Movement to a Piano Concerto in C (draft to K. 503) (K. 502a)
沃尔夫冈·阿马德乌斯·莫扎特
Mozart’s Concerto movement in C major (K. 502a) is a surviving draft for piano (clavier) and orchestra, written in Vienna and left unfinished on a single bifolium. Closely related to the sound-world of the later Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503, it offers a rare glimpse of Mozart’s concerto workshop at age 30.
What Is Known
K. 502a is an authentic, extant fragment: an uncompleted concerto movement in C major for clavier and orchestra, preserved in Mozart’s autograph as one leaf (two written pages) without an original title [1]. The Köchel Verzeichnis dates the piece to Vienna, 1784–1785 (rather than 1786) [1].
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
The scoring listed in the Mozarteum catalogue matches Mozart’s late-Viennese “grand C-major” palette—solo keyboard with flute, pairs of oboes and bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani, and strings—suggesting a public-concerto ambition akin to K. 503 [1]. The fragment has been transmitted in later copies under headings such as “beginning of a clavier concerto,” reinforcing that what survives is essentially an opening span rather than a complete, performable movement [1].
Musical Content
What survives appears to be the start of a first movement: music that sets up the concerto’s initial argument (likely in sonata-allegro terms), but breaks off before Mozart can carry it through the large-scale piano–orchestra dialogue typical of his mature Viennese concertos. In this period Mozart was writing on a symphonic scale for the keyboard concerto, and K. 503—completed on 4 December 1786—stands as the fully realized C-major summit toward which this abandoned draft points [2]).
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel Verzeichnis entry for KV 502a: dating, status (fragment), autograph extent (1 leaf / 2 pages), instrumentation, and transmission notes.
[2] Wikipedia: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503 (completion date and general contextual reference to the finished concerto connected with K. 502a).