The first one Mozart wrote and the only one to bear the indication “Andante” (all the others are Allegro).
In bars [12] and [13] (also [35] and [36]) I felt that playing the violin notes literally like that on the piano wasn’t effective at all so instead I trilled them.
The ritardando at the end is not marked in the score, but was played in the recording I listened to. I liked the idea so I put an even heavier one in my transcription.
NOTE: The mp3 version on IMSLP.org is slightly different from the youtube video, with improved (= more natural) trills and velocity.
Definitely the hardest to transcribe of all the 17. Just look at the instrumentation: oboe, horns, clarinets, violins, cello, organ, bass, timpani, for a grand total of 10 staves. I mean, come on. … I mean, bring it on!
What I did (but I didn’t have much of a choice!) was to apply the fundamental technique that I could call the “solo thread” or better yet the “sound path”. When you listen to a symphonic piece, or in general a piece scored for more than one instrument, your ear always finds the “thread” of the dialogue going on. At any given time in a musical work, there is a definite “something” that stands out of the sound mass and gives an identity and a meaning to the whole. What our ears subconsciously do is tracing this “sound path” throughout the composition, thus piecing together the “thread” of discussion and painting the story-world the composer wanted to show / tell us.
The consequence is that no matter how complex the ensemble of instruments, there is always one sound path, and if there is only one sound path, it means there is ultimately a single tale-world. A single voice is always sufficient to narrate any kind of tale, just as a single instrument is sufficient to travel through any given sound path. This is how my theory goes. So just identify the sound path and include all of it in your transcription. Only if there’s enough capability left, include also something from the rest.
The first time I consciously applied this was with project tbpt2 (the Menuetto from Mozart’s Symphony 40). In fact I always apply it, but it is when facing works with a rich instrumentation like this one’s that it becomes essential, a determining factor.
Back to the Church Sonata, this one also makes us notice (duh!) that the instrumentation is not the same throughout the set. You range from the skinniest combination of two violins and two more staves for organ / bass of the first sonatas, to this fat orchestral blow-up, with many variations in between. The only constants are the instruments of the skinniest version.
Obviously the less voices a composition has, the easier it is to transcribe, unless there is only one voice and you transcribe for an instrument with more than one voice: then you have to do a mix of transcribing and composing – that’s the case with Bach’s Cello Suites. You aren’t anymore reducing N to 2 but augmenting 1 to 2.
This is the last one Mozart wrote, and also the only one where the organ plays extensive passages as solo; that’s why this work looks more like the opening allegro of an (hypothetic) organ concerto than a church sonata. In this case the solo instrument much resembles the piano (two hands), so transcribing the solo passages was easy, little work to do beside writing the notes as they are in the original.
The real challenge of transcribing concerto-like pieces (with a “solo” voice / instrument facing a “tutti” ensemble) for a solo instrument is to bring out the respective solo / tutti shadings each passage is supposed to have… by only using the means of a solo instrument. For example I chose to transpose one octave lower the whole first passage in order to make the following solo entrance stand out more as it should. It is by resorting to such eyebrow-raising “tricks” that the end result turned out much better than a more literal transcription would have, I think.
To add to the challenge, a cadenza is supposed to be played near the end (more evidence of the concerto-like nature of the piece), so I wrote and slipped in my own. Well I had no other choice since Mozart’s original one was not included in the score (actually I think it was never written out to begin with, as is the case with some piano concertos and other works) and of course I couldn’t get hold of the one played in the recording of the original I heard. But, hey, after all, I’m a composer too! Why not take this chance to try my (composer) hand with a new genre? So I did.
This is the first cadenza I ever wrote; the version you hear in the youtube video is slightly different from the final, official version I posted as mp3 on IMSLP.org. In the final version I fixed (changed) a few spots that sounded “quirky” or (too) immature to me at a second glance.
I like how the liveliness of the beginning turned out in the piano version, even if it is probably not how Mozart would have written it: if you compare to the piano sonatas you don’t find passages like that, I mean the “rumbling” effect of the left hand and then of the right hand. The gap between August and October was mostly a hiatus.
This was (after KV 329) the second most difficult to transcribe. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and also one of the most energetic ones, so much it could be the opening allegro of a sturm-und-drang symphony (like the KV 183). It is a bit of a shame that it is not divided in two halves (although it could be) because this means “no ritornello”.
I was especially curious and happy to transcribe this because it is catalog-close to one of my all-time (ever since I was a young boy) favorite Mozart works, that is the first Piano Sonata KV 279 in C major.
With this, the project of transcribing for piano solo the complete (17) Mozart Church Sonatas is finished. I have no idea if this has ever been done before, but I’m satisfied anyway. This was my first “serial” or “larger” transcription project to be completed.
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