Movement to a Piano Concerto in A (fragment), K. 488c
de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Movement to a Piano Concerto in A (K. 488c) is a short, unfinished autograph sketch from Vienna, dating to late 1785–early 1786, and closely connected with the compositional workshop behind the Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 [1]. What survives suggests an abandoned idea for a concerto finale: a playful rondo opening that breaks off almost as soon as it begins [1].
What Is Known
K. 488c survives as a brief autograph fragment—an uncompleted concerto movement in A major, transmitted in score and breaking off after 20 bars [1]. The Mozart-Verzeichnis dates it to Vienna (November 1785–February 1786), placing it directly alongside the period in which Mozart (aged 30) completed the finished Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 (entered in his own thematic catalogue on 2 March 1786) [1] [2].
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Its scoring is already conceived on the scale of Mozart’s mature Viennese concertos, with flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings, and solo keyboard—notably aligning with the clarinet-inclusive sound world associated with K. 488 itself [1].
Musical Content
What survives is the opening of a rondo (Rondo eines Clavier=Concerts in a later copyist description), described by the Mozart-Verzeichnis as “playful” in character [1]. The same source suggests a practical musical reason the idea may have been discarded: Mozart perhaps avoided having two movements in 6/8 within the same concerto, seeking greater metrical contrast across the three-movement design [1]. In other words, K. 488c reads less like an “alternate concerto” than like a glimpse of Mozart testing finale themes and proportions before settling on the familiar, balanced architecture of K. 488.
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for K. 488c (dating, scoring, description, fragment length).
[2] Boston Symphony Orchestra program note for Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 (completion date and context).