Rondo for String Quartet in A major (fragment), K. 464a
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Rondo for string quartet in A major (K. 464a) is an uncompleted finale-like movement from Vienna, dated 11 January 1785, surviving only as a short score fragment. Probably connected with the String Quartet in A major, K. 464, it offers a fleeting glimpse of Mozart’s quartet style at age 29: poised, conversational, and already thinking in larger formal arcs.
Background and Context
In early 1785, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was at the height of his Viennese career—writing ambitious chamber music alongside the piano concertos that made him famous in the city’s concert life. The Quartet movement in A (K. 464a) is securely dated in Vienna to 11 January 1785 and is transmitted as an uncompleted work for the standard string quartet (two violins, viola, cello) [1].
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Scholars and cataloguers generally connect it with the contemporaneous String Quartet in A major, K. 464—one of the six “Haydn” quartets—treating K. 464a as a projected alternative or additional finale, though Mozart’s exact intention (replacement, appendix, or abandoned draft) cannot be demonstrated from the surviving leaves alone [1].
Musical Character
What survives is the start of a rondo-type movement: music designed to return repeatedly to a principal refrain while ranging into contrasting episodes. Even in fragmentary form, the writing is recognizably “quartet-minded” rather than soloistic—motives are passed quickly among the four parts, and the inner voices (especially viola) participate in the thematic argument instead of merely filling harmony, a hallmark of Mozart’s mature quartet style in the mid-1780s [1].
In A major, the fragment projects a bright, open sonority well suited to a closing movement, with buoyant surface rhythms and clear phrase structure that suggests Mozart was aiming for a genial, forward-moving conclusion. Yet the break in the text arrives before the larger plan can be confirmed: we cannot tell how fully Mozart meant to balance refrain and episodes, nor how (or whether) he intended to integrate the movement with the finished finale of K. 464.
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation (KV Online): work entry for K. 464a with dating (Vienna, 11 Jan 1785), instrumentation, and status as uncompleted/extant.