Movement to a Piano Concerto in D (fragment), K. 488a (D major)
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Movement to a Piano Concerto in D (K. 488a) is a tiny surviving draft—just ten bars—written in Vienna in 1786–1787 and left unfinished. Scored for piano and a full late-Viennese concerto orchestra (including clarinets), it appears to have been conceived as a slow movement connected to the world of the A-major Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488, but was replaced in that concerto by the famous Adagio in F♯ minor.
What Is Known
A single, incomplete movement survives: an autograph draft of ten bars for what the Köchel-Verzeichnis describes as a slow movement for “clavier and orchestra,” in D major (K. 488a). It is dated to Vienna, 1786–1787, when Mozart was 30 and producing, in quick succession, some of his most refined Viennese piano concertos [1].
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The surviving scoring—flute; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; solo keyboard; strings—is especially telling, because it matches the sound-world Mozart was exploring in 1786 with obbligato clarinets in the concerto orchestra [1]. The same source notes that the instrumentation “clearly indicates” the fragment was originally intended for the *Piano Concerto in A*, K. 488, but ultimately replaced by that concerto’s celebrated F♯ minor Adagio [1].
Musical Content
Because only a short draft survives, K. 488a offers less a “movement” in the usual sense than a glimpse of Mozart’s workshop: a few measures in D major that suggest the opening of a slow movement, already conceived in concerto terms (soloist plus colored winds) but abandoned before any full thematic argument could unfold. Heard in context, its chief interest lies in what it implies about Mozart’s decision-making in 1786: the path not taken, before he chose the more inward—and strikingly unusual—F♯ minor slow movement for K. 488 [1].
[1] Köchel-Verzeichnis (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum): KV 488a — dating (Vienna 1786–1787), extent (10 bars), scoring, and relation to K. 488.