NorviK

Wind Music

Fantasia for a Mechanical Organ  No.2, K 608

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

arranged by Tony Turrill for woodwind octet

2Flutes/2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets), 2 Bassoons

click on the quaver for some excerpts

or

here for a full virtual performance

In March 1791, Count Deym von Strzitez, a Viennese art collector, advertised the opening of a mausoleum in honour of Field Marshall Baron von Laudon, who had died the previous year. (Haydn's Symphony No. 69 had been composed in his honour a dozen years before.)  A mechanical organ attached to a clock played funeral music "on the stroke of each hour".  Deym announced that the music would be changed  each week; Mozart's Adagio and Allegro, K594, seems to have been commissioned  as the inaugural music and it is assumed that K608, completed on March 3rd 1791,  was intended for later performance by the same instrument.  Mozart was not enthusiastic about the project, whilst composing K594, he complained that the  organ's little pipes sounded "too high pitched and childish for my taste". 

Our arrangements of both for a woodwind octet arose from a belief that the sound of this ensemble without horns might well approach the original timbre of the organ.  On a more pragmatic level they provided something substantial for a hornless ensemble – when mixing players into groups this can be a decided advantage. The work is in one continuous movement, Allegro, Andante, Allegro.  It is however substantial,  running to 223 bars.

We also publish settings of the first fantasia, a similar combination to this one by Tony Turrill, and another of this fantasia as an octet containing basset horns, Ein Orgel-Stuck fur eine hur, K608 by Duncan Druce

Click here to buy the pdf files for £16

make a note of the  ref. no. NM2088; used with the composer and title it will help identify the work 

or

Click here to buy the sheet music for £24

         This takes you straight to the right page in June Emerson Wind Music. Just check out there. Emerson’s will then print and dispatch the music

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