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But we cannot be certain that the
Divertimenti
were really intended as
Tafelmusik
. As with almost all of Mozart’s music, we know very little about
the circumstances of their composition and it is very difficult to confirm
the legends that grew up later as solutions to the mystery. Our only source
lies in the manuscripts that were used to establish a score that remained
unpublished for many years and which is now available in the
Neue Mozart
Ausgabe
. Most of the pieces are autograph manuscripts and some of them
are precisely dated: July 1775 for K.213, January 1776 for K.240, August 1776
for K.253, and January 1777 for K.270. They were probably written as quite
independent pieces, although Leopold Mozart had the idea of bringing them
together to forma set (some of themare numbered in his hand and indicated
as
Divertimenti
). In a letter dated 9 October 1777 (which tells us that all the
pieces had been composed by that date), Leopold reminds his son, then in
Augsburg, that he has at his disposal in Salzburg ‘a whole series of works for
the court musicians’, just waiting to be reused.
The authenticity of the
Divertimenti
cannot therefore be questioned, with
the exception of just one (the sixth, K.289), which is regarded as spurious by
Mozart scholars and is therefore omitted here, as from the official catalogue
of Mozart’s works. This piece was probably added to make up the set of six
(wind sextets being generally published in sets of six). The fact that Mozart
composed only five may have delayed or prevented the publication of these
pieces inhis lifetime (the
Divertimenti
werepublishedposthumously by Johann
André in 1801). It is therefore difficult to regard these pieces as forming a cycle
or a great work comparable to the
Gran Partita
, although Mozart probably
intended the
Divertimenti
to be complementary, with a view to publication.
SALZBURG DIVERTIMENTI 67