Horn Concerto No. 4 in E♭ major (K. 495)
ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作
Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 in E♭ major (K. 495) was completed in Vienna on 26 June 1786, a late, gleaming summation of what the natural horn could do in Classical concerto style.[1] Written for his friend, the Viennese horn virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb, it turns the instrument’s traditional “hunting” associations into genuinely vocal lyricism and quick-witted dialogue with the orchestra.[2]
Background and Context
By 1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) had been living as a freelance composer in Vienna for several years, balancing teaching, publishing, and composing against an unforgiving concert economy. In that world, the most dependable “occasion” for a concerto was not an institution but a performer—someone with the social standing and technical authority to make a new piece audible, desirable, and (ideally) saleable.
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Joseph Leutgeb (often spelled Leutgeb/Leitgeb in sources and in Mozart’s own teasing inscriptions) was precisely such a figure: a seasoned horn player in Vienna and, for Mozart, a long-term acquaintance whose relationship blended practical help (loans, favors, networks) with a rough intimacy that can feel startlingly modern. Later commentary preserves the blunt flavor of Mozart’s jokes about him—an edge that sits oddly beside the elegance of the music, yet also hints at how personally these concertos were tailored.[3]
The Fourth Concerto is often described as the “last” of the four canonical horn concertos (K. 412/386b, K. 417, K. 447, K. 495), and it does feel like a culminating statement: not because it is grander, but because it is more assured about how to make the horn speak as both instrument and character. Mozart no longer needs to prove that the horn can dazzle; instead, he lets the solo line glide in and out of the orchestral texture with an ease reminiscent of his mature piano concertos—conversation rather than display.
Composition and Premiere
Mozart dated the concerto in his own thematic catalog on 26 June 1786, describing it as a “hunting horn concerto” for Leutgeb.[2] This single detail is more revealing than it might seem: it situates the piece in Mozart’s working routine (he was meticulous about logging finished works) and it acknowledges—without apology—the genre’s public “meaning” at the time. The horn’s identity was still inseparable from outdoor signals and aristocratic sport; Mozart embraces that association, but he refines it until it can carry long-breathed lyricism and sophisticated harmonic travel.
One of the most vivid traces of the concerto’s social backstory lies not in a letter but in the look of the sources. Mozart wrote the score (and especially the horn part) using multiple ink colors—black alongside red, green, and blue—an eccentricity hard to explain purely in practical terms. Modern editors and performers have taken this as part prank, part performance instruction: an artifact of the composer’s playful, sometimes needling rapport with Leutgeb, but also a reminder that Mozart expected the soloist to read fluently and fearlessly under pressure.[1]
As for the first performance, documentation is thinner than for Mozart’s piano concertos. We can say with confidence that the intended soloist was Leutgeb and that the concerto was created within Vienna’s mixed ecology of private music-making and public subscription concerts. But the absence of a securely documented premiere date is itself instructive: this was a concerto written for use—for the circulation of a performer’s reputation—rather than for a single ceremonial unveiling.
Instrumentation
Mozart scores the concerto for solo horn and a compact orchestra that keeps the sound clear and the harmonic rhythm nimble. (The orchestration is also a clue to performance conditions: this is music that can thrive with modest forces.) The surviving tradition and standard editions agree on the following ensemble.[4]
- Solo: natural horn in E♭
- Winds: 2 oboes
- Brass: 2 horns (in E♭) as ripieno (i.e., orchestral horns in addition to the soloist)
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- Strings: violins I & II, viola, cello, double bass
The presence of ripieno horns is an important coloristic choice. It allows Mozart to thicken the harmonic “glow” in tuttis and to blur the boundary between solo and orchestral horn sonority—an effect that can sound almost like the soloist stepping out of (and back into) the section.
Form and Musical Character
I. Allegro (E♭ major)
The opening movement adopts a Classical concerto first movement design—essentially sonata-allegro form (exposition, development, recapitulation) adapted to the double-exposition logic of concerto writing. Yet what makes K. 495 distinctive is how Mozart handles entry.
Instead of treating the horn’s first appearance as a “heroic arrival,” he lets the soloist join a texture already in motion, as if the horn has been present all along, listening and then deciding to speak. The thematic material is “horn-like” in the eighteenth-century sense—triadic outlines, signal figures, and bright arpeggiations—but Mozart constantly turns these gestures toward songfulness. The solo line repeatedly aims for the illusion of legato on an instrument that, without valves, must negotiate notes and timbres with ingenious compromises.
That technical background matters. The natural horn’s pitch inventory is governed by the harmonic series; notes outside that series are obtained through hand-stopping (partially closing the bell with the hand), which subtly changes tone color. In performance, this can become an expressive device: certain notes will naturally sound more open, others more veiled. Mozart writes as though he expects (and enjoys) those color shifts, using them to shade phrases rather than to conceal “limitations.”
II. Romance (Andante-like slow movement in ABA spirit)
Mozart labels the slow movement a Romance, a term that in his time suggests something more intimate than ceremonious: a lyrical interlude with a lightly narrative quality. The orchestral fabric is transparent, so that the horn can sustain long melodic spans without forcing.
Here, Mozart’s genius is less about inventing a “pretty tune” (though he does) than about composing breath and time. The horn’s line often seems to hover just above the strings, entering on tones that feel inevitable rather than climactic. For the listener, the pleasure is partly acoustic: the horn’s warm resonance in E♭ major, an especially sympathetic key for the instrument, creates a halo around the melody.
A small interpretive debate that performers face is how “vocal” to make this movement. On a modern valved horn, one can smooth away the natural horn’s timbral contrasts; historically informed players, by contrast, may allow the stopped notes to speak with their characteristic darkened hue. Neither approach is inherently more faithful to Mozart’s musical intention, but each reveals a different romance: one as bel canto line, the other as a kind of intimate soliloquy.
III. Rondo (Allegro vivace)
The finale is a rondo—returning refrain alternating with contrasting episodes—whose surface charm can disguise how deftly Mozart calibrates risk. For the soloist, the writing is athletic but rarely brutal: it favors clean articulation, buoyant leaps, and quick turns that exploit the horn’s natural brilliance.
The “hunting” topic is present not as picturesque scenery but as rhythmic energy: a sense of forward motion that keeps the music smiling even when the harmony briefly darkens. Mozart’s rondo refrains are also unusually memorable in profile; the theme can be heard as a compressed operatic number—entrance, wink, exit—repeated with new inflections each time.
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This movement also invites a practical question: cadenzas. Mozart did not leave a single “authorized” cadenza tradition for the horn concertos in the way later nineteenth-century composers sometimes did. As a result, performers must choose: a short, stylistically discreet cadenza (often drawing on eighteenth-century models), or an almost improvisatory flourish that spotlights the player’s personality. In either case, K. 495 rewards restraint: too much bravura can break the concerto’s conversational scale.
Reception and Legacy
K. 495 has become the best-known of Mozart’s horn concertos in the modern repertoire, in part because it sits at a sweet spot of difficulty: challenging enough to be a calling card, but gracious enough to be universally playable. It is also a piece that adapts unusually well to different performance cultures. On period instruments, its hand-stopped color palette makes audible the instrument’s eighteenth-century identity; on modern horns, its long lines and bright articulation show why the concerto is treated as foundational training for classical style.
The autograph’s multi-colored inks have also become part of the work’s legend, not merely as a curiosity but as an interpretive prompt: a reminder that Mozart’s “serious” craftsmanship coexisted with an irreverent workshop humor.[1] In a repertoire where masterpieces are often sealed behind reverence, K. 495 keeps a human face—friendship, virtuosity, mischief, and a composer who knew exactly how to make a difficult instrument sound effortlessly eloquent.
For listeners today, the concerto’s enduring appeal may lie in that balance. It never denies the horn’s origins as a signaling instrument, but it repeatedly transforms signal into speech. In doing so, Mozart offers something rarer than display: a portrait of an instrument thinking aloud, witty one moment and tender the next, always within a few perfectly judged bars of orchestral reply.
楽譜
Horn Concerto No. 4 in E♭ major (K. 495)の楽譜をVirtual Sheet Music®からダウンロード・印刷
[1] G. Henle Verlag urtext edition page (HN 704): completion date, editorial remarks, and discussion of Mozart’s multi-colored inks in the autograph.
[2] Parlance Chamber Concerts program note: Mozart’s catalog entry date (26 June 1786) and description as a “hunting horn concerto” for Leutgeb; context on numbering and Leutgeb.
[3] The Arts Desk article on “completing Mozart”: contextual discussion of Leutgeb and the famous “took pity on Leutgeb, ox, ass and fool” inscription tradition.
[4] IMSLP work page for K. 495: standard scoring/instrumentation and access to public-domain materials.