Movement to a Symphony in C (fragment), K. 467a
沃尔夫冈·阿马德乌斯·莫扎特
Mozart’s Movement to a Symphony in C (K. 467a) is a tiny surviving orchestral sketch in C major, not a complete symphony: essentially a brief “note for one voice” dating from Vienna in 1782, when the composer was 26.12 It belongs to the dense period in which he was simultaneously absorbing strict counterpoint and working in the theatre—most famously on Die Entführung aus dem Serail.3
What Is Known
Only a scrap of what seems to be symphonic thinking survives under K. 467a: the New Mozart Edition’s sketches catalogue describes it as a “note for one voice for an instrumental piece in C”—a single-line remnant rather than a full score or even a short score.1 The Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum’s Köchel-Verzeichnis likewise classifies it as an instrumental piece in C, probably for orchestra, and explicitly as a fragment.2
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
The dating to Vienna, 1782 places the leaf amid Mozart’s early freelance years in the imperial capital—months marked by rapid stylistic expansion, operatic deadlines, and an increasingly confident handling of orchestral rhetoric.2 Beyond these catalogue identifications, the fragment’s intended scope (a symphony movement as later described in some references) and its precise position within a hypothetical multi-movement plan cannot be established securely from the surviving material alone.
Musical Content
Because the surviving notation is described only as a single-voice jotting in C major, K. 467a does not preserve enough musical information to reconstruct a full movement’s orchestration, harmonic plan, or formal design with confidence.12 What it does suggest is Mozart’s habitual method in 1782: capturing an idea quickly—sometimes as a lone melodic strand—before shaping it into the richer, conversational textures that characterize his mature orchestral writing in Vienna.23
[1] Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (DME) table of contents for Series X/30/3 (Sketches): entry for Skb 1782d (1), identifying K. 467a as a 'note for one voice' for an instrumental piece in C.
[2] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis work page: KV 467a 'Instrumental piece in C', probably for orchestra (fragment), dated to Vienna 1782.
[3] Peter Keenan, MMus thesis (University of Glasgow), discussion of Wolfgang Plath’s study 'Das Skizzenblatt KV 467a' and the 1782 sketch context connected with *Die Entführung aus dem Serail*.