Movement for a String Quintet in F major (Andante), K. 515a
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Movement for a String Quintet in F major (K. 515a) is a short, unfinished Andante for the standard “viola quintet” ensemble (2 violins, 2 violas, cello), associated in the sources with the fragment K. 515c. The International Mozarteum Foundation dates it to Vienna, February 1791—one of Mozart’s last years, when chamber music ideas often appear in sketch- or draft-like form rather than as fully published works [1].
Background and Context
In early 1791, Mozart was 35 and living in Vienna, balancing practical work (teaching, performances, and commissions) with an increasingly compressed compositional schedule. K. 515a is dated by the International Mozarteum Foundation to Vienna, February 1791, and survives as an uncompleted movement with an extant autograph source also described in their catalogue [1]. In the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe’s string-quintet volume, it is grouped among appendices and fragments, reinforcing its status as an ancillary survivance rather than a finished, four-movement quintet [2].
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Musical Character
What survives is marked Andante and set in F major for strings: 2 violins, 2 violas, and cello [1]. Even in fragmentary state, the choice of a warm, central key and a moderate tempo suggests Mozart was exploring the quintet’s characteristic, thickened inner texture (the two violas enabling sustained harmonic “glow” and conversational counterpoint).
Because the notated material is very short (a single autograph leaf is reported in the source catalogue) [1], it is best heard not as a self-standing slow movement with a fully articulated form, but as a glimpse of Mozart’s late chamber idiom: lyrical pacing, closely spaced voicing, and an ear for instrumental equality that had long distinguished his mature string quintets.
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation (KV Online): work entry for KV 515a — dating (Vienna, Feb. 1791), key, instrumentation, and source notes (autograph leaf).
[2] Digital Mozart Edition (NMA Online): Table of contents for NMA VIII/19/1 (String Quintets), showing KV 515a listed in the appendix as a fragment (*Andante*) in F.