Adagio in F major for String Quartet (lost), K. 718
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Adagio in F major for string quartet (K. 718) is a lost, poorly documented chamber work tentatively dated to 1781, when the composer was 25. With no surviving score or autograph, the piece is known only by catalogue reference and is often treated as of doubtful authenticity.
What Is Known
The work entered the Köchel catalogue as an Adagio in F major for string quartet, dated broadly to 1781; no place of composition is securely transmitted, and no music manuscript is presently known to survive. In practice this means K. 718 is a title-and-scoring reference rather than a performable quartet movement.
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Because the source situation is so thin, K. 718 is best regarded as a doubtful or possibly spurious attribution: the catalogue entry preserves the claim that such a piece once existed, but it does not by itself establish authorship beyond question. (The uncertainty surrounding some attributions—especially those surviving only through secondary lists—has parallels elsewhere in the Mozart repertory of “spurious or doubtful” works.)[2]
Musical Content
No notated music is extant, so the Adagio’s themes, form, and texture cannot be described from primary evidence. Beyond the label “string quartet,” even basic particulars—such as whether it was conceived as a slow introduction, an independent movement, or a replacement movement—remain unknown.[1]
[1] Wikipedia — Köchel catalogue entry list including K. 718 as “Adagio in F for string quartet (lost), 1781.”
[2] Wikipedia — Overview article on Mozart works of spurious or doubtful authenticity (context for how doubtful attributions are handled in Mozart scholarship).