Canon in G for 4 Voices in 1, “G’rechtelt’s enk” (K. 556)
par Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Canon in G for 4 Voices in 1, “G’rechtelt’s enk” (K. 556), is a compact Viennese convivial piece entered in his thematic catalogue on 2 September 1788. Written when he was 32, it distills late-1780s social music-making into a few sharply profiled bars—humorous in text, disciplined in technique, and built for friends to sing on the spot.
Background and Context
Vienna in 1788 was a year of striking contrasts for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): months that produced large-scale instrumental masterpieces also yielded a cluster of brief, sociable vocal canons intended for private circles. G’rechtelt’s enk (K. 556) belongs squarely to that latter world—music for after-dinner company, for quick wit and quicker ensemble, rather than for the theatre or church.1
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The Köchel-Verzeichnis at the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum dates K. 556 precisely to Vienna, 2 September 1788, and classifies it as an authentic, extant, completed work for four equal voices (V1–V4).1 That concreteness matters: many occasional canons circulate with messy transmission histories, but here the basic catalog data and attribution are unusually secure for so small a piece.
Text and Composition
The title points to dialect and informality. Mozart (or his circle) often favored colloquial German in these canons—texts that sound spoken, even shouted, and that invite a performative delivery. The Mozarteum catalogue credits the text to Christoph Gottlob Breitkopf (better known as a major Leipzig music publisher), a reminder that “social” does not mean “anonymous”: even playful miniatures could intersect with the broader literary and publishing networks of the time.1
K. 556 is a “canon in 1,” meaning the same melodic line is taken up successively by the participating voices, creating counterpoint through strict imitation rather than through separate composed parts.1 In practice, this is both a compositional constraint and a social advantage: once the tune is known, the piece can be launched immediately, with the canonic entries supplying the texture.
Musical Character
Scored for four unaccompanied voices, K. 556 is designed for equality rather than hierarchy—no soloist, no chorus-versus-solo contrast, only the communal pleasure (and mild peril) of keeping one’s place as the imitation stacks up.12 The result is characteristically Mozartian: a surface that feels effortless, underpinned by craftsmanship that is anything but.
What makes G’rechtelt’s enk worth attention within Mozart’s output is precisely this dual identity. It is a joke you can sing—and also a demonstration of how late-18th-century counterpoint could live outside the conservatory. In a few moments, Mozart turns convivial banter into a small machine of order: the voices chase, overlap, and lock together, producing the satisfying click of a well-made canon. That blend of sociability and technique helps explain why these late Viennese canons continue to appear in modern choral anthologies and editions: they are miniature social rituals, still capable of animating a room.
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[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for KV 556 (dating, authenticity, scoring, text author).
[2] IMSLP work page for K. 556 (basic work identification and scoring; access to editions).