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MENAHEM PRESSLER 31
On his return from his travels, Mozart had no more solutions left to extricate
himself from his financial impasse, and once again sought the help of his brother
Mason, the rich draper Michael Puchberg: ‘Great God! I would not wish my worst
enemy to be in my present position. . . . Unfortunately Fate is so much against me,
but only in Vienna
, that even when I want to, I cannot make any money’, he wrote
to Puchberg on 12 July 1789. During the journey, his quarrel with Prince Lichnowsky
(the future patron of Beethoven), with whom he had set out, had increased his
expenses. He had enjoyed enormous successes, and his reunionswithmany friends
in themusical profession had been rich in emotions, but the expected commissions
had not materialised, except for one from the King of Prussia, who had invited him
to compose a set of six string quartets and another of six piano sonatas which his
daughter Princess Frederika would be technically capable of playing.
This final sonata may have been composed as the beginning of a response
to the royal proposal. But there is nothing easy about it; on the contrary, it
displays extreme contrapuntal complexity, due perhaps to Mozart’s recent
visit to St Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, where he discovered scores by Bach that
were previously unknown to him. Thus the little fanfare motif gives rise to fugal
developments of which one would never have imagined it capable on its first
statement. Setting an example that Beethoven would copy, in the Adagio he
writes out ‘in full’ ornamentation that adds diminutions to the vocal and prosodic
expression of the themes. The Allegro takes up its first motif again and constantly
intensifies the counterpoint, which channels an unstable, modulatory discourse
expressing a distress too deep for words.