Overture in E♭ major (draft to *Die Zauberflöte*), K. 620a
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Overture in E♭ major (K. 620a) is a surviving draft fragment for the opening of Die Zauberflöte (K. 620), sketched in Vienna in 1791, when the composer was 35. Though incomplete and long overshadowed by the finished overture, K. 620a offers a rare close-up of Mozart’s late theatrical workshop—how he tests the opera’s ceremonial, Masonic-inflected tone before arriving at the familiar final design.[1]
Background and Context
In the late summer and autumn of 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was composing at an extraordinary pace in Vienna: the public-facing commission of La clemenza di Tito for Prague, the unfinished Requiem, and—closest to his daily theatrical life—the German Singspiel Die Zauberflöte for Emanuel Schikaneder’s Theater auf der Wieden.[2] The completed Zauberflöte overture in E♭ major (K. 620) would become one of the best-known opera overtures in the repertory, balancing ceremonial weight with comic velocity.
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K. 620a, by contrast, survives only as a short draft fragment (mm. 1–26), yet it deserves attention precisely because it is not a “concert” piece with a stable performing tradition. Instead, it documents Mozart’s process at the very point where an overture must do multiple jobs at once: command attention in a noisy public theatre, set a moral–symbolic atmosphere, and still promise entertainment. The fact that this draft remains in E♭ major—the same key as the final overture—also suggests that Mozart had already fixed the tonal “frame” within which the opera’s mixture of solemnity and fantasy would unfold.[1]
Composition and Commission
The Köchel-Verzeichnis (International Mozarteum Foundation) dates K. 620a to Vienna, September–October 1791, classifying it as an authentic but uncompleted work transmitted in autograph.[1] In other words, it is not an “alternate overture” in the usual sense, but rather a draft that never reached full continuity.
The draft stands in close relation to the performed overture K. 620/00. The same Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for K. 620/00 points directly to “Appendix 102 (620a)” and to the relevant New Mozart Edition volume (NMA II/5/19, Die Zauberflöte), where the fragment is presented as part of the opera’s editorial documentation.[3][4]
Instrumentation (K. 620a fragment) is given in the Mozarteum catalogue as a classical-late orchestral palette that overlaps strongly with Mozart’s late-stage practice:
- Winds: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons
- Brass: 2 horns, 2 trumpets
- Percussion: timpani
- Strings: violins I & II, viola, cello & bass
Notably, this catalogue listing does not include the three trombones that are characteristic of the final Zauberflöte overture’s full scoring in many modern editions and performances; those trombones are explicitly listed in the Mozarteum instrumentation for K. 620/00.[3] The difference is a reminder that K. 620a is a working draft: Mozart may not yet have decided on the final colouristic “ritual” weight of the brass choir, or the surviving leaf may represent only one stage of a larger, now-lost plan.
Libretto and Dramatic Structure
Because K. 620a is an overture draft rather than a set number, its dramatic function must be inferred from the opera it introduces. Schikaneder’s libretto for Die Zauberflöte famously fuses popular Viennese theatre (comic scenes, stage effects, spoken dialogue) with moral allegory and Enlightenment ritual imagery.[2] The finished overture responds to this hybrid world with a calculated duality: a slow, monumental introduction (ceremony, “temple” atmosphere) followed by a fast contrapuntal movement (wit, bustle, theatrical momentum).
The draft fragment K. 620a is valuable because it suggests how early Mozart began to shape that opening posture. Even when only a few dozen measures survive, an overture draft can reveal what a composer thought the opera needed before a word was spoken: a tonal centre (E♭ major), a rhetorical stance, and a sense of public space—music that does not merely “start the show” but frames the listener’s expectations of authority and trial.
Musical Structure and Key Numbers
K. 620a does not offer “numbers” in the operatic sense, but it does offer a focused glimpse into Mozart’s late overture thinking.
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1) The fragment as a threshold (Adagio-domain rhetoric)
The Mozarteum catalogue ties the surviving draft to the overture’s opening span (presented in the NMA as mm. 1–26).[1] For the listener who knows the final K. 620, this is exactly where the overture’s identity is forged: in the negotiation between public ceremony and theatre—a slow introduction that asks for attention, and a later quick section that releases kinetic energy.
What makes K. 620a distinctive is that it is not yet “sealed” into the famous final text. It is Mozart thinking in real time about pacing and sonority: what to state plainly, what to reserve, and how to make a late-18th-century Viennese audience listen before the curtain rises.
2) Orchestral colour as a late-style signature
Even in draft form, the instrumentation listed for K. 620a (with full winds, trumpets, and timpani) implies a deliberately festive and ceremonial overture profile—far from the lighter theatre-band scoring one might expect for suburban popular entertainment.[1] In that sense, the fragment supports a broader view of Die Zauberflöte as a work that elevates Singspiel materials into a more ambitious moral drama.
At the same time, the comparison with K. 620/00 is instructive: the final overture’s catalogue entry explicitly includes three trombones alongside the rest of the orchestra.[3] Whether Mozart added trombones later to deepen the “temple” resonance, or whether K. 620a simply preserves an earlier scoring idea, the draft encourages a concrete question that often gets lost behind the overture’s popularity: how did Mozart calibrate the opera’s ceremonial sound-world, and at what stage did he commit to its most unmistakable timbral markers?
Premiere and Reception
K. 620a itself has no documented premiere: it survives as an autograph draft and is categorized as an uncompleted work rather than a performed overture.[1] Its “reception,” therefore, is primarily editorial and documentary.
The performed overture K. 620/00, however, quickly became detachable from the opera and entered the concert hall as a standalone showpiece—one reason the completed version has so thoroughly eclipsed its sketches. Modern access to K. 620a comes largely through scholarly transmission: the New Mozart Edition’s Die Zauberflöte volume explicitly accounts for the fragment (Appendix 102 / 620a), situating it within the opera’s textual history rather than treating it as an independent concert item.[4]
For today’s listener and reader, that is precisely why K. 620a matters. It reminds us that Mozart’s late theatrical masterpieces were not born fully formed; they were made through experiments, revisions, and abandoned pathways. In a repertory dominated by finished “masterworks,” this small E♭-major fragment offers something rarer: Mozart’s compositional decision-making, caught in the act.
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[1] International Mozarteum Foundation (Köchel-Verzeichnis): KV 620a — a) Fragment K (Appendix 102), mm. 1–26; dating Vienna Sept–Oct 1791; instrumentation; status uncompleted.
[2] Wikipedia: The Magic Flute — overview of opera, libretto, and context (Schikaneder, genre, overture discussion).
[3] International Mozarteum Foundation (Köchel-Verzeichnis): KV 620/00 — Ouverture; key, full overture instrumentation (including 3 trombones) and relation to Appendix 102/620a.
[4] Digital Mozart Edition (DME): NMA II/5/19 *Die Zauberflöte* — table of contents showing Ouverture and Appendix 102 (620a).