While in Mannheim in the autumn of 1777 and the spring of 1778, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) composed a pair of songs for Augusta Wendling, daughter of J.B. Wendling, the flutist in the Mannheim orchestra. With their semi-dramatic texts and semi-expansive forms, both songs might be more properly classified as ariettas with a straightforward piano accompaniment. In the second song, Dans un bois solitaire with a five-verse text by Antoine Hodart de la Motte, the singer takes the opening three verses as a simple-seeming through-composed song of great amiability, takes the fourth verse as a semi-recitative, and takes the fifth verse as a recapitulation of the music of the opening verse. Although hardly one of Mozart's greatest songs, Dan un bois solitaire is still a charmer.

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