Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Symphony No. 40 KV 550

Mozart’s final three symphonies were composed, according to Mozart’s autograph Verzeichnüß, in the space of a few weeks, from late June to early August 1788. During that year the 11-year-old Hummel was a resident pupil of Mozart and would have been a daily witness to the creation of these foundational works of the Western musical canon. There is an almost total lack of documentary evidence concerning the circumstances of these works, however, which has led to considerable speculation as to their origins, early performances and reception. There are three plausible scenarios for the genesis of these symphonies: that they were written for a series of subscription concerts scheduled for autumn 1788; that Mozart wrote them with the (unfulfilled) intention of publication as an “opus”; that they may have been prepared in advance of Mozart’s projected visit to London with his British friends the Storace family, Thomas Attwood and Michael Kelly (again unfulfilled). A contemporaray review in The Harmonicum (1823) of Hummel’s piano arrangements of these works notes, approvingly, that they show “his perfect knowledge of the instrument and his nice [= fastidious] discrimination in selecting the most effective parts from the score in those places where the whole could not be taken”.