Rondo for a Clarinet Quintet in E♭ major (fragment), K. 516d
di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Rondo for clarinet and strings in E♭ major (K. 516d) survives only as a tiny Vienna fragment from 1787, when the composer was 31. Though its context is uncertain, the page points toward the chamber style Mozart was beginning to cultivate around the clarinet in the late 1780s.
What Is Known
Only a brief Rondo fragment for clarinet and string quartet (clarinet + two violins, viola, and bass/violoncello) survives in E♭ major, generally dated to Vienna, 1787, and transmitted in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe as K. 516d [1] [2]. The surviving music is extremely short—often described in performance materials as just a handful of bars—so any reconstruction of Mozart’s plan (or the fragment’s intended function within a larger quintet) remains conjectural [3].
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Musical Content
What can be heard and read from the fragment suggests an Andante rondo idea: a poised, vocal clarinet line set against unobtrusive string accompaniment, in the warm sonority of E♭ major [1]. Even in miniature, the writing hints at the conversational balance Mozart would later realize on a far larger scale in the Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581 (1789)—not as proof of direct connection, but as a glimpse of the same Viennese preoccupation with clarinet cantabile and chamber transparency [4].
[1] DME Mozarteum (Neue Mozart-Ausgabe online), TOC entry for “Andante Rondo in E flat … (fragment) K. 516d”
[2] IMSLP: Neue Mozart-Ausgabe page listing volume pagination including “Andante Rondo in E-flat major, K. 516d”
[3] Performance upload describing the K. 516d fragment’s brevity (used here only for the commonly circulated extent claim)
[4] DME Mozarteum PDF (NMA volume commentary in English) discussing clarinet quintet context and the 1780s clarinet chamber idiom in Vienna