Violin Concerto “No. 6” in E♭ major (spurious), K. Anh.C 14.04
par Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The so-called Violin Concerto No. 6 in E♭ major (K. Anh.C 14.04), sometimes dated to around 1780 (Munich has often been suggested), survives as a concerto in three movements that was long attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) but is now generally regarded as spurious. Modern scholarship most often connects it with the Munich violinist-composer Johann Friedrich Eck (1767–1838), though the work’s exact origin remains unclear.[1]
Background and Context
In 1780 Mozart was 24, moving between Salzburg obligations and major commissions further afield, and he would soon be drawn again to Munich for the premiere of Idomeneo (January 1781). Against that backdrop, an E♭-major violin concerto ascribed to him—later circulated as “No. 6”—has an understandable surface plausibility: Munich was a virtuoso-oriented court, and Mozart’s earlier, authentic violin concertos (1775) show how fluently he could write for the instrument. Yet the surviving tradition for K. Anh.C 14.04 points away from Mozart’s secure oeuvre. The piece was first published only in 1799 (by Johann André), and it is not included in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.[1]
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Musical Character
The concerto follows the familiar three-movement Classical plan—Allegro moderato, Un poco Adagio, and a finale Rondo: Allegretto—for solo violin with orchestra.[1] The outer movements are built around clear-cut orchestral ritornellos (recurring tutti blocks) that frame solo episodes, and the solo writing leans toward brilliant passagework and idiomatic violin figuration rather than the operatic, conversational interplay often prized in Mozart’s authentic concertos.
While the full scoring varies by source, the work is generally performed as a late-18th-century concerto for violin with strings and winds. A related manuscript copy in Oxford (Bodleian Libraries) preserves only the first movement and already labels the concerto as spuriously attributed to Mozart, adding that it may have been composed or completed by Eck.[2]
Place in the Catalog
K. Anh.C 14.04 sits alongside other “extra” concertante works that have travelled under Mozart’s name; today it is best approached as a capable period concerto whose musical profile and transmission history do not securely match Mozart’s documented output around 1780.[1]
[1] Wikipedia — overview, movement list, publication (André 1799), and modern attribution doubts for the so-called Violin Concerto No. 6 in E♭ major (K. 268/365b/Anh.C 14.04).
[2] Bodleian Libraries (Oxford) catalogue entry — manuscript holding for K. Anh.C 14.04 (1st movement only) noting spurious attribution and possible connection to Friedrich (Johann Friedrich) Eck; includes bibliography to Lebermann (1978) and Oldman (1931).