Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's K. 396 (formerly K. 385f) is a movement, or rather an unfinished scrap of a movement, that the composer worked on in Vienna during the late summer (i.e. August or September) of 1782. It was intended to be a part of one of the sonatas for piano and violin that Mozart composed for his wife Constanze (backwards as it might seem, these unusual sonatas are as much piano sonatas accompanied by violin as they are the reverse), but it was abandoned, forgotten, and its manuscript was not seen or heard again until 1930, when Robert Haas turned it up at an archive in Weimar. The movement, which has been "finished" by at least one composer-musicologist, has no specific tempo indication, but the elaborate ornamental filling of the piano writing establishes it as a slow or slowish item. The violin enters only at the very end of the fragment, in the 23rd of the 27 bars that Mozart finished, just before a cadence to E flat major is made and a repeat sign (going back to the beginning) appears.

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.