Mozart - Piano Sonata No.12 in F Major, K. 332

The Piano Sonata in F major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 332/300k, was written at the same time as the Piano Sonata, K. 330 and Piano Sonata, K. 331 (Alla turca), Mozart numbering them as a set from one to three. They were once believed to have been written in the late 1770s in Paris, but it is now thought more likely that they date from 1783.

Vienna has been suggested as a possible place of composition, with others believing the sonatas were written during a visit to Salzburg where Mozart introduced his wife, Constanze, to his father, Leopold. All three sonatas were published in Vienna in 1784.

The sonata is in three movements and has a conventional structure:
1. Allegro - in sonata form
2. Adagio - a slow movement in the key of B flat major
3. Allegro assai - in sonata form

A typical performance takes about 18 minutes (25 minutes with repeats).
The first movement, in sonata form, offers a classic example of a fake-out of an essential expositional closure half-cadence postmedial caesura extending the secondary theme zone and deferring the essential expositional closure to the next perfect authentic cadence. The second movement (adagio) is in ABA form. In the autograph, the return of the principal theme (measures 21 ff.) is essentially a literal repeat of its initial presentation. In the earliest printed editions, however, it is considerably elaborated.

The rapid finale is in 6/8 time. While it starts out with a forte chord and passagework, it concludes with a pianissimo cadence.

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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