Mozart's Stunning Tribute To Bach

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Mozart’s 'Kleine Gigue’ in G major was written in 1789, when Mozart was staying in Leipzig. On 16th May, the day before he left the city, he jotted down this short piece in the notebook of the court organist Carl Immanel Engel. It appears to have been written as a rather cheeky tribute to J.S. Bach who had been cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig earlier in the century. The gigue is written in fugal style with three voices presenting a remarkable cross-rhythmic subject, which also contains an angular sequence of intervals, presenting a ’note-row’ of ten chromatic notes. The musical material and its virtuosic working out are a striking (if not untypical) example of Mozart displaying his compositional prowess in the wittiest and most ingenious manner possible. It is one of the finest keyboard miniatures of the eighteenth century.

It is possible that the theme of Mozart’s ‘Kleine Gigue’ is a homage to the similarly angular fugue subject of Bach’s B minor fugue from ’The Well Tempered Clavier’ Book 1. The theme is also very similar to the concluding gigue of Handel’s F minor harpsichord suite.

Mozart: Kleine Gigue K 574

Pianist: Matthew King.

You can hear a recording of ‘Kleine Gigue’ played by Andràs Schiff here:    • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Gigue in G ...  

You can hear a recording of Bach’s B minor fugue from the 'Well Tempered Clavier' Book 1 played by Kimono Ishizaka here:    • J.S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier,...  

You can hear a recording of Handel’s gigue from his F minor Suite played by Charles Tebbs here:    • Handel: Gigue in F minor (ABRSM grade...  

Tchaikovsky’s orchestration of Mozart’s little gigue in his Fourth Orchestral Suite ‘Mozartiana’ can be heard here:    • Tchaikovsky  - Suite No. 4, Op. 61 "M...  

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Edited by Ian Coulter ( https://www.iancoultermusic.com )
Produced and directed by Ian Coulter & Matthew King