Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Bassoon Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 191 (Analysis)

Eighteenth-century bassoonist performing Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto, K. 191, with a small Classical orchestra
In K. 191, the bassoon steps out of the orchestra as orator, singer and dancer, uniting lyricism, virtuosity and Mozartian wit.

The bassoon usually inhabits the orchestra’s deeper regions, where it supports, comments upon and colours the sound without constantly claiming the foreground. In the Concerto in B-flat major, the eighteen-year-old Mozart invites it to leave that familiar position and reveal the full range of its personality. The instrument sings, dances, narrates and manoeuvres with unexpected ease, moving from stately nobility to playful quick-wittedness while retaining the characteristic warmth of its voice.

The work was composed in Salzburg at the beginning of the summer of 1774, during a period of remarkably rapid creative growth. Mozart had returned from the extensive European journeys of his childhood and adolescence having absorbed Italian melodic fluency, the German orchestral tradition and the galant style that shaped much of European musical life. At the same time, his duties at the court of Salzburg’s prince-archbishop brought him into daily contact with orchestral musicians and the distinctive possibilities of their instruments.

The Bassoon Concerto, K. 191 is Mozart’s earliest surviving complete concerto for a solo wind instrument and the only authentic bassoon concerto by him to have reached us. Older sources and later traditions refer to further concertos for the instrument, yet the evidence is too fragmentary to establish their number, date or even the circumstances in which they may have been written. K. 191 therefore remains the sole complete witness to Mozart’s encounter with the bassoon as an exclusive solo protagonist.

The work’s first performer is unknown. For many years the concerto was associated with the Bavarian aristocrat and amateur bassoonist Thaddäus von Dürnitz, although his acquaintance with Mozart appears to have begun several months after the composition was completed. It was more probably written for a virtuoso connected with the Salzburg court, or for a visiting musician temporarily in the city. No surviving letter, dedication or record of a first performance resolves the question.

The small orchestra—two oboes, two horns and strings—gives Mozart a clear and flexible field of sound. The horns reinforce the bright splendour of B-flat major, the oboes form lucid harmonic planes and the strings keep the motion alive without obscuring the solo voice. In the Andante ma Adagio, the change to horns in F and the use of muted strings transform the colour: outward brilliance recedes and a gentler, more inward world emerges.

Mozart understands that the bassoon can bridge two apparently distant musical identities. One grows from its traditional orchestral role, in which it often follows the bass line and strengthens the foundations of the harmony. The other reveals its lyrical and rhetorical power: its capacity to shape long phrases, sing in its upper range and change expression within a few notes.

The concerto’s virtuosity springs from this very duality. Rapid repeated notes, wide leaps, triplets, arpeggios and agile scales coexist with spacious cantabile phrases and delicately inflected cadences. The bassoon appears brilliant and quick-witted in the first movement, acquires an almost vocal nobility in the second and completes its journey in a dance where courtly elegance meets theatrical vitality and subtle humour.

The balance between these qualities also explains the concerto’s unique position today. It is central to the international bassoon repertoire, a landmark in the study of the instrument and a frequent requirement in orchestral auditions. Beneath the music’s apparent clarity lies an exacting test: the performer must unite precision of articulation, control of breath, natural phrasing and a continually changing sense of character.

Movements / Structure

I. Allegro — B-flat major, 4/4

The first movement follows sonata form with a double exposition, adapted to the dramatic demands of the Classical concerto. The opening orchestral exposition establishes the movement’s thematic world, while the solo entrance reimagines that material through the bassoon’s wide leaps, rapid articulation and striking shifts of colour. A concise development increases the harmonic mobility and leads to a recapitulation in which the roles of soloist and orchestra are reconsidered with remarkable finesse.

II. Andante ma Adagio — F major, 3/4

The slow movement stands in the subdominant key of F major and has the character of an orchestral aria without words. Its design approaches a compressed sonata form without an independent development, while its melodic progress recalls a slow aria from opera seria. Muted strings create a soft background against which the bassoon reveals its most eloquent and inward voice.

III. Rondo. Tempo di Menuetto — B-flat major, 3/4

The finale combines rondo form with the rhythm, symmetrical phrasing and social elegance of the minuet. The orchestral refrain returns between solo episodes that act as successive disclosures of the bassoon’s personality. The dignity of the dance remains recognisable throughout, while triplets, rapid passagework, changes of register and improvisatory interventions add theatrical animation.

Musical Analysis

I. Allegro — The Entrance of an Unexpected Protagonist

The first movement opens with a decisive orchestral statement in B-flat major. Its principal theme rests on broad melodic intervals and a firm rhythmic stride, while continuous motion in the strings supplies energy beneath the longer notes of the winds. From the opening phrases, the music combines ceremonial nobility with lively momentum.

The bassoon is already present in the initial tutti, integrated into the orchestral texture and linked to the bass line. This presence has particular dramatic significance. The future protagonist begins within the ensemble; its solo appearance will sound like the release of a voice that has been there from the outset, waiting for the moment when it can step forward.

The orchestral exposition occupies the first 34 bars and presents the movement’s principal thematic elements. A second subject is distinguished by short staccato figures in the violins, framed by sustained notes in the oboes and horns. A closing idea built from arpeggiated motion heightens the brilliance of the orchestral writing and completes the first presentation of the material.

The true solo entrance begins in bar 35. The bassoon rises swiftly into its upper range and reintroduces the principal theme in a manner that sounds commanding, agile and theatrical at once. The distance between low and high notes becomes part of the musical thought: each leap alters the colour of the voice and gives the impression that a single character is passing through several different moods.

The solo exposition moves towards F major, the dominant of the home key. The bassoon develops the thematic material through rapid passagework, repeated notes and small melodic extensions. Technical demands remain organically embedded in the phrase: scales travel towards harmonic destinations, leaps create climaxes and repetitions accumulate rhythmic energy.

Mozart’s treatment of the second subject is especially revealing. When the orchestra recalls it during the solo exposition, the bassoon adds an independent countermelody and turns the familiar tune into a dialogue. In the recapitulation, Mozart reverses the roles: the bassoon takes over the staccato line while the violins assume the countermelody. This exchange of musical functions shows that soloist and orchestra are not fixed opposing forces. They listen, imitate and reshape one another’s voices.

The development is relatively brief and highly concentrated. The bassoon isolates small elements from the familiar material, carries them into new harmonic regions and incorporates them into successive phrases. The music passes through related and minor keys, while chromatic notes, shifts of dynamic emphasis and denser responses from the strings increase the tension.

The recapitulation restores B-flat major and re-establishes the thematic balance. The principal ideas return adjusted to the tonic region, while the solo line continues to renew them through different placements, fresh connections and movement between areas of the instrument’s range. The return is recognisable, yet it also retains the memory of what occurred during the development.

Shortly before the close, the orchestra pauses on the characteristic fermata chord and yields time to the soloist. The first-movement cadenza may gather the principal theme, wide leaps, repeated notes and arpeggiated figures into a concise improvisatory recollection. After the trill that prepares the return, the closing tutti restores the splendour of B-flat major and brings the movement to a decisively symmetrical conclusion.

II. Andante ma Adagio — The Bassoon as a Human Voice

The marking Andante ma Adagio contains a subtle inner tension. The music must retain the natural pace and breathing of an Andante while allowing greater space for phrasing and feeling. An excessively slow performance risks breaking the melodic continuity; a hurried one removes the quiet gravity implied by ma Adagio.

Mozart changes the atmosphere immediately. The tonality moves to F major, the horns adjust to the new harmonic region and the strings play with mutes. The sound loses some of its outward brilliance and acquires a gentle, almost nocturnal transparency. The triple metre preserves a calm motion over which the phrases can unfold without haste.

The orchestral introduction is brief and restrained. Its first melody rises naturally, forming balanced phrases and small pauses that allow the sound to settle. When the bassoon enters, it continues the melodic thought like a singer appearing after the instrumental opening of an aria. The change of personality is instantly audible without disturbing the unity of the musical discourse.

The solo writing draws on long phrases, appoggiaturas, small ornaments and cadential turns requiring finely graded tone. The leaps heard in the first movement acquire a different expressive meaning here. Rather than displaying the instrument’s agility, they broaden the melodic line and allow the bassoon to move from its warm middle range to higher notes charged with lyrical intensity.

The string accompaniment avoids stillness. Beneath the soloist’s sustained notes, small semiquaver figures maintain an inner current, like a quiet breath that continues even through the most tranquil moments. Oboes and horns are used economically, reinforcing harmonic arrivals and places where the melody needs greater depth.

The opening theme bears a striking affinity to the melodic beginning of “Porgi, amor” from Act II of The Marriage of Figaro, composed some twelve years later. The relationship between the two melodies illuminates a characteristic region of Mozart’s imagination: the noble rise of the phrase, the restrained plea and the descending motion that seems quietly to accept what it has just expressed.

This kinship gains greater significance within the movement’s broader style. The bassoon does more than imitate a singing line; it assumes a genuinely dramatic role. Short pauses resemble breaths, appoggiaturas add emotional weight and the highest notes become climaxes within an imagined vocal narrative.

In the middle region of the movement, the harmonic motion grows more unsettled. Chromatic notes momentarily shade F major, the solo phrases acquire livelier groups of notes and the music moves away from its initial serenity. The tension remains inward, expressed through melodic direction, harmonic displacement and subtle changes of texture.

The return of the opening material restores F major with a different emotional weight. Familiar phrases retain the memory of the intervening journey and approach the final fermata with greater calm. There the second large cadenza of the concerto opens before the soloist.

The cadenza of the Andante ma Adagio calls for a different spirit from that of the Allegro. Its essence lies in melodic recollection, discreet ornamentation and the preservation of vocal character. A sudden display of virtuosity would draw the music away from the world of the aria. The orchestra returns to close the movement quietly, allowing the final phrase to remain suspended in the air for a moment.

III. Rondo. Tempo di Menuetto — The Court Meets the Theatre

The finale begins with a complete orchestral refrain in B-flat major. Its triple metre, symmetrical phrases, graceful melodic rebounds and clearly articulated cadences evoke the minuet, a dance associated with courtly refinement, social order and controlled movement. Yet the music possesses enough vitality to prepare a less predictable continuation.

The orchestral refrain is presented as a self-contained world. Oboes and first violins carry the melodic outline, the horns strengthen the harmonic points of arrival and the lower strings maintain the dancing step. Once again, the bassoon participates in the tutti before leaving its orchestral function behind and moving into the first solo episode.

Its entrance immediately changes the balance of the music. Triplets, rapid trajectories and wide leaps add freedom to the minuet’s stable pulse. The bassoon respects the metre of the dance while its motion seems continually to test its boundaries. Every return to the lower or upper range changes the colour of the voice and gives the phrase a new theatrical dimension.

At bar 49, the score indicates a cadenza for the bassoon. Its position within the finale is unusual and gives the soloist an early opportunity to suspend the flow of the dance. Because the refrain returns immediately afterwards, the intervention needs a clear direction towards the orchestra’s reappearance and should not assume the proportions of a large concluding cadenza.

The refrain returns and briefly restores courtly order. The new equilibrium, however, is temporary. In the following episodes, the bassoon widens the rondo’s harmonic and expressive space, passing through F major and darker related regions. Slurred phrases alternate with repeated notes, triplets and semiquaver passagework, while the orchestra sometimes accompanies discreetly and at other moments comments on the soloist’s progress through short responses.

The persistent triple metre holds all these transformations within the world of the dance. Even in the most virtuosic passages, the music retains the sense of a measured step and balanced phrasing. The soloist’s freedom becomes meaningful because it unfolds above a stable ceremonial framework.

At bar 106, Mozart writes an Eingang, a brief improvisatory lead-in connecting a fermata to the next return of the principal material. Unlike the cadenza at bar 49, the Eingang has a clearly transitional purpose. A concise allusion to characteristic motifs is enough to renew expectation and return the music naturally to its dancing pulse.

Soon afterwards, Mozart reserves one of the finale’s most ingenious moments. The refrain, previously presented chiefly by the orchestra, passes to the bassoon itself. The strings do not retreat into static accompaniment; they move around the soloist in independent lines, adding contrapuntal animation. A theme that initially represented formal orchestral order has now been absorbed by the protagonist.

This moment completes the dramatic journey of the entire concerto. The bassoon began as part of the orchestral foundation, emerged as an independent solo voice and now returns to shared material with the power to express it in its own identity. Its relationship with the orchestra has evolved from alternating presentation into a deeper exchange of roles.

The final tutti returns responsibility for the dance to the ensemble. The bassoon completes its journey with one last animated phrase, and the orchestra restores the brilliant, formal aspect of the minuet. Order returns after receiving the soloist’s transforming influence and revealing the theatrical energy concealed within its elegance.

Selected performance: Theo Plath, bassoon; Frankfurt Radio Symphony; Elias Grandy, conductor. Recorded at the hr-Sendesaal, Frankfurt, 15 May 2020.

Video timestamps:
I. Allegro — 00:27
II. Andante ma Adagio — 08:17
III. Rondo. Tempo di Menuetto — 15:40

From Orchestral Foundation to Solo Foreground

The concerto draws upon three fundamental aspects of the bassoon: its capacity to articulate rapid notes cleanly, the considerable contrast of colour between the different areas of its range, and its ability to sustain long cantabile phrases. Mozart organises the entire work around the alternation of these qualities, never treating the instrument as an isolated display of virtuosity.

In the lower range, the bassoon preserves its living connection with the orchestra’s bass line. Its sound carries weight and earthy stability, while its articulation can give rhythmic definition even to denser textures. In the middle range, the voice becomes rounder and more speech-like. Many of the phrases that appear to narrate or comment upon the music unfold there.

The higher notes gain particular intensity precisely because they differ so noticeably from the instrument’s deeper identity. Mozart uses them as points of culmination, as expressive extensions of lyrical lines and as brilliant arrivals after wide leaps. A move from one area of the range to another can alter the character of a phrase even when the dynamic level remains unchanged.

Repeated notes demand precision of tongue and steady breath support. Rapid passages require lightness and clear inner organisation, since excessive emphasis can easily turn musical wit into mechanical display. In the same way, the lyrical phrases of the Andante ma Adagio depend upon the span of the breath, direction towards climactic notes and discreet differentiation of each recurrence.

Technical difficulty ultimately serves an art of musical characterisation. The bassoon appears as an orator in the Allegro, a singer in the Andante and a dancer in the Rondo. A complete interpretation must make these transformations audible while preserving the sense that they all belong to a single voice.

Between Concerto and Opera

The work’s theatrical dimension extends well beyond the familiar resemblance between its slow movement and “Porgi, amor”. The whole concerto is organised like a sequence of entrances, responses, recognitions and shifts of character. The orchestra establishes the world of each movement, and the bassoon enters to comment on it, embellish it and eventually make it its own.

In the first movement, the alternation of tutti and solo resembles the gradual emergence of an individual from the ensemble. The orchestra has already introduced the principal themes, yet the bassoon’s entrance makes them sound different. The same melodic ideas acquire greater humour, flexibility or rhetorical force according to the range and manner in which they are articulated.

In the second movement, the bassoon assumes an explicitly vocal role. Phrases breathe, ornaments act as expressive inflections, and harmonic changes recall the delicate emotional transitions of an operatic aria. The orchestra is more than a background: it creates the space in which the solo voice can acquire psychological depth.

In the finale, theatrical action moves into the dance. The orchestra’s formal refrain represents a world of social order, while the solo episodes allow the bassoon greater freedom of movement. When the soloist finally takes over the refrain, the effect resembles a transformation on stage: the character who entered as a visitor has learned the language of the surrounding world and can now speak it in a voice of its own.

This dramatic thinking anticipates a fundamental feature of Mozart’s mature art. Form becomes a meeting place for different personalities. Each voice preserves its identity, yet contact with the others leads it towards new expressive possibilities.

Cadenzas, Eingang and Interpretative Freedom

The score provides for substantial improvisatory interventions in the first two movements, an additional cadenza at bar 49 of the Rondo and a short Eingang at bar 106. Mozart left no written cadenzas for the concerto, so performers today must choose between published examples or create material of their own.

A convincing Allegro cadenza may draw upon the principal theme’s wide intervals, repeated notes and some of the movement’s arpeggiated figures. Virtuosity has its place, provided that the proportions of Classical phrasing and the clear progress towards the concluding trill are preserved. The cadenza acts as a concentrated memory of the movement and the soloist’s final personal intervention before the orchestra returns.

In the Andante ma Adagio, the aesthetic balance is different. Melodic recollection, small ornaments, appoggiaturas and chromatic inflections are more closely suited to the movement’s lyrical character. The cadenza may briefly widen the emotional space while retaining the sense of a voice that thinks and breathes.

The cadenza at bar 49 of the Rondo lies within the continuing architecture of the dance. It therefore requires greater economy and a clear preparation of the returning refrain. The Eingang at bar 106 is shorter still: a flexible connection between fermata and re-entry, able to create a moment of expectation without interrupting the rhythmic continuity.

These open spaces remind us that eighteenth-century performance involved active creative participation. The score supplied the stable framework, while musicians were expected to know the language of the style, ornament, improvise and respond to the particular moment of performance. A historically informed approach therefore also requires knowledgeable freedom: personal imagination developed within the work’s proportions and vocabulary.

🪶 From the Life of the Work

The Lost Autograph and an Unlikely Dedicatee

The exact date of a composition usually survives because it can still be read on the composer’s manuscript. In the case of the Bassoon Concerto, the story followed a stranger course: the autograph disappeared, but its date lived on.

The manuscript had passed into the possession of the publisher Johann Anton André. In 1799, André purchased from Mozart’s widow, Constanze, a substantial part of the musical estate that remained in her hands. The score of the Bassoon Concerto was among those manuscripts.

The publisher used the autograph when preparing the work’s first printed editions at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The edition of 1805 even stated that it had been checked against the composer’s original manuscript. At some later point, the autograph itself vanished, and modern critical reconstruction of the concerto had to rely upon the early printed sources and information recorded while the manuscript was still accessible.

Through those records, we know that the score bore a date from the first days of June 1774. The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe gives 4 June, while the current online Köchel catalogue uses the span 4–5 June 1774. A slight discrepancy in the reading of the date remains, without altering the historical circumstances of composition.

A second story grew around the identity of the person for whom the concerto was written. For decades, writers repeated the claim that it had been intended for Thaddäus von Dürnitz, a wealthy Bavarian nobleman, amateur bassoonist and owner of numerous works by Mozart. The theory possessed every element of an ideal commission narrative: an aristocratic musician, a young composer and a demanding work designed for one performer’s abilities.

The chronology of their acquaintance overturned this picture. Mozart seems to have met Dürnitz in Munich towards the end of 1774, during preparations for the opera La finta giardiniera—several months after the concerto had been completed. Moreover, no dedication, letter or contemporary document connects the baron with the creation of K. 191. The work’s later presence in Dürnitz’s music collection demonstrates his interest in it, not a role as original commissioner or first performer.

The true soloist therefore remains unknown. He may have been a musician at the Salzburg court or a visiting virtuoso who impressed the young composer. His name disappeared along with the autograph, while the work written for him acquired a life far larger than its original occasion.

Over the following centuries, the concerto travelled from concert halls into conservatoires, recordings and orchestral auditions. For generations of bassoonists it became a constant companion: a work of study, a test of technique and musicianship, a point of comparison and a piece to which they repeatedly return. The identity of the first person to play it still eludes us; the music itself now lies at the centre of almost every professional bassoonist’s life.

🎧 Listening Guide

Listening becomes more rewarding when one recognises both the principal themes and the ways in which their character changes as they pass between orchestra and bassoon.

The bassoon within the opening tutti: Before the clearly defined solo entrance in the Allegro, the instrument participates in the orchestral texture and remains connected to the bass line. Its later release from the ensemble is all the more striking as a result.

The first movement’s solo entrance: At bar 35, the bassoon rises rapidly into its upper range. The change of colour transforms the principal theme and immediately establishes the presence of a new protagonist.

The countermelody to the second subject: In the solo exposition, the bassoon moves around the violins’ staccato melody. In the recapitulation, the roles are reversed and the soloist takes over the staccato line.

The rapid repeated notes: These are among the most characteristic technical features of the first movement. Clean articulation preserves their rhythmic vitality without breaking the larger direction of the phrase.

The change of sound in the Andante ma Adagio: Muted strings and the move to F major immediately create a more inward world. The bassoon’s entrance sounds like the continuation of an aria already begun by the orchestra.

The kinship with “Porgi, amor”: The slow movement’s opening melodic idea anticipates the style of the Countess’s aria from The Marriage of Figaro. Their shared quality lies in the noble rise, restrained intensity and eloquent descent of the phrase.

The finale’s minuet: The orchestral refrain preserves the elegance of a formal dance. The bassoon’s episodes introduce triplets, rapid passagework and a greater freedom of movement.

The Rondo’s cadenza and Eingang: The first extended pause occurs at bar 49 and permits a cadenza. At bar 106, a shorter Eingang leads swiftly into the return of the principal material.

The moment when the bassoon takes the refrain: Towards the end of the Rondo, the theme ceases to belong exclusively to the orchestra. The soloist presents it while the strings form moving lines around it.

🎶 Further Listening

The following performances illuminate three different facets of the concerto: its historical scale of sound, the Classical poise of an established interpretative tradition and the immediacy of a contemporary live performance.

  • Danny Bond — Academy of Ancient Music — Christopher Hogwood: A historically informed performance on period instruments, with light articulation and transparent orchestral textures. The historical bassoon reveals stronger contrasts of colour between different areas of the range, while the natural horns bring a distinctive brilliance to the tutti passages.
  • Klaus Thunemann — Academy of St Martin in the Fields — Neville Marriner: A classic interpretation on the modern bassoon, distinguished by rounded tone and exemplary balance of phrase. Thunemann’s virtuosity is integrated into an elegant, steady orchestral pulse, offering an especially clear model of the post-war Mozart tradition.
  • Theo Plath — Frankfurt Radio Symphony — Elias Grandy: A lively, flexible performance with clean articulation and a strong sense of theatrical dialogue. Plath brings out the changes between lyrical voice and playful virtuosity, while the orchestra maintains a lucid, active presence throughout the work.

📚 Further Reading

A deeper approach to the concerto benefits from bringing together the critical score, the history of Salzburg’s musicians, the development of the bassoon and research into the improvisatory practice of cadenzas.

  • Franz Giegling, ed., Konzerte für Flöte, Oboe und Fagott**, Neue Mozart-Ausgabe V/14/3:** The fundamental critical edition of the work. It permits close study of the orchestration, the exchange between solo and orchestral writing, the thematic design and the places where cadenzas or an Eingang are expected.
  • Ulrich Leisinger, “Instrumentalists in Salzburg and Abroad”, in Mozart in Context**:** A valuable examination of the musicians active in Salzburg and the difficulties surrounding the identification of the concerto’s first bassoonist. The chapter offers a well-documented dismantling of the older association between the work and Dürnitz.
  • Sarah Anne Wildey, Historical Performance Practice in Cadenzas for Mozart’s Concerto for Bassoon, K. 191 (186e): A specialised doctoral study of the concerto’s cadenzas and their relationship to eighteenth-century practice. It is particularly useful to performers wishing to assess published cadenzas or devise material of their own.
  • William Waterhouse, The Bassoon**:** A comprehensive history of the instrument, its constructional development and its repertoire. It provides the essential context for understanding the bassoon of Mozart’s time and the technical resources available to the concerto’s first performer.

🔗 Related Works

The following works relate to K. 191 through the history of the bassoon, the development of the Classical wind concerto and Mozart’s search for an instrumental style that approaches the human voice.

  • Antonio Vivaldi — Bassoon Concerto in E minor, RV 484: One of the most significant Baroque concertos for the instrument, in which rapid articulation, sequential writing and strong rhythmic energy illuminate the tradition from which later Classical writing developed.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Oboe Concerto in C major, K. 314: This later oboe concerto offers a still more mature union of instrumental virtuosity and vocal phrasing, using the same transparent orchestral forces of two oboes, two horns and strings.
  • Carl Stamitz — Bassoon Concerto in F major: A work from approximately the same period, marked by galant elegance, solo agility and clearly articulated contrasts between the bassoon and orchestra.
  • Carl Maria von Weber — Bassoon Concerto in F major, Op. 75, J. 127: One of the most important later works in the repertoire, extending Classical virtuosity towards theatrical dynamism and Romantic expression.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622: The mature counterpart to the Bassoon Concerto within Mozart’s writing for wind instruments, bringing the particular identity of the instrument, the human voice and concerto form into a still deeper union.

🎼 Closing Reflection

Mozart’s bassoon seems to know that every serious phrase contains the possibility of a smile, and that every game can suddenly become song. Between courtly order and the soloist’s freedom, the concerto releases a voice far more human than its usual place in the depths of the orchestra might suggest.

📖 References & Sources

Research for this article drew upon critical examination of the score, the revised catalogue entry for the work, surviving early editions, and studies of Salzburg’s musicians, the eighteenth-century bassoon and cadenza practice. Particular attention was given to discrepancies concerning the exact date, the uncertain identity of the first performer and the history of the lost autograph.

Scores and Critical Editions

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Konzert in B für Fagott und Orchester, KV 191 (186e). In Konzerte für Flöte, für Oboe und für Fagott, Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, Series V, Work Group 14, Volume 3, ed. Franz Giegling, pp. 133–164. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981.

Giegling, Franz. Konzerte für Flöte, für Oboe und für Fagott und Orchester: Kritischer Bericht. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, Series V, Work Group 14, Volume 3. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1986.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Bassoon Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 191. Ed. Ernst Herttrich; piano reduction by Siegfried Petrenz; cadenzas by Robert D. Levin. Munich: G. Henle Verlag, HN 801.

Primary and Catalogue Sources

André, Johann Anton. Early printed editions of the Konzert für Fagott und Orchester. Offenbach, 1801 and 1805. The 1805 edition states that it was checked against the composer’s original manuscript, which was then still extant.

Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum. Köchel Catalogue Online: entry for KV 191, Concerto in B flat for Bassoon and Orchestra.

Secondary Sources

Keefe, Simon P., ed. Mozart in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Leisinger, Ulrich. “Instrumentalists in Salzburg and Abroad”. In Mozart in Context, ed. Simon P. Keefe, pp. 183–189. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Waterhouse, William. The Bassoon. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003.

Wildey, Sarah Anne. Historical Performance Practice in Cadenzas for Mozart’s Concerto for Bassoon, K. 191 (186e). DMA dissertation, University of Iowa, 2012.

Zaslaw, Neal, ed. The Compleat Mozart: A Guide to the Musical Works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.

Digital Resources

Digitale Mozart-Edition. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe Online, NMA V/14/3: Konzerte für Flöte, Oboe und Fagott.

Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum. Köchel Catalogue Online, KV 191.

Discography and Performance Material

Bond, Danny; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood. Mozart: Bassoon Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 191. Period-instrument recording, 1988.

Thunemann, Klaus; Academy of St Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner. Mozart: Clarinet and Bassoon Concertos. Decca, 1989.

Plath, Theo; hr-Sinfonieorchester; Elias Grandy. Mozart: Bassoon Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 191. hr-Sendesaal Frankfurt, 15 May 2020.