Mozart composed this music between 1779 and 1780.
Scored for a very small group of players, this work was probably written to commemorate the graduation of a close friend of Mozart’s, Sigmund Robinig, from his law studies at the University of Salzburg in 1780.
It seems that Sigmund Robinig was an excellent violinist — he is described in a surviving letter from Leopold Mozart — and the first violin part is quite ambitious and may have been crafted with him in mind.
This was a particularly turbulent period in Mozart’s life; his mother had died during his recent trip to Paris, and he had both found and lost his first love, the soprano Aloysa Weber.
Here is the Divertimento K334, in a totally beautiful recording:
