Rondo for String Quintet in G (fragment), K. 516a
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Rondo for string quintet (fragment), K. 516a, is an unfinished scrap from Vienna in 1787, surviving only as a single-page autograph. Scored for the standard “viola quintet” ensemble (two violins, two violas, and cello), it offers a fleeting glimpse of the composer’s chamber thinking at age 31—close in time to the great G-minor String Quintet, K. 516.
What Is Known
The work now catalogued as K. 516a is an authentic but uncompleted quintet movement for 2 violins, 2 violas, and violoncello, dated to Vienna, 1787 in the Mozarteum’s Köchel catalogue entry.[1] The source situation is unusually stark even by fragment standards: the surviving autograph is described there as a single leaf (one written page), without an original title.[1] Modern access to the fragment is typically via the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe string-quintet volume (edited by Ernst Hess and Ernst Fritz Schmid, 1967), which is also the basis of the scan circulated on IMSLP.[2]
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Musical Content
What survives is too little to support confident claims about a full rondo design (a recurring refrain alternating with contrasting episodes). The manuscript suggests instead a brief quintet movement fragment—enough to establish scoring and tonal world, but not enough to show how Mozart intended to balance refrain and episodes, or how he planned a convincing return and close.[1] Still, even this single-page draft belongs to the intensely productive Viennese period in which Mozart was refining the five-part string texture—writing for two violas not as mere reinforcement, but as a medium for dark inner voices, conversational counterpoint, and luminous chordal weight.[3]
[1] International Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel catalogue entry for KV 516a (status, dating, instrumentation, autograph description).
[2] IMSLP work page for K.Anh.86/516a (fragment): year, instrumentation, and scan details (NMA-based).
[3] Brentano String Quartet notes on Mozart’s string quintet medium and late-Vienna context (background on quintet texture and 1787 climate).