Duet "Ich nenne dich, ohn’ es zu wissen" in B♭ major (fragment), K. 699
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s duet "Ich nenne dich, ohn’ es zu wissen" (K. 699) is an incomplete vocal canon in B♭ major for two high voices (discant) with keyboard accompaniment, datable to around 1785, when the composer was 29. Only a short draft survives—enough to suggest an intimate, salon-scale piece poised between song and learned contrapuntal play.
What Is Known
The surviving material for "Ich nenne dich, ohn’ es zu wissen" (K. 699) is a fragment for two sopranos (or other high voices) with clavier/piano in B♭ major, usually placed around 1785; the place of composition is not known.[1]
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The text is attributed to Christian Felix Weiße.[1] Nineteenth-century reporting already describes it as a brief, unfinished duet with keyboard accompaniment, preserving only a few dozen measures.[2] The New Mozart Edition likewise treats it as an untraceable, fragmentary duet.[3]
Musical Content
What survives appears to be the opening of a canon—a “round” in which one voice imitates the other at a fixed time-interval—cast for two equal high parts above a keyboard part. The manuscript suggests a compact, lyric beginning suited to domestic performance rather than the theater, with Mozart’s late-1784/1785 Viennese gift for vocal melody applied to contrapuntal wit in miniature.[2][3]
[1] New Mozart Edition (NMA) table of contents entry for K. 699 (Fragments volume): scoring, text author (Weiße), and basic cataloging.
[2] Otto Jahn, *W. A. Mozart*, Vol. 3 (1858): early description of the duet fragment and its short extent.
[3] New Mozart Edition, Series III/9 (Partsongs), English preface PDF: notes the duet as untraceable/fragmentary and provides contextual remarks.