Piece in B♭ for dance ensemble or orchestra (fragment), K. 675
par Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Piece in B♭ for dance ensemble or orchestra (fragment), K. 675, is a brief surviving scrap from 1778—one of the years in which the 22-year-old composer was moving between Mannheim and Paris. Preserved only in autograph form, it offers a fleeting glimpse of Mozart thinking in the compact, practical idiom of social and theatrical dance music.
What Is Known
Only a fragment of K. 675 survives: an autograph draft for a short dance-like instrumental piece in B♭ major, left incomplete and without any secure documentation of its intended occasion or original venue.[1] The surviving leaf belongs to a 1778 sketch sheet (Skizzenblatt 1778b), and the Mozarteum catalogue dates it to Mozart’s Mannheim/Paris period (1778).[1] In the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe sketch volume, the entry is described as an “instrumental piece in B♭” transmitted as a first notation, a renewed sketch, and an attempted fair copy—suggesting Mozart was briefly testing how (and whether) to finish it.[2]
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Musical Content
What remains appears to be the opening of a concise dance—music that would have relied on clear phrasing, buoyant rhythm, and easy tonal orientation in B♭ major rather than extended development.[2] Although the catalogue allows for performance by “dance ensemble or orchestra,” the fragment does not preserve enough context to identify a specific scoring (for example, whether winds were intended alongside strings), nor to determine whether it belonged to a larger set of dances or marches.[1] In miniature, however, K. 675 still aligns with Mozart’s 1778 preoccupation with orchestral clarity and public-facing style—concerns that also shaped his major Paris-year projects, above all the “Paris” Symphony in D, K. 297.[3])
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for KV 675 (work description, status, dating, source note).
[2] Digital Mozart Edition (DME), NMA X/30/3 (Ulrich Konrad, 1998) table of contents entry for Skb 1778b (2) describing the KV 675 sketch states.
[3] Wikipedia: Symphony No. 31 in D major (“Paris”), K. 297—context for Mozart’s orchestral work in 1778 (used cautiously for general chronology).