Harmoniemusik or wind band music was extremely popular in the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, a time when the Austrian Empire found it fashionable to keep a private wind band, called a Harmonie, and when Emperor Joseph II added a Harmonie to the royal court, the success of this kind of musical organisation was assured. The function of such ensembles was to provide music for social, not military occasions, and the bulk of the music they played were arrangements of popular songs, operas, symphonies and ballets, though there were original compositions too, for outdoor or indoor entertainment, more often than not of a divertimento or serenade-like character. Nearly all of Mozart’s music for wind band dates from this period, when there was a seemingly insatiable demand for such music in Vienna

Apart from the ever-popular Septet, Beethoven’s chamber music with wind scarcely approaches the grandeur and splendour of Mozart’s Serenade in C minor, K.388 or the Serenade in B flat, K.361, possibly the most influential work for wind instruments ever composed.

It has been suggested that this ‘Gran Partita’, as it is called on Mozart’s autograph manuscript – although this title was added at a later date and was probably nothing to do with Mozart – may have been his wedding present to his wife Constanza in 1782. If so, with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll it must be one of the greatest gifts of music a composer has ever made to his wife. Anton Stadler, the player for whom Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet was one of the two clarinettists in Emperor Joseph’s Harmonie and in 1784 he organised a private concert for his own benefit, which included the first public performance of sections from the Serenade, K.361 which was described in the Wienerblättchen advertisement for the concert as a “great wind piece of a very special kind”.

“A master sat at every instrument – and oh, what an effect! – magnificent and grand. Mozart. That’s a life here, like the land of the blessed, the land of music…” wrote one critic who was present at the concert.

The Serenade in B flat is a seven-movement work scored for six pairs of wind instruments: oboes, clarinets, basset horns, bassoons, horns in F and horns in B flat. To this group of twelve players Mozart adds a string bass to double the second bassoon at the octave as well as having an independent part. For many years before Mozart’s autograph manuscript was consulted, this part was usually performed on a contrabassoon, giving rise to its other nickname, the Serenade for thirteen wind instruments. However, the autograph specifically identifies the instrument as “contrabasso” and the performance instructions “arco” and “pizzicato” also appear in the score.

In K.361 – and of course in the two other wind band serenades he wrote around the same time, those in E flat, K.375 and C minor, K.388 – Mozart shows that he has assimilated perfectly the language and mastered the problems of writing for wind band. This is particularly true of the brooding slow movements of K.361, with their undulating inner lines showing an extraordinary sense of what groups of wind instruments can create in the way of smooth, legato sound. Indeed, this work displays an almost luxuriant character which is missing in K.388 and very much refined in K.375.

The opening movement of K.361 begins with an extensive slow introduction which leads to a festive Molto allegro, typically serenade-like in character. The following minuet has two contrasting trio sections and the Adagio third movement, in E flat major, is an operatic ensemble of passionate feeling and sensuous warmth.

The fourth movement is a second minuet and once again it has two trio sections, after which the Romanze returns to the same key and slow tempo of the third movement, but with a contrasting Allegretto central section in C minor. The sixth movement is a set of six variations on an Allegretto theme in B flat major, and Mozart rounds off this extraordinary work with a high-spirited rondo.

© Jeremy Hayes 2010