Program Notes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K. 385 “Haffner” (1782)

Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, timpani and strings  

In July 1782 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart received a letter from his father, Leopold. Sigismund Haffner, Wolfgang's childhhod friend, was about to be elevated to the nobility, and Leoplold was passing on the news that Haffner was requesting a new work for the occasion. Wolfgang had written a serenade for the Haffner family a few years earlier to celebrate the marriage of Sigismund's sister Elizabeth. The timing was terrible, but the composer wanted to comply:

I am up to my ears in work. By a week from Sunday I must arrange my opera for wind instruments. Otherwise someone will beat me to it and secure the profits instead of me. And now you ask me to write a new symphony, too! How on earth can I do that? You have no idea how difficult it is to arrange a work of this kind for wind instruments, so that it suits them and yet loses none of its effect. Well, I will have to stay up all night, for that is the only way; for you, dearest father, I will make the sacrifice. You may rely on having something from me in each mail delivery. I shall work as fast as possible.

From the collection of movements described in subsequent letters to his father, it seems that Mozart was putting together another serenade. On July 27 he sent an opening allegro and wrote, “It has been quite impossible to do more for you, because I had to write yet another serenade for wind instruments alone (otherwise I could have used the piece for your project as well). On Wednesday the 31 st I shall send the two minuets, the andante and the finale. If I can manage to do so, I shall send the march. If not, then just use the one from my earlier Haffner music, which is quite unknown.”

But when the July 31 st deadline had come, Mozart found himself falling behind. His letter to Leopold contained no music. He wrote, “One cannot do the impossible! I won't scribble inferior stuff. So I cannot send you the whole symphony until the next mail.”

On August 4, Leopold received the movements he had been promised earlier, and on August 7, he received the march. After all of this, history does not record whether the work was actually performed at Haffner's ceremony. Since we don't know the date of the ceremony, it is impossible to check.

Wolfgang wrote to his father in December to ask him to return the score so that it could be used in a performance to take place in Vienna. He had to write three more times before his father condescended to comply. Leopold was obviously cross at his son. It may have been because of the delay in finishing the work in the first place, but it also may have been Leopold's displeasure over Wolfgang's marriage to Constanze Weber the previous August.

In any case, the score was finally returned, and when Wolfgang saw it, he was pleasantly surprised. “My new Haffner Symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. I must surely produce a good effect.”

But before he was ready to release it for public performance he decided to tighten it up into the traditional four movements dispensing with the march and one of the minuets. Since the original was written without flutes or clarinets, these were duly added. The final result could now truly be called a symphony. Perhaps he had not broken any new ground with this work, but there is an economy of means that is more akin to Haydn than Mozart. Perhaps this was the result of the close friendship that had developed between the two men. In any case, there was plenty in it to dazzle, to charm and to delight.