String Trio in G major (fragment), K. 562e
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s String Trio in G major (K. 562e) is a short, unfinished Allegro for violin, viola, and cello, drafted in Vienna in September 1788 and closely associated with the great Divertimento for the same forces, K. 563. What survives is best heard as a glimpse into Mozart’s workshop at age 32—an attempt at the same rare, fully equal string-trio texture that he brought to completion only once.
Background and Context
In September 1788, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was living in Vienna and working at extraordinary speed across genres; the autograph date of 27 September 1788 belongs to the completed Divertimento in E♭ major, K. 563, for violin, viola, and cello [1]. Alongside that major six-movement work, the Mozarteum catalogue lists K. 562e—an Allegro in G for the same trio scoring—as an extant but uncompleted fragment [2].
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The proximity of date, instrumentation, and the catalogue’s direct linking of the two entries make it very likely that K. 562e relates to the same creative moment as K. 563: Mozart testing ideas for a second large-scale trio or an alternate opening before settling on the E♭-major design. What can be said securely is simpler: only one movement survives, and it does not reach a finished state [2].
Musical Character
K. 562e is an Allegro fragment in G major, scored for violin, viola, and cello [2]. In musical substance it belongs to the world of Mozart’s mature chamber style: quick-moving thematic work, conversational part-writing, and the characteristic challenge of keeping three string voices in continuous, balanced dialogue without the harmonic “padding” a second violin (or a keyboard) can provide.
Even in fragmentary form, the piece’s most telling feature is its ambition. Like K. 563, it points toward a string trio conceived not as a light divertimento but as chamber music of equal partners—violin brilliance, viola’s inner rhetoric, and cello’s melodic as well as bass function—compressed into a single opening movement draft. That it remained unfinished may simply reflect Mozart’s practical priorities in late 1788; yet the surviving page still shows him thinking in the same high-pressure, large-arc manner that makes K. 563 such an outlier in the trio repertoire [1].
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation (Köchel Verzeichnis): Divertimento in E♭ for violin, viola and violoncello, K. 563 — date, instrumentation, sources.
[2] International Mozarteum Foundation (Köchel Verzeichnis): Allegro in G for violin, viola and violoncello (fragment), K. 562e — status as uncompleted extant fragment; key; scoring; link to K. 563.