- It’s the middle one of Mozart’s last three symphonies.
- Like the 39th (discussed here) and 41st (Jupiter), it was written in the summer of 1788.
- No one know why Mozart didn’t write any symphonies during the last three years of his life.
- Unlike the 39th, which is full of peaceful, flowing melodies, the 40th is made of dramatic twists and turns.
- It’s one of the very few Mozart symphonies written in a minor key.
- The first movement is a perfect example of sonata form.
- It consists of the four standard movements of a classical symphony:
i. Allegro ii. Andante iii. Menuetto iv. Allegro
Each is in sonata form, except for the usual ABA of the minuet and trio.
- The only performance of it where there’s a record of Mozart being present was so bad that he had to leave the room.
- The sturm und drang of 40th kept it popular even among the Romantics who dismissed most of Mozart’s work as empty formalism.
- It sounds like this:
https://youtu.be/p8bZ7vm4_6M
4 thoughts on “Tenshot: Mozart’s 40th Symphony”
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My mnemonic for remembering the melody of the first movement is “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Mozart!”
Someone told me that, well sang that to me, once and it stuck. Those brain cells are dead now.
I both get the point of the Romantics, and think that they are silly. This formalism is definitely not empty, but the audience didn’t necessarily attach to it the same way then. It took the work of the Romantics to teach listeners to look for a more emotional connection to the music that was customarily played in courts of nobles not looking to stir things up.Report
I’ll do my best to forget those words, lest I hear them every time, like:
This is the symphony
That Schubert wrote and never finished.Report
One of my favorites.Report
Perfect cookie baking music. Thanks.Report