Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, K. 421/417b is the second of his quartets dedicated to Haydn and the only one of the set in a minor key. Though undated in the autograph,^[1] it is believed to have been completed in 1783, while his wife Constanze Mozart was in labour with her first child Raimund.^[a] Constanze stated that the rising string figures in the second movement corresponded to her cries from the other room.^[3]

1. Allegro moderato

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2. Andante

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3. Menuetto and Trio – Allegretto

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4. Allegretto ma non troppo – Più allegro

Performed by the Strub Quartet

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Performances of the whole string quartet vary in length from 23 to 33 minutes. It is in four movements:

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante (F major)
3. Menuetto and Trio (the latter in D major) – Allegretto
4. Allegretto ma non troppo – Più allegro

The first movement is characterized by a sharp contrast between the aperiodicity of the first subject group, characterized by Arnold Schoenberg as "prose-like", and the "wholly periodic" second subject group.^[4] In the Andante and the Menuetto, "normal expectations of phraseology are confounded."^[5] The main part of the Menuetto is in minuet and trio sonata form,^[6] while "the contrasting major-mode Trio ... is ... almost embarrassingly lightweight on its own ... [but] makes a wonderful foil to the darker character of the Minuet."^[7] The last movement is a set of variations. The movement ends in a Picardy third.

An arrangement of the Menuetto and Trio for violin and piano is in Suzuki Violin Volume 7.^[8]

Notes

References

• Finscher, Ludwig, ed. (2007). Mozart: The Ten Celebrated String Quartets. Translated by Kinloch Anderson. Kassel: Bärenreiter. ISMN 9790006201181.
• Hildesheimer, Wolfgang (1991). Mozart. New York: Noonday Press. ISBN 978-0-374-52298-8 – via Internet Archive.
• Irving, John (1998). Mozart: The 'Haydn' Quartets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58475-2.
• Polesky, Mark (n.d.). "Suzuki Violin Pieces in their Original Forms – Volume 7". www.markpolesky.com. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
• Rosen, Charles (1988). Sonata Forms. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393302196 – via Internet Archive.

• Wilks, Alexa Vivien (2015). The Biography of a String Quartet: Mozart's String Quartet in D minor, K. 421 (417b) (PDF) (D.M.A). University of Toronto. Retrieved 14 January 2018.

• String Quartet No. 15: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• String Quartet No. 15: Score and critical report (in German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
• Performance of String Quartet No. 15 by the Borromeo String Quartet at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format