Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525

Composer: MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus
  • This serenade premiered in Vienna in  1787.1
  • The title means “a short serenade”2 
    • The genre of serenade, very popular in Salzburg in Mozart’s time, is traditionally a work to be performed at night, often outside, directed to a lover or friend – thus the use of the phrase “night music” to indicate “serenade.”3
  • We don’t know the specific occasion for which this serenade was composed, but pieces of this type were often performed in outdoor concerts in gardens or parks in Mozart’s Vienna.4

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. Maynard Solomon, Mozart: A Life (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 128.
  3. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th ed., s.v. “Serenade” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
  4. Betsy Schwarm, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” Encyclopædia Brittanica (November 20, 2015), accessed November 27, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eine-kleine-Nachtmusik. 

Cut IDs

15195, 45657