Serenade for winds in C minor, K.388
Allegro
Andante
Menuetto in canone
Allegro
Almost all the great achievements of Classical chamber music stand in line of descent from the most popular instrumental forms of the mid-18th Century – the Serenade (Nachtmusik) and Divertimento. Usually intended as background music, they could be in anything from 3 to 9 movements. The string divertimento, cultivated by Haydn and later Mozart, evolved into the string quartet, the perfection of domestic music. Wind serenades, usually designed for outdoor performance, evolved more fitfully, reaching a peak of popularity in the early decades of the 19th Century before becoming all but extinct in the Romantic era. But in its brief flowering, the genre did yield a handful of true masterpieces, of which the greatest are Mozart’s three of 1781-82: the "Gran Partita" in B flat for 13 instruments (K.361/370a), the E flat Serenade (K.375) and, most remarkable of all, this Serenade (K.388) in the tragic key of C minor.
That’s the most immediately striking feature of this Serenade; it’s in the dark, personal key of Mozart’s greatest piano concerto and his most serious mass-setting. This is remarkable; a serenade, by its nature, was not meant to be serious or thoughtful music. Played in the open air, it wasn’t even likely that it would be listened to with much attention. It’s true that Mozart never lowered his standards, even when writing background music; the two preceding wind serenades are proof of that. But this alone can’t account for the music of the C minor Serenade; passionate and introspective, it stands comparison with Mozart’s finest minor-key masterpieces. Beside this, another peculiarity of this Serenade - that it lacks the second minuet normal in a wind serenade - seems of secondary importance. The weightiest movement is the sonata form first Allegro. Calling attention to itself with a stark, unison opening theme, the music soon turns inward, sighing chromatic figures adding pathos to the sadness inherent in the choice of key. The Andante, in E flat, is warm and serene, but there is no relaxation in the severe Minuetto in canone - back in C minor, it prefigures the Minuet of the G minor Symphony K.550. Only in the C major Trio section is there relief; the pairs of oboes and bassoons, in Erik Smith’s words, like "the image of two swans reflected in still water". The classical Finale is typically a lighter movement, but not here – a theme and 8 free variations busily go about serious affairs, moving into C major in the fifth variation and at the very close of the whole piece. That fifth variation, opening with a call for the pair of horns and a meltingly sweet clarinet response is just one example of Mozart’s magnificently idiomatic writing, throughout the piece, for his four pairs of instruments. Poignant oboe phrases, running bassoon lines, and pulsating clarinet accompaniments abound, colour, emotion and instrumental writing perfectly tailored to each other.
In all, then, a mature and personal masterpiece – yet still we have no idea why or even when it came into existence. It’s not listed in Mozart’s own post-1784 thematic catalogue and it may be the "Nacht musique" he referred to in a letter to his father in July 1782, but this is uncertain. We do know that Mozart thought so highly of the C minor Serenade that in 1787 he arranged it for string quintet, a favourite form for his most personal thoughts. But for any more than that, the great Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein has put it as well as anyone: "We know nothing about the occasion, nothing about the person who commissioned it, nothing about whether this client desired so explosive a serenade or whether that is simply what poured forth from Mozart’s soul".
R.G.Bratby, 2002
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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