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A brief glance at Mozart's output is enough to convince anyone that, throughout his life, he was a very busy fellow. "Believe me when I say that I do not like to be idle but to work," he wrote to his father, Leopold, from Vienna on May 6, 1781.
But even someone with Mozart's stamina would have been put to the test by the stressful events of midsummer, 1782. He had just completed Die Entführung aus dem Serail (K. 384), the centerpiece of his plan to establish himself as a mature composer in Vienna. (The premier had been July 16, and it had not gone well.) He was in the midst of moving (again), this time to a house on the Hohe Brücke. To top everything off, he and his fiancée, Constanze Weber, were desperately trying to bring their yearlong courtship to a close (they would be married Aug. 4).
The time could not have been worse for Leopold to ask his son to write a symphony for the ennoblement of Sigmund Haffner, son of the Salzburg burgomaster. But perhaps that was Leopold's intention: He disapproved of his son's plans and, especially, of his impending marriage to Constanze. This request may have been a test, a last attempt to assert his authority over his "most obedient son."
"Well, I am up to my eyes in work," Mozart furiously responded in a letter written on July 20, 1782. "And now you ask me to write a new symphony! How on earth can I do so?" But loyalty -- or an innate eagerness to please -- won out: "You may rely on having something from me by every post. I shall work as fast as possible and, as far as haste permits, I shall turn out good work."
Indeed, the first allegro was completed and sent off to Salzburg within a week. The rest of the work arrived piecemeal. By modern-day standards, it was more a serenade than a symphony: The original composition began and ended with a march (K. 408/2), and included at least one minuet and trio. For later performances in Vienna, Mozart reduced it to the four movements that we know today. He also removed some repeats and added flutes and clarinets. Even so, it belies its origin as a serenade; Alfred Einstein refers to it as a "somewhat amphibious work."
Mozart must have been preoccupied, because he stretched out the task of composing Haffner's symphony to several weeks. "You see that my intentions are good," he wrote on July 31. "Only what one cannot do one cannot! I am really unable to scribble off inferior stuff. So I cannot send you the whole symphony until next post-day." Meanwhile, he took pains to report his Viennese successes ("My opera was given again yesterday -- and that too at Gluck's request") and on his marriage.
As it turned out, Mozart probably missed his deadline altogether. It is not clear when Sigmund Haffner's ennoblement was celebrated (O.E. Deutsch gives a date of July 29, 1782), but records indicate that the symphony did not arrive in time.
But now the tables were turned. Mozart, eager for fresh material to perform in Vienna, badgered his father for months to return the manuscript. As Zaslaw writes in his book Mozart's Symphonies: "Surely the usually punctilious Leopold's procrastination is mute testimony to the anger and frustration he felt over what he considered to be his son's faltering career and foolish choice of a wife. Still, by 15 February Wolfgang could write, 'Most heartfelt thanks for the music you have sent me ...,' adding (ironically?), 'My new Haffner symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect.' "
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