Divertimento in E flat major, K.113

The piece unfolds in four brief movements, more like a light suite than a weighty symphony.

I. Allegro opens with a bright, bustling theme shared around the strings and winds, setting a genial, conversational tone rather than any dramatic argument.

II. Andante slows the pace to something more song-like, with the newly added clarinets giving the texture a mellow, rounded warmth that string-only divertimentos of the time lacked.

III. Minuetto is a courtly dance in triple time, with a contrasting middle section, or trio, that lightens the scoring before the opening dance returns.

IV. Allegro closes the work briskly and buoyantly, tying off the piece with the same good humor that opened it, offering the winds and strings one last cheerful exchange.

Listeners can expect no big emotional storms here, just a young composer's evident delight in mixing instrumental colors, especially the still-novel clarinet, within a compact, sociable format.

Mozart composed this divertimento in Milan in November 1771, during the third of his youthful journeys to Italy with his father Leopold. He was fifteen. The trip centered on the premiere of his opera Ascanio in Alba, and works like K. 113 likely served as incidental entertainment music for the local nobility who hosted the Mozarts. It holds a small but genuine place in music history as the first piece Mozart scored for clarinets, instruments then still rare in orchestras, foreshadowing the rich clarinet writing of his mature works. After its Italian origins, the piece settled into the outer edges of the standard repertoire, performed today mainly by chamber orchestras and student ensembles drawn to its modest scale and youthful charm.