Sonata in C minor for clavier

On October 14, 1784, Mozart entered the Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457 into his own handwritten catalog of works. A manuscript copy with an autograph title page is dedicated to his piano student Therese von Trattner, the wife of Mozart’s landlord Johann Thomas von Trattner. The first edition of the sonata, published by Artaria in December 1785, was likewise dedicated to his pupil. In the print, the three-movement sonata is preceded by the Fantasia in C minor for piano, K. 475. It appears that the middle movement was the seminal cell of the entire sonata and originated independently as a slow rondo movement. In the autograph manuscript, the last movement immediately follows the first, leaving no space for the Adagio, which must have therefore already been written.

Did you know…

Did you know that the Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457 is the most lucid example for Mozart’s art of embellishment? Sources of piano works that Mozart wrote for himself or his students typically contain almost no entries relating to performance practice. For publications, Mozart often added additional dynamic marks and wrote out passages that he or his student would have embellished. For K. 457, several sheets with embellishments have survived along with the autograph, showing that it took Mozart at least three attempts before he was satisfied with the written-out ornamentation of the slow movement.