Allegro for String Quartet in E minor (fragment), K. 417d
沃尔夫冈·阿马德乌斯·莫扎特
Mozart’s Allegro for string quartet in E minor (K. 417d) survives only as a brief, autograph fragment—just two pages of score—and was never completed. The Köchel Verzeichnis lists it as an authenticated but uncompleted quartet movement, with the surviving leaf preserved as an autograph source.
What Is Known
The work is catalogued as an Allegro in E minor for two violins, viola, and cello, transmitted in an autograph score leaf (one bifolio/leaf, notated on two written pages) and explicitly described as an uncompleted composition.[1] The same fragment is reproduced in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe string-quartet volume, and is available in scan form via IMSLP.[2]
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While older reference listings sometimes attach an earlier composition year, the Mozarteum catalogue places the fragment broadly in Mozart’s Vienna years and treats it as a late, unfinished entry among the quartets.[1] In any case, the piece stands apart from the finished quartets of the mid-1780s—including the six “Haydn” quartets—whose carefully balanced four-movement designs represent Mozart’s mature public statements in the genre.[3]
Musical Content
What survives is the start of a single fast movement (Allegro) in E minor, notated in open score for the four instruments.[2] Even in this curtailed state, the choice of E minor—rare in Mozart’s chamber music—suggests an expressive, more searching sound world than the bright major keys of many of his quartets; yet the fragment breaks off before any large-scale plan (such as a full sonata-allegro exposition and cadence scheme) can be securely inferred from the page.[2]
[1] International Stiftung Mozarteum (Köchel Verzeichnis) — work entry for KV/K. 417d with status (uncompleted), instrumentation, and source description.
[2] IMSLP — String Quartet in E minor, K.417d: page with scan availability and NMA volume reference (pp. 136–137).
[3] International Stiftung Mozarteum (Köchel Verzeichnis) — context page within the string-quartet grouping (example: KV 421) describing Mozart’s mature quartet practice and the Haydn set.