Music that Haunted Mozart: Annotated Score of Johann Schobert's Sonata, Op. 17 No. 2, First Movement

During their stay in Paris in 1763–1764 the seven-year-old Mozart and his family met the German keyboard player and composer Johann Schobert. It was probably then that Mozart got to know Schobert's music, consisting of works for keyboard mostly accompanied by violin or by various combinations of violin and other instruments. Much later, in Paris in 1778, Mozart came into direct contact with Schobert's music again, when he bought a book of his sonatas for one of his pupils. The opening movement of Schobert's Keyboard Sonata in F with violin accompaniment, Op. 17 No. 2, an Andante poco allegro in binary form, seems to have cast a special spell on Mozart.

We do not know the dates of composition or publication of Schobert's Op. 17. It may have appeared in print only after the composer's death in 1767. But Mozart may have encountered the music earlier, as William S. Newman reminds us: "Mozart may already have procured a MS copy before he left Paris with his family in 1764" (The Sonata in the Classic Era, p. 628). Or Mozart could simply have played or heard the sonatas in Paris.

Schobert's Andante poco allegro served Mozart as the model for the second movement of his Concerto in B flat, K. 39 (the first and third movements are based on a sonata of Hermann Friedrich Raupach). But K. 39 was not the only work in which Mozart demonstrated an intimate knowledge of and intense admiration for Schobert's movement. Others include the Andante of the Symphony in E flat, K. 16, the Andante cantabile of the Piano Sonata in A minor (in F major, the same key as Schobert's movement), and the Andante (also in F) of the Piano Concerto in C, K. 467.

All four of Mozart's Andantes feature Schobert's repeated triplet eighth-notes. In K. 16 Mozart followed Schobert in using the repeated triplets to spin out a slowly rising Corelli Leapfrog, leading to a Cudworth Cadence almost identical to one used repeatedly by Schobert. In K. 310 (written in Paris in 1778, shortly after Mozart bought a collection of Schobert's sonatas) Mozart followed Schobert by adding upward leaps to the triplets on the strong beats.

The galant schemata (in addition to the Corelli Leapfrog) that Schobert elaborated in his Andante poco allegro include the Le-Sol-Fi-Sol, the Heartz, the Lully, the Fenaroli-Ponte, the Morte, the Circle of Fifths Prinner, the Converging Half Cadence, and the Cudworth Cadence.

Although Brigitte Haudebourg's recording leaves out the violin part, I prefer her performance to the one with violin by Cyprien Katsaris and Ariane Volm, which I find too slow:    • Sonata for Harpsichord with Accompaniment ...