Symphony No.6 in F major (K.43) (Full Score)

Mozart Symphony No.6 in F major (K.43) (Full Score)

Like Mozart’s first symphony (K.16), the Symphony in F major K.43 has come down to us in an autograph score (Biblioteka Jagiellonska, Kraków), albeit with the place and date of composition added by Leopold Mozart (“à Vienna 1767”).  The place of composition was originally given as “à Olmutz” in reference to the Bohemian town of Olomouc.  This was then crossed out, and the year was evidently altered later as well.  Hardly had the family arrived in Vienna on 15 September 1767 than a smallpox epidemic forced them to make a detour to Olomouc, the seat of an archbishopric in the present-day Czech Republic.  (They left Vienna on 23 October and arrived in Olomouc three days later.)  Here Mozart suffered a case of smallpox until 10 November, followed by Nannerl until 29 November.

On 10 January 1768 the Mozarts left Olomouc for Vienna where once again, it appears that illness-related isolation proved beneficial to the young Mozart’s compositional activities, to which the autograph score of his F-major Symphony readily attests.  The slow movement is an arrangement of a duet from Apollo und Hyacinth (K.38), a Latin intermedium performed in Salzburg in May 1767.  This manuscript, too, contains annotations in Leopold’s hand, but unlike K.16 there are no corrections to the basic fabric of the music.  For the most part, Leopold added the movement headings and corrected minor slips in the “col basso” writing of the viola part.

- Urtext of the New Mozart Edition

- Full score and performance material (BA9168) available for sale