SYMPHONY IN C MAJOR, “JUPITER” (KOECHEL NO. 551)
I. Allegro vivace II. Andante cantabile III. Minuetto: allegretto; trio IV. Finale: allegro molto
Hearing the andante, the minuet, and the wonderful finale, one no longer questions the famous and subtle saying of Rossini. When asked who was the greatest composer, he answered “Beethoven”; he then said, “But Mozart is the only one.”
Let the first movement pass with its second theme that reminds one of charming music in The Marriage of Figaro. The andante could have been written only by Mozart. There is spiritualized sensuousness; there is perfect form, exquisite proportion, and euphony.
Has there not too much been said about the marvelous display of science in the construction of the finale? The wonder of it is that the display does not impress the hearer unduly. To him it is merely gay and charming music. It ravishes his ear without his taking interest in the technical devices, even if he could recognize and understand them. If the title should be “Symphony in C major with the Fugue,” the word “fugue” would not fill his soul with dismal foreboding. There has been only one Mozart, as there has been only one Handel.
It is not known who gave the title “Jupiter” to the symphony. There is nothing in the music that reminds one of Jupiter Tonans, Jupiter Fulgurator, Jupiter Pluvius; or of the god who, assuming various disguises, came down to earth, where by his adventures with women semi-divine or mortals of common clay he excited the jealous rage of Juno. The music is not of an Olympian mood. It is intensely human in its loveliness and its gayety.
It is possible that the “Jupiter” symphony was performed at the concert given by Mozart in Leipsic. The two that preceded the great three were composed in 1783 and 1786. The latter of the two (D major) was performed at Prague with extraordinary success. Publishers were not slow in publishing Mozart’s compositions, even if they were as conspicuous niggards as Joseph II himself. The two symphonies played at Leipsic were probably of the three composed in 1788, but this is only a conjecture.
Some say the title “Jupiter” was applied to the symphony by J. B. Cramer, to express his admiration for the loftiness of ideas and nobility of treatment. Some maintain that the triplets in the first measure suggest the thunderbolts of Jove. Some think that the “calm, godlike beauty” of the music compelled the title. Others are satisfied with the belief that the title was given to the symphony as it might be to any masterpiece or any impressively beautiful or strong or big thing. To them “Jupiter” expresses the power and brilliance of the work.
The eulogies pronounced on this symphony are familiar to all—from Schumann’s “There are things in the world about which nothing can be said, as Mozart’s C major symphony with the fugue, much of Shakespeare, and pages of Beethoven,” to Bülow’s “I call Brahms’ First symphony the Tenth, not because it should be placed after the Ninth: I should put it between the Second and the Eroica, just as I think the first not the symphony of Beethoven but the one composed by Mozart and known by the name of ‘Jupiter.’” But there were decriers early in the nineteenth century. Thus Hans Georg Nägeli (1773-1836) attacked this symphony bitterly on account of its well-defined and long-lined melody, “which Mozart mingled and confounded with a free instrumental play of ideas, and his very wealth of fancy and emotional gifts led to a sort of fermentation in the whole province of art, and caused it to retrograde rather than to advance.” He found fault with certain harmonic progressions which he characterized as trivial. He allowed the composer originality and a certain power of combination, but he found him without style, often shallow and confused. He ascribed these qualities to the personal qualities of the man himself: “He was too hasty, when not too frivolous, and he wrote as he himself was.” Nägeli was not the last to judge a work according to the alleged morality or immorality of the maker.
Mozart wrote his three greatest symphonies in 1788. The one in E flat is dated June 26; the one in G minor, July 25; the one in C major with the fugue-finale, August 10.
His other works of that year are of little importance with the exception of a piano concerto in D major which he played at the coronation festivities of Leopold II at Frankfort in 1790. Why is this? 1787 was the year of Don Giovanni; 1790, the year of Cosi fan tutte. Was Mozart, as some say, exhausted by the feat of producing three symphonies in such a short time? Or was there some reason for discouragement and consequent idleness?
The Ritter Gluck, composer to the Emperor Joseph II, died November 15, 1787, and thus resigned his position with a salary of 2,000 florins. Mozart was appointed his successor, but the thrifty Joseph cut down the salary to 800 florins. And Mozart at this time was sadly in need of money, as his letters show. In a letter of June, 1788, he tells of his new lodgings, where he could have better air, a garden, quiet. In another, dated June 27, he says: “I have done more work in the ten days that I have lived here than in two months in my other lodgings, and I should be much better here, were it not for dismal thoughts that often come to me. I must drive them resolutely away; for I am living comfortably, pleasantly, and cheaply.” We know that he borrowed from Puchberg, a merchant with whom he became acquainted at a Masonic lodge, for the letter with Puchberg’s memorandum of the amount is in the collection edited by Nohl.
Mozart could not reasonably expect help from the Emperor. The composer of Don Giovanni and the “Jupiter” symphony was unfortunate in his emperors.
The Emperor Joseph was in the habit of getting up at five o’clock; he dined on boiled bacon at 3.15 P.M.; he preferred water as a beverage, but would drink a glass of Tokay; he was continually putting chocolate drops from his waistcoat pocket into his mouth; he gave gold coins to the poor; he was unwilling to sit for his portrait; he had remarkably fine teeth; he disliked sycophantic fuss; he patronized the English, who introduced horse-racing; and Michael Kelly, who tells us many things, says that Joseph was “passionately fond of music and a most excellent and accurate judge of it.” We know that he did not like the music of Mozart.
Joseph commanded from his composer Mozart no opera, cantata, symphony, or piece of chamber music, although he was paying him 800 florins a year. He did order dances, for the dwellers in Vienna were dancing mad. Kelly, who knew Mozart and sang in the first performance of Le Nozze di Figaro in 1786, says in his memoirs (written by Theodore Hook): “The ridotto rooms, where the masquerade took place, were in the palace; and, spacious and commodious as they were, they were actually crammed with masqueraders. I never saw or indeed heard of any suite of rooms where elegance and convenience were more considered, for the propensity of the Vienna ladies for dancing and going to carnival masquerades was so determined that nothing was permitted to interfere with their enjoyment of their favorite amusement.... The ladies of Vienna are particularly celebrated for their grace and movements in waltzing, of which they never tire. For my own part, I thought waltzing from ten at night until seven in the morning a continual whirligig, most tiresome to the eye and ear, to say nothing of any worse consequences.”[39] Mozart wrote for these dances, as did Haydn, Hummel, Beethoven.
We know little or nothing concerning the first years of the three symphonies. Gerber’s “Lexicon der Tonkünstler” (1790) speaks appreciatively of him: the erroneous statement is made that the Emperor fixed his salary in 1788 at 6,000 florins; the varied ariettas for piano are praised especially; but there is no mention whatever of any symphony.
The enlarged edition of Gerber’s work (1813) contains an extended notice of Mozart’s last years, and we find in the summing up of his career: “If one knew only one of his noble symphonies, as the overpoweringly great, fiery, perfect, pathetic, sublime symphony in C.” And this reference is undoubtedly to the “Jupiter” the one in C major.
Mozart gave a concert at Leipsic in May, 1789. The programme was made up wholly of pieces by him, and among them were two symphonies in manuscript. At a rehearsal for this concert Mozart took the first allegro of a symphony at a very fast pace, so that the orchestra soon was unable to keep up with him. He stopped the players and began again at the same speed, and he stamped the time so furiously that his steel shoe buckle flew into pieces. He laughed, and, as the players still dragged, he began the allegro a third time. The musicians, by this time exasperated, played to suit him. Mozart afterwards said to some who wondered at his conduct, because he had on other occasions protested against undue speed: “It was not caprice on my part. I saw that the majority of the players were well along in years. They would have dragged everything beyond endurance if I had not set fire to them and made them angry, so that out of sheer spite they did their best.” Later in the rehearsal he praised the orchestra, and said that it was unnecessary for it to rehearse the accompaniment to the pianoforte concerto: “The parts are correct, you play well, and so do I.” This concert, by the way, was poorly attended, and half of those who were present had received free tickets from Mozart, who was generous in such matters.
Mozart also gave a concert of his own works at Frankfort, October 14, 1790. Symphonies were played in Vienna in 1788, but they were by Haydn; and one by Mozart was played in 1791. In 1792 a symphony by Mozart was played at Hamburg.
The early programmes, even when they have been preserved, seldom determine the date of a first performance. It was the custom to print: “Symphonie von Wranitsky,” “Sinfonie von Mozart,” “Sinfonia di Haydn.” Furthermore, it should be remembered that Sinfonie was then a term often applied to any work in three or more movements written for strings, or strings and wind instruments.