ABSTRACT
With the remarkable exception of K.271, slow movements within the Salzburg concertos display an uncomplicated innocence, plumbing no remote depths of feeling. The opening theme of K.238’s Andante un poco adagio perfectly personifies the galant style of J. C. Bach (Example 4.1). 1 Supporting its gently lilting scansion is a succession of varied rhythms, dotted at first, within what feels like a long upbeat, and soon giving way to that epitome of galant idiom, the triplet. Precisely notated details of articulation, in both themes and accompaniments (combining here both sordino and pizzicato), contribute essentially to the idiom. This movement, composed in January 1776, reveals a style-conscious young Mozart. But whereas his later slow movements evoke a spirit of timelessness, this one is frozen in its time - unmistakably current (that is, galant), charming, but without any deeper significance. It lacks an expressive dimension that the mature lyricism of the later Viennese concerto slow movements possess in such abundance: that is, a mobility of meaning that allows us to interpret their characteristics in a variety of different ways. The same could be said of the slow movements of K.242 and K.246, though in the latter, there is a greater imagination in the interrelationship of soloist and orchestra and hints of a deeper intensity of purpose in the phrase beginning at bars 94–5.
