Sinfonia in D

Dwarfed by the reputation of his peerless son and the recipient of much spiteful and ill-informed criticism over the past 200 years, the reputation of Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) has suffered more than that most of his professional contemporaries. He was an acute and sardonic observer of men and morals, a superlative critic and teacher and a fine composer whose works circulated well beyond the confines of Salzburg and made the name Mozart famous before it became immortal. The Sinfonia D12 (Seiffert 3.14) was composed not later than 1761. It was first advertised by Breitkopf in their non-thematic catalogue of that year and again, with incipit, in 1762, but the earliest known source appears to date from the 1750s. Contra attributions to Jomelli and Holzbauer both exist but there seems few grounds to challenge Leopold’s authorship of this excellent example of the mid-century symphony.