Symphony No. 32 in G Major, K. 318
Performances: Oct 6/7, 2007

I declare to you before God, and as an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by name. - Joseph Haydn, to Leopold Mozart.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) showed such a prodigious talent for music in his early childhood that his father, also a composer, dropped all other ambitions and devoted himself to educating the boy and exhibiting his accomplishments.  Between ages six and fifteen, Mozart was on tour over half the time.  By 1762, he was a virtuoso on the clavier—an early keyboard instrument and predecessor of the piano—and soon became a good organist and violinist as well.  He produced his first minuets at the age of six, and his first symphony just before his ninth birthday, his first oratorio at eleven, and his first opera at twelve.  His final output would total more than 600 compositions.  Much has already been said and studied in the popular media about Mozart’s roguish lifestyle and apprehension of conformity.  It was this aspect of his personality that never won him the support of royalty or the church, which, at that time, was critical to any composer’s survival.  As such, Mozart died young, ill, poor, and relatively unappreciated … only to become the mostly widely acknowledged orchestral composer in history.

             Mozart’s symphonic output halted after his Paris symphony, leaving a four-year gap (1774-1778).  In 1779, Mozart took up symphonic writing again with a marked shift from his early works.  The powerful Symphony No. 32 in G Major, K318, looks both forward and backward.  The three-movement structure, with no break between movements, comes from the old Italian symphonic overture.   The brilliant orchestration, with a large wind section and unprecedented four horns, prefigures the symphonies of Beethoven.  At a brief nine minutes, it is also, by far, the shortest of Mozart’s later symphonies.