Theme and Variations for Organ in C major (fragment), K. 383d
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Theme and Variations in C major (K. 383d) is a tiny surviving remnant from his early Vienna years, dating from around 1782–83, when he was 26. Though often associated with the organ, the sources point more broadly to a fragmentary keyboard variation project whose musical substance is preserved only in outline.
What Is Known
Only a brief keyboard fragment survives for K. 383d: an autograph leaf containing a Thema (theme), with the continuation and any intended set of variations left incomplete or lost. The International Mozarteum Foundation’s Köchel Verzeichnis lists the work under Keyboard Variations, gives the key as C major, and indicates instrumentation as clavier/organ—a shorthand that reflects the uncertainty of whether Mozart had a specific organ context in mind or a more general keyboard usage. It also records Vienna as the place of origin and provides both an autograph source (a single-leaf score) and later copies. [1]
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In biographical terms, the dating places the fragment close to Mozart’s first full season as a freelance virtuoso-composer in Vienna, when keyboard improvisation—and the rapid drafting of themes for potential variation sets—was central to his public persona. The modest scale of what survives fits that working reality: a notated seed that may have served as the starting point for elaboration at the instrument.
Musical Content
Musically, what can be described with confidence is limited to the preserved theme: a concise, diatonic C-major idea suitable for variation treatment, notated as a single keyboard line with harmony implied by conventional eighteenth-century figuration. The surviving page (as transmitted in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe and reflected in public scans) presents the theme as an incipit-like unit rather than a complete, performable variation cycle, leaving questions of formal plan (number and character of variations, any concluding Allegro or Presto, etc.) open. [2]
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation (KV Online): entry for K. 383d (“Piano piece in C”) with status, dating (Vienna, 1783), sources (autograph leaf), and instrumentation shorthand “clav/org.”
[2] IMSLP: “Theme in C major, K.Anh.38/383c” (scan of NMA IX/26) summarizing the work as a short theme fragment and giving general information (year 1782; instrumentation “organ (or piano)”).