History
Mozart wrote the trio on 10 sheets (19 pages) in Vienna and dated the manuscript on 5 August 1786. According to Karoline Pichler, a 17 year old student of Mozart at this time, the work was dedicated to Franziska Jacquin (1769–1850), another student of his. In fact, Mozart and the Jacquin family —father Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin and his youngest son, Gottfried Jacquin— were quite close friends. They performed house concerts together where Nikolaus played the flute and Franziska the piano. In a letter to Gottfried from 15 January 1787 Mozart praises Franziska's studiousness and diligence, and he dedicated a considerable number of works to the Jacquin family, most notably this trio. His friendship went even further when one year later he wrote two songs, Als Luise … (K. 520) and Das Traumbild (K. 530) for the explicit purpose of Gottfried using them under his own name.
The German word Kegelstatt means a place where skittles are being played, a bowling alley. Mozart did write that he composed the 12 duos for basset horns (K. 487) while playing skittles; he noted on the first page of that autograph: "Vienna, 27 July 1786 while playing skittles" ("Wien, den 27ten Jullius 1786 untern Kegelscheiben") – only about a week before he dated this trio. However, there is no evidence that there was a similar situation with this work; the title was added by later publishers. Mozart entered this work into his own list of works as "Ein Terzett für klavier, Clarinett und Viola".
This clarinet-viola-piano trio was first played in the Jacquin's house; Anton Stadler played the clarinet, Mozart the viola, Franziska Jacquin the piano. In Mozart's time, the clarinet was a relatively new instrument, and the Kegelstatt Trio (along with the Clarinet Quintet and Concerto of Mozart) helped increase the instrument's popularity.
The trio was published in 1788 by Artaria, arranged —probably with Mozart's consent— for violin, viola and piano, and the original clarinet part was described as "alternative part": La parte del Violino si può eseguire anche con un Clarinetto. Due to this unusual scoring, the piece is sometimes adapted to fit other types of trios; e.g. a clarinet-violin-piano trio, a violin-cello-piano trio or a violin-viola-piano trio as in that first publication by Artaria.
No composer before Mozart had written for this combination of instruments; in the 19th century Robert Schumann wrote Märchenerzählungen (Op. 132), Max Bruch in 1910 "Eight pieces for clarinet, viola, and piano" (Op. 83) and Carl Reinecke "Trio for piano, clarinet and viola" (Op. 246).
In March 1894 the manuscript came into the possession of the musicologist and composer Charles Théodore Malherbe (1853–1911) when he bought it from Leo Sachs, a banker in Paris, who had bought it from Johann Anton André who bought it as part of a large purchase of manuscripts from Mozart's widow Constanze (the Mozart Nachlass) in 1841. In 1912 it was donated to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département de la Musique, Malherbe collection, Ms 222.
Read more about this topic: Kegelstatt Trio
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