Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. (1756–1791)
"Partitions des cinq principaux Quintetti pour deux Violons, deux Altos, et Violoncelle, composés par W. A. Mozart. No. 2." [K. 515]
Offenbach am Main: Chez Jean André. [ca. 1824]. 8vo 39 pp. [PN] 4792. Lithograph score for Mozart's String Quartet No. 3 in C major, K. 515. A superb copy of the reissue of the 1800 edition. RISM MM 5982a. Very fine condition in original blue wrappers."Not until the spring of 1787, after he had achieved mastery of the string quartet medium in the six ‘Haydn’ Quartets and the lone ‘Hoffmeister’ Quartet, K499, did Mozart return to the string quintet with a contrasted pair of works, K515 and 516. Although he had recently triumphed with Figaro in Prague, prompting the commission for Don Giovanni, this was a troubled period for the composer. His glory days as virtuoso-impresario were over. His father was now gravely ill, and his ‘best and dearest friend’ Count August von Hatzfeld, a fine amateur violinist, had recently died at the age of thirty-one. In April Mozart and his wife were obliged to leave their lavish apartment in the Domgasse for a cheaper one in the Viennese suburbs, a move acerbically noted by Leopold in a letter to his daughter Nannerl—his last recorded words about his son.
Mozart’s chief sources of income were now his modest salary as court Kammermusicus and the fees he earned from pupils and from the sale of manuscript copies and publication rights of his works, mainly chamber music. Purchasers of manuscript copies traditionally enjoyed privileged use of a work or set of works for a fixed period before publication. But with Mozart already being branded a ‘difficult’ composer in some quarters, he found few takers for the string quintets K515 and 516 and the quintet arrangement, K406, of the C minor Wind Serenade (eighteenth-century chamber works were usually sold in sets of three or six). After advertising the three string quintets in manuscript copies ‘finely and correctly written’, for the sum of four ducats, in the Wiener Zeitung of 2 April 1788, Mozart was forced to make the humiliating announcement shortly afterwards that: ‘As the number of subscribers is still very small, I find myself obliged to postpone publication of my three quintets until 1 January 1789.’ Mozart eventually sold the three works to the firm of Artaria, who issued K515 in 1789, K516 in 1790 and K406 in 1792, the year after the composer’s death." (Richard Wigmore, Hyperion Records)
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