Fugue in D major (K. Anh.A 52)
av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Fugue in D major (K. Anh.A 52) is a short solo-keyboard fugue traditionally associated with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) but now generally regarded as spurious and attributed instead to Johann Michael Haydn (1737–1806). It is sometimes tentatively dated to around 1783, though the provenance and original context remain unclear.
Background and Context
The Fugue in D major (K. Anh.A 52) survives with little secure documentary context: its date and place of origin are not firmly established, and modern reference listings treat the work as of doubtful authenticity under Mozart’s name [1]. Current scholarship and cataloguing practice generally describe it as not by Mozart, assigning it instead to Johann Michael Haydn, Mozart’s Salzburg colleague and a composer whose contrapuntal idiom could easily circulate in keyboard copies of the period [2].
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Placed against Mozart’s well-documented interest in learned counterpoint in the early 1780s—years that also saw more securely authenticated fugal projects and arrangements after Bach—this small fugue is best understood today as a peripheral item transmitted under Mozart’s name rather than a reliable witness to his compositional development [3].
Musical Character
On the page, the piece presents a compact fugal argument in D major: a single subject is stated clearly and then worked through brief imitative entries, producing the familiar texture of independent voices in close dialogue. The writing favors practical keyboard counterpoint—steady motion, clear harmonic direction, and a generally diatonic profile—over the kinds of dramatic, chromatically heightened fugal rhetoric Mozart sometimes adopts in his authenticated mature contrapuntal movements.
In effect, it reads as a concise exercise in fugal craft: direct, workmanlike, and built to demonstrate control of imitation and voice-leading more than to project an expansive concert character. That profile aligns comfortably with Michael Haydn’s cultivated, church-adjacent contrapuntal manner, and it helps explain why the work has been reassigned away from Mozart in modern commentary [2].
[1] ClassicaLive listing for “Fugue in D major, K.291/Anh.A 52” (basic reference entry; notes the work’s presence in modern listings under Mozart’s name).
[2] Wikipedia overview of Johann Michael Haydn (biographical context; standard reference point for the composer now commonly credited with the fugue).
[3] IMSLP overview page for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (context for Mozart’s authenticated engagements with fugue/counterpoint and editorial practice in modern collected editions).