J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

CHAPTER 4
MOZART, FINISHED AND UNFINISHED
In 1803 Joseph Haydn effectively announced his retirement by publishing the two
movements now known as ‘op.103’. This final publication consisted of an Andante
grazioso and a minuet, the inner movements only of a projected string quartet (itself
presumably intended as a continuation of op.77). This is almost the only unfinished
work to be found in Haydn’s entire oeuvre. Mozart by contrast left pages and pages of
sketches, experiments, and unfinished movements.
There are several reasons for this disparity. Haydn had nearly a decade at the
end of his career to put his oeuvre in order, revisiting and occasionally revising works
whose composition he had long forgotten about. It is quite likely that he had begun to
see himself as a classic in his own right, and he was well aware of the various attempts
to collect and preserve Handel’s works in England. Mozart, of course, had very little
time to prepare for his death: he did not intend to die at the age of thirty-five. His life
had been spent in less settled circumstances of employment than Haydn’s, and in
general his manner of living was less neat and orderly. In addition, Mozart appears to
have shown a greater interest in contrapuntal experiment on paper for its own sake,
without reference to a particular publication or performance. Mozart was the first
composer in history of the musical canon to leave a substantial body of unfinished
works and sketches.
This is no doubt partly a consequence of the celebrity that began to surround
his name almost immediately after his death—for the first time there was a strong
incentive, both cultural and commercial, to preserve every fragment of a composer’s
output after his death:
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