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These serenades were written in the context of the opportunism of
an ambitious young composer’s attempts to obtain advancement at
court by closely following musical fashion, but to see them only in this
light is to take a reductive view. On a deeper level, their composition is
Mozart’s response to his encounter withwind ensembles and above all
with a group of exceptional virtuosi, who showed him a new path rich
inmusical potential.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of these serenades is Mozart’s
assimilation of the language and technique of wind instruments, as if he had
played themhimself (which is indeed not impossible). Heworked in very close
collaboration with the musicians for whom his compositions were intended.
Anton Stadler had a special influence on the composer’s writing: out of this
encounter, one might almost say this fraternity, in both the musical and the
spiritual sense, between the greatest composer and the greatest clarinettist
of the time were born the Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet, numerous
solos in theoperas, andperhaps theSerenadeK375,which theStadler brothers
may have played before their engagement in the imperial Harmonie. Mozart’s
genius consists not so much in inventing a new language which he imposes
on the instrument and its player, as in acting as amanuensis for them, in a
perfect symbiosis reflected in the flexibility of the composition.
On the face of it, the instruments of Mozart’s time may appear more limited
than those of today. Since the keying system is much less developed, it is
more difficult to produce sound. (The oboe, for example, uses only two keys.)
Intonation is delicate, timbre is not as brilliant, nor as homogeneous. But it is
precisely the composer’s genius to accept and make use of these limitations
of the instruments, in order to turn them into elements of the composition in
their own right, and the source of a specific musical emotion.
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