Allegro for String Quartet in G minor (fragment), K. 587a
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Allegro for string quartet in G minor (K. 587a) is an incomplete late-Vienna fragment from 1789, surviving only in sketch-like form. Even in its brief compass, the work hints at the concentrated, darkly expressive quartet manner Mozart had refined in the 1780s.
What Is Known
The Allegro for string quartet in G minor (K. 587a; also catalogued as K. Anh. 74/587a) survives as a two-page fragment for the standard quartet ensemble—two violins, viola, and violoncello. No complete movement is transmitted, and there is no evidence that Mozart finished, revised, or prepared it for publication or performance; modern access is therefore typically through the fragment as printed in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe and reproduced in facsimile/scan on major digital libraries. The dating to Vienna, 1789 places it among Mozart’s late chamber-music years, shortly after the “Prussian” quartets begun in 1789 and just before the final quartet set of 1790—circumstances that make the fragment especially suggestive, even if it remains musically self-incomplete. [1][2]
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Musical Content
What survives appears to be the opening of a first movement (Allegro) conceived in G minor, with the musical text breaking off before any full formal span can be confirmed. The manuscript’s scope is too limited to speak confidently about a complete sonata-allegro design (exposition–development–recapitulation), but the fragment’s very choice of G minor—an inflected, high-tension key in Mozart’s mature style—points toward the dramatic, contrapuntally alert quartet writing familiar from his best chamber works of the 1780s. In practical terms, the piece is best understood not as a performable “lost quartet,” but as a glimpse of Mozart’s workshop in 1789: a serious opening idea for four strings, left tantalizingly unfinished. [2][1]
[1] IMSLP — String Quartet in G minor, K.Anh.74/587a (Mozart): page with scan information, instrumentation, and NMA reference.
[2] Digital Mozart Edition (Mozarteum) — NMA X/30/4 table of contents listing: “Fragment of a first movement of a quartet in g … K. 587a (Anh. 85; … 1789…).”