Mozart wrote the piano trio on 10 sheets (19 pages)[1] in Vienna and dated the manuscript on 5 August 1786.

One year later, Mozart wrote two Lieder, "Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte" (K. 520) and "Das Traumbild" (K. 530) explicitly for Gottfried von Jacquin to use under his own name.

The German word Kegelstatt means "a place where skittles are played", akin to a duckpin bowling alley.

Mozart wrote that he composed 12 Duos for Two Horns (not 2 violins as once thought, or basset horns as was commonly thought), K. 487, "while playing skittles";[5] 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).

The key signature of E♭ major in Mozart's late chamber music indicates close friendship.

It repeats neither its exposition nor the remainder of the movement, which is unusual for Mozart's mature chamber music.

The piano's pounding bass line and sharp dynamic contrasts set the mood of this theme apart from any conventional light and frilly notions of a Minuet.

During the development, the dialogue between the instruments becomes intensified, and Mozart shows his grasp of counterpoint without ever sounding academic or "learned".

In the development of that theme, the four-note phrase and the lively triplets are then taken up by the piano, and clarinet and viola present some chromatically rising lines, before all three instruments start a concerto-like conversation where the 4-note phrase is only heard twice in the piano left hand (bars 63–94, repeated).

Theme A is an eight-bar cantabile melody in two parts, drawn from the first movement and presented first by the clarinet, then taken up as a variation by the piano (bars 1–16).

[13] With the playful coda of bars 191 to 222, Mozart concludes the composition, "that does not merely satisfy the listener, but leaves him enchanted!