Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus – K. 313 – Flute Concerto in G Major

If one has a good edition of this piece, it is really quite playable.  The suggestions listed below reference the Henle Urtext of the piece.

Movement I – Allegro maestoso

• Measure Three:  There’s a trill on the fourth beat.  You should begin on the main note since you are already coming from the upper neighbor.  Instead of discussing each ornament in this concerto, suffice it to be said that you should make clear decisions on the ornaments before playing this piece.  Listen to recordings. Read Mozart’s father’s Violinschule.  Do something to be able to defend your choices.
• Measure Twenty-Seven:  Take the treble-clef G on the downbeat in your left hand.  This will allow you time to prepare the right hand for the beginning of its melody instead of having to leap.

Movement II – Adagio ma non troppo

•  Measure One: Although the last eighth note of this measure looks like it is contained within the initial forte marking, it actually belongs to the piano marking that starts at measure two.  This dynamic change marks the beginning of a melody played by the flute/violins and the final eighth note of measure one belongs to this melody.  Be sure to play it that way!
• Measure Two:  By taking the A and C# thirds that appear on beat four in the left hand, it is easier to properly voice and link the melodic sixty-fourth notes (E-F#) leading into the G on this beat.
• Measure Three:  Similar to the advice mentioned in measure two, if the B appearing in beat four is played with the left hand, the preceding sixth-fourth notes can smoothly transition into the eighth-note G keeping the melody unbroken and properly voiced.
• Measure Nine:  Begin this trill on the upper neighbor.  But as I said in the discussion of Movement I, do research and make clear decisions about the ornaments based on your own knowledge.
• Measure Sixty:  Playing everything in beats three and four, except the pizzicato bass, in one’s right hand allows one to have maximum control over the bass line.

Movement III – Tempo di Menuetto

• Measure 138:  Take the eighth notes of beat two in the left hand.  This allows that hand to be in place for beat three and the right hand to be prepared without jumping.
• Measures 283-End:  Be prepared for the flautist to join in with you sometime during this coda.  Clear this in advance with the soloist if you are concerned that it might be distracting.

We’ll begin the history of this composition in September 23, 1777 when Mozart left Salzburg on a tour.  During the tour he stopped in Mannheim and was quite pumped about the quality of the orchestra, especially the wind players.  Here, he became friends with Johann Baptist Wendling, a flute player and composer.  He stayed with him a while, wrote some compositions for the family, even orchestrated one of Wendling’s flute concertos.  Whenever it looked like Mozart was running low on funds, Wendling would get a bit worried about losing his friend and go find some freelance work for Mozart.  And thus enters Ferdinand De Jean, a rich Dutch guy who really liked the flute.

Ferdinand De Jean had an extra 200 gulden lying around and asked Mozart to write some concertos and quartets for his own use (De Jean was an amateur).  This was about six month’s salary for typical composers.[1. This and a more detailed description of this story is found on page 151 of this book.]  But, like many young guys in their twenty’s, Mozart procrastinated, fought with his dad about the procrastination, and then raised a fuss when he only received partial payment for half-completing the assignment in 1778.  (Mozart complained that the 96 gulden he received was 4 short of what he had expected for completing two concertos and three quartets, thus leading historians to believe that the original commission, double the amount received, was clearly for four concertos and six quartets, double the amount completed…although many people write confidently about the original commission being for three concertos and four quartets…someone clear this up please).  Mozart’s lucky he got this much since the D major concerto was basically a rehashing of an oboe concerto that De Jean surely would have been familiar with.

We all say things we don’t really mean when we’re angry and stressed.  As the arguments with his dad reached a climax, Mozart wrote, “C’mon, how do you expect me to write for an instrument I can’t stand?” (This is not a direct quote).  This statement has caused much eye-rolling among flautists to this day. I mean, really…. As Phillip Huscher wrote for the Chicago Symphony, “…it seems unlikely that Mozart would have composed an opera about [the flute’s] magical power to transform human passion” if he really disliked the instrument. [2. See this link]

Köchel Number: You will often encounter a second Köchel number in publications and recordings of this work.  It should be noted (for this piece as well as all Mozart compositions), that Köchel numbers usually refer to Ludwig von Köchel’s first catalog that he put together in 1862.  The poor guy got things off to a good start with 551 pages of information, but discoveries continued to be made revealing quite a bit of oversights in his original work.  In 1936 Alfred Einstein (for those of you thinking the physicist must’ve been really been into Mozart…you’re thinking of Albert, not Alfred) fixed things up a bit.  He really liked the G Major Flute Concerto calling it, “a veritable fountain of good spirits and fresh invention.” Finally, in 1964, some other gentlemen produced the latest and most updated Köchel catalog.  These numbers from this edition are known as the sixth edition of Köchel numbers.  In short, K285c is the number for the G Major Flute Concerto from this sixth edition.

Alternate Slow Movement:  Alfred Einstein (see above) proposed that the flautist who commissioned this concerto found the middle movement too ornamented leading to the creation of the K. 315 Andante.  This has led many people to unequivocally state that the K. 315 Andante in C Major for Flute is, indeed, an alternate middle movement for this concerto.  This hasn’t been proven yet.  The Andante was composed on a particular type of paper that Mozart used in Salzburg between 1777-1779.  Maybe he had some in his luggage while he was in Mannheim during this time?