Minuet with Trio in C major (K. Anh.C 13.01)
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
The Minuet with Trio in C major (K. Anh.C 13.01) survives as an orchestral dance movement once attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but now regarded as incorrectly assigned. Preserved in copyist transmission and lacking a secure date or place of origin, it is today associated instead with Kaspar Anton Karl van Beethoven.
Background and Context
Although this Menuett und Trio appears in the Mozart catalogue as K. Anh.C 13.01, modern reference work at the International Mozarteum Foundation classifies it as incorrectly assigned and attributes it to Kaspar Anton Karl van Beethoven rather than to Mozart [1]. No firm year or place of composition is given there, and the work’s survival is described simply as extant in copy (“Abschrift”), without the kind of documentary anchors (autograph, dated commission, identifiable occasion) that would allow a confident placement within Mozart’s career [1].
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
In practical terms, that uncertainty places limits on biography-based interpretation: the piece is best approached as a functional orchestral dance—music designed for social use—rather than as a datable milestone in Mozart’s stylistic development.
Musical Character
K. Anh.C 13.01 is a conventional minuet-and-trio pair in C major, the minuet’s courtly triple-meter genre normally articulated in repeated sections, followed by a contrasting central Trio and a return to the opening minuet [1]. Its scoring, however, is notably full for a dance:
- Winds: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons
- Brass: 2 horns, 2 trumpets
- Percussion: timpani
- Strings: violins I & II, viola, cello, double bass
This “festival” palette—especially the presence of trumpets and timpani—suggests a public-facing, brightly colored style of ballroom or outdoor entertainment rather than an intimate chamber minuet [1]. Even without a secure provenance, the instrumentation alone points to a sound world closer to late-18th-century ceremonial dance practice than to a private domestic divertimento.
Place in the Catalog
As K. Anh.C 13.01, the work sits among miscellaneous dances in the catalogue’s appendix and is now treated as spurious with Mozart’s authorship rejected [1]. For performers and listeners, its value lies less in what it reveals about Mozart’s life than in what it preserves of the period’s orchestral dance idiom—presented here under the name of Kaspar Anton Karl van Beethoven.
[1] International Mozarteum Foundation, Köchel-Verzeichnis entry for K. Anh.C 13.01 (“Menuett und Trio in C”) — authenticity status, attribution, key, and instrumentation.