Adagio and Rondo for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello

First page of manuscript of Mozart's Adagio and Rondo K.617 in the Stefan Zweig collection of the British Library (Zweig MS 61)

The Adagio and Rondo, K. 617, is a quintet composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello.^[1] Completed on May 23, 1791 (the date indicated in Mozart's own list of his works^[2]), it was written for Marianne Kirchgessner, a blind glass harmonica virtuoso, who played the first performance in the Burgtheater Akademie on June 10, 1791, and subsequently performed it at the Kärtnertortheater on August 19, 1791.^[1]

The autograph manuscript is in the British Library as part of the Stefan Zweig Collection. It was purchased by Zweig from a Berlin auction house in 1930.^[3]

The work was first published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1799.^[1]

The adagio, in C minor, is 58 bars long, while the rondo (C major) contains 230 bars.^[1]

References

Sources

• Köchel, Ludwig Ritter von Köchel (1964). Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts : nebst Angabe der verlorengegangenen, angefangenen, von fremder Hand bearbeiteten, zweifelhaften und unterschobenen Kompositionen. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. pp. 703–704. 
• Federhofer, Hellmut (1957). Kritsche Bericht: Quintette, Quartette und Trios mit Klavier und mit Glasharmonika. Serie VII, Werkgruppe 22, Abteilung 1. Kassel: Bärenreiter. pp. 79–82. 

External links

• Adagio and Rondo for Glass Harmonica, Flute, Oboe, Viola and Cello: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Adagio and Rondo for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello: Score in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
• Zweig MS 61 (digitized manuscript from the British Library)
• Adagio and Rondo in C, K.617 on YouTube