Mozart - Symphony No.1 in E Flat Major, K. 16 (Complete)

The Symphony No. 1 in E flat major, K. 16, was written in 1764 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of just eight years. By this time, he was already notable in Europe as a wunderkind performer, but had composed little music.

The autograph score of the symphony is today preserved in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków. The piece was written on the Mozart family's Grand Tour of Europe in London when they had to move to Chelsea during the summer of 1764 due to Mozart's father Leopold's illness (throat infection).

The house at 180 Ebury Street, now in the borough of Westminster, where this symphony was written, is marked with a plaque. The symphony was first performed on 21 February 1765. The work shows the influence of several composers, including his father and the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially Johann Christian Bach, an important early symphonist working in London whom Mozart had met during his time there.

The symphony is scored for 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings. The work is in three movements:
1. Molto allegro, 4/4
2. Andante, C minor, 2/4
3. Presto, 3/8

What's notably interesting is the symphony's second movement, in which the young eight year-old Mozart makes use of the famous four note motif that appears in the Finale of his Jupiter symphony. The four notes, Do, Re, Fa, Me, were used considerably by Mozart, and they make an appearance in several of his works, including his Symphony No. 33 and the Symphony No. 41. This particular theme is stated by the horns in his first symphony.

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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