Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

's Horn Concerto No. 1 in D major, K. 412/386b was written in 1791. The work is in two movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

• I. Allegro
• II. Rondo
  Rondo
  Rondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also to a character-type that is distinct from the form...
  
   (Allegro) 6/8

This is one of two horn concerti of Mozart to include bassoons (the other is K. 447), but in this one he "treats them indifferently in the first movement." It is the only one of Mozart's horn concerti to be in D major

D major

D major is a major scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature consists of two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor and its parallel minor is D minor....

 (the rest are in E-flat major) and the only one to have just two movements instead of the usual three.

Although numbered first, this was actually the last of the four to be completed. Compared to the other three concertos, it is shorter in duration (two movements rather than three), and is much simpler in regard to both range and technique, perhaps in a nod to Leitgeb's, the horn player and Mozart's great friend, advanced age and (presumably) reduced capabilities at the time of composition. The second movement was shown by Alan Tyson

Alan Tyson

Alan Walker Tyson was a British musicologist who specialized in studies of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven...

 to have been finished by Mozart's student Franz Xaver Süssmayr

Franz Xaver Süssmayr

Franz Xaver Süssmayr was an Austrian composer, now famous for his completion of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem.-Early life:...

 after Mozart's death.

The autograph score contains, arranged in strategic places throughout the Rondo, a bizarre written narrative perhaps directed to Leutgeb:

For you, Mr. Donkey—Come on—quick—get on with it—like a good fellow—be brave—Are you finished yet?—for you—beast—oh what a dissonance—Oh!—Woe is me!!—Well done, poor chap—oh, pain in the balls!—Oh God, how fast!—you make me laugh—help—take a breather—go on, go on—that's a little better—still not finished?—you awful swine!—how charming you are!—dear one!—little donkey!—ha, ha, ha—take a breath!—But do play at least one note, you prick!—Aha! Bravo, bravo, hurrah!—You're going to torture me for the fourth time, and thank God it's the last—Oh finish now, I beg of you!—Confound it—also bravura?—Bravo!—oh, a sheep bleating—you're finished?—Thank heavens!—Enough, enough!

Maynard Solomon

Maynard Solomon

Maynard Solomon has carried out a multiple career: he was a co-founder of Vanguard Records as well as a music producer, and later became a writer on music.-Career in the recording industry:...

 terms it "a prose description of a farcical sexual encounter".

Discography

Given its duration (no more than 10 minutes), the Concerto is typically grouped with Mozart's other three for the instrument. The foremost example is Dennis Brain

Dennis Brain

Dennis Brain was a British virtuoso horn player and was largely credited for popularizing the horn as a solo classical instrument with the post-war British public...

's November, 1953 recording of the four horn concertos on EMI with The Philharmonia Orchestra

Philharmonia

The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the leading orchestras in Great Britain, based in London. Since 1995, it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the resident orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Corn Exchange, Bedford, as well as The Anvil, Basingstoke...

 conducted by Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...

.