SYMPHONY IN E FLAT MAJOR (KOECHEL NO. 543)
I. Adagio; allegro II. Andante III. Minuetto; trio IV. Finale: allegro
Mozart wrote his symphony when in a condition of distress, but who would know from the music of the composer’s poverty and gloom? The iteration of the chief theme of the second movement soon frets the nerves, not from any poignancy of emotion, but from its very placidity. And how seldom in Mozart’s music is there any emotional burst as we understand emotion today! There are a few passages in the first movement of the G minor symphony, pages in certain chamber works, and in the Requiem, and there are the two great scenes in Don Giovanni, the trio between the Don, the Commander, and Leporello after the duel, and the scene between the blaspheming rake and the Stone Man. As a rule the emotion of Mozart is that of the classic frieze or urn. Beauty with him is calm and serene, and emotion, he believed, should always be beautiful.
The symphony in E flat induced A. Apel to attempt a translation of the music into poetry that should express the character of each movement. It excited the fantastical E. T. A. Hoffmann to an extraordinary rhapsody: “Love and melancholy are breathed forth in purest spirit tones; we feel ourselves drawn with inexpressible longing toward the forms which beckon us to join them in their move with the spheres in the eternal circles of the solemn dance.” So explained Johannes Kreisler in the Phantasiestücke in Callots Manier.