Fugue in G minor for Organ (fragment), K. 401
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Fugue in G minor (fragment), K. 401, is an unfinished contrapuntal keyboard piece dating from around 1772–1773. Surviving only as a short autograph draft, it offers a glimpse of the 16-year-old composer experimenting with fugal procedure in a dark, concentrated minor key.
What Is Known
The work transmitted as Mozart’s Fugue in G minor (fragment), K. 401 is authentic but uncompleted, and survives in a brief autograph source (a single leaf with two written pages). The Köchel-Verzeichnis dates it to Salzburg, 1772–1773, and describes it as “presumably for organ,” while also listing the instrumentation simply as clav (keyboard), reflecting the ambiguity typical of short late-baroque/early-classical keyboard drafts.[1]
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
The same source tradition helped the piece circulate in early nineteenth-century copies and prints; later editions sometimes present a “completed” text, notably in an arrangement attributed to Maximilian Stadler (1748–1833).[2]
Musical Content
What survives is a compact fugal exposition and continuation in G minor, laid out in four-part keyboard texture. The writing is predominantly alla breve-leaning in feel (steady contrapuntal motion, frequent imitation), with a subject that emphasizes the minor mode and a sober, church-toned affect—features that sit plausibly beside Mozart’s teenage studies of learned style, even if the fragment stops before a full-scale fugue can unfold.[2]
Because the draft breaks off mid-course, its larger plan (a complete set of entries, episodes, and a closing stretto or cadence) cannot be securely reconstructed from Mozart’s notation alone; performances therefore often rely either on the surviving bars as a fragment or on later completions.[1]
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for KV 401 (status, dating, sources, instrumentation).
[2] IMSLP work page for Fugue in G minor, K. 401/375e (score access, completeness notes, Stadler completion attribution, basic metadata).