Contredanse in E♭ major, “Il Trionfo delle Donne” (fragment), K. 607
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Contredanse in E♭ major, “Il Trionfo delle Donne” (fragment), K. 607, belongs to his final Vienna year (1791) and survives only as an incomplete orchestral dance. Brief as it is, the title and musical materials place it close to the courtly ball repertoire that Mozart supplied alongside his operatic and sacred commissions.
What Is Known
The work is catalogued as a fragmentary contredanse in E♭ major from Vienna, dated 28 February 1791, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was 35.[1] The surviving source is an autograph fragment, and the New Mozart Edition commentary identifies what remains as a “Conclusion and Trio” for the dance.[2] Beyond this—how much preceded it, whether it belonged to a larger set, and whether it was ever performed—documentation is slight, so the most secure conclusions are those suggested directly by the manuscript’s function as the ending of a ballroom-style number.[2]
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Musical Content
As preserved, K. 607 gives the closing stretch of a contredanse with an attached Trio section—an expected alternation in late-18th-century social dances, where a contrasting Trio (often lighter in scoring or character) refreshes the ear before the final cadence.[2] Even in fragmentary state, the idiom is recognizably Mozart’s late-Vienna dance style: clear periodic phrasing, bright E♭-major harmonies, and a practical, public-facing directness that complements the more rarefied worlds of La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte composed the same year.[1]
[1] Wikipedia: Köchel catalogue entry listing K. 607 (“Contredanse, ‘Il Trionfo delle Donne’ (fragment)”), date (28 Feb 1791), place (Vienna), and Mozart’s age.
[2] Digital Mozart Edition (Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg): New Mozart Edition, Series IV/13/1/2 commentary PDF noting an autograph fragment of the contredance K. 607/605a, preserved as “Conclusion and Trio.”