Mozart Symphony n.40 K550 – Movements 2-3

Mozart: an analysis of the 2nd and 3rd movement of the Symphony K550

Second movement: Andante

In case you don’t have it at hand, here’s a quick link to the score.

“The key of passionate grief” that dominates 3 out of 4 movements of the symphony – G minor – leaves room here to the warm and regal key of Eb major.

This movement has a constant pulse of eight notes: it’s the beating heart of the piece. In my imagination, I also picture it as a king entering a hall full of courtesans, respectfully bowing with elegance.

Exposition

The tempo marking is Andante which means, literally, going, or moving. This gives you the idea of not too slow of a tempo. The first phrase is a perfectly balanced 8 bars phrase, split exactly in half. The beating heart starts in the violas

followed by the 2nd violins one bar later, then the first, and finally the horns, unfolding one bar after the other.

Look at harmonic wonders: we start on Eb major obviously. The Eb is held by the violas in the second bar its function changes becoming a 7th built of the second step of the Eb major scale. But that 7th is missing the 3rd, the C, which comes first as a Cb in the cellos and basses and then as a C natural, leading us into the dominant seventh of the following bar which then resolves on the tonic.
The second half of the phrase is a sequence of elegant reverences. It also includes the first appearance of an element that will be used times and again throughout the entire movement