also writing other pieces , giving piano lessons , tending a sick wife , enduring the death of a six-month-old daughter , entertaining friends , moving to a new apartment , and navigating an extended cash-flow crisis .
In Symphony No . 41 , the Jupiter , Mozart seems intent on showing off his sheer brilliance as an orchestral composer . Its emotional range is wide indeed , prefiguring the vast expressive canvases that would emerge in the symphonies of Beethoven . In this work ’ s finale , Mozart renders the listener slack-jawed through a breathtaking fugal display of quintuple invertible counterpoint , and that in itself may be viewed as looking both backward , to the contrapuntal virtuosity we associate with Bach and Handel , and forward , to the dramatic power of fugue as demonstrated in many of the greatest compositions of Beethoven .
Although we don ’ t know just when it was premiered — of the three last symphonies , only No . 40 appears to have been played in the composer ’ s lifetime — the Jupiter Symphony quickly earned a reputation as a work of exceptional qualities . In 1798 , a reviewer referred to Mozart ’ s “ formidable Symphony in C major , in which , as is well known , he came on a little too strong .” But by the time Georg Nikolaus von Nissen published his groundbreaking Mozart biography , in 1828 , commentators had adopted tones of almost universal adulation . “ His great Symphony in C with the closing fugue is truly the first of all symphonies ,” declared Nissen . “ In no work of this kind does the divine spark of genius shine more brightly and beautifully .”
We have no reason to doubt the English publisher Vincent Novello ’ s account concerning the origin of the nickname Jupiter . He reported that the composer ’ s son Franz Xaver told him that “ he considered the Finale to his father ’ s Sinfonia in C — which Salomon christened the Jupiter — to be the highest triumph of Instrumental Composition , and I agree with him .” This would have been the violinist Johann Peter Salomon ( 1745-1815 ), a German ex-pat in London remembered especially for having arranged Haydn ’ s two residencies there in the 1790s . It rings true : the earliest concert program to use the nickname was for a performance in Edinburgh in 1819 , and the first printed edition of the score to which the name was attached appeared in London in 1823 , with an illustration of the chief Roman god on the title page .
Instrumentation Flute , two oboes , two bassoons , two horns , two trumpets , timpani , and strings .
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