THE VIOLA

Some while back, I observed that Mozart's favorite instrument was the viola. I took a certain amount of abuse for that observation. This morning, while out and about shopping, I heard a beautiful work on our local classical music FM station which I could easily enough identify as a Mozart piano quartet, but since I am not really familiar with those quartets, I was uncertain whether the instruments were a violin, a viola, a cello, and a piano, or two violins, a cello, and a piano. I listened carefully and persuaded myself that there was indeed a viola in the mix. It was Mozart's First Piano Quartet, it rurned out, and when I got home I checked. A violin, a viola, a cello, and a piano. So, faced with the necessity of replacing one of the instruments of the traditional quartet with a piano, Mozart chose to keep the viola. I rest my case.