Mozart: Clarinet Quintet and Quartets

Love at second sight "Away with you to Paris, and soon!" father Leopold Mozart admonished the tardy son from Salzburg, who could not let go of Mannheim. He was too much in love with Aloysia, the 17-year-old daughter of the poor music copyist Fridolin Weber. The young lady promised to become a good singer, and the enamored Wolfgang was already dreaming of traveling around the musical world with his beloved But there was another reason that kept the young composer in Mannheim: the first-class court orchestra, the most modern of its kind and a style-setter for all of Europe. Johann Stamitz had added a new wind instrument - the clarinet - to this orchestra a quarter of a century ago; now his son Carl Stamitz cultivated, alongside the violin, this expressive instrument of which Schubert said: "Whoever blows into the clarinet with all his soul seems to be making a declaration of love to the whole world, even to the heavenly beings." Later in Vienna, Mozart met the clarinetist Anton Stadler (1753-1812), a member of the imperial court orchestra and Mozart's lodge brother. Stadler inspired his friend to write his two immortal works for clarinet, the Quintet K. 581 and the Concerto K. 622. He may also have commissioned the arrangements of violin sonatas into clarinet quartets, which were published by the music publisher André in Offenbach in 1799.