Divertimento No. 2 in D major, K.131

By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

BORN : January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria

DIED : December 5, 1791, in Vienna

Ω COMPOSED : June 1772

Ω WORLD PREMIERE : Summer 1772, most likely at an outdoor performance

Ω CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE : February 3, 1949, led by Music Director George Szell

Ω ORCHESTRATION : flute, oboe, bassoon, 4 horns, and strings

Ω DURATION : 30 minutes

ONCE MOZART HAD MOVED to Vienna in 1781, he composed no more of the Serenades and Divertimentos that had flowed from his pen during his years in Salzburg. However, between the ages of 13 and 23, he wrote nearly 20 such pieces, most of them longer than the symphonies he was writing in the same period since the aforementioned works conventionally included more than four movements. The Serenades were intended for playing outdoors in the summer months, and the Divertimentos were essentially the same in spirit and in purpose.

One such occasion would be to mark the end of the academic year. The student orchestra would assemble at dusk and march to the Archbishop’s summer residence where a Serenade would be played. Then they would return to the university campus, Kollegienplatz, and perform the Serenade for a second time in front of the assembled professors and students. Mozart’s sister Nannerl wrote in her diary in August 1775: “8th. Rehearsal of my brother’s Finalmusik composed for the professors. 9th. The Finalmusik started from here at 8.30, at the Mirabell it lasted until 9.45, from there to the college it lasted until after 11.00.”

The Divertimento K. 131 was composed in the summer of 1772, when Mozart was 16, probably just after the wellknown Divertimentos for strings alone, K.136–138 (despite their higher Köchel numbering). K. 136, 137, and 138 were probably intended for indoor performance (Divertimento was not Mozart’s title for them), whereas today’s Divertimento K. 131 is scored, unusually, for four horns, strongly suggesting an outdoor purpose. Or perhaps Mozart was taking advantage of a glut of good horn players that year — the composition that followed immediately after, Symphony No. 19, also calls for four horns, which is undoubtedly more than coincidence. The horns are specially featured in the Minuets, and they also introduce the finale and contribute an important flourish on their own at the end of that movement.

Most of the Divertimentos include two Minuets, which is the case here, as is a generous supply of Trios in alternation. In the first Minuet, the first Trio is for the four horns alone, the second Trio for the three woodwinds alone, and the third Trio brings all the winds together.

The second Minuet reverses the balance by giving the horns the lion’s share of the Minuet and the strings a little more favor in the Trios.

The very beautiful Adagio, where horns would have no place, is wisely entrusted to the strings alone, while the opening and closing movements are both constructed on symphonic dimensions.

Even at that young age Mozart was in complete command of his style, derived from the music of his contemporaries, but already marked by some distinctive features: the colorful writing for the flute, for example. His fondness for giving the second violins the same tune as the first violins an octave lower, as at the beginning of the Allegretto movement, is another example. That Allegretto movement is in fact an ideal example of Mozart’s mastery of charm and exquisite craftsmanship at a tempo neither fast nor slow and thus unlikely to feature in a symphony. The Salzburg Divertimentos are a treasure house of the less familiar side of Mozart’s genius.

Macdonald