Adagio for Organ in D minor (fragment), K. 593a
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Adagio in D minor (fragment), K. 593a, is a brief surviving leaf from his late Vienna years (dated 1790–91). Often associated with organ—more specifically a “mechanical organ” in modern catalogues—its exact intended keyboard medium remains partly uncertain, but the notation preserves a concentrated glimpse of Mozart’s late expressive language in a dark minor key.
What Is Known
Only a fragment of the Adagio in D minor survives: the Köchel catalogue describes an extant autograph score consisting of a single leaf (one written page), explicitly marked as an uncompleted work. It is dated to Vienna, 1790–1791, placing it alongside Mozart’s final period of keyboard and “mechanical organ” commissions. The International Mozarteum Foundation catalogues the work as Adagio in d for a mechanical organ (fragment) and lists the instrumentation accordingly, though the same sources acknowledge its circulation among “individual works for clavier … or a mechanical instrument,” which helps explain why some modern listings have treated it as generic keyboard music rather than a definite church-organ piece.[1]
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The most accessible modern witness is the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe reading (edited by Wolfgang Plath) preserved in facsimile/scan via IMSLP; it presents the fragment on a single page and likewise treats it under K. 593a.[2]
Musical Content
As the title implies, the music is cast as an Adagio: a slow, weighty utterance in D minor. Even in its incomplete state, the fragment suggests a sombre, harmonically directed meditation rather than a self-contained miniature, with the kind of searching minor-key rhetoric familiar from Mozart’s late, more introspective keyboard writing. The notation’s plain score layout is compatible with performance on organ (including the late-18th-century mechanical organs for which Mozart was commissioned), but the fragment is too short to establish a full formal design beyond an opening paragraph and its continuation.[1][2]
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for KV 593a (status, dating Vienna 1790–1791, autograph leaf, mechanical organ designation).
[2] IMSLP work page for Adagio in D minor, K.Anh.35/593a (includes NMA-based scan details and basic work metadata).