1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings

Allegro vivace
Andante cantabile
Menuetto: Allegretto
Molto Allegro

Program Notes by Martin Pearlman

Mozart's last symphony, the "Jupiter", was completed on August 10, 1788.  It was a difficult time for Mozart.  His public career and personal finances were faltering, and he had only recently suffered the death of a baby daughter.  Nonetheless, it was an unusually productive year for his composing, and he was able to add thirty new entries into his catalogue of works.  Don Giovanni, composed the previous year, received its second production in Vienna in May of 1788, and in June he began work on his famous final trilogy of symphonies, of which the "Jupiter" is the third, completing them all in less than two months.

The name "Jupiter," was attached to this work after Mozart's death most likely by Johann Peter Salomon, the English impresario who had commissioned Haydn's last twelve symphonies.  From its very opening, the symphony has the weighty sonority and character that set it apart from most other symphonies by Mozart or his contemporaries.  The first movement opens with three powerful strokes of an octave "C" followed immediately by a gentle sighing figure, and it is between these two poles that the material of the movement unfolds.  There follows a slow movement with muted strings, which, as its andante cantabile marking suggests, flows throughout with a gentle forward motion.  The third movement is a dance, a Menuetto with a trio that begins with two chords that sound like a final cadence.  Both these middle movements are extraordinary, but it is the finale that is most famous. 

In German-speaking countries, this work was long known as "the symphony with the fugal ending;" and, while the entire symphony is brilliant -- or, as Schumann put it, "wholly above discussion" -- it is indeed the unprecedented finale that is most dazzling.  The four-note motive C-D-F-E which begins that last movement not only appears in a number of other works by Mozart but had long been common property for composers of counterpoint.  But this little motive is only one of five that Mozart treats in fugue and canon in the course of this sonata-form movement.  The culmination comes in the coda, where all five of these motives are heard simultaneously in an intricate web of counterpoint that is  brought to a close in a flourish of brass and timpani.  Here we have a finale that is the climax of the entire work, rather than the lighthearted ending that is so common in earlier symphonies.  The feeling of seriousness and weight in this symphony was no doubt one reason why the "Jupiter" remained so popular in the nineteenth century, taking a revered place alongside the symphonies of Beethoven.

Boston Baroque Performances

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