Movement for a String Quintet in B♭ major (K. 589a)
de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Movement for a String Quintet in B♭ major (K. 589a) survives as a short, self-contained Allegretto—an ancillary movement whose most plausible home is alongside the late “Prussian” quartets, especially String Quartet in F major, K. 590. The fragment is modest in scale, but it offers a clear window into Mozart’s deft late-classical conversational writing for strings.
Background and Context
Mozart seems to have drafted this B♭-major Allegretto as a spare movement for a five-part string texture (2 violins, 2 violas, cello), and modern cataloguing associates it directly with String Quartet No. 23 in F major, K. 590—that is, as material intended “in conjunction” with that quartet rather than as an independent published quintet.[1] The surviving text is brief (two notated pages in the commonly circulated scan), which helps explain why it has remained peripheral in both performance and scholarship.[2]
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Although older references sometimes circulate an earlier Vienna date, the work’s documented connection to K. 590 points more naturally to Mozart’s late Viennese chamber-music world—when he was writing with particular sensitivity to the lower strings and to the cultivated, “courtly” surface of quartet style.[1]
Musical Character
The movement’s designation (Allegretto) and its B♭-major tonality place it in Mozart’s most genial, unforced register: a medium-tempo, songlike manner rather than a dramatic Allegro.[2] What is most striking on the page is the texture: rather than treating the additional viola as mere thickening, Mozart writes in a true quintet weave, where inner voices can answer, cushion, or lightly imitate the melody—an approach familiar from his mature string quintets and one that heightens the sense of “conversation” even in a small span.
If K. 589a was indeed sketched as an alternative or insertable movement near K. 590, its scale makes musical sense: it can function as a graceful intermezzo-like panel, expanding the quartet’s palette into five parts without changing the overall tone of poised late Mozart chamber writing.[1]
[1] Wikipedia: Köchel catalogue entry listing K. 589a as a movement for a string quintet in B♭ “in conjunction with K. 590,” with dating context.
[2] IMSLP work page for K.Anh.68/589a (scan and NMA publication details), noting key and surviving extent.