Six Variations on "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant"


Six Variations on "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant" in G minor, K. 360/374b, is a composition for piano and solo violin by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composed when he was 25 years old.
The six variations are nominally on a French ariette, "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant" by :fr:Antoine Albanèse|Antoine Albanèse, an Italian-born French singer and composer. However, it appears that Mozart misnamed the melody used, which was actually entitled "Au bord d'une fontaine". The NMA points out that no French tune bearing the title "Hélas, j'ai perdu mon amant" ever existed. The melody also existed far earlier in France than Albanèse's version, since at least the sixteenth century.
It is thought to have been written for Mozart's aristocratic piano student, Marie Karoline, Countess Thiennes de Rumbeke.