Movement for a String Quintet in D (draft for K. 593) (K. 592b)
di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Quintet movement in D major (K. 592b) is an authentic but uncompleted draft for string quintet—two violins, two violas, and cello—written in Vienna and dated broadly to 1787–1789. Often discussed as a sketch connected with the later String Quintet in D major, K. 593, it survives only in fragmentary form and does not constitute a complete, performable movement.
What Is Known
The surviving material for K. 592b consists of an uncompleted quintet movement draft in D major for the standard “viola quintet” scoring (2 violins, 2 violas, cello). The work is transmitted as an extant source and is classified as authentic, but it remains unfinished; the surviving autograph is described as a short score-format manuscript of one leaf (two written pages), without an original title. Dating in the Köchel-Verzeichnis entry places the draft in Vienna, 1787–1789, i.e., in the same late-Vienna period in which Mozart was intensively cultivating the string quintet as a genre.[1]
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In the context of Mozart’s chamber music at age 31, this fragment sits near the moment of his mature Viennese rethinking of five-part string texture—particularly the expressive and contrapuntal possibilities unlocked by the second viola. The manuscript’s D-major orientation and quintet scoring also help explain why scholars often treat it as related, in some manner, to the later and fully realized String Quintet in D major, K. 593.[1][2]
Musical Content
K. 592b is best understood as the beginning of a first movement draft rather than a complete movement plan: the surviving leaf preserves only an opening stretch (not a full exposition, and certainly not a finished movement). In this incomplete state, the page nonetheless implies the sort of clear, bright D-major sonority and quintet dialogue (upper strings set against the inner violas) that Mozart would later expand into the broader architectural and textural world of K. 593—where, in finished form, he frequently alternates spare, transparent writing with fuller five-part resonance.[1][3]
[1] International Stiftung Mozarteum (KV Online): KV 592b work entry with authenticity status, dating, instrumentation, and brief source description.
[2] Neue Mozart-Ausgabe Online (DME/Mozarteum): Table of contents for NMA X/30/4 ‘Fragmente’, listing the fragment ‘Fragment of the first movement of a quintet in D … KV Anh. 83 (592b)’.
[3] Program-note PDF discussing Mozart’s String Quintet in D major, K. 593, including remarks on its texture and style (context for the related later work).