Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756-91)
Divertimento in E-flat major, for violin, viola, and cello, K. 563 (1788)
After completing what turned out to be his last three symphonies in the summer of 1788, Mozart turned to writing chamber music. The most notable product of this redirection of his attentions was a six-movement work that was published as his Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563. Mozart had dabbled with its instrumentation –violin, viola, and cello – before, but the Divertimento is the only string trio Mozart either saw fit or managed to complete.
Its first movement anticipates Beethoven somewhat, with a first theme that relies heavily on scale figures and arpeggios. But its second motive is pure Mozart: graceful, singing, and elegant; the perfect contrast to the opening materials.
In the Divertimento’s slow second movement, the music takes on the character of Mozart’s operatic vocal writing, highly lyrical and deeply expressive. Its harmonic language is also highly chromatic – anticipating Beethoven (again) and Schubert by thirty years or so.
After the Adagio comes the first of the Divertimento’s two minuets. This one dispels any leftover gloom from the second movement: all is cheerful and sunny. Like Haydn, Mozart enjoyed toying with listener’s expectations in his minuets and this one is no exception, filled with rhythmic hiccups and unpredictable phrase lengths.
At the center of the Divertimento sits a warm, brilliant set of variations. The theme is presented by violin and viola in octaves and each of the four variations that follow allows for brilliant solo turns by each member of the ensemble. Of particular note is the brief, penultimate variation in the minor, filled with rich dissonances, imitative motivic gestures, and a seamless transition in the ecstatic final variation (back in the major mode).
The second minuet is, like the first, folk-like in character, if a bit less complicated, rhythmically.
For the finale, Mozart wrote a sonata-rondo movement that echoes the opening movement with, first, a triadic principal theme and, then, a lyrical, scalar melody. Both are developed in turn, boldly and idiomatically, while also showcasing each member of the ensemble.
Like much of Mozart’s late chamber music, the E-flat-major Divertimento is a forward-looking score. It foreshadows the balance between parts that would become standard (thank, largely, to Beethoven) in string chamber music just a few decades after it was written. It also, especially in its second movement, points towards the highly-personalized expressivity of the Romantics. In fact, its prophetic features weren’t lost on Beethoven: his own String Trio no. 1, op. 3, written six years later in 1794, follows the same basic formal patterns as Mozart’s Divertimento and even shares the same key.
The Divertimento is dedicated to Mozart’s friend, Michael Puchberg, a fellow Freemason who is best known for having lent Mozart sums of money over the last years of his life. The composer participated in its 1789 premiere in Dresden, performing on his preferred instrument, the viola, alongside violinist Anton Teyber and cellist Antonin Kraft.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
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