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Revision as of 18:30, 15 June 2006 by 206.130.199.46 (talk) (→References)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote the Symphony No. 41 in C major (K. 551), along with the immediately preceding symphony, No. 40 in G minor (K. 550), in the space of a few weeks in 1788. It was, as far as can be determined, never performed in Mozart's lifetime. Its movements display the typical classical symphonic form:
Though the title "Jupiter" is not Mozart's—it may have been added by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in an early arrangement of the work for piano—the symphony carries an Olympian weight to it, marked out immediately by the boldness of the first subject of the first movement. A remarkable characteristic of this symphony is the five-voice fugato (representing the five major themes) at the end of the fourth movement. But there are fugal sections throughout the movement, especially during the interplay between the woodwinds when one of the five themes is first introduced and the G major theme that starts off the 2nd half of the exposition. One can say that the finale represents one of the greatest examples of development in music. It starts with four simple notes and transforms into one of the most complex pieces of music of all time with an incomparable fugal coda.
References
In Woody Allen's 1979 film, Manhattan, his character regards the 2nd movement of the symphony to be one of the reasons why life is worth living.
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Mozart wasn't a very smart man
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