Ein Orgel-Stuck fur eine hur

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

arranged by Duncan Druce

2 Oboes, 2 Clarinet, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns

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".  An  arrangement for wind ensemble allows for some expansion into a lower register (the original organ's range of just over three octaves only extended one octave below middle C) whilst keeping the treble parts at their original pitch. Duncan Druce (click for short biography) used Basset horns for this arrangement because the opening figure and the Andante's main theme both lie so naturally in the instrument's middle register.  The arrangement was commissioned by the London Mozart Players and first  performed by them in St. John's, Smith Square, London on October 17th 2001.

A ‘bass part is provided but is definitely ad lib.

The work is in one continuous movement, Allegro, Andante, Allegro. It is however substantial, running to 223 bars.