Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622 (Analysis)

Historical basset clarinet resting on manuscript music and an open case in an eighteenth-century room
Neither the final manuscript of K. 622 nor Anton Stadler’s basset clarinet has survived; their deeper voice, however, remains inscribed in the music.

The first theme rises from the strings without ceremonial grandeur, as though a conversation were already under way and the listener had simply drawn close enough to hear it. A little later, the clarinet enters that same musical space and transforms it from within: it sings, moves with weightless virtuosity, shifts character almost imperceptibly, and descends into an unusually deep region where the sound seems to acquire human gravity.

Mozart completed the Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622 during the final months of his life. Its position between The Magic Flute, La clemenza di Tito, and the unfinished Requiem has often encouraged a melancholy reading of the concerto as a farewell. The music itself, however, does not appear to be facing a predetermined end. It possesses humour, mobility, and theatrical quickness; its darker colours do not extinguish the radiance of A major, but make that radiance more complex and more human.

The concerto’s immediate recipient was Anton Stadler, a clarinettist of the Viennese imperial court and one of Mozart’s closest musical collaborators. Their acquaintance can be traced back at least to 1784 and deepened through shared concert and Masonic activities. Stadler took part in performances of Mozart’s music and became the player for whom some of the most important pages in the clarinet repertory were written: the Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, the extensive obbligato lines in La clemenza di Tito, and finally the Concerto K. 622.

Stadler’s instrument was not the customary clarinet in A. Working with the instrument maker Theodor Lotz, he had developed a type of clarinet extended downwards to written low C. The instrument we now call the basset clarinet possessed four additional low notes—E-flat, D, C-sharp, and C—and allowed the player to pass from a brilliant upper range into a deeper, earthier sonority without changing instruments.

That enlarged compass shaped the musical conception of the concerto itself. The low notes belong to its melodic syntax, harmonic balance, and dialogue between the clarinet and the orchestra’s deeper voices. When the work was published after Mozart’s death for the standard clarinet, a number of these phrases were displaced upwards. Most of the musical text remained, yet the direction, weight, and sometimes the expressive logic of crucial passages were altered.

The final manuscript score has not survived. Modern basset-clarinet versions are therefore scholarly reconstructions, based on the earlier manuscript draft K. 621b, the first printed editions, an exceptionally informative review from 1802, and close examination of passages in which the traditional text betrays the octave transposition of originally lower phrases. The precise original form of every note cannot be recovered; the instrument and compass for which Mozart conceived the solo line, by contrast, are documented with considerable certainty.

Within this unusual editorial history, the identity of the work remains remarkably stable. Formal clarity, delicately judged orchestration, and Mozart’s ability to change the psychological temperature of a phrase without violently disturbing its surface create a concerto in which virtuosity grows out of song. The clarinet shines because it listens, answers, and remembers what the orchestra has already said.

Movements / Structure

The concerto follows the three-movement fast–slow–fast design, yet each movement explores the relationship between motion and voice in a different way. The Allegro opens a broad field of thematic dialogue; the Adagio concentrates expression around a melody that seems born from breath; and the Rondo restores the impulse of dance while allowing darker tonal regions to pass through its luminous surface.

I. Allegro — A major, 4/4

The first movement combines sonata form with the older logic of the ritornello: four orchestral and three solo sections organise an intricate course of expositions, developments, and returns. The opening brightness of A major encounters passages in minor keys, while the clarinet transforms the orchestral themes through changes of colour, compass, and phrasing.

II. Adagio — D major, 3/4

In the slow movement, the melody passes between clarinet and orchestra like a private thought acquiring a collective voice. The form may be heard as ternary or as a compressed sonata form with coda; in either reading, its expressive centre lies in the return of the opening melody after a more searching middle section.

III. Rondo: Allegro — A major, 6/8

The finale combines rondo and sonata principles. An agile, dance-like refrain returns between episodes that move from A and E major towards F-sharp minor, D major, and A minor. No return sounds entirely identical to the last, because the intervening material has already changed the way we recognise the principal theme.

Musical Analysis

I. Allegro — Form as Continual Re-creation

The first movement opens with a phrase of quiet assurance in the strings. Its period is symmetrical, its harmonic foundation secure, and A major is established without the imposing proclamation one might expect at the beginning of a concerto. The theme soon passes into imitative and contrapuntal treatment. Voices enter in succession, and the apparent simplicity reveals an inner mobility that will permeate the entire movement.

The orchestral exposition presents an unusually rich group of themes. Rather than confining the argument to two sharply opposed ideas, Mozart creates a succession of related motifs: a theme poised in song, a livelier closing motion, imitative entries, and phrases that will later offer the clarinet different possibilities for development. The whole orchestral exposition remains in A major, postponing the true tonal adventure until the soloist appears.

The clarinet enters after the first orchestral ritornello has run its course. It approaches the opening theme with more flexible articulation, extending it through arpeggios, rapid passagework, and wide intervals. In one characteristic phrase, the line crosses more than two octaves, revealing from the outset the instrument’s ability to unite distant areas of its compass without losing the continuity of breath.

Soon afterwards, the music turns unexpectedly to A minor. Motion slows, the accompaniment grows sparse, and the clarinet sings a melody whose emotional force arises from economy of means. The transition resembles a change of light across the same face: the music retains its intimacy and simplicity, yet its colour has deepened. This alternation between luminous and shadowed aspects of a single sound character becomes one of the concerto’s central expressive principles.

The solo exposition moves towards the dominant, E major, where new melodic elements coexist with material from the opening orchestral section. The clarinet passes between long cantabile phrases, rapid scales, and arpeggios, every change of texture serving a particular purpose. Even the quickest passages have formal direction: they connect keys, prepare returns, or alter the colour of an idea we already know.

In the development, the stability of the opening recedes. The music travels from E major through regions including F-sharp minor, D major, and B minor, while exchanges become shorter and more restless. The clarinet rises into sustained notes, plunges into the instrument’s low range, and crosses wide intervals, creating sharp contrasts within a single phrase. Here the importance of the basset clarinet becomes especially audible: the descent to the low notes completes the melody’s dramatic curve and permits it to assume a second, darker voice.

A brief, more agitated passage leads towards the recapitulation, where A major is restored without immediately dispersing the shadows of the development. Themes previously heard in other keys now return under the gravitational pull of the tonic, while orchestra and clarinet exchange functions. Orchestral ideas acquire solo flexibility, and melodies associated with the clarinet are absorbed into the collective texture.

Two short fermata pauses are especially significant. At each, the soloist may add an Eingang—a brief improvised link leading into the next section. These are not the expansive cadenzas found in many concertos. The position and harmonic function of the fermatas call for a concise, perceptive bridge that momentarily concentrates attention on the clarinet and then returns it to the form. The absence of a large cadenza strengthens the movement’s identity: even in moments of freedom, the soloist’s personal voice remains connected to the architecture of the whole.

The final ritornello restores A major with energy and clarity. The conclusion does not swell into a triumphal display; it gathers the movement’s thematic forces and guides them towards a natural completion. The form closes as it began—with precision, motion, and lucidity—having revealed how many different expressions can inhabit the same thematic material.

II. Adagio — A Melody in the Space of Breath

The Adagio begins without an orchestral introduction. Above a tranquil string accompaniment, the clarinet alone presents the principal melody: two balanced phrases in D major, shaped from broad note values, delicate appoggiaturas, and pauses that allow the sound to settle before the next thought is born. The orchestra immediately repeats the theme, carrying the soloist’s private utterance into a wider acoustic space.

This opening exchange defines the character of the entire movement. Clarinet and orchestra illuminate the same material from different distances. In the solo statement, the melody acquires the fragile continuity of a breathing voice. In the orchestral reply, strings and winds surround it with fuller harmony, as though expanding the thought that has just been spoken.

A second solo phrase rises higher and unfolds in more decorated writing before it is again entrusted to the orchestra. The regularity of the eight-bar sections provides stable ground, yet the melody’s inner articulation remains extraordinarily sensitive. A suspension, an appoggiatura, or the slight prolongation of a note is enough to shift the emotional weight of an entire phrase.

The middle section broadens the harmonic field towards A major and keeps the clarinet in the foreground for longer spans. Phrases lengthen, smaller note values become more frequent, and the melody moves between the bright middle register and the instrument’s deeper notes. Harmonic motion remains restrained, yet chromatic notes, suspensions, and descending lines temporarily shade the serenity of the opening. The sense of time changes without breaking the melodic continuity: the listener is not driven towards a great climax, but drawn further into the theme’s interior space.

Another fermata appears at the end of the middle section. A short Eingang is appropriate here, leading naturally back to the opening melody. Such an improvised intervention needs to preserve the proportion and character of the Adagio. A large virtuoso cadenza would turn the silence of the fermata into outward spectacle and disturb the movement’s slow breathing.

When the principal theme returns, every detail remains recognisable, yet our hearing of it has changed. The wanderings of the middle section have added a faint memory of uncertainty. D major now sounds less like a point of departure than a place to which the music returns after encountering another emotional shade.

A brief coda allows the clarinet to drift gently away from the principal melody. The closing phrases let the expressive space recede into stillness instead of sealing it abruptly. The last sound resembles a breath reaching its natural end, while the silence that follows seems part of the phrase itself.

The form of the Adagio has been described both as ternary, or binary with reprise, and as a small sonata form with coda. The terminology depends on whether the middle section is heard primarily as contrast or as a development of the opening material. Both readings illuminate the same essential path: the music moves away from its opening and returns to it while sustaining, throughout the movement, the impression of one continuous voice.

III. Rondo: Allegro — Dance, Shadow, and Return

The finale begins with a short upbeat that launches the clarinet directly into the principal theme. The 6/8 metre, repeated notes, and lively curves of the melody create a character that is dance-like, playful, and lightly theatrical. The phrase seems ready to change direction at any moment, while the orchestra’s replies strengthen the sense of a conversation unfolding on stage.

The refrain occupies an extended span and does not behave like a compact theme returning intact. It contains subsidiary ideas, closing phrases, and brief dialogues that Mozart will redistribute in later appearances. The movement’s organisation therefore approaches a fusion of rondo and sonata principles: repetition secures recognition, while tonal and thematic development creates the sense of an unfolding journey.

The first episode moves towards E major. The clarinet introduces a more lyrical idea and then accelerates through arpeggios, scales, and sequential shifts of the same figure to different pitch levels. In one particularly inventive moment, the flute sings while the clarinet assumes the accompanying motion. This brief exchange of roles reminds us that the soloist remains part of a living ensemble, able either to stand in the foreground or to support another voice with equal naturalness.

The first return of the refrain is shortened. Mozart needs only a few essential motifs to recover the familiar character and stability of A major. Its brief reappearance feels like the recognition of a familiar face before the music turns towards one of the concerto’s most dramatic regions.

The next episode begins in F-sharp minor. The clarinet moves in wide leaps between the low and high reaches of its compass, as though two distinct voices were alternating within the same instrument. Chromatic directions, syncopations, and shifts towards D major and D minor temporarily disturb the refrain’s buoyant balance. At precisely these moments, the basset clarinet’s low notes assume particular dramatic importance: they draw the melody into a darker region and create genuine counterpoint between the soloist’s contrasting sonic identities.

Another brief memory of the refrain leads into the more extensive later episode. Material heard earlier is now transformed through regions including A minor, C major, and D minor. The rondo thus acquires memory: the intervening sections do more than offer new adventures, returning instead to earlier ideas and placing them in a different harmonic and expressive environment.

The full restoration of the principal material re-establishes A major without erasing what has come before. The clarinet continues to move between lyrical phrases, rapid figures, and sudden changes of compass. Virtuosity now sounds like part of the theme’s theatrical personality: by turns conversational, songful, and mischievously unpredictable.

In the coda, the main motif is developed with greater intensity. A brief pause creates the impression that the music is holding its breath; then the clarinet leads the orchestra into the final cadence. The work ends brilliantly, yet its joy has acquired depth. The minor-key journeys continue to resonate behind the last return of A major, giving the conclusion vitality, experience, and the faintest shadow of memory.

The Basset Clarinet and the Lost Musical Text

The editorial history of K. 622 begins before the concerto itself was completed. Mozart had sketched a first movement in G major for basset horn, now catalogued as K. 584b/621b. The surviving manuscript draft extends to bar 199 and contains principally the upper melodic line and bass, with some inner parts added where they had already become necessary to the form and harmonic direction.

As he reworked the material, Mozart abandoned the original basset-horn conception and turned to Stadler’s extended clarinet. He transposed the work from G to A major and added two bassoons to the orchestration. Because the basset horn in G and clarinet in A transpose differently, the change of the work’s key allowed much of the written solo melody to remain at the same notated pitch. Towards the end of the draft, the transition to the new key and instrument becomes visible chiefly in the orchestral writing.

K. 584b/621b provides a relatively secure basis for reconstructing the first movement as far as the draft extends. For the remainder of the Allegro and the two later movements, editors have had to rely on indirect evidence. The most important clues come from the first printed editions of 1801 and a review published in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1802. Its anonymous author knew that the concerto had been written for a clarinet descending to low C and identified specific places where the publishers had displaced the original phrases upwards.

This evidence makes a persuasive reconstruction of many passages possible without removing every uncertainty. More than one melodic solution may lead naturally to the same cadence, while articulation, dynamics, and the exact distribution of some notes cannot always be established. The term “reconstructed version” is therefore more accurate than “restoration of the authentic version”: it acknowledges both the range of the evidence and its limits.

The traditional text for standard clarinet is neither useless nor arbitrary. It carried the concerto through almost two centuries and became the foundation of a major performing tradition. Comparing it with modern reconstructions allows us to hear more clearly how closely a melodic idea may be bound to the compass and timbre of the instrument for which it was conceived.

The Orchestration of Transparency

Mozart surrounds the clarinet with a relatively small orchestra: two flutes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings. The absence of oboes, trumpets, and timpani removes the sharper and more ceremonial colours. The ensemble remains rich enough to create independent groups of timbre, yet light enough for even the soloist’s deepest phrases to emerge clearly.

The flutes often add brightness above the solo line or briefly follow a melodic course of their own. The bassoons reinforce the harmony and converse with the clarinet’s low range, while the horns supply stability and warmth without weighing down the texture. The strings continually change function: they present themes, form imitative entries, accompany with repeated patterns, or withdraw into delicate harmonic support.

Particular care is given to the orchestra’s lower range. At certain points, the sources distinguish the participation of the cellos from that of the double basses so that the accompaniment does not cover the deepest notes of the basset clarinet. Transparency is therefore the result of precise decisions about instrumental distribution, dynamics, spacing between voices, and density of texture.

Throughout the concerto, the orchestra acts as a changing acoustic frame. The same clarinet timbre may sound bright beside the flutes, warm near the horns, fragile above strings alone, or unusually deep when it meets the bassoons, cellos, and double basses. Mozart continually transforms the space in which we hear the melody and, with it, the melody’s psychological colour.

🪶 A Chapter in the Life of the Work

A Manuscript Lost, a Sound Recovered

On 7 October 1791, Mozart was in Vienna, writing to Constanze, who was staying in Baden. The letter moves from everyday details and family concerns to a sentence that now offers the most immediate trace of his work on the concerto: he had orchestrated almost the whole of “Stadler’s Rondo.”

The reference is brief and familiar. Mozart does not need to explain the work he means or identify the musician for whom he is writing. Stadler’s name is enough. Behind those few words lay years of collaboration, knowledge of a particular manner of playing, and an instrument whose possibilities Mozart had already explored in the Clarinet Quintet and La clemenza di Tito.

A few days later, on 16 October, Stadler was in Prague. The revised Köchel-Verzeichnis places the work’s first performance there. The clarinettist had recently taken part in performances of La clemenza di Tito, playing the expansive obbligato lines Mozart had composed for his own instruments. Now he carried a new concerto, designed to reveal his virtuosity, the celebrated softness of his tone, and the uncommon sound of his extended clarinet.

The final manuscript score probably passed into Stadler’s hands. From that point, its path disappears. The clarinettist embarked on a long European tour and performed the concerto in several cities. A programme from his Riga concert of 21 March 1794 even includes an image of his unusual instrument: a clarinet with an enlarged lower section built to contain the additional mechanisms required for its low notes.

No original instrument of this type survives, and the manuscript score never returned to any known archive. When three publishers issued the concerto almost simultaneously, around a decade after Mozart’s death, they adapted it for the standard clarinet. The low phrases were moved upwards, and the work began its public life in a form different from the one Stadler had heard.

In 1802, a reviewer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung objected to these alterations. He knew that Mozart had written for an instrument descending to low C and identified specific passages in which the solo line had changed octave. For many decades, his observation remained more a historical curiosity than a practical guide. Stadler’s clarinet had vanished, and the established version had already taken possession of the concert stage.

In 1948, George Dazeley in England and Jiří Kratochvíl and Milan Kostohryz in Prague independently concluded that several phrases in the traditional edition could not represent Mozart’s original solo writing. Their work, together with Ernst Hess’s later research, opened the way to the first systematic reconstructions.

New instruments were built, the low notes returned, and clarinettists began to reconsider a performing tradition almost two centuries old. The missing manuscript had not been found. What had returned was the possibility of hearing the music once more within the compass that had shaped Mozart’s imagination.

Today, traditional and reconstructed versions coexist. Between them lies more than a difference of four low notes: there is an entire history of how a work changes as it passes from composer to performer, from manuscript to print, and from a vanished instrument to the modern stage.

🎧 Listening Guide

Listening to K. 622 becomes richer when attention moves beyond the general beauty of its melodies towards the changing compass, accompaniment, and function of each musical idea.

Imitative development
During the opening minutes of the Allegro, the calm theme passes from voice to voice and acquires contrapuntal movement. Its later appearance in the clarinet reveals how differently the same material can sound when it gains breath, a wider compass, and solo flexibility.

The turn to A minor
After the soloist’s first expansive motions, the accompaniment thins and a more inward melody appears. The change is audible in the retreat of activity, the broader note values, and the darker colouring of the tonic minor.

The brief Eingänge
Fermatas in the first and second movements create small regions of freedom. The expectancy they generate matters more than the length of the improvisation: they function as breaths linking one section to the next, not as large solo cadenzas.

The opening of the Adagio
The clarinet states the theme and the orchestra repeats it. The difference between the two utterances reveals the heart of the concerto: an alternation between a private voice and its collective resonance.

The low notes
In performances of a reconstructed version, certain phrases descend where the traditional edition sends them upwards. Their downward direction changes the emotional weight of the melody and often brings it closer to the bassoons, cellos, and double basses.

The shadows of the Rondo
The dancing character of the refrain is interrupted by episodes in F-sharp minor, D minor, and A minor. Returns of the principal theme sound brighter because these more unsettled journeys have come before them.

The exchange of roles
At several points, the flutes or bassoons take the melody while the clarinet accompanies, comments, or completes the phrase. The soloist therefore appears as a member of a flexible community of voices rather than the permanent centre of orchestral attention.

🎶 Further Listening

The following recordings offer three genuinely different perspectives on the work and its editorial tradition:

  • Antony Pay — Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood: One of the historically decisive recordings of the reconstructed basset-clarinet version, with period instruments, lucid articulation, and a buoyant orchestral texture.
  • Karl Leister — Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan: The traditional version for standard clarinet set within a rich, homogeneous symphonic sound. Leister’s rounded phrasing and the orchestra’s long line represent an important twentieth-century performing tradition.
  • Martin Fröst — Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Peter Oundjian: A modern basset-clarinet interpretation with exceptionally flexible articulation and vivid differentiation of character. The smaller orchestral scale allows inner voices and abrupt changes of compass to emerge with particular clarity.

📚 Further Reading

  • Colin Lawson — Mozart: Clarinet Concerto: The most comprehensive single-volume study of the concerto’s genesis and form, Stadler’s instrument, its editorial history, and its performance practice.
  • Pamela L. Poulin — The Basset Clarinet of Anton Stadler and Its Music: Extensive organological and historical research on Stadler, Theodor Lotz, the eighteenth-century sources, and the modern revival of the basset clarinet.
  • Albert R. Rice — The Clarinet in the Classical Period: Places Stadler’s instrument within the broader development of clarinet construction and performing practice during the Classical period.
  • Jiyoung Park — “The Formal Analysis of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, K. 622: Atypical or Highly Individualized Style?”: A focused study of the first movement’s form, with particular attention to the coexistence of sonata process and the Classical ritornello–solo design.

🔗 Related Works

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581: Mozart’s earlier major work for Stadler explores the same extended instrumental compass within the intimacy of chamber music.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — “Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio” from La clemenza di Tito, K. 621: Sesto’s voice and the obbligato basset clarinet unfold a theatrical dialogue that illuminates the concerto’s vocal conception of instrumental writing.
  • Carl Maria von Weber — Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Op. 73: Its drama, extreme contrasts, and extrovert virtuosity reveal how Mozart’s model was transformed at the beginning of the Romantic era.
  • Johannes Brahms — Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115: Another late masterpiece in which the clarinet becomes a vessel of memory, inwardness, and unbroken exchange with the strings.
  • Claude Debussy — Première Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano or orchestra: Its agility, finely graded colours, and imperceptible transformations of timbre carry the clarinet’s lyrical flexibility into a very different harmonic world.

🎼 Closing Reflection

Stadler’s clarinet disappeared, and the manuscript score fell silent with it, yet the music preserved the outline of the voice for which it had been written. Whenever the melody descends once more towards those low notes, we do not recover a lost past with certainty; we hear the trace of a friendship beginning to breathe again.

📖 References & Sources

This revision draws on a comparison of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe with the revised Köchel-Verzeichnis, Mozart’s correspondence and personal catalogue, the earliest printed sources, the review of 1802, and modern research on Stadler and the basset clarinet. Because the final manuscript score is lost, a clear distinction has been maintained between directly documented evidence, strong editorial conclusions, and details that remain hypothetical.

Scores and Editorial Sources

  • Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Konzert in A für Klarinette und Orchester, KV 622. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, Series V, Work Group 14, Volume 4. Edited by Franz Giegling. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1977.
  • Giegling, Franz. Klarinettenkonzert KV 622: Kritischer Bericht. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe V/14/4. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1982.
  • Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Konzertsatz in G für Bassetthorn und Orchester, KV 584b/621b. Manuscript draft reproduced in facsimile as an appendix to Neue Mozart-Ausgabe V/14/4.
  • Breitkopf & Härtel. Concert pour Clarinette avec accompagnement de 2 Violons, 2 Flûtes, 2 Bassons, 2 Cors, Viola et Basse. First edition in parts, Leipzig, c. 1801.

Primary Sources

  • Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Letter to Constanze Mozart, Vienna, 7–8 October 1791. In Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, no. 1193.
  • Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Verzeichnüss aller meiner Werke. Entry for the Clarinet Concerto between The Magic Flute, K. 620, and the Little Masonic Cantata, K. 623.
  • “Concert für Clarinette von Mozart.” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, vol. IV, Leipzig, March 1802, cols. 408–414.
  • Programme for Anton Stadler’s concert in Riga, 21 March 1794, including an image of his extended clarinet.

Secondary Sources

  • Dazeley, George. “The Original Text of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.” The Music Review 9, no. 3, 1948, pp. 166–172.
  • Hess, Ernst. “Die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Klarinettenkonzerts KV 622.” Mozart-Jahrbuch 1967, Salzburg, 1968, pp. 18–30.
  • Lawson, Colin. Mozart: Clarinet Concerto. Cambridge Music Handbooks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  • Park, Jiyoung. “The Formal Analysis of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, K. 622: Atypical or Highly Individualized Style?” Journal of the Musicological Society of Korea 19, no. 3, 2016, pp. 47–73.
  • Poulin, Pamela L. The Basset Clarinet of Anton Stadler and Its Music. Doctoral dissertation, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 1983.
  • Poulin, Pamela L. “Anton Stadler’s Basset Clarinet: Recent Discoveries in Riga.” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 22, 1996, pp. 110–127.
  • Rice, Albert R. The Clarinet in the Classical Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Discography

  • Antony Pay, basset clarinet; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood. Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, K. 622. L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1985.
  • Karl Leister, clarinet; Berliner Philharmoniker; Herbert von Karajan. Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, K. 622. EMI.
  • Martin Fröst, basset clarinet; Amsterdam Sinfonietta; Peter Oundjian. Mozart: Clarinet Concerto & Quintet. BIS, 2003.

Digital Resources

  • Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum — Köchel-Verzeichnis Online: Concerto in A for clarinet and orchestra, K. 622.
  • Digitale Mozart-Edition — Neue Mozart-Ausgabe Online, V/14/4.
  • Digitale Mozart-Edition — Mozart Briefe und Dokumente Online.
  • University of Rochester — digital archive of Pamela L. Poulin’s study of Anton Stadler’s basset clarinet.

Note on the Editions

The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe publishes the reconstructed basset-clarinet version separately from the traditional version for standard clarinet. No modern reconstruction can be identified completely with the lost final manuscript score; differences between editions must therefore be assessed in relation to the surviving evidence and the musical coherence of each proposed solution.