Overview
Introduction
The Rondo in A minor, K. 511, is a work for solo piano by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Composition, premiere, and publication
Mozart recorded the completion of the Rondo in his personal thematic catalog on 11 March 1787; he was 31 at the time and had only recently returned from a triumphant journey to Prague, where he witnessed great success for a new production of his 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro, for his Symphony No. 38, and for his own solo piano performances. Abert (2007) notes some other major works of this stage in Mozart's life: the Rondo shortly preceded the beginning of work on Don Giovanni; and instrumental pieces from 1787 include the Third and Fourth String Quintets as well as the string serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
No musical sketches for the Rondo survive. However, this is not surprising, since as Konrad has noted, none of the many surviving Mozart sketches are for solo keyboard works; apparently Mozart felt no need to sketch in his native performing medium. Keefe even suggests that the Rondo was not created through ordinary musical composition but rather was improvised on the spot, perhaps before an audience in Prague during his trip there (January-February 1787), or at a Vienna concert on 11 February 1787.
No record survives of Mozart having premiered the completed Rondo in public. Aside from Keefe's suggestion above, a different guess is entertained by Ullrich Scheideler (2009): "Since subscription [i.e., benefit] concerts of two of [Mozart's] musician friends took place shortly after he completed the work (that of the oboist Friedrich Ramm on 14 March and of the bass singer Ludwig Karl Fischer on 21 March), and works by Mozart were ascertainably performed there ... it seems plausible to assume that the Rondo in a minor was also given its first performance at one of these concerts."
The Rondo was published (1787) by Franz Anton Hoffmeister in Vienna, and reissued by a variety of publishers in the years after Mozart's death in 1791. The Hoffmeister publication consisted of a volume of works for piano by Mozart and other composers; it was issued as part of a monthly subscription series entitled Prénumération pour le Forte Piano ou Clavecin.
An alternative to buying printed music in Mozart's day was the purchase of handwritten copies. Later in 1787 (17 October), an advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung announced that manuscript copies of the Rondo (price 1 florin) were available from the copyist Johann Traeg, who had previously issued three of Mozart's piano concertos. Traeg frequently produced unauthorized copied of composers' works; there is no evidence whether or not his version the Rondo was created with Mozart's cooperation.
Several editions of the Rondo are available today. The modern editor will generally rely on surviving copies of the Hoffmeister edition and on facsimile editions of the original autograph (hand-written) manuscript. The two sources differ in dozens of places, though mostly just in details of phrasing or articulation. The edition by Scheideler (2009) relies primarily on the autograph, but includes a list of all the divergences.
