Rondo for Piano in F major (fragment), K. 590c
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Rondo for Piano in F major (fragment), K. 590c, is a surviving two-page draft from Vienna, generally dated to 1787–1789, when the composer was in his early thirties. It preserves the start of a genial rondo-like finale—likely intended either for a projected piano sonata or as a standalone keyboard piece—before breaking off mid-course.
What Is Known
Only a fragment for solo piano survives: a short rondo movement in F major transmitted on just two pages in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA IX/25/2), where it is classed among the keyboard-sonata appendices and explicitly marked as a fragment [1]. Modern catalogues usually place it in Vienna and within 1787–1789 [1], though it is not securely tied to a specific event or publication during Mozart’s lifetime.
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In an editorial note attached to a 12 June 1790 letter to Michael Puchberg (as transmitted in the Digital Mozart Edition), the rondo in F (fragment) is grouped with other contemporary keyboard-sonata drafts, and the note adds that these sketches “probably belong to a sonata” [2]. This does not prove K. 590c was definitively a sonata finale, but it supports the common view that the fragment may have been conceived as the closing rondo of an otherwise unfinished sonata.
Musical Content
What remains suggests a bright, keyboard-idiomatic rondo in F major: a compact principal idea designed to return after contrasting digressions, with the texture favoring clear melody-and-accompaniment writing and light passagework rather than the denser contrapuntal styles of some earlier keyboard pieces. The fragment’s scale (two pages) implies Mozart had only begun the movement; the surviving music reads as opening material rather than a self-contained miniature, ending without any sense of cadence as a full close [1].
[1] IMSLP work page for K.Anh.37/590c (includes basic catalogue data, fragment status, and links to the two-page score scan from the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe).
[2] Digital Mozart Edition (Mozarteum) PDF transcript of Mozart’s letter to Johann Michael Puchberg (Vienna/Baden, before or on 12 June 1790), including editorial note grouping the F-major keyboard fragments (590a–c) and stating they probably belong to a sonata.