Fugue in G major for Two Pianos (fragment), K. 375d
di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Fugue in G major for two keyboards (fragment), K. 375d (K⁶.375d), is a single-page contrapuntal sketch associated with Vienna and the mid-1780s, when the 29-year-old composer was exploring learned styles alongside his celebrated piano concertos. What survives is brief and unfinished, yet it offers a glimpse of Mozart thinking in strict imitative counterpoint for a two-keyboard texture.
What Is Known
Only a short, incomplete fugue survives, notated for two keyboard instruments (often realized today on two pianos). In the New Mozart Edition it appears among the two-keyboard works as “Fugue in G for two claviers (fragment)”, K. Anh. 45 (375d), occupying a single page within the volume’s contents list. [1] The same NMA volume identifies the work as part of NMA IX/24/1 (edited by Ernst Fritz Schmid) and explicitly labels it a fragment for “two Keyboards.” [2]
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Performance history is scant; the piece is chiefly known through the critical edition and facsimile/score reproductions circulated via reference portals such as IMSLP, which lists it as one incomplete movement in G major, scored for 2 pianos, and ties it to the NMA printing. [3]
Musical Content
The manuscript presents the opening of a fugue: a compact subject stated and answered in imitation, with the two-keyboard scoring inviting a clear separation of voices (rather than the hand-crossing compromises of a single keyboard). The surviving notation suggests Mozart was interested less in a finished concert piece than in the craft itself—testing invertible counterpoint and stretto-like density within a bright G-major frame. In Vienna, such “learned” experiments sit naturally beside his more public keyboard writing of the decade, pointing toward the heightened contrapuntal confidence heard in later works where fugue becomes a dramatic, structural device (even when, as here, the idea remains on the sketch page).
[1] Digital Mozart Edition (NMA TOC): NMA IX/24/Abt. 1, lists “Fugue in G for two claviers (fragment) K. Anh. 45 (375d)” on p. 50.
[2] New Mozart Edition (English front matter PDF) for NMA IX/24/1, showing the contents list including “Fugue in G for two Keyboards (fragment) KV App. 45 (375d).”
[3] IMSLP work page: “Fugue in G major, K.Anh.45/375d,” gives key, instrumentation (2 pianos), and status as a single incomplete movement, with NMA edition details.