Mozart never had a particular fondness for the harp as a concert instrument. Still, when he visited Paris in 1778 in the company of his mother, Maria Anna, he decided to take as a music pupil a harpist girl, whose father, a duke who played the flute, commissioned Mozart to compose the only concerto for harp and flute that ever came out of the ingenuity of the Salzburg's genius. Mozart did not freak out about the commission but duly fulfilled it. Not so the flute-playing duke who did not pay Mozart for the concerto and settled only half of the girl's tuition.
A painful tour
It was one of the many misfortunes faced by Wolfgang and his mother during this unfortunate tour, the final shadow falling on them when Maria Anna, in July of that year, died in an inglorious room in Paris. Both mother and son had come from an extended stay in Mannheim where Mozart had been greeted as the genius he was, but whose longing for a position at court was, as usual, unfulfilled. Falsely hopeful, too, he took leave of Aloysia Weber, with whom he had fallen in love, but that is another story.
Concerto for harp and flute in C major, K 299
The combination of both instruments is not easy, but Mozart did it, and built with them a stylistically perfect work, hailed today by the widest audiences. Harpists and flutists all over the world are also grateful for it since opportunities to perform on stage as soloists, at least for the harp, are not plentiful. The work, intended for the salon, requires only a few woodwinds and the standard string ensemble.
