Movement for a Horn Concerto in E (fragment), K. 494a
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Movement for a Horn Concerto in E (K. 494a) is an unfinished concerto first movement, begun in Vienna in 1786–87 and surviving only as an autograph fragment. Though sometimes discussed alongside the completed Horn Concerto No. 4 in E♭, K. 495 (1786), its precise relationship to that work remains uncertain.
What Is Known
K. 494a is transmitted as an autograph score fragment titled Concerto a Corno principale, not a complete concerto. The International Mozarteum Foundation dates it broadly to Vienna, 1786–87, and lists it as an uncompleted work for solo horn and orchestra. The surviving scoring is given as 2 oboes, 2 horns, solo horn, and strings (with divided violas). [1]
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A modern critical edition appears in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA), which treats it explicitly as a fragment within Mozart’s horn-concerto corpus. [2]
Musical Content
What survives reads as the start of a first-movement *Allegro in E major, opening with an orchestral exposition and proceeding toward the soloist’s entry before breaking off. In editorial commentary for a performing edition, Dominic Nunns points to stylistic fingerprints associated with Mozart’s Vienna writing of 1786—heightened chromaticism, irregular phrase lengths (notably around bars 30–32), and moments of contrapuntal working—suggesting a more ambitious horn-concerto design than a routine occasional piece. [3]
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation (Köchel Catalogue Online), KV 494a entry: dating, status, instrumentation, and autograph description.
[2] Digital Mozart Edition / Neue Mozart-Ausgabe: volume information for the horn concertos (includes treatment of K. 494a as a fragment).
[3] Bärenreiter preface (Dominic Nunns) to a performing edition of K. 494a: stylistic notes (chromaticism, irregular phrasing, contrapuntal procedures) and fragment status.