Two Variations in A major on Sarti’s “Come un’agnello” (K. 460)
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Two Variations in A major on Giuseppe Sarti’s aria “Come un’agnello” (K. 460) is an unfinished clavier fragment, transmitted in autograph and dated to Vienna in June 1784. Although the piece is often encountered in print as a longer set of “8 variations,” modern cataloguing treats only the theme and first two variations as securely authentic.
Background and Context
In Vienna—where Mozart was establishing himself as a virtuoso-composer and producing a steady stream of keyboard works for teaching, publication, and the concert room—he turned to an immediately recognizable operatic tune: “Come un’agnello” from Sarti’s hugely popular Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode (premiered at La Scala in September 1782). The opera’s melody was widely current in central Europe by the mid-1780s, and Mozart later alluded to it famously in the banquet scene of Don Giovanni (1787), a sign of how readily such stage “hits” circulated across genres and cities.[2]
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The Mozarteum’s Köchel catalogue entry classifies K. 460 as authentic, extant, but uncompleted, preserving only the theme and two variations for solo keyboard (clavier).[1] This narrower, fragmentary work stands behind later, expanded transmissions that some sources print as “8 variations,” a version whose overall authorship has been questioned in modern reference summaries.[3]
Musical Character
Set in A major, the piece begins with a clear presentation of Sarti’s theme, laid out idiomatically for the keyboard before Mozart’s first variation starts to “activate” the line with quicker figuration and a more continuous right-hand motion. The writing is compact and practical—music that would have suited Mozart’s world of domestic performance as well as the quicksilver art of variation-improvisation at the fortepiano.[1]
Variation II increases the textural animation again, tightening the musical surface with brighter passagework and a more assertive rhythmic profile while keeping the harmonic outline close to the theme—typical of variation craft meant to keep a popular melody in view even as the keyboard “dress” changes from stanza to stanza. That the work breaks off after only two variations leaves the larger plan (a customary slow variation, a minor-mode turn, or a faster concluding variation) merely implied rather than realized.[1]
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis: KV 460 — Two variations in A on “Come un agnello” (status, dating, instrumentation, autograph transmission, links to NMA).
[2] Wikipedia: Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode — premiere date (14 Sept 1782) and note that the aria “Come un agnello” is quoted by Mozart in Don Giovanni.
[3] IMSLP work page: “8 Variations on ‘Come un agnello’, K.460/454a” — notes on the commonly circulated longer set and doubts about authorship beyond the first two variations.