Talk:Symphony No. 3 (Mozart)

Link to K364

Not sure Mozart was influenced by Abel in his later works or if this symphony really is composed by Mozart but if you listen to the first bars of the 3rd and compare with the beggining of the Symphonie Concertante there's a fragment that is almost identical. LonesoLL (talk) 22:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

You're right. There are similarities. Both have descending, two-octave staccato broken chords near the beginning and the climbing first violin part in bars 7-9 of K18 and 27-29 of K364 are identical... and in my opinion the part is complex enough where it really can't be an accident, either.

There's no question about the attribution though, all the scholars attribute it to Abel. We do know that Mozart knew the work (his copying of the score is where the misattribution began) and that he was influenced by the style of the London composer (Abel & JCBach). These similarities are brief musical memes and it wasn't uncommon for Mozart to grab memes like these and incorporate them into larger-scale and more complex works. It would be cool if I could find more information about this connection (its possible they predated Abel) but rarely is anything written about K18 anymore. Its always skipped in symphonic analyses since its spurious. Maybe someone else can find something.DavidRF (talk) 02:03, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Did some more digging. There's a bit of a mention of Abel's influence in Zaslaw [1]. He points to books by Dearling [2] and Croce [3] (no sample and in Italian) as places to look for more details. Girdlestone in his book on piano concertos has two footnotes mentioning motifs in K18 as a precursor to motifs in K271 and K482. Also Girdlestone mentions an Abel precursor in K526 (Abel-Op.5) which he thinks is Mozart's tribute to Abel after Abel died. Girdlestone refers to these as galante devices, Dearling calls them "tricks". That's all I can find right now.DavidRF (talk) 05:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Not included in Neue Mozart-Ausgabe?

K.18/Anh.A 51 is there (NMA X/28/Abt. 3-5/3, pp. 63–83), as is K.444/425a+Anh.A 53 (Symphony GA 37: NMA X/28/Abt. 3-5/2, pp. 30–41). Among the symphonies printed in the GA, only K.17 (Symphony GA 2) and K.98 (Symphony GA 48/56) are AFAICS not included in the NMA. Double sharp (talk) 10:15, 8 April 2014 (UTC)