Mozart

Mozart's Quintets

On today's date in 1787, Wolfgang Mozart finished one of his finest chamber works, a String Quintet in C Major. As was his custom at the time, as soon as it was finished he dutifully entered the date into own catalog of works. Mozart had written some string quintets earlier in his life, but this new one in C Major and a companion piece in G Minor that he finished a month later were in a different league altogether.
Financially speaking, 1787 was tough year for Mozart. A 16-year old prospective student from Bonn by the name of Beethoven had arrived in Vienna hoping for lessons, but then two weeks later was called back to Bonn to attend his dying mother. Despite some big successes elsewhere, Mozart had 'cash flow' problems in Vienna.

He decided to try his hand at what we now call 'self publishing,' and in 1788 placed an announcement in a Viennese newspaper offering his new quintets directly to customers on a subscription basis.
One recent biographer described Mozart's quintets as 'a pair of four-movement masterpieces uniting symphonic dimension with the intimacy of the quartet, the first expansive in mood and of sovereign ease and heroic proportion, the second, tragic in tone and desolate beauty.'

Well, to prospective customers circa 1788, they were apparently just too dark, dense and difficult. The response was so poor that Mozart first extended the offer another year, then gave up altogether and sold the music outright to a Viennese publisher."