Gigue in G, K, 574

The extremely brief “little jig” in G major, K. 574, reminds us that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) loved musical experiments. This one, lasting just 90 seconds with all repeats observed, is spicily chromatic. The angular theme and shifting tonal sense are typical Mozart, but more than one listener will hear echoes of J. S. Bach in this miniature. Bach, of course, wrote dozens of such contrapuntal gigues in his keyboard suites. And the connection to the Leipzig master is more than coincidental, for Mozart composed this Gigue in Lepizig while hoping to secure more lucrative positions or commissions. We know the details for dating the piece because the composer notated it in the family album of Carl Engel, the man who then occupied Bach’s position as chief organist in Leipzig.
For all its similarity to Bach, the Gigue’s chromaticism goes even beyond him. The piece could just as easily be an homage to Bach penned by a neo-Baroque composer of the early 20th century. It seems to float in a stylistic void: it is clearly not Bach, and not typical Mozart, and yet it has too many conventions of phrase length and cadential punctuation to be convincingly modern. In the late 1880s Tchaikovsky contributed an additional dimension to the Gigue’s identity when he used it for the first movement of a “Mozartiana” suite—performed later this evening.

(c) Jason Stell