible. Alfred Einstein again took this up and hypothesized Mozart might have expanded the Symphony K338 with K409 to be played in the May 26, 1782 concert in the Augarten in Vienna. Otto Erich Deutsch then took this hypothesis as fact in his Documentary Biography. Einstein got past the problem of the differing instrumentation of the Symphony and Menuet (the Menuet includes two Flutes, not called for in the Symphony) by stating Mozart could have written addition parts for the 2 Flutes for the outer movements for Vienna (even conceivably to the slow movement). Einstein re-numbered the Menuet K383f.

In the 1970 Symphonies volume of NMA, Friedrich Schnapp raised important objections to this hypothesis. One was that Mozart could not have added Flute parts to the outer movements without altering the Oboe parts. There is no trace of such re-working. He compared what we would have with K409 inserted into the Symphony is equal to playing one movement of the g-minor Symphony with the added Clarinets and the remaining movements without them. Schnapp lists 5 objections to K409 being any part of the Symphony K338:

1) As the original Menuet to the Symphony was probably completed, there was no reason to replace it with a new Menuet with different instrumentation.
2) In the autograph of K338 there is no indication of the insertion of a new Menuet, or Flutes in the other movements.
3) There is no remark in the autograph of K409 to show it should serve as an insert into a symphony.
4) In no manuscript set of parts from either the 18th or 19th Century for the Symphony are Flutes furnished, or the Menuet present.
5) No Menuet in any Mozart Symphony reaches the length of K409 (89) measures. The Symphony K338 itself would have been overwhelmed by this Menuet.

In the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe that contained the Menuet K409 (1978), Wolfgang Plath concurred with Schnapp, except he could not effectively place the Menuet as an "interlude" to one of the Augarten concerts. In addition to its length, Plath used as criteria the prominence of the winds in the trio for an independent performance. Plath thought the 1782 could be the correct date.

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K338 The Symphony in C and Menuet K409

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