Mozart - Symphony No.5 in B Flat Major, K. 22 (Complete)

The Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, K. 22, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in The Hague in December, 1765, at the age of nine, while he was on his musical tour of Western Europe. Mozart fell seriously ill during his stay in Hague, and he wrote that composition probably while he was convalescing from his illness.

The symphony is scored for two oboes, two horns and strings. The form is that of a three-movement Italian overture:
1. Allegro, 4/4
2. Andante, 2/4
3. Allegro molto, 3/8

All three movements are colored especially prominently by horns. A rousing first movement in the key of B-flat major opens the symphony, followed by a more solemn, mournful movement in the relative key of G minor. A short, boisterous finale closes the work.

The opening theme to the finale is borrowed from the finale to keyboard concerto by Johann Christian Bach whom Mozart had met the previous year in London. The same theme would also appear in a much later, more mature work of Mozart's: the Act 2 Finale of his 1786 opera buffa, Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492.

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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