Mozart - Horn Concerto No.1 in D Major, K. 412

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 1 in D major, K. 412/386b was written in 1791. The work is in two movements:
I. Allegro
II. Rondo (Allegro) 6/8

This is one of two horn concerti of Mozart to include bassoons (the other is K. 447), but in this one he "treats them indifferently in the first movement." It is the only one of Mozart's horn concerti to be in D major (the rest are in E-flat major) and the only one to have just two movements instead of the usual three.

Although numbered first, this was actually the last of the four to be completed. Compared to the other three concertos, it is shorter in duration (two movements rather than three), and is much simpler in regard to both range and technique, perhaps in a nod to Leitgeb's, the horn player and Mozart's great friend, advanced age and (presumably) reduced capabilities at the time of composition.

The second movement was shown by Alan Tyson to have been finished by Mozart's student Franz Xaver Süssmayr after Mozart's death.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 -- 5 December 1791), baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty.

At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly.

While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound; Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."

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