Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622

Composer: MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus
  • This piece was first published in Vienna in 1791.1
  • Mozart wrote this concerto for clarinetist Anton Stadler,2 who also inspired Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. These two works were among the first to feature the clarinet as a solo instrument.3
    • After Mozart’s death, Stadler possessed the manuscript for this concerto, as well as that of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. When Mozart’s widow Constanze asked for him to return them, Stadler claimed someone had stolen them, but Constanze was suspicious that Stadler had pawned them. The manuscripts remain lost to this day.4
  • Mozart was working on this concerto while he was composing his Requiem – which calls into question the popular belief that Mozart was ill and obsessed with death while writing that Requiem for his mysterious patron.5

Sources

  1. Cliff Eisen, and Stanley Sadie, “Mozart, (Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 19, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278233.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Betsy Schwarm, “Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K581,” Encyclopædia Brittanica (March 15, 2016), accessed November 26, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Clarinet-Quintet-in-A-Major-K-581.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Eisen and Sadie, “Mozart, (Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus,” Grove Music Online.

Cut IDs

15126, 15187, 44648 , 45841