“Mußt’ ich auch durch tausend Drachen” (K. 435) — Mozart’s Tenor Aria Sketch
von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“Mußt’ ich auch durch tausend Drachen” (K. 435) is an incomplete sketch for a German-language tenor aria, written in Vienna in 1783, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was 27. Surviving only as an autograph draft, it offers a rare glimpse of Mozart thinking on the page during the years immediately after Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
What Is Known
Only a sketch survives for “Mußt’ ich auch durch tausend Drachen” (K. 435), an aria draft for tenor and orchestra from Mozart’s Vienna years (1783). The source is an autograph and is explicitly described as not fully orchestrated (“…nicht ganz instrumentirt”).[1] Later prints and library copies reflect the fragment’s afterlife in 19th-century collected editions.[2]
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The sketch’s dramatic destination remains unclear. One plausible context is Mozart’s interest, in early 1783, in pursuing German comic opera again—an ambition mentioned in his correspondence and sometimes linked (cautiously) with surviving German aria fragments from the same year.[3]
Musical Content
The manuscript catalogue describes an Allegro con brio movement in D major, laid out on eight folios, with the vocal line and bass most fully present, and orchestral writing left incomplete.[1] The surviving scoring indications point toward a Classical operatic palette—strings with pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns—even if parts are only intermittently written into the draft.[1] In its very incompletion, K. 435 sits close to the workshop of Mozart’s Viennese stage style: energetic, vocally driven, and conceived with an ear for wind color, yet preserved in the provisional shorthand of a composer moving faster than the page could easily contain.
[1] Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg (PDF): manuscript catalogue entry for “Müßt ich auch durch tausend Drachen” (KV 435/KV 416b), describing autograph status, D major, incompletely orchestrated score, and scoring indications.
[2] IMSLP work page for “Müsst' ich auch durch tausend Drachen, K.435/416b” (bibliographic details and access to historical editions).
[3] Leroy A. Smith, “The Concert Arias of Mozart” (University of North Texas digital thesis PDF): discusses K. 435 as a 1783 tenor aria and connects it (speculatively) to Mozart’s early-1783 German opera plans via a cited letter passage.