Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter”

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart finished two new symphonies in the summer of 1788 (catalogued today as Nos. 39 and 40, respectively), he turned immediately to creating another one, which was destined to be his last. This one — the so-called “Jupiter” Symphony in C major — took Mozart no more than two weeks and two days to complete, and he entered it in his own catalog on August 10.

It was not unusual that Mozart should compose so fast, but it was odd that he should compose three substantial works without a performance in view. As far as we know, no impresario had invited him to present a concert series, and no publisher had asked him for symphonies (which were not as easy to market as concertos). Mozart was not competing with other composers, at least no more than usual, and in any case, he disdained such motives.

The only explanation, widely accepted by historians today, is that he planned to mount his own set of concerts in Vienna during the autumn and winter seasons, and would need new works to draw in the public. However, no mention of such plans is found in his letters or in the press, and there was little reason for such an idea to have progressed beyond a few discussions in Viennese cafés with possible collaborators and patrons.

Letters that survive from this period describe Mozart as either madly busy or desperate for money, both of which align with planning future concerts. Still, no such concerts were given. In fact, in the three years that remained in his short life, Mozart offered no more public concerts in Vienna and composed no more symphonies. Thus, the great burst of symphonic composition in the summer of 1788 languished as an unrealized dream of entertaining enthusiastic Viennese audiences with regular concerts, as he had in 1783 and 1784.

All three of these final symphonies had to wait until after Mozart’s death to be published and performed. No first performance of the “Jupiter” has been identified, although the parts were published in 1793. The nickname itself was conferred by Johann Peter Salomon, the German impresario who settled in London in 1781 and secured Haydn’s two long visits to the city. It is highly likely that Salomon presented the “Jupiter” in London sometime before his death in 1815.

All four movements of the symphony vie with one another for the greatness that the nickname “Jupiter” implies, but the finale stands out for its miraculous combination of fugue and symphonic form. The four notes that begin the finale are both a fugue subject and the first theme of the movement. Mozart then introduces new themes which turn out, in due course, to be counterpoints to the four-note subject. The movement gains further complexity in the development section, although not until the extended coda are all the counterpoints heard together in a magnificent tour de force. The energy and positive spirit of the finale provide a solid, satisfactory conclusion to the work.

The first three movements are scarcely less impressive. In particular, the innocent opening of the Andante cantabile generates a movement of great intensity, with harmony sometimes as dissonant as anyone could imagine in 1788, and figures in the winds which are by no means simply decorative. The balance between winds and strings throughout the symphony is the most ingenious and resourceful that Mozart ever achieved, and he did it without calling for clarinets, an instrument he had begun using in his late orchestral writing.

At the time Mozart penned his last three symphonies, Haydn still had a dozen yet to write. As great as that composer’s “London” symphonies are, however, many musicians believe that it is Mozart’s “Jupiter” that crowned the Classical symphony’s enormous legacy in the 18th century, a legacy that Beethoven single-handedly transformed while resetting the stage for the Romantic era yet to come.

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.