Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart completed the Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622 in Vienna in early October 1791, writing it for his friend and collaborator Anton Stadler and the latter’s extended-range basset clarinet in A. Often described as Mozart’s instrumental farewell, the concerto’s luminous surface conceals a fascinating documentary problem: the autograph is lost, and much of its 19th-century performance tradition rests on an “adapted” solo line that smooths away the instrument’s intended low notes.
Background and Context
In late 1791 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was composing at astonishing speed in Vienna—finishing Die Zauberflöte, supplying music for La clemenza di Tito, and working amid the pressures of theatre deadlines, teaching, finances, and fragile health. The Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622 belongs to this compressed final season, yet its tone is notably unhurried: spacious melodic paragraphs, long-breathed transitions, and a solo line that seems to “speak” rather than dazzle.
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The work’s dedicatee, Anton Stadler (1753–1812), was no ordinary orchestral clarinettist. Contemporary reports repeatedly single out his expressive sound and, crucially, his mastery of the chalumeau (low) register—an area Mozart exploits with unusual tenderness and rhetorical weight. Stadler’s instrument-making circle in Vienna (especially the court instrument maker Theodor Lotz) fostered new clarinet types with expanded lower range; Mozart’s concerto is inseparable from this moment of technical experimentation, when the clarinet’s identity was still being negotiated between vocal imitation, virtuoso display, and orchestral blending.[1][2]
What makes K. 622 especially rich—beyond its fame—is that its “text” is historically unstable. Mozart’s finished autograph score does not survive, and the concerto entered the 19th-century repertoire through early printed editions that adjust passages lying below the standard clarinet’s compass.[2] The result is an interpretive debate with real musical consequences: are the concerto’s most affecting moments those we inherited through publication, or those we must reconstruct through evidence, analogy, and instrument history?
Composition and Premiere
Mozart entered the concerto into his own thematic catalogue between late September 1791 (Die Zauberflöte is dated 28 September there) and the Freimaurer-Kantate, K. 623 (15 November 1791), which fixes the concerto’s completion to a narrow window.[3] The most vivid documentary glimpse comes from Mozart’s letter of 7/8 October 1791 to his wife Constanze, where he refers to completing the final movement—often paraphrased as having “orchestrated” or finished “Stadler’s Rondo.”[1][2]
The premiere cannot be documented with the certainty one would like. A performance by Stadler in Prague on 16 October 1791 is widely proposed, and the date plausibly fits Stadler’s documented travel and concert activity; however, no programme has survived to confirm it beyond doubt.[2] This uncertainty has encouraged two useful cautions for performers and listeners:
1. The concerto’s “first audience” may not have been Vienna at all, but the cosmopolitan, opera-oriented Prague scene that had just hosted La clemenza di Tito (September 1791). 2. The work’s earliest reception is entangled with Stadler’s personal touring repertory and the practicalities of a rare instrument—factors that likely accelerated the later editorial “normalization” of the solo part.
Behind the premiere question lies an even more consequential issue: the disappearance of the autograph. Constanze Mozart later suggested to the publisher Johann Anton André that Stadler was implicated—whether through loss, pawning, or theft—an anecdote that persists because it matches the uncomfortable reality that the concerto’s original performing materials vanished at the precise point when Stadler, the key intermediary, took them on the road.[2][1]
Instrumentation
Mozart scores the concerto with characteristic restraint: an orchestra that frames the soloist with clarity rather than weight, allowing timbral “close-ups” and chamber-like dialogues.
- Solo: basset clarinet in A (extended lower range; often played today on A clarinet with adaptations)[2]
- Winds: 2 flutes, 2 bassoons
- Brass: 2 horns
- Strings: violins I & II, viola, cello, double bass
Notably absent are oboes, clarinets (in the orchestra), trumpets, and timpani—omissions that help maintain the concerto’s mellow, autumnal color. The orchestral winds often behave less as a brilliant “choir” than as shading devices: the flutes can brighten a phrase’s halo, while bassoons anchor the harmony with an intimacy closer to chamber music than to public ceremonial style.
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Form and Musical Character
I. Allegro (A major) — sonata-allegro form
The first movement exemplifies Mozart’s late concerto rhetoric: the opening orchestral exposition is poised and unforced, yet it quietly establishes a world in which the soloist’s entrance feels like the continuation of a conversation already underway. One can hear Mozart writing for a specific player—not merely in technical convenience but in the way the line flatters a singerly legato, then pivots to articulate passagework without turning the clarinet into a violin surrogate.
The most discussed “non-obvious” feature is not thematic but registral. In a reconstructed basset-clarinet reading, several cadential and transitional moments resolve downward into the extended low compass, giving harmonic gravity to what later editions often redirect upward. The difference is not cosmetic: it changes the concerto’s sense of persuasion. Downward resolution feels like arriving; upward displacement can sound like polite avoidance. Because Mozart’s autograph is missing, modern reconstructions triangulate from early printed editions, the concerto’s internal logic, and related Mozart materials—including an earlier, partially preserved version connected to a basset-horn concerto concept (K. 621b/584b), which suggests how readily Mozart could rethink scoring and key as he refined the work for Stadler.[2][1]
II. Adagio (D major) — ternary design
The Adagio has become emblematic of Mozartian serenity, but its construction is more daring than the reputation suggests. The solo part sustains long arcs that test breath control and tonal steadiness—especially on classical or basset instruments—while the orchestra often provides accompaniment textures that are deliberately “thin,” leaving the clarinet exposed.
Here the basset clarinet question becomes expressive rather than merely historical. The extended low notes (where employed in reconstructed texts) allow Mozart to color the return of material with a darker vocal register—less soprano aria, more human speaking voice. Even in the standard A-clarinet version, performers often try to preserve the rhetorical intention by shaping phrase-endings as if they were capable of sinking further: diminuendo into the floor of the instrument, with consonant-like articulation that keeps the line intelligible at very soft dynamics.
III. Rondo: Allegro (A major, 6/8)
Mozart’s reference to “Stadler’s Rondo” in early October 1791 has encouraged musicians to hear the finale as a portrait: convivial, agile, and warmly extroverted.[2] Yet the movement is more than genial entertainment. The rondo theme is built for memorability, but its episodes repeatedly test the soloist’s ability to switch character on a dime—pastoral ease, operatic cantabile, then bright virtuosity—without breaking the instrument’s illusion of a single “speaking” persona.
The finale is also the place where 19th-century adaptation is especially audible. When the solo line’s lowest compass is unavailable, editors tend to re-route phrases into the middle register. The problem is that Mozart frequently writes with a dramatist’s ear for direction: a phrase that descends to a dark low note is not simply choosing a pitch; it is choosing a cadence type, a gesture of closure, even a kind of stage movement. To restore those gestures, many present-day soloists and ensembles adopt editions that include basset-clarinet readings, or at least indicate original low notes as ossia alternatives.
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Reception and Legacy
The concerto’s early printed life both secured and distorted its legacy. After Mozart’s death, the work appeared in 1801 in editions by André, Sieber, and Breitkopf & Härtel, all presenting a solo part tailored to the standard clarinet rather than Stadler’s extended instrument.[2] This “publishable” version helped the concerto travel quickly, but it also normalized a text that at least one early critic found unsatisfactory in principle.
A remarkable document is the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung review of 17 March 1802, which praises the concerto as unmistakably Mozart’s and, in effect, the finest clarinet concerto known to the reviewer—yet criticizes the editorial solution. The reviewer argues that it would have been better to publish Mozart’s original as primary, providing the necessary transpositions only as small-note alternatives.[4] For modern readers, this is striking evidence that “historically informed” concerns are not merely late-20th-century purism: already in 1802, listeners could perceive that a compromise text came at an artistic cost.
The 20th and 21st centuries have therefore inherited two parallel traditions:
- The long-dominant standard-clarinet tradition, shaped by 19th-century editions and a century of canonical recordings.
- The basset-clarinet revival, supported by scholarship, reconstruction, and instrument building, which seeks to recover Mozart’s registral dramaturgy and the concerto’s darker, more vocal lower reaches.[2][1]
Neither approach is automatically “truer” in performance; the autograph’s loss ensures that any basset version involves editorial judgement. But the broader legacy is clear: K. 622 became a cornerstone not just because it is beautiful, but because it defines what the clarinet can be in Classical style—an instrument capable of lyric intimacy, speech-like inflection, and architectural weight.
Among notable modern recordings, the most illuminating choices tend to be those that make the textual question audible: performances on basset clarinet (or using editions that restore the low compass) can reveal a subtly different concerto—less polished in the “upright” sense, perhaps, but more persuasive in its downward gravitation and late-Mozart warmth.[2]
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Sheet Music
Download and print sheet music for Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622 from Virtual Sheet Music®.
[1] Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA/DME Mozarteum): Foreword to the Clarinet Concerto (historical context, sources, Stadler, text issues)
[2] Reference overview: composition (Oct 1791), dedicatee Stadler, basset clarinet, loss of autograph, early editions and adaptations
[3] Mozarteum programme booklet (documents concerto’s placement in Mozart’s thematic catalogue between 28 Sep and 15 Nov 1791; cites Mozart’s 7/8 Oct letter context)
[4] Discussion of the 17 March 1802 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung review and its critique of the adapted edition; includes contextual translation notes