Kegelstatt Trio

The Kegelstatt Trio, K. 498, is a piano trio for clarinet, viola and piano in E-flat major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Mozart wrote the trio on 10 sheets (19 pages) in Vienna and dated the manuscript on 5 August 1786. According to Karoline Pichler, a 17-year-old student of Mozart at this time, the work was dedicated to Franziska von Jacquin (1769–1850), another student of his. Mozart and the von Jacquin family—father Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin and his youngest son, Gottfried Jacquin—were quite close friends. They performed house concerts together where Nikolaus played the flute and Franziska the piano. In a letter to Gottfried from 15 January 1787, Mozart praises Franziska's studiousness and diligence. Mozart dedicated a number of works to the von Jacquin family, including this trio. One year later, Mozart wrote two Lieder, Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte (K. 520) and Das Traumbild (K. 530) for the explicit purpose of Gottfried von Jacquin using them under his own name.

The origin of the nickname Kegelstatt is interesting. The German word Kegelstatt means "a place where skittles are played," akin to a duckpin bowling alley. Mozart wrote that he composed the 12 duos for French horns (not basset horns as is commonly thought), K. 487, "while playing skittles;" on the first page of the autograph manuscript of K. 487, Mozart inscribed the following: "Wienn den 27.^t Jullius 1786 untern Kegelscheiben" (Vienna, 27 July 1786 while playing skittles). A week and a half later, Mozart composed and dated the trio Eb K. 498. He entered this work into his list of compositions simply as: "Ein Terzett für klavier, Clarinett und Viola" (A trio for piano, clarinet and viola). There is no evidence that Mozart gave any nickname to the K. 498 trio; the moniker Kegelstatt first appears ascribed to the K. 498 trio in Ludwig von Köchel's 1862 thematic catalogue of Mozart's music.

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