Six Variations on "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant"

Six Variations on "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant" in G minor, K. 360/374b, is a composition for piano and solo violin by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composed when he was 25 years old (June 1781).

The six variations are nominally on a French ariette, "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant" ("Alas, I have lost my lover") by Antoine Albanèse, an Italian-born French singer and composer. However, it appears that Mozart misnamed the melody used, which was actually entitled "Au bord d'une fontaine" ("By the edge of a fountain"). The NMA points out that no French tune bearing the title "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant" ever existed. The melody also existed far earlier in France than Albanèse's version, since at least the sixteenth century.[1]

It is thought to have been written for Mozart's aristocratic piano student, Marie Karoline, Countess Thiennes de Rumbeke.[2]

References
  1. "NMA VIII/23/2: Sonatas and Variations for Violin and Piano vol. 2, Preface (English translation)" (PDF). Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. Retrieved 18 September 2017.
  2. Cowdery, edited by Neal Zaslaw with William; Cowdery, William (1990). The Compleat Mozart : a guide to the musical works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1st ed.). New York: Mozart Bicentennial at Lincoln Center. p. 293. ISBN 0-393-02886-0.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
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