Scena (K. 315b) — the lost Saint-Germain scena for Tenducci
de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Scena (K. 315b) was written at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in late August 1778, during his difficult Paris sojourn, for the celebrated castrato Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci. The music is now lost, but contemporary testimony preserves an unusually concrete picture of its forces and ambition.
Background and Context
In August 1778, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) briefly left Paris for Saint-Germain-en-Laye, staying in the household of Louis, Duke of Noailles. Among the musicians there was the Italian castrato Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci (c. 1736–1790), whom Mozart knew through the Paris musical circle around Johann Christian Bach [1]. In a letter dated 27 August 1778, Mozart told his father Leopold that he had to “make haste” to write a scena for Tenducci for Sunday (i.e., within days), explicitly naming a mixed chamber ensemble with pianoforte, oboe, horn, and bassoon [2].
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The episode places K. 315b alongside Mozart’s other Paris/Mannheim dramatic concert pieces—works in which operatic declamation meets instrumental virtuosity, and where the composer tests how far a scene can be animated by obbligato wind writing rather than by strings alone [1].
What Survives
No autograph, copy, or printed edition of K. 315b is currently known; the piece is therefore not describable “on the page” in the normal sense [1]. Still, two near-contemporary descriptions offer rare specificity.
First, Mozart’s own letter gives the core concertante idea: a vocal scena with a prominent keyboard part and featured winds [2]. Second, the music historian Charles Burney—reporting information to Daines Barrington in print—described a scena Mozart composed for Tenducci in 1778 as an elaborate work “in 14 parts,” with multiple obbligati and a substantial ensemble including (as he lists it) two violins, two violas (“tenors”), oboe, two clarinets, keyboard (“piano forte”), horns, and a reinforcing bass [1]. Burney’s assessment is double-edged: he praises Mozart’s command of multipart writing and adventurous modulation, while finding the melodic invention less striking than the overall effect [1].
Scholarly Context
Modern scholarship generally treats K. 315b as a standalone concert scena written for Tenducci at Saint-Germain rather than as a surviving portion of a larger opera project [1]. A long-standing hypothesis—that the missing Mozart work might correspond to a London-printed anonymous scena linked with Tenducci—has been argued but remains unconfirmed, with stylistic and scoring objections raised already in the critical literature surrounding the New Mozart Edition [1].
Even in absence, K. 315b is revealing for Mozart at 22: it suggests a composer thinking theatrically in miniature, treating the keyboard and winds as dramatic partners to the voice—an approach that would soon bear more securely documented fruit in his mature concert arias and, ultimately, in the operas of the 1780s.
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[1] Digital Mozart Edition (Mozarteum): New Mozart Edition II/7/2 (Arias, Scenes, Ensembles and Choruses) — foreword passage discussing the lost scena for Tenducci (KV App. 3/315b), instrumentation, and Burney report.
[2] Mozart letter from St. Germain, 27 August 1778 (to Leopold Mozart), mentioning the need to write a scena for Tenducci and naming instruments (pianoforte, oboe, horn, bassoon).