Fantasia in C major (fragment) for glass harmonica and ensemble, K. 616a
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Fantasia in C major (K. 616a) is an unfinished 1791 Vienna fragment for glass harmonica with flute, oboe, viola, and cello—a rare glimpse into his late fascination with the instrument’s ethereal sound world. What survives is extremely short: essentially a single-page score, closely linked in scoring and context to the contemporaneous Adagio and Rondo, K. 617.
What Is Known
The Fantasia in C major (K. 616a) is transmitted as an autograph fragment dating from Vienna, April–June 1791, and is classified as an uncompleted work in the Mozarteum’s catalogue entry.[1] Only one leaf of score survives (a Partitur consisting of “1 Bl. (1 beschr. S.)”), so the piece gives no secure evidence of overall length, formal plan, or intended continuation.[1]
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The instrumentation—glass harmonica (Glasharmonika), flute, oboe, viola, and cello—matches Mozart’s late chamber writing for the same forces, above all the Adagio and Rondo, K. 617, completed in 1791.[1] While K. 616a is accepted as authentic in modern reference cataloguing, the surviving material is too scant to connect it confidently to a specific occasion or performer, beyond the broader circle of Mozart’s 1791 interest in glass-harmonica sonorities.[1]
Musical Content
With only a single notated page extant, K. 616a reads less like a “piece” in the usual sense than like the beginning of an improvisatory idea committed to paper: a fantasia in the late-18th-century meaning of free, exploratory continuity rather than a closed, symmetrical design. The scoring itself already implies a distinctive color balance—the glass harmonica as a luminous, sustaining treble presence, framed by paired winds (flute and oboe) and the darker string duo (viola and cello).
What can be said with confidence is therefore primarily timbral: the fragment belongs to Mozart’s late Vienna sound palette in which unusual instruments are treated with chamber-music intimacy, and where melody and accompaniment can pass fluidly between solo line, inner voices, and bass support. In development terms, K. 616a sits convincingly beside K. 617 as a late experiment in writing that is at once vocal in line and unusually blended in texture—music poised between salon refinement and the heightened expressivity of Mozart’s final year in Vienna.[1]
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum (KV Online): KV 616a “Fantasia in C” — status, dating (Vienna, 04–06/1791), instrumentation, and surviving source description (autograph; 1 leaf, 1 written page).