Instrumental Piece in C major (fragment), K. 682
di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Instrumental Piece in C (K. 682) is a short, unfinished fragment in C major, notated on just two leaves and associated in the Köchel-Verzeichnis with a “dance ensemble” of uncertain type. Usually dated to Mozart’s Vienna years (1781–1791), it is commonly placed around 1782—when the 26-year-old composer was newly established in the city and writing both social dance music and ambitious concert works side by side.[1]
What Is Known
Only a fragment of K. 682 survives: an autograph short score/score fragment described as “Partitur: 2 Bl. (3 beschr. S.)” (two leaves, three written pages).[1] The work is transmitted as extant but explicitly uncompleted.[1]
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The entry associates the fragment with a sketch sheet (Skb 1782γ) and places it broadly within Mozart’s Vienna period; a more exact occasion, destination, or performing group is not securely documented beyond the suggestion “probably for dance ensemble.”[1][2]
Musical Content
Because the surviving source is so slight and the instrumentation is not fixed in the description, K. 682 is best understood as a working draft: a practical idea in C major that may have been intended for the kind of public or semi-public dancing Mozart regularly supplied in early-1780s Vienna. The manuscript’s brevity and unfinished state suggest that what survives is not a complete movement but a partial musical thought—enough to hint at a straightforward, functional style, but not enough to reconstruct a full dance set with confidence.[1]
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for K. 682 (status, key, dating range, source description: autograph score fragment on 2 leaves).
[2] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for Skb 1782γ (associated sketch sheet; autograph, dated 1782).