Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183

Program notes

About the Work

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was seventeen when he finished this symphony in Salzburg on 5 October 1773. He wrote dozens of symphonies, and only two of them are in a minor key, both in G minor: this one, and the famous No. 40 of 1788. To tell them apart, musicians call the earlier work the ‘little’ G minor.

Its manner belongs to a fashion of the years around 1770 that later took the name Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) from German literature: symphonies in minor keys with agitated rhythms, wide leaps in the melody and abrupt contrasts. Haydn’s Symphony No. 39 is the likely model here. It too is in G minor, and it too asks for four horns where the orchestras of the day normally had two. The extra pair was a practical trick as much as a luxury. Horns then had no valves and could play only the notes natural to their length of tube, so by using two pairs pitched in different keys a composer could keep horn tone going through passages where a single pair would have had to fall silent.

Many people who have never been to a concert know how this symphony starts: its first movement was used over the opening of the 1984 film Amadeus.

The scoring is for two oboes, two bassoons, four horns and strings. The symphony lasts between twenty and twenty-five minutes.

What to Listen For

I. Allegro con brio. The strings begin with urgent repeated notes pushed off the beat (syncopations), and the melody drops through a wide, dissonant interval, a diminished seventh. There are sudden pauses. The bass line is unusually active throughout, carrying themes of its own.

II. Andante. A short slow movement in E-flat major, built like an opera aria. Muted violins and the two bassoons trade sighing phrases as if in conversation.

III. Menuetto and Trio. The minuet is in G minor, stern, and begins with the whole orchestra in bare octaves. The trio in G major is for the wind instruments alone, a piece of village-band music that lets some air into the room.

IV. Allegro. The finale returns to G minor and to the drive of the opening, more compressed, with sudden changes between soft and loud. It ends in the minor.