The Piano Menuet K355: An Interesting Study

[dennis]

One of my favorite pastimes is researching why different scholars have dated a Mozart piece to one time or another, or why one believes a piece is authentic while another is convinced there is no way it is a Mozart composition. Sometimes the lesser known the composition, the more differing opinions there are. One of the more interesting in this category is the Menuet in D for Piano K355.

An autograph for this 44 measure composition has never been known, it is never mentioned in any correspondence of the Mozart family and is not listed in Mozart's work catalogue. A perfect composition for all sorts of dating games.

The piece was first published in 1801 by T. Mollo & Co. in Vienna as "Menuetto avec Trio pour le Piano-Forte par W.A. Mozart et M. Stadler". Constanze's musical adviser, Maximilian Stadler, added a b-minor Trio to the Menuet for this edition, which was omitted in later editions.

Köchel assigned the piece to 1780, giving it the number K355. By 1936 Einstein (heavily influenced by the French scholars Wyzewa and St. Foix) believed it showed "all the characteristics of Mozart's most mature style", and moved the composition to 1790, renumbering it 594a. By 1946 (K^3a Einstein had changed his mind and now suggested the Menuet originally had been the 3rd movement of the Piano Sonata in D K576 (dated in Mozart's work catalogue July 1789), thus the reason why the Menuet was not in Mozart's work catalogue. Einstein presumed that by the end of the 1790s a 4-movement Sonata was so unusual Mollo decided to issue the Menuet by itself. [The Sonata K576 was first issued by Bureau d'Arts et d'Industrie in Vienna in 1805.] K⁶ followed Einstein's new dating, giving the Menuet a third number: 576b; however stating the Einstein hypothesis did not sound very credible, but without knowledge of the autograph could neither be championed nor refuted.

Thus three different datings and three different Köchel numbers. But there is more. Others have given opinions on dating this piece. In 1966 Ernst Oster also cast aside Einstein's idea of the Menuet being part of K576, believing it "highly unlikely" Mozart would have included a short Menuet without a Trio in a Sonata of the length of K576. In fact Oster did not believe anything in the work pointed to a late period in Mozart's work. He wrote the work's chromaticism, its sudden dissonances and certain contrapuntal devices appear in some of his much earlier works. The strange diversity of texture seems to deny the possibility it was written this late. He agreed with Walther Siegmund-Schultze's 1957 article [which I have not read] that the piece was written earlier than 1790. Both Siegmund-Schultze and Oster believed K355 was a "Menuet study", or an "experiment". This would account for some "compositional weaknesses not usually to be found in Mozart". Oster even doubted if the last 12 measures of the main part were by Mozart, but completed by Stadler for publication. All in all he thought the piece "somewhat labored". Oster felt the Menuet was written around 1782, and associated with the other experiments of that period.

In the same year (1966) Paul Badura-Skoda published an article on K355 in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Badura-Skoda believed the Menuet had all the attributes of a late Mozart work. The bold chromaticism showed the piece in immediate proximity to the last String Quartets, and he praised the piece's "delicate counterpoint". All in all "the piece showed a grace and a serenity as are only characteristic to the later Mozart". Were Badura-Skoda and Oster talking of the same Menuet??!! Badura-Skoda also sided with Einstein on the 4-movement K576 hypothesis.

But our story gets better.

In 1982 Wolfgang Plath edited the piece for the NMA. In the Forward to this volume Plath states the Menuet (more later on the Trio) is certainly by Mozart, and clearly later Mozart, but it is impossible to determine a definite year. Plath however had doubts the Menuet is for Piano. He questioned whether the contents of the piece were not "absolutely chamber musical, String quartet-like". He believed it possible this was a quartet piece transcribed for piano, perhaps by Stadler. Plath agreed it was possible Mozart did not finish the composition and Stadler did. Mozart perhaps stopped in measure 32. He confessed these were "speculations that at best form a probability, but can not be proven".

Of interest is also an anecdote of a conversation that appeared in England in 1815 of a person who knew Mozart. In this story a Viennese gentleman showed W.T. Parke the copy of a Menuet and Trio composed by Mozart. According to this story Mozart was accosted in the streets of Vienna by a beggar, who made it appear he was related to Mozart. As Mozart had no money he took the beggar to a coffee house and drawing some lines on a sheet of paper composed this Menuet and Trio. He told the beggar to take the composition to his publisher, where he got 5 guineas for it. The piece printed with this anecdote is K355.

Regarding the Trio published in the 1801 edition. As the title states, it is by Maxmilian Stadler. Badura-Skoda calls it "a very pretty, stormy, romantic b-minor piece that unfortunately was never published in the modern issues". Of course Oster called it a "second rate composition, which was rightly omitted in later editions".

Paul Badura-Skoda's wife, Eva, (a Haydn and Dittersdorf specialist) found an unknown piano piece in the Kremsier Monastery (then in the CSSR) with the pencil remark "Mozart" by an unknown hand at the top. The indication "Menuetto da capo" at the end makes it clear it is a Trio to an unknown Menuet. While Eva Badura-Skoda did not take the remark "Mozart" seriously, Paul saw similarities to the Trio of the Menuet in the Piano Sonata in A-major K331, along with some other traits of Mozart. Paul B-Skoda certainly did not claim to prove the Trio belongs to K355, or is even by Mozart, but laid out the possibility.

To finish the K355 saga, Tchaikovsky used K355 as the 2nd movement in his Mozartiana Suite, in which he paid homage to the composer he admired above all others.

Dennis Pajot