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.