2 Contredanses (lost), K. 565
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s 2 Contredanses (K. 565) are a lost pair of orchestral dances, entered in the catalogue for Vienna in 1788, when the composer was 32. With no surviving score, they are known today chiefly as evidence of Mozart’s ongoing work for the city’s social dance culture at the end of the 1780s.
Background and Context
In 1788—Mozart’s third decade in Vienna and a year otherwise marked by large-scale instrumental projects—the composer also continued to supply functional dance music for the capital’s lively season of balls and public entertainments. The Mozarteum’s Köchel entry for K. 565 identifies the work simply as “two contredanses” and notes that the music is lost, leaving only the basic Viennese dating and genre attribution securely in place [1].
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Musical Character
Because no musical text survives, the key, thematic profile, and formal particulars of the two dances cannot be described with confidence. What can be said is that a contredanse in late-18th-century Vienna was typically a concise, rhythm-forward orchestral number designed for group dancing—music built for clear phrasing, regular periodicity, and immediate memorability rather than extended development. In Mozart’s output more broadly, such dances form a substantial practical corpus alongside minuets and German dances, suggesting K. 565 belonged to a steady stream of occasional pieces written to meet demand rather than to make a public artistic statement [2].
Place in the Catalog
K. 565 sits among Mozart’s late-Viennese dance contributions: modest in scale, social in function, and—unlike many related sets—unfortunately undocumented in sound, surviving only as a title and catalogue record [1].
[1] Köchel-Verzeichnis (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum): entry for KV 565, “Zwei contredances for dance ensemble” (lost; Vienna, 1788).
[2] Wikipedia: List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (context for the scale of Mozart’s dance output; includes K. 565 as lost).