Piano Piece in C (fragment), K. 695 (C major)
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Piano Piece in C (fragment), K. 695, is a tiny surviving keyboard draft from his Viennese maturity, dated by the Mozarteum to 1785–1786. Preserved only in autograph on a single leaf with two written pages, it offers a fleeting glimpse of Mozart thinking at the keyboard rather than presenting a finished miniature.
What Is Known
The Piano Piece in C (fragment), K. 695, is an authentic but uncompleted solo keyboard work (listed simply for clavier) whose source survives in Mozart’s autograph. The International Mozarteum Foundation’s Köchel-Verzeichnis dates the fragment to Vienna, 1785–1786, and notes that it belongs to a sketch sheet ("Skizzenblatt 1785a"); the physical source is described as a score on one leaf, written on two sides. [1]
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In these years Mozart (aged 29–30) was writing at white heat for the Viennese concert season—most famously the Fantasia in C minor, K. 475 (completed 20 May 1785), whose free, improvisatory rhetoric shows how readily his keyboard writing could move between the private sketch and the public showpiece. [2]
Musical Content
Because K. 695 survives as a short, unfinished autograph draft (rather than a prepared fair copy), it reads less like a self-contained “character piece” and more like material in progress: compact ideas in C major set down without the closing harmonic and formal confirmations one expects in a completed keyboard miniature. In that sense, it sits naturally alongside the other late-1780s keyboard sketches and fragments transmitted on similar leaves in the Mozarteum’s holdings, where Mozart’s notation often captures a thought mid-flight rather than a performance-ready text. [1]
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for KV 695 (dating, status, transmission, and source description).
[2] Reference overview for Fantasia in C minor, K. 475 (completion date and context in 1785 Vienna).