Movement for a String Quintet in A minor, K. 515c (Fragment)
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Movement for a String Quintet in A minor (K. 515c) is an unfinished single movement from Vienna, probably dating from 1791, and surviving only in fragmentary form [1] [2]. Scored for the standard “viola quintet” ensemble (two violins, two violas, cello), it offers a rare glimpse of Mozart, aged 35, thinking again in the dark, concentrated key of A minor at the end of his life [2].
Background and Context
In 1791 Mozart was living and working in Vienna, balancing intense practical pressures with a remarkable late creative surge. K. 515c belongs to this final year and survives as what the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe describes as a fragment of a first quintet movement, marked Allegro moderato [2]. The autograph sources are divided between Bergamo (Civico Istituto Musicale “Gaetano Donizetti”) and the Bibliotheca Mozartiana in Salzburg, suggesting a transmission history that is partly independent of Mozart’s better-documented, complete chamber works [2].
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Musical Character
The scoring is Mozart’s characteristic string quintet layout—two violins, two violas, and cello—with the parts explicitly labeled in the autograph [2]. The movement’s Allegro moderato tempo indication (given at the start) implies a first-movement design, and modern recordings and catalogues routinely present it as such [1] [3]. What survives is too incomplete to support a confident formal map, yet even as a torso it points toward the late Mozart quintet idiom: conversational part-writing, with inner voices (the two violas) treated as expressive equals rather than mere harmonic filling—an approach Mozart had already perfected in his mature viola quintets and seems to revisit here in a more shadowed A-minor language [1].
[1] AllMusic work entry: Movement for string quintet in A minor (fragment), K. Anh. 79 (K. 515c).
[2] Digitale Mozart-Edition (Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg): NMA Kritischer Bericht PDF including source description for KV Anh. 79 (515c) (*Allegro moderato*), autograph locations and instrumentation labeling.
[3] MusicBrainz release tracklist reference showing standard modern identification: “Allegro moderato (fragment)” for K. 515c/Anh. 79.