Unexpected harmonic turns and pulsing accompaniment figures deepen the expressivity of the thematic material. The Adagio pleads its case with poise and dignity in slow, halting dotted rhythms, which soon give birth to the long lines of florid decoration in the first violin that will dominate the movement. Arrestingly novel is the way in which Mozart plays “bait and switch” with the cadencing bar of the trio, turning it surprisingly into the first bar of the minuet when returning to the opening material. Normally conceived of as a place of mental relaxation and toe-tapping repose, this minuet gets ever ‘brainier’ as it goes along, with creeping chromatic lines and small points of imitation in the opening dance steps preparing the way for full-on canonic imitation in the minor-mode trio. The Menuetto is where things get interesting. The entire movement unfolds as a series of loose variations on its opening bars. These two motives-the arpeggiated triad and the jolly repetitions of a single note-will pervade the movement to such an extent that one can hardly even speak of there being a second theme at all. It opens with a gentle fanfare as all four instruments in unison hop through the notes of the D major triad, ending with four repeated notes on the dominant. The first movement Allegretto is surprisingly light, both in its thematic material and the elaboration of it. And its slow movement pulls out all the stops in its search for deep expressiveness, perhaps under the influence of Haydn. Its minuet and finale are unusually intense in their use of contrapuntal procedure, perhaps as a result of Mozart’s discovery and study of the works of Bach. This is a quartet that gets ever more compositionally ‘weighty’ with each movement. 499 composed in 1786 and dedicated to Mozart’s friend and fellow Freemason, the music publisher and composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754–1812). In between came a ‘one-off,’ the four-movement Quartet in D major K. Mozart’s most accomplished string quartets are generally considered to be the ten he wrote after moving to Vienna in 1781, beginning with the set of six dedicated to Haydn, published in 1785 and ending with the set of three dedicated to the King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, published in 1791.
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