Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major, K.417 (Analysis)

The horn can sound like a call from far away and, a moment later, like a voice singing close beside us. In the Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major, K.417, Mozart brings these two possibilities together. The soloist unfolds a melody, answers the orchestra, tests the instrument’s agility and returns to song with an ease that conceals the demands of performance. As the music progresses, a personal relationship begins to emerge behind the clarity of the writing. Mozart composed the work for Joseph Leutgeb, a horn player he had known for many years.

The score bears the date 27 May 1783 and the name of Vienna. Two years after settling in the city, Mozart was building an independent professional life through concerts, teaching and composition. Earlier musical friendships continued to find a place within this activity. Leutgeb had belonged to the Mozart family’s circle since their Salzburg years, and familiarity with his abilities gave the composer the freedom to write with a particular musical voice in mind: its breath, its fluency and its expressive strength.

The number “2”, by which the concerto is generally known, can give a misleading impression of its place in Mozart’s output. The conventional numbering of the four horn concertos does not follow their order of composition. K.417 is the earliest of the three complete concertos in E-flat Major, whereas the work in D Major usually called the “First”, with the complex source history of K.412 and K.514, belongs to Mozart’s final years. The familiar numbering remains a useful way of identifying the work; the chronology of these concertos tells a different story.

For Leutgeb, the music was intended for the natural horn, without the valve mechanism developed later. The open notes of the harmonic series, fine adjustments of the lips and changes in the position of the hand inside the bell worked together to produce a melody whose colour could vary from one note to the next. E-flat corresponded to a particular configuration of the instrument and to particular possibilities of sound production. The concerto’s key is therefore closely connected to the physical instrument and to the player’s technique, beyond any general description of E-flat as an inherently “brilliant” tonality.

Across the work’s brief span, this relationship takes three different forms. The quiet beginning of the first movement prepares a conversation that gradually opens out; in the Andante, the horn finds room for more inward singing; in the finale, the returning hunting theme has the vitality of a familiar phrase that sounds slightly different each time. The concerto’s direct appeal grows out of the care devoted to these details. Breath, articulation, changing tone colour and the presence of the orchestra keep alive what may initially seem simple and effortless.

Movements / Structure

The concerto follows a fast–slow–fast sequence, with its outer movements in E-flat Major and its central movement in B-flat Major. Their contrasting pulses give each movement a distinctive way of unfolding.

In the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, the opening Allegro markings of the first and last movements are supplied by the editors. The familiar Allegro maestoso for the first movement became established through editions and recordings; the surviving autograph does not carry that indication. The Andante marking is transmitted through the other sources, since the slow movement is missing from the surviving manuscript. Mozart’s own Più allegro appears near the end of the finale and indicates the increase in speed at that point.

Musical Analysis

I. Allegro — From Orchestral Phrase to Solo Voice

Before the solo horn is heard, Mozart has already established a delicate balance between stillness and motion. The opening is quiet: the first violins carry the melodic line at a gentle dynamic, while the second violins move in continuous semiquavers. Violas and basses provide a steady pulse beneath them. Within this light texture, the melody can unfold without losing momentum, sustained by the small, unceasing movements of the accompaniment. The wind instruments are initially silent. When they enter, they give greater weight to the harmonic articulations, and the sound gradually expands.

The brief orchestral exposition establishes E-flat Major and introduces the first features of this musical world. At bar 26, the horn takes up the recognisable opening figure, as though the melody were passing from the ensemble to a voice with its own breath. The continuation becomes more expansive: phrases lengthen, the writing acquires greater soloistic freedom, and the music turns towards B-flat Major, the dominant. The two presentations of the material, characteristic of concerto sonata form, are heard here as a gradual opening of possibilities. What the orchestra has set within a stable tonal framework becomes the starting point for a more adventurous course.

Sustained notes, short melodic arcs and rapid figures coexist in the solo line. The player’s virtuosity is tested particularly in the connections between them: an ascent that must arrive naturally at the following note, a change of articulation that must preserve the phrase, a long note that must retain expressive direction while the strings continue moving beneath it. The horn player must bring these different demands together in a continuous musical narrative. For the listener, the accompaniment’s quiet rhythmic activity makes the apparent ease of the horn’s line all the more palpable, as it seems to float above that movement.

As the solo exposition proceeds in the new tonal area, the material becomes more songful. The relationship with the first violins brings this change into focus. At times they reinforce the horn’s line; elsewhere they move in related figures higher in the texture, sustaining the flow around the soloist. There is something here of the care with which an orchestra accompanies a voice in an aria. The horn retains the melodic initiative, while its song gains depth from the activity beside it. Selected interventions from the oboes add another shade to the responses and cadences, preserving the lightness of the balance.

After the orchestra confirms B-flat Major, the development changes our sense of the music’s progress. The horn moves into longer note values, its melodic activity becoming less dense while the accompaniment retains its inner motion. The solo voice seems to take more time over its notes, even as the ground beneath it continues to shift. Chromatic alterations and successive harmonic changes draw the music away from its initial certainty. A sustained note can remain on the surface while its expressive significance changes with the harmony around it. Tension accumulates through this relationship between duration and harmonic instability, with the solo line holding its course as the tonal direction becomes less secure.

When the opening orchestral theme returns at bar 117, E-flat Major becomes clearly audible again. The familiar texture has particular force after the more spacious melodic writing of the development. The orchestra restores the world of the opening, and the soloist re-enters it, with the later ideas now adjusted to the home key. In the recapitulation, the paths that had led away converge. Recognition of the material comes with a sense that the music can now complete what it began.

Towards the close, the horn’s trill prepares the final tutti, and the orchestra brings the movement to a close. In the version of the music that has come down to us, there is no customary pause for a substantial improvised cadenza. The motion passes from soloist to ensemble and continues to the end, without the extended moment of solitary display found in many Classical concertos. The conclusion preserves the feeling of a journey shared by horn and orchestra.

This unusual feature also leaves a question open about the history of the score. The final portion of the first movement is missing from Mozart’s surviving manuscript and is known through other sources. The absence of a cadenza is a definite feature of the text performed today; the composer’s original intention at this point is harder to establish. In performance, the ending has its own coherence. In studying the concerto, it reminds us how closely a musical detail can be bound to the sources through which it survives.

II. Andante — Breathing Within Repetition

With the move to B-flat Major and 3/4, the music finds a gentler way forward. The triple pulse gives the phrases room to bend, linger slightly and settle more softly. In the opening orchestral passage, oboes and strings shape a clear, softly lit outline. When the horn enters, the accompaniment becomes lighter around its melody. The change brings the solo voice closer: a small movement, the length of a note or the connection between two pitches now carries greater expressive weight.

The melody sings through ornaments, small chromatic movements and notes that momentarily delay their harmonic resolution. These delays keep the expectation of the next note open for a little longer, making the eventual resolution part of the expression. The strings support the phrase and fill out its movement in the spaces left by the soloist. The horn player’s breath belongs to this continuity. The placement of a break, the intensity with which the song resumes and the time allowed for an ornament all help determine the unity of the line. Even a brief silence can sound like a natural continuation of what came before.

The movement unfolds through phrases that return and find their place in the music again. After the introduction and first solo section comes a broader melodic passage, repeated extensively and largely with the same writing. The Andante thus has the intimate character of a romance, shaped through recurring sections. Its surviving form is best described through these actual repetitions, rather than by applying a general A–B–A label. We follow a song that dwells on related thoughts, without an extended central development comparable to that of the first movement.

Repetition gives the performer time to illuminate familiar material differently. The melodic outline remains recognisable, while an almost imperceptible change of dynamic, a different emphasis on a note or a more generous breath can alter its perspective. The listener has become more familiar with the phrase and is better placed to notice these subtle distinctions. Much of the Andante’s expressive life lies here, in the player’s ability to keep a returning line alive without losing its direction.

On the natural horn, this continuity also passes through changes of colour. Open and more covered notes follow one another within the same melody, requiring the performer to connect different ways of producing sound. The tranquillity that reaches the listener depends on constant care: steady breath, sensitive control of intensity and an awareness of where the phrase is going. The small differences of shade can then become part of the song, giving depth to its apparent simplicity.

Towards the close, the orchestra becomes more active and the dynamic range expands before the music withdraws again into quietness. This brief rise and final release bring the movement to a calm that has emerged through motion. The whole Andante is missing from the surviving autograph, and its text is preserved in other sources. The extensive repetitions belong to the form we know; the possibility of an originally longer movement remains an editorial hypothesis. Its quiet ending ultimately draws attention to the completion of the phrase, where the horn’s breath meets the orchestra’s final withdrawal.

III. Rondo: Allegro — The Call Becomes a Game

In the finale, the horn speaks immediately. The main theme begins with a short upbeat and moves in 6/8, with two principal beats, each divided into three. Repeated notes, small leaps and melodic curves give the phrase the agility of a hunting rondo. Its kinship with hunting calls can be heard in the way the horn projects the rhythm and makes the melody instantly recognisable. This musical idiom establishes the movement’s character, without tying its course to a programme of specific scenes.

The orchestra promptly takes up the theme and gives it a broader sound. The opening solo has moved over a light accompaniment; now the oboes and orchestral horns join in the collective response, and the same melody acquires greater fullness and weight. The difference is apparent even before we distinguish the instruments. We hear the phrase first from one voice, then from an ensemble that recognises and reinforces it. From this first exchange, the return of the theme becomes connected both to our memory of the melody and to our expectation of another response.

The first episode turns towards B-flat Major and allows the soloist greater freedom of movement. Short figures alternate with longer note values, trills enliven the cadences, and the line moves away from the clear symmetry of the opening call. Before the main theme returns, a fermata makes room for an Eingang, a brief improvised lead-in that bridges the way back to the familiar melody. Its scale and purpose distinguish it from an extended cadenza. For a moment the continuation is suspended, and the horn player can guide that expectancy towards the resumption of the theme, allowing its return to sound spontaneous once more.

In the central episode, the directness of the call recedes and the colour darkens. Minor inflections and chromatic departures alter the tonal surroundings, while the solo line encounters more notes that require adjustments of the hand and of sound production on the natural horn. Harmonic distance is therefore audible within the instrument’s own voice. Between the solo figures, the first violins interject short, insistent replies. The exchange has an almost theatrical vitality: the horn must continue its thought, maintain accuracy of pitch and preserve its thread within a conversation that has become more restless.

When the theme returns in E-flat Major, the music recovers its bearings. The familiar material now arrives after a passage of darker colours and more demanding exchanges. This is one of the rondo’s expressive possibilities: the melody remains familiar, while its place in the listener’s experience changes. Each reappearance gathers up what has happened in between and brings it close to the original tonal centre again.

Near the end, Mozart uses this familiarity with particular subtlety. The horn restarts the theme at a very quiet dynamic and leaves small gaps where the first statement had continued without interruption. By now the melody is familiar enough for these breaks to stand out immediately: the expectation of the next note remains alive within the silence. The phrase can sound as though it briefly hesitates before remembering how to continue. This is a plausible reading of the music’s humour, arising from the relationship between what we remember and what the composer momentarily withholds.

The Più allegro marking near the close supplies the final impetus. After the little interruptions, the greater speed gathers the pulse together again, the soloist displays renewed agility, and the orchestra brings the concerto to a brief, decisive conclusion. The ending’s energy has been prepared by the movement as a whole. The call that initially belonged to the horn reaches its destination within the ensemble’s shared motion.

The Natural Horn: Changing Colours Within a Melody

To understand the solo writing of K.417 more fully, it helps to picture the instrument for which the score was intended. On the natural horn, the open notes come from the harmonic series, while adjustments of the lips and movements of the right hand inside the bell extend the available pitches. By the late eighteenth century, horn players had developed this technique to create complete melodic lines. Interchangeable lengths of tubing, known as crooks, altered the instrument’s length and adapted it to a work’s basic key. The way the horn was set up and the player’s technique together determined the possibilities of performance.

Within a phrase, breath, lips and hand worked continuously together as the notes required different adjustments. Pitches involving greater closure of the bell could acquire a more veiled colour than the open notes. A harmonic departure could therefore be felt on two levels: the music temporarily left its home tonal area, and the solo voice itself changed shade. Modulation had this immediate, physical dimension too, which a performance on natural horn can bring more clearly to the surface.

In the concerto’s lyrical passages, the challenge lies in sustaining the song through these differences. The next note has to belong to the same melodic thought, even when it is produced with a different hand position and has a different colour. In the rondo’s central episode, this requirement combines with the speed of the exchanges and the more adventurous harmonic course. The horn player’s virtuosity includes the ability to draw all of this into a voice that remains recognisable. The shading of the sound can then become part of the expression, making the music’s changes still more palpable.

The experience changes on the modern valved horn, whose mechanism offers its own possibilities for an even tone, stability and projection. Its greater facility gives the performer room to choose how to differentiate the phrases: how much suppleness to allow the rapid figures, how to give direction to a sustained note, how much time to leave within a silence. Knowledge of the natural instrument illuminates these choices by revealing tensions and contrasts already present in the writing. In the Andante, for example, comparison may draw our attention to the way notes are connected; in the rondo, to the changing colour as the harmony moves away from E-flat Major.

A Small Orchestra with an Active Presence

Around the soloist, the score places two oboes, two orchestral horns and strings. The presence of three horns creates an affinity of colour within the ensemble, while their roles remain clearly differentiated. The flexible melodic line belongs to the soloist, whereas the orchestral horns chiefly strengthen the harmony and dynamics of the tutti passages. When the orchestra responds, the solo instrument’s timbre thus finds a broader counterpart around it. Mozart can move the music from an individual voice to a collective presence while keeping the protagonist’s place clear.

The strings sustain this relationship from beginning to end. In the first movement, their fine rhythmic activity allows the horn’s melody to unfold over a living accompaniment. In the Andante, their responses and changes of texture connect the song’s breaths. In the finale, the first violins’ interjections give the episodes the character of a more animated conversation. The transparency of the scoring allows these functions to be heard distinctly: a small figure can maintain continuity, a brief reply can alter a phrase’s intensity, and a tutti can lend weight to an idea the soloist has just offered.

One detail of the scoring shows how interesting the distance between a written score and a performance can be. The concerto contains no separate bassoon part, yet the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe notes the possibility of reinforcing the bass with a bassoon within historical performance practice. The instruments named in the score and the choices made by an ensemble therefore address related, but different, questions. In recordings, this distinction joins the size of the string section, articulation and wind balance in shaping the sound. Together, these choices alter our sense of distance: the horn may sound close and distinct, or more fully integrated into the ensemble, giving the conversation a different weight each time.

🪶 A Chapter in the Life of the Work

The Voice of an Old Friend

Long before his name appeared on the first page of K.417, Joseph Leutgeb had already built his professional life around the horn. Viennese records show him appearing repeatedly in concerts during the early 1760s. His career later took him to the Salzburg court orchestra and into the Mozart family’s circle. That earlier acquaintance would continue to find its way into Wolfgang’s music many years afterwards. The musician for whom the concertos were written brought experience, a public performing career and a sufficiently accomplished technique for the composer to entrust him with both the instrument’s agility and its delicate capacity for song.

In 1777, Leutgeb’s life took a new turn when he bought a house on the outskirts of Vienna. That December, Leopold wrote to his son, then in Mannheim, and passed on a request from their old acquaintance: the horn player wanted a concerto. The letter preserves this wish alongside the practical concerns of Leutgeb’s life, including references to a debt and to hopes of earning money from the cheese trade. The request for music reached the young composer through family correspondence, among news of a man trying to establish a life in Vienna.

Those references also gave rise to a story that proved far more durable than its evidence. In many accounts, Leutgeb became the horn player with a cheese shop, a memorable image that accompanied Mozart’s concertos for years. When Michael Lorenz returned to the archives, the image began to separate into its actual components. The family of Leutgeb’s first wife had been associated with such a business, but the received story had merged different people and properties. Leutgeb himself is not documented as running a cheese shop. Behind the popular anecdote, the musician came into clearer view again.

Meanwhile, the paths of the two old acquaintances had drawn closer once more. When Mozart settled in Vienna in 1781, the friendship from the Salzburg years could continue in the same city. The request Leopold had conveyed in 1777 belongs to the background of their collaboration, without identifying which concerto Leutgeb had in mind or what plans the composer might then have made. The clear connection with K.417 appears in the spring of 1783, on the score itself. There Mozart recorded Vienna and the date 27 May 1783, together with a dedication that still retains the sharp edge of his familiar humour.

In a free English rendering, Mozart writes that he has taken pity on Leutgeb, the “donkey, ox and fool”. The words survive in the composer’s hand; his friend’s response remains beyond what we know. The score that follows, however, gives the dedication a richer setting. The horn is asked to sing delicately, connect different colours, pass from rapid movement to long notes, and hold its place among the orchestra’s replies. The teasing language sits beside writing that presupposes confidence in the recipient’s abilities. Through the music, something of the depth of their acquaintance becomes apparent, which the epithets alone might obscure.

In the rondo, the relationship may find an especially appealing reflection. The first violins intervene between the horn’s figures, and near the end the familiar melody leaves small gaps in its continuity. The editor Henrik Wiese has suggested hearing certain passages as musical teasing, even as moments when the soloist pretends to forget what comes next. This reading belongs to the interpretation of the notes: no known account of a performance records a corresponding incident. Yet when the phrase stops just where we have learned to expect its continuation, the humour has an immediate presence. The listener’s expectation becomes part of the game, just as the horn player’s skill becomes part of the conversation.

After the composer’s lifetime, the concerto continued its journey through copies and editions. In 1802, André published its first printed edition in separate instrumental parts, opening another route for its circulation. Our knowledge of the work today rests on this transmission as well as on what survives of the manuscript. The autograph, now held in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, is incomplete: the end of the first movement is missing from bar 177 onwards, along with the whole Andante. The music of these sections reached us through other witnesses, which later editors had to examine and bring together. The loss concerns the survival of the manuscript source; the concerto itself has been transmitted as a complete work.

The entire finale survives in Mozart’s hand. With it remain the little interruptions in the theme’s last return and the instruction to accelerate towards the end. These details bring the score’s long journey close to its beginning again, to music written for an old friend’s abilities. When the horn leaves its phrase open for a moment and then recovers its momentum, we can hear it with this added sense of human closeness. The voice that now passes from one performer to another still carries the song and playfulness Mozart entrusted to Leutgeb.

🎧 Listening Guide

The opening before the horn. The quiet melody of the first violins and the fine movement of the second violins offer two points of focus within the same texture. One unfolds the phrase; the other sustains its inner energy. As the winds join in, the dimensions of the sound change. The soloist’s entry is heard within surroundings that have already come to life, and recognition of the opening figure makes the melody’s passage from orchestra to horn easier to follow.

The changing sense of time in the development. After the solo exposition and orchestral tutti, the horn’s longer note values stand out above the movement of the strings. Melodic activity becomes less dense while the harmony continues to change. A sustained note may acquire a different expressive weight as its support shifts. The return of the opening orchestral theme then becomes a clear audible landmark, with E-flat Major restoring the music’s bearings.

The returns in the Andante. Related and repeated phrases allow time to hear how the performer gives direction to a sustained note or brings an ornament to completion. As the melody becomes more familiar, small changes of breath and intensity stand out more clearly. In the spaces within the solo line, the accompaniment takes up the motion and holds the song together.

The rondo theme in a different light. At the start of the finale, the succession of the solo statement and orchestral response makes the change of weight and colour immediately apparent. Later, the central episode introduces minor shading and more restless exchanges with the first violins. The next return of the familiar melody is heard against the memory of this change, and its familiarity gains greater force.

The last small interruptions. Near the close, the theme appears very quietly and with momentary gaps. Musical expectation has already taken shape: the next note seems to exist in our memory before it sounds. Silence can acquire the vitality of a brief hesitation within the conversation. With the Più allegro, the final acceleration restores continuous momentum and gathers the pulse together through to the ending.

🎶 Further Listening

  • Dennis Brain — Philharmonia Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan. The historic 1953 recording offers a valuable starting point for hearing the singing line on the modern horn. Attention can centre on the connections between phrases and on the space the orchestra allows the soloist’s breath. The relationship between this continuity and the articulation of the orchestral responses provides a rewarding basis for comparison with later performances.
  • Hermann Baumann — Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt. A performance on natural horn brings the listening experience closer to the instrument’s historical technique, allowing changes of colour to be related to the production of individual notes. In the lyrical passages, the interest lies in melodic coherence through these differences; in the rondo’s harmonic departures, in the interaction between the tonal course and the shading of the solo voice.
  • Barry Tuckwell — London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Maag. This recording offers another perspective on the relationship between the modern horn and the orchestra. The soloist’s projection, the weight of the tutti passages and the move from lyrical continuity to the finale’s agile articulation provide specific points of comparison. Through them, differences between performances can be heard as different ways of shaping the same musical conversation.

📚 Further Reading

  • Franz Giegling, ed. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hornkonzerte, Neue Mozart-Ausgabe V/14/5. The score allows the details of form and orchestration to be followed within the musical text itself. The foreword complements this reading with the history of the sources and observations on horn technique and performance practice in Mozart’s time.
  • Henrik Wiese, ed. — Horn Concerto no. 2 in E-flat major, K.417, Henle HN 702. The preface and editorial comments examine the passages missing from the manuscript, the other sources for the text and characteristic details of the relationship between horn and violins. They illuminate the distance between the surviving version and hypotheses about the work’s original extent, while also opening an interesting perspective on its musical humour.
  • Horace Fitzpatrick — The Horn and Horn-Playing and the Austro-Bohemian Tradition from 1680 to 1830. This historical study widens the listening horizon towards the world of the natural horn: its construction, technique and the performing tradition that preceded and accompanied Mozart. The concerto can thus be placed within a longer history of relationships between instrument, player and compositional writing.
  • Michael Lorenz — A Little Leitgeb Research. This archival investigation returns to the evidence of Leutgeb’s life and re-examines the persistent cheese-shop story. Alongside its biographical reassessment, it offers a revealing example of how a few lines of correspondence can acquire a different life as they pass from one account to another.

🔗 Related Works

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Horn Quintet in E-flat Major, K.407. The horn’s relationship with strings moves into the more intimate space of chamber music. Responses, the exchange of melodic initiative and the integration of the solo voice into the ensemble can be heard on a different scale, while preserving the closeness of its song.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Horn Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major, K.447. Clarinets and bassoons change the orchestral colour around the soloist. Comparison with K.417 offers a direct way of hearing how strongly orchestration affects the position and expressive presence of the same instrumental voice.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat Major, K.495. Its broader concerto design, lyrical Romanza and hunting finale revisit related possibilities of the horn in different proportions. Heard alongside K.417, it reveals the variety that can emerge from the same combination of song, agility and orchestral conversation.
  • Ludwig van Beethoven — Sonata for Horn and Piano in F Major, Op.17. With the piano as partner, the music finds a different balance between solo projection and shared development. The natural horn keeps the instrument’s capabilities in focus, while the changed relationship between the two instruments opens another perspective on articulation and the weight of a phrase.
  • Richard Strauss — Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op.11. The horn’s call and song enter a later Romantic language, with a different harmonic course and a wider expressive scale. The shared instrument and key make the distance between the two composers’ musical worlds especially interesting.

🎼 Closing Reflection

A melody we know can surprise us with a brief silence. In Mozart’s horn writing, even a momentary interruption retains the warmth of the voice about to continue. The orchestra remains beside it, sharing the same breath, until the song finds its way forward again.

📖 Bibliography & Sources

The analysis is based on a reading of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe score and an examination of the editorial forewords and comments by Franz Giegling and Henrik Wiese. The historical narrative draws on Mozart’s handwritten inscription in K.417, the family correspondence as documented and reproduced in the relevant studies, and Michael Lorenz’s archival research. Particular care has been taken to distinguish the surviving portions of the manuscript from evidence supplied by later transmission and from editorial hypotheses.

Scores and Critical Editions

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hornkonzerte. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, Serie V, Werkgruppe 14, Band 5. Edited by Franz Giegling. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1987. K.417, pp. 3–28; foreword and photographic reproduction of the manuscript’s first page.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Horn Concerto no. 2 in E-flat major, K.417. Edited by Henrik Wiese; piano reduction by Jan Philip Schulze. Munich: G. Henle Verlag, HN 702. Preface and editorial comments dated spring 2002.

Primary Evidence

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, manuscript of the Horn Concerto in E-flat Major, K.417, with the composer’s inscription and the date 27 May 1783. Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków. Examined through the reproduction and description in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.

Leopold Mozart to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1 December 1777, letter no. 382 in the Bauer–Deutsch edition. The relevant passage was checked through Michael Lorenz’s transcription and archival documentation, together with the reference in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe foreword.

Historical Research

Michael Lorenz, “A Little Leitgeb Research”, 8 April 2013. Archival study with reproductions and transcriptions of documents.

Digital Catalogues and Recording Documentation

Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel-Verzeichnis online: entries KV 417, KV 447 and KV 412, 01–02.

Naxos Historical, Mozart: Horn Concertos Nos. 1–4 / Piano and Wind Quintet, 8.111070: documentation of the recording by Dennis Brain, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Herbert von Karajan.

CiNii Books, Horn concertos, record BA44253288: documentation of the Teldec release with Hermann Baumann, Concentus Musicus Wien and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Universal Music Italia / Decca, Mozart: Horn Concertos, UPC 00028946058923: documentation of the recording by Barry Tuckwell, the London Symphony Orchestra and Peter Maag.