Mozart - "Conservati fedele" - Aria for Soprano and Orchestra, K. 23

"Conservati fedele" (K. 23) is a concert aria for soprano and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart composed the aria in October 1765 while staying at The Hague during the family's British-European tour, when he was nine years old.

Both of the Mozart children, Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl, were quite ill at the time. It was slightly revised in January 1766, possibly for a performance for Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau. In his list of Wolfgang's works which he started in 1768 in Vienna, his father Leopold entered this piece as no. 2 of 15 Italian Arias, composed in London and The Hague (German: 15 Italiänische Arien theils in London, theils im Haag Componiert). The Newberry Library (Case MS 6A, 48), Chicago, acquired the manuscript (6 sheets, 11 pages) through a bequest of the opera singer Claire Dux --Mrs Charles H. Swift-- (1885--1967 in Chicago).

It was previously owned by Raphael Georg Kiesewetter who gave the autograph to Aloys Fuchs as a gift. Both Fuchs and Abbé Maximilian Stadler confirmed its authenticity with their signatures on 7 December 1832. The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe also mentions an autograph (4 sheets, 7 pages) at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in its Malherbe collection.

The text is taken from Metastasio's libretto Artaserse which had been set to music by a number of composers, among them Johann Christian Bach whom Mozart had met just a short time before in London. Metastasio's libretti have been set to music by a large number of composers.

Mozart's largest work based on a Metastasio text was his last opera, La clemenza di Tito, as was his earlier Il re pastore. The work is scored for soprano, two violins, viola, cello and bass; the tempo marking is Andante grazioso, the time signature is 2/4 time, the key signature is A major. A typical performance would last for about 7 minutes.

It is composed as a da capo aria (bars 1--86) with a short middle section ("Ch'io per virtù d'amore", bars 87--100) which has the tempo marking Allegretto and is in the parallel key of A minor. The aria consists almost wholly of two-bar phrases.
After hearing this piece and "Va, dal furor portata" (K. 21) written by the nine year-old Mozart, Baron Grimm predicted that "the boy would have an opera performed in an Italian theatre before he was twelve". As it turned out, Mozart's first work for the stage, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, was performed less than 18 month later, and his first work for an Italian theatre, Mitridate, re di Ponto, opened in Milan in 1770 when Mozart was 14 years old.

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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