MOZART’S VIENNESE
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC A Study of Stylistic Re-Invention
SIMON P. KEEFE
Mozart’s Viennese Instrumental Music A STUDY OF STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
Mozart’s Viennese Instrumental Music A STUDY OF STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
Simon P. Keefe
THE BOYDELL PRESS
© Simon P. Keefe 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Simon P. Keefe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2007 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
ISBN 978–1–84383–319–2
The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Pru Harrison, Hacheston, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Contents
List of Musical Examples
vii
List of Figures
ix
Acknowledgements
xi
Introduction: Mozart and Stylistic Re-Invention
1
I. PIANO CONCERTOS 1.
2.
3.
‘An Entirely Special Manner’: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in Eb, K. 449, and the Stylistic Implications of Confrontation K. 449 as a hybrid of Mozart’s 1782–83 and spring 1784 concertos The stylistic implications of confrontation in K. 449 On the Grand, Brilliant and Intimate: Mozart’s Piano Concertos K. 450 – K. 503 (1784–86) Grandeur, intimacy and brilliance in late eighteenth-century concerto criticism Grandeur, brilliance and intimacy in Mozart’s piano concertos Mozart’s piano concertos K. 450–503 (1784–86) K. 449 re-visited K. 491 and K. 503 A Complementary Pair: Stylistic Experimentation in Mozart’s Final Piano Concertos, No. 26 in D, K. 537 (the ‘Coronation’), and No. 27 in Bb, K. 595 Stylistic experimentation in the first movements of K. 537 and 595 Mozart’s stylistic experimentation in context K. 491 re-visited
19 25 34
43 44 47 49 53 55
64 68 77 80
II. STRING QUARTETS 4.
5.
An Integrated ‘Dissonance’: Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ Quartets and the Slow Introduction of K. 465 K. 465/i and the ‘Haydn’ set K. 465’s slow introduction as peroration
89 94 102
Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ Quartets, K. 575, 589 and 590: Towards a New Aesthetic of the String Quartet Musical contrast in the ‘Prussian’ quartets K. 465 re-visited The ‘Prussian’ quartets in musical and aesthetic context
105 107 121 123
III. SYMPHONIES 6.
The ‘Jupiter’ Symphony in C, K. 551: The Dramatic Finale and its Stylistic Significance in Mozart’s Orchestral Oeuvre The ‘Jupiter’ finale: reception and context Dramatic dialogue and the late eighteenth-century symphony Dramatic dialogue in the ‘Jupiter’ finale The stylistic significance of the ‘Jupiter’ finale in Mozart’s oeuvre
137 139 144 152 160
IV. CONCLUSIONS 7.
Mozart’s Stylistic Re-Invention in Musical Context The Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452 The piano quartets The piano trios, ‘Kegelstatt’ trio and string trio The piano sonatas and violin sonatas Conclusion: the process of re-invention
167 169 174 177 182 188
Bibliography
201
Index of Mozart’s Works by Köchel Number Index of Mozart’s Works by Genre General Index
211 213 215
Musical Examples
1.1
Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 14 in Eb, K. 449, 1st movement, bars 228–45 1.2 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 12 in A, K. 414, 1st movement, bars 191–95 1.3 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 13 in C, K. 415, 1st movement, bars 189–201 1.4 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 15 in Bb, K. 450, 1st movement, bars 186–98 1.5 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 14 in Eb, K. 449, 1st movement, bars 188–96 1.6 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 16 in D, K. 451, 1st movement, bars 187–201 1.7 Mozart, String Quartet in G, K. 387, 4th movement, bars 221–33 2.1 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, 1st movement, bars 329–46 2.2 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503, 1st movement, bars 116–26 3.1 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, K. 537, 1st movement, bars 178–89 3.2 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, K. 537, 1st movement, bars 395–401 3.3 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 27 in Bb, K. 595, 1st movement, bars 185–204 3.4 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 27 in Bb, K. 595, 1st movement, bars 338–42 3.5 Mozart, Symphony in G minor, K. 550, 1st movement, bars 99–105 3.6 Mozart, Symphony in G minor, K. 550, 4th movement, bars 125–35 3.7 Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, K. 537, 3rd movement, bars 184–88 4.1 Mozart, String Quartet in C, K. 465, 1st movement, bars 1–5 4.2 Mozart, String Quartet in Eb, K. 428, 1st movement, bars 69–76 4.3 Mozart, String Quartet in Eb, K. 428, 2nd movement, bars 45–8 4.4 Mozart, String Quartet in Bb, K. 458, 3rd movement, bars 14–16 4.5a Mozart, String Quartet in C, K. 465, 1st movement, bars 13–16 4.5b Mozart, String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, 1st movement, bars 65–6 4.6 Mozart, String Quartet in G, K. 387, 3rd movement, bars 58–62
26 27 28 29 31 32 41 57 60 70 71 73 76 78 78 80 91 99 99 100 101 101 101
viii 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 7.1
MUSICAL EXAMPLES
Mozart, String Quartet in F, K. 590, 1st movement, bars 92–8 112 Mozart, String Quartet in F, K. 590, 1st movement, bars 186–98 113 Mozart, String Quartet in Bb, K. 589, 3rd movement, bars 60–77 114 Mozart, String Quartet in D, K. 575, 3rd movement, bars 31–48 114–15 Mozart, String Quartet in F, K. 590, 3rd movement, bars 15–42 115–16 Mozart String Quartet in F, K. 590, 4th movement, bars 132–88 119–20 Mozart, String Quintet in C, K. 515, 2nd movement, bars 57–68 127 Mozart, String Quintet in Eb, K. 614, 1st movement, bars 87–106 133 Mozart, Quintet for Piano and Winds in Eb, K. 452, 2nd movement, bars 104–109 173 7.2 Mozart, Piano Quartet in Eb, K. 493, 1st movement, bars 106–17 176 7.3 Mozart, Piano Trio in G, K. 496, 1st movement, bars 77–88 179 7.4 Mozart, Piano Trio in C, K. 548, 2nd movement, bars 31–7 180 7.5 Mozart, ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio in Eb, K. 498, 2nd movement, bars 77–82 181 7.6 Mozart, Piano Trio in E, K. 542, 1st movement, bars 124–37 182 7.7 Mozart, Piano Trio in G, K. 564, 1st movement, bars 49–53 183 7.8 Mozart, Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457, 1st movement, bars 168–76 184 7.9 Mozart, ‘Tradito, schernito’ from Così fan tutte, K. 588, bars 29–43 195 7.10 Mozart, Concert Aria for Soprano, Piano and Orchestra, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’, K. 505, bars 65–70 198
Figures
4.1 6.1 7.1
The tonal and formal arrangement of the ‘Haydn’ quartets Dialogue in the Finale of K. 551 Symmetrical distributions of dialogue in the slow introduction, exposition and recapitulation of K. 452/i
96 153–55 172
For Celia, Abraham and Madeleine
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Queen’s University Belfast for granting me sabbatical leave in spring 2002 to carry out initial work on two chapters of this book, and to colleagues at City University London (2003– ) for promoting and supporting a vibrant research culture. My Mozart-related dialogues with Cliff Eisen are a continual source of inspiration, and our even more frequent conversations about English football’s Premiership (especially the relative merits of Aston Villa and Arsenal) a most welcome distraction from the rigours of academic work. My warmest thanks are reserved for my family – Robert and Virginia Hurwitz, Terry, Sheila and Rosanna Keefe, and my grandmother, Laura Keefe, in anticipation of her 100th birthday in August 2007. To my wife, Celia, and children Abraham and Madeleine, I owe far more than traditional avowals of love and respect can express. I dedicate this book to them, remembering the wonderful experiences of times past and looking forward to the years ahead. I am grateful to the following for permission to reprint versions of my previously published work, revised to incorporate new material: Oxford University Press for ‘ “An Entirely Special Manner”: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in Eb K. 449 and the Stylistic Implications of Confrontation’, Music & Letters, 82 (2001), pp. 559–81; the University of California Press for ‘A Complementary Pair: Stylistic Experimentation in Mozart’s Final Piano Concertos, K. 537 in D and K. 595 in Bb’, The Journal of Musicology, 18 (2001), pp. 658–84; Bärenreiter-Verlag Kassel for ‘An Integrated “Dissonance”: Mozart’s “Haydn” Quartets and the Slow Introduction of K. 465’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 2002, pp. 87–103; and BärenreiterVerlag Kassel for ‘The “Jupiter” Symphony in C, K. 551: New Perspectives on the Dramatic Finale and its Stylistic Significance in Mozart’s Orchestral oeuvre’, Acta musicologica, 75 (2003), pp. 17–43. Simon P. Keefe City University London 5 October 2006
Introduction Mozart and Stylistic Re-Invention
The extraordinary popularity of Mozart’s works composed during his years in Vienna (1781–91) is a product of, and a factor contributing towards, the intense public fascination with the man and his music. Scholarly attention to Mozart, no less remarkable in volume and intensity, is also motivated by, and is a motivating factor for, the continued allure of his music as a topic for intellectual investigation. The explosion of secondary literature on Mozart in the last fifty years or so, in musicological sub-disciplines as diverse as source studies, history and context, gender studies, and music analysis (to name but a few major areas), sets the composer in as sharp a critical perspective, perhaps, as any composer before or since. Such fertile scholarly investigation, of course, feeds an insatiable scholarly appetite – the more information and interpretation we are afforded, the more we crave. Equally – and perhaps more surprisingly – the proliferation of diverse standpoints, methodologies and approaches leaves major areas of Mozart scholarship, and basic questions about his music, conspicuously under-represented, or even misrepresented. One fundamental area of investigation eliciting little systematic attention in recent years – and one that will provide the focus for this monograph – is the development of Mozart’s instrumental style in his Viennese works of 1781–91. While the absence of up-to-date book-length volumes focussing on stylistic development that traverse the generic boundaries of Mozart’s instrumental output may not be significant in itself, the absence becomes more striking when recent advances in our collective appreciation of the aesthetic and historical contexts of Mozart’s Viennese works are factored into the equation.1 Study of the
1
Important book-length studies in English include: Elaine R. Sisman, Mozart: The ‘Jupiter’ Symphony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Neal Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); David Schroeder, Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief and Deception (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999); John Irving, Mozart’s Piano Sonatas: Contexts, Sources, Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Robert W. Gutman, Mozart: A Cultural Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999); Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Andrew Steptoe, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background of ‘Le nozze di Figaro’, ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘Così fan tutte’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Daniel Heartz, Mozart’s Operas, ed. Thomas Bauman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Mary Hunter, The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Mary Hunter and
2
INTRODUCTION
stylistic evolution of Mozart’s Viennese instrumental repertory as a whole has yet to benefit substantially from expanded knowledge of late eighteenth-century aesthetic and compositional contexts; the time is right, therefore, for an extended stylistic investigation that is closely tied to historical and contextual lines of enquiry. Ultimately, this approach will enable us to probe a series of far-reaching issues – hitherto represented in only haphazard, impressionistic or otherwise limited fashions for Mozart’s 1781–91 works in total – that have a fundamental impact upon our appreciation of Mozart’s Viennese instrumental repertory. Where do apparently ‘original’ instrumental works or movements (in the context of Mozart’s canon) stand in relation to contemporary aesthetic trends, and how do the works or movements in question relate to Mozart’s preceding and succeeding works in the same genre and his contemporary works in other genres? To what phenomena – aesthetic or otherwise – can stylistic changes in works from the composer’s final years be attributed (assuming stylistic changes can be demonstrated in the first place)? How do musical, contextual and aesthetic considerations bear witness to the exceptional stylistic gravitas and climactic status of certain works? And, to what extent is stylistic development in Mozart’s oeuvre an inter-generic, and to what extent an intra-generic phenomenon? Studies of an individual composer’s style, irrespective of historical period or methodological orientation, must always account, of course, for normative and individualistic musical practices. Even a cursory survey of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century dictionary entries on style – an important barometer of prevailing contemporary opinion – reveals that classical writers are just as aware of this fact as preceding and succeeding generations of theorists, historians and aestheticians. J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas’s claim in the Dictionnaire de musique (1787) that style denotes ‘expression peculiar to each individual’ presumes both expressive norms and departures from these norms.2 Equally, Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny’s assertion in the Encyclopédie méthodique: musique that every piece by a great composer will have ‘something that makes their style and their manner recognizable’, along with John Hoyle’s and Daniel Gottlieb Türk’s remarks that one speaks ‘of the Bach manner, the Benda manner, the Gluck manner, the Haydn manner, and so on’, implicitly acknowledges the mutual dependence of the general and the idiosyncratic for understanding style.3 Heinrich Christoph Koch’s brief, incisive definition of style in the Musikalisches Lexikon (1802) neatly links the general and the ‘characteristic’ components of style to the numerous dimensions assigned to style (according to level, function, genre, nationality and topical implication) in late eighteenth-century discourse. Consideration of the most
2 3
James Webster, eds., Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Meude-Monpas, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1787; reprint Geneva: Minkoff, 1981), p. 192. Momigny, ‘Style’, in Encyclopédie méthodique: musique, vol. 2, ed. Pierre-Louis Ginguené, Nicholas-Etienne Framery and Momigny (Paris, 1791 and 1818), p. 400; Hoyle, ‘Style’, in A Complete Dictionary of Music (London, 1791), p. 242; Türk, School of Clavier Playing (1789), trans. Raymond H. Haagh (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), p. 399.
MOZART AND STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
3
important elements of a work establishes its important ‘characteristic’ features, which are classifiable in two ways and lead in two directions: an assessment of the diversity of the treatment of artistic materials, through which passions are expressed, points towards two stylistic levels, the strict and the free; and an evaluation of the passions themselves has an impact upon stylistic function, namely whether a piece belongs to the church, the theatre or the chamber style.4 For the most part, the relationship between Mozart’s instrumental repertory as a whole and earlier and contemporary stylistic practices and musical trends has been well served by the secondary literature. Indeed, it could be said that the principal strategy for delineating Mozart’s style in general has remained more-or-less unchanged, albeit considerably refined, since Otto Jahn’s monumental biography of the composer in the mid nineteenth century, and involves a determination of what Mozart was taught, what he learned from other composers and where he stands in eighteenth-century musical-historical terms.5 The single most important landmark in this respect is Georges de Saint-Foix and Théodore de Wyzewa’s epic Mozart: sa vie musicale et son oeuvre (5 volumes, 1912–46), intensely rigorous and systematic in its division of Mozart’s work into 36 periods, in its relentless search for influences on the composer and in its determined exposé of Mozart as a historical pinnacle in musical-stylistic terms. Richly detailed and analytically sophisticated though the volumes are (in the context of early twentieth-century Mozart criticism), they cannot ultimately answer the oft-cited criticism of procedural abstraction. Since influences of one kind or another account for almost every compositional element in Mozart’s works according to Saint-Foix and Wyzewa, we are presented ultimately with ‘a closed system which detaches itself not only from the work as a whole and from the intentions and the individuality of the artist, but also from the influences, which may have come from outside the musical data themselves’.6 While Saint-Foix and Wyzewa’s magnum opus suffers from an over-wrought and tendentious line of stylistic enquiry, life-and-works studies of Mozart have traditionally painted with a broad brush where stylistic issues are concerned, incorporating relatively little critical or analytical detail in justifying assertions made about the stylistic evolution of Mozart’s music.7 Konrad Küster’s Mozart: A Musical Biography redresses the standard imbalance in favour of life-based rather than work-based issues in an extended, chronologically arranged survey of isolated works and groups of works from the beginning to the end of Mozart’s compositional career. Küster’s individual studies are admirably lucid and refreshingly free of methodological axe-grinding, but collectively fail to uncover in an
4 5 6 7
Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt, 1802; reprint Hildesheim: Goerg Olms, 1964), col. 1451. Gernot Gruber, Mozart Verstehen: ein Versuch (Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 1990), p. 121. Gernot Gruber, Mozart and Posterity, trans. R.S. Furness (London: Quartet Books, 1991), p. 194. Two notable exceptions are the classic twentieth-century biographies by Hermann Abert – ostensibly a revision of Jahn – and Alfred Einstein, both of which contain substantial musical-stylistic discussion.
4
INTRODUCTION
explicit fashion underlying strategies that govern the development of Mozart’s style over extended periods. To be sure, Küster’s volume has no pretensions to being a stylistic study per se; indeed, its fundamental concern for ‘the artistic development which cannot be separated from the life’8 puts it firmly in the mainstream biographical tradition, albeit with a welcome and long overdue emphasis upon Mozart’s music. If Küster and Saint Foix / Wyzewa unwittingly demonstrate that musically based biographies are apparently not a suitable place for an over-arching thesis (or theses) about the evolution of Mozart’s style, in what type of study should we engage, and in what ways should our study be orientated, in order to develop such a thesis? A crucial element in the stylistic analysis of Mozart’s music, yet to receive the systematic attention it deserves and especially relevant to the music of his Viennese period, is the extent to which certain movements represent an original stylistic approach in relation to Mozart’s own earlier practices. As Gernot Gruber explains, Mozart’s originality is often either inadvertently (or deliberately) marginalized in stylistic studies – since writers have preferred to consider his music in relation to the music of his predecessors – or is simply discussed in an uncritical or reverential fashion. But if we begin from the perspective that Mozart’s music is categorically different to that of his predecessors, Gruber continues, we no longer obligate ourselves to frame a consideration of his style in relation to that of his compositional antecedents.9 Even if we side-step broad claims about Mozart’s compositional uniqueness in historical-stylistic terms, we can acknowledge that the study of seemingly original, innovative works – judged in relation to his Viennese instrumental canon as a whole and situated in appropriate musical and aesthetic contexts – could help explain how, why and in what ways Mozart’s instrumental music evolved in the last decade of his life. The aesthetic concept of originality, closely linked to that of creative genius and supplanting earlier fixation with compositional correctness, takes centre stage in reviews of instrumental music in Germanic music magazines and scholarly review journals from the 1770s and 1780s, lending hermeneutic weight to discussion of originality in Mozart’s Viennese instrumental repertory. Creative genius and originality are manifest, for example, in ‘vaguely defined novel ideas, . . . witty turns of phrase, . . . modulatory ingenuity, and . . . imaginatively varied melodic structure’ and – once Haydn and C.P.E. Bach in particular acquire an exalted status – require bold, conspicuous and unanticipated writing.10 More explicit theoretical debate from the mid eighteenth century onwards sees originality explained either as ‘innate, introspective and self expressive’ (Edward Young through Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Georg Hamann, Johann
8 9 10
Küster, Mozart: A Musical Biography, trans. Mary Whittall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. ix. Gruber, Mozart Verstehen, pp. 127–28. See Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), especially pp. 99–133. (Quotation from p. 123.)
MOZART AND STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
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Joachim Winckelmann and Johann Georg Sulzer) or as process- rather than product-driven (Alexander Gerard and Immanuel Kant).11 References to Mozart’s originality during his decade in Vienna fit comfortably into these aesthetic contexts. Stylistic boldness is often associated with the overwhelming momentum his music conveys. Mozart is praised in 1785 for ‘great . . . original . . . compositions’ and for a piano concerto displaying a ‘wealth of ideas . . . variety . . . and contrasts in passionate sounds’: ‘One swims away with him unresistingly on the stream of his emotions.’12 In 1790 his ‘great genius’ is said to ‘[embrace] so to speak, the whole extent of the art of music’, his works representing ‘a river in spate which carries along with it every stream that approaches it’.13 And in 1791 Bernhard Anselm Weber, finding the ‘greatest possible originality’ in Mozart’s linking of ‘profound knowledge of the art with the happiest talent for inventing lovely melodies’, explains: ‘Nowhere in his work does one ever find an idea one had heard before: even his accompaniments are always novel. One is, as it were, incessantly pulled along from one notion to another, without rest or repose, so that admiration of the latest constantly swallows up admiration for what has gone before.’14 Writers in the 1780s are collectively undecided about whether the putatively overwhelming nature of Mozart’s original ideas is positive or negative; in some circles, indeed, criticism of this aspect of Mozart’s musical personality becomes a scholarly tick, even if ‘faults’ themselves are worthy of praise.15 At any rate, the originality of Mozart’s music extends to the listening experience for individual works: Die Entführung aus dem Serail ‘produces new fascination with each repeated hearing’ on account of music that is ‘so individual and varied that on first hearing it is not entirely understandable even to a trained ear’ (1789).16 The Prager Oberpostamtszeitung – reporting on the memorial ceremony for Mozart in Prague on 14 December 1791 – goes further still, linking repeated hearings to procedural evolution in the works themselves: ‘Everything that he wrote carries the clear stamp of classical beauty. For this reason he pleases each time even more, for one beauty evolves from another, and so he will always please for he will always seem new.’17 11 12 13 14 15
16 17
Thomas Bauman, ‘Becoming Original: Haydn and the Cult of Genius’, The Musical Quarterly, 87 (2005), pp. 333–57. (Quotation from p. 338.) Given in Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe and Jeremy Noble (London: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 233. Ibid., p. 372. Ibid., pp. 411–12. Well-known examples include Dittersdorf’s claim that Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets ‘deserve the highest praise, but . . . because of their overwhelming and unrelenting artfulness are not to everyone’s taste’ (Cliff Eisen, New Mozart Documents: A Supplement to O. E. Deutsch’s Documentary Biography (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 54) and Cramer’s explanation that the same quartets have ‘a decided leaning towards the difficult and the unusual. But then, what great and elevated ideas he has too, testifying to a bold spirit!’ (Deutsch, Documentary Biography, p. 349). See also Deutsch, Documentary Biography, p. 412 and Eisen, New Mozart Documents, p. 123 for comments from 1791 that offset tentative criticism with fulsome expressions of praise. Given in Eisen, New Mozart Documents, p. 57. Ibid., p. 123.
6
INTRODUCTION
Explaining precisely how specific movements manifest stylistic innovation in the context of Mozart’s oeuvre cannot be undertaken lightly, and requires scrupulous musical justification in each and every case. The innovation/tradition binary is not a straightforward one in Mozart’s repertory, with every innovative work remaining convention-laden to some extent;18 this state of affairs is recognized by late eighteenth-century reviewers of instrumental music who value above all – in the context of creative genius and originality – ‘the skillful presentation of the unexpected within the confines of the familiar’.19 In addition, a realization that Mozart’s instrumental style does not evolve in a vacuum necessitates an equally careful consideration of prevailing aesthetic factors pertaining to a particular innovative stylistic orientation. Only through an approach informed by both musical and aesthetic factors will it be possible to ascertain the stylistic significance of key works in Mozart’s evolving instrumental style.
Stylistic re-invention An identification and examination of stylistically innovative movements among Mozart’s Viennese works requires an understanding of how stylistic development is manifest at various levels. In terms of Mozart’s stylistic practices, for example, we need to establish where striking musical procedures in a specific Mozart instrumental work stand in relation to musical procedures in his preceding and contemporary works. Equally, and at a deeper level, we need to determine whether – and if so how and why – a spirit of stylistic innovation characterizes certain works, and whether Mozart apparently re-appraises his aesthetic views of a genre on account of stylistic novelties. There is evidence to suggest that Mozart was acutely self-aware in matters of style, very often with pragmatic concerns at heart. In the first movement of his ‘Paris’ Symphony, K. 297 (1778) he freely acknowledges assimilating one stylistic gesture (the premier coup d’archet) in order to accommodate Parisian taste, in spite of a jocular lack of respect for the gesture itself (‘It is really too much of a joke’), as well as writing ‘a passage that I felt sure must please’ in the middle of the movement subsequently re-stated at the end in order to please the audience still further.20 And the close correspondences between refined aspects of wind 18
19
20
For a vivid account of how dependent Mozart’s operas are on opera buffa conventions of the day, see Mary Hunter, The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), especially pp. 247–98 (on Così fan tutte). Morrow, German Music Criticism, p. 123. Johann Georg Sulzer’s discussion of originality (Originalgeist) – albeit not in a specifically musical context – also explains that ‘One can . . . be original and still conform in many other ways to the ordinary.’ See Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1771–74), vol. 3, p. 626, as given in Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment: Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch, ed. Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 35. See Emily Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters of Mozart and his Family (3rd edition, London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 553, 558; letters of 12 June 1778 and 3 July 1778.
MOZART AND STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
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orchestration in this movement and French commentary on wind orchestration in the years preceding his Parisian visit suggest a desire to please connoisseurs as well.21 Mozart even boasts to his father, a few months earlier in 1778: ‘I am, as you know, pretty well able to assimilate and imitate every manner and style of composition’.22 His ability to survive as an independent composer depended upon audiences (and potential performers) finding his music stylistically accessible; the famous remark to his father in 1782 about the ‘happy medium’ of stylistic qualities he strikes in his first Viennese piano concertos (K. 413–415) recognizes this.23 Moreover, the advice that the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister gave to Mozart after poor sales of the piano quartets K. 478 (1785) and K. 493 (1786) – ‘Write in a more popular style, otherwise I can neither publish anything by you nor pay you’24 – lends further evidence of Mozart’s alertness to the fact that stylistic factors directly affected commercial success. It would be wrong, however, to attribute Mozart’s self-awareness in the stylistic domain purely to pragmatic and commercial factors. His statement that the Piano Concerto No. 14 in Eb, K. 449, is written in ‘an entirely special manner’ has far-reaching stylistic implications (see Chapter 1), as does his identification of his piano concertos from No. 15 in Bb, K. 450 onwards as ‘grand concertos’ (Chapter 2); similarly his remark about the ‘happy medium’ of stylistic qualities witnessed in K. 413–415 has important stylistic as well as commercial resonances (Chapter 2). Given Mozart’s attentiveness to stylistic matters, it is surely not too far-fetched to suggest that he would always have been alert to the stylistic characteristics, implications and resonances of his works, if only to identify those of his existing works that might be appropriate for a planned concert or series of concerts; consequently, he must have contemplated – even if only in a general way – the musical direction in which he was heading. His Thematic Catalogue, the Verzeichnüss aller meine Werke, begun with an entry for K. 449 on 9 February 1784, would have provided him with an excellent aide mémoire of pre-existent compositions, and, by extension, of their stylistic qualities. This study, however, will be constricted neither by Mozart’s purported intentions regarding style, nor by late eighteenth-century understandings of style. Koch’s definition in the Musikalisches Lexikon outlined above points to the expression of passions, in other words to communication between musician(s)
21 22
23 24
Simon P. Keefe, ‘The Aesthetics of Wind Writing in Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony in D, K. 297’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 2006, forthcoming. From Küster, Musical Biography, p. 131; letter of 7 Feb. 1778. Emily Anderson gives a slightly different translation in Letters, p. 468. Elaine Sisman has recently identified the ‘real meaning’ of this remark as ‘not merely that he was a virtuoso chameleon (as well as a chameleon virtuoso) but that he actually drew inspiration from the work of others to rise to his own heights; the better the model the better the result’. See ‘Observations on the First Phase of Mozart’s “Haydn” Quartets’, in Words About Mozart: Essays in Honour of Stanley Sadie, ed. Dorothea Link and Judy Nagley (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2005), p. 58. Anderson, Letters, p. 833; letter of 28 December 1782. As reported by Mozart’s early biographer Georg Nikolaus Nissen. See Gruber, Posterity, p. 12.
8
INTRODUCTION
and audience. The crucial passages I discuss in this volume as hinges for Mozart’s stylistic development contain especially rich and intense expressive material, and thus by definition constituted powerful means for Mozart to communicate with his contemporary audiences; but, on account of resonances with earlier and later works, these passages also invite us to examine their musical procedures in ways that do not always conform explicitly with late eighteenth-century critical practices (for example through comparison of specific techniques used across a series of works). Theorists contemporary with Mozart nonetheless provide invaluable guides to stylistic issues in his music, not least (as we shall see) because their priorities and judgements often overlap with Mozart’s own, highlighting contemporary critical expectations of particular genres, and because their views provide catalysts for historically based interpretation of moments of originality in his instrumental oeuvre. Writers contemporary with Mozart, then, did not prioritize discussion of the stylistic development of an extended corpus of works by a single composer – the absence of sufficient numbers of widely available editions by individual composers in the late eighteenth century would have made the task more or less impossible – but their insights can still stimulate our own account of this development. At any rate, the study of technical features within the remit of style (if not in explicitly comparative or developmental contexts) is never far from the surface in the late eighteenth century. The rhetorical ‘elocutio’ (usually translated as ‘style’), one of the five partes of the oration, involves mastering grammatical and presentational issues as explained by writers such as Aristotle, Cicero and Quintillian, and parallels late eighteenth-century, rhetorically driven discussion of musical periodicity and melodic figures (figurae).25 It is logical to begin an investigation of Mozart’s instrumental style and his innovative stylistic practices with the act of creation itself, especially the rhetorical idea of invention (‘inventio’, or ‘Erfindung’ in German) that permeated so much eighteenth-century musico-theoretical discourse and in which Mozart a few years after his death is said to possess ‘inexhaustible richness’ (unerschöplicher Reichthum).26 Historically, the invention stage of a rhetorical process is concerned with pre-compositional thoughts and ideas, inspired by a rhetorician’s (or composer’s) innate, un-teachable genius.27 In reality, however, eighteenthcentury explanations of invention, as well as recent interpretations of its continued relevance to scholarly discourse on eighteenth-century music,28 stress the intertwining of invention and elaboration, the un-teachable and teachable 25 26 27
28
On ‘elocutio’ in rhetorical and musical-rhetorical contexts, and applied to several of Mozart’s works, see Irving, Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, pp. 151–61. See Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1800–01), col. 31. For recent discussions of invention in eighteenth-century contexts see: Laurence Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), esp. pp. 1–32; Mark Evan Bonds, Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), passim; Irving, Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, Part 3, ‘Style’, passim. See, in particular, Dreyfus, Patterns of Invention, pp. 1–32.
MOZART AND STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
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elements of rhetoric collectively encapsulating the mysteriously inspired and the more industrious, mechanical aspects of the rhetorical/compositional process. Transplanted from a compositional context to one of style, then, the interdependence of putatively inspired idea and industrious, erudite process through which such an idea takes shape provides an aesthetic starting point for understanding stylistic innovation in Mozart’s music. Assuming that a moment or passage can be identified as stylistically original in the context of Mozart’s instrumental music necessarily involves also accepting that a musical process of some kind must have laid the foundation for this originality – process and product are inextricably linked. And if musical process and original stylistic product belong together, it becomes necessary to explain what musical process (or processes) follows an original stylistic product and whether, in fact, another innovative practice ensues as a result. The on-going nature of such a model of development – assuming it is shown to exist – would render Mozart’s stylistic ‘invention’, stylistic ‘re-invention’. At any rate, an emphasis on the process by which Mozart’s originality evolves – original stylistic practices come into being, rather than appearing from nowhere – resonates with a famous remark made by Joseph Haydn towards the end of his life. At Eszterháza, Haydn explains to Georg August Griesinger, he had the opportunity to ‘make experiments’ (Versuche machen) and ‘had to become original’ (so musste ich originel werden). The confluence of originality and experimentation brings Haydn into line with the ideas of Alexander Gerard and Kant, rather than with those of Young, Herder and Sulzer among others who regard originality as innate and antithetical to the idea of learned genius.29 I contend that originality in Mozart’s Viennese instrumental music belongs in a similar, process-orientated category; and writers from 1781–91, who associate Mozart’s originality with dynamic musical procedures as we have seen, would support this view. Moving from an aesthetic perspective on stylistic development and originality (what I shall call stylistic re-invention) in Mozart’s instrumental oeuvre to a practical perspective requires us to address several key questions.30 Which stylistic features of a particular work are to be foregrounded and why? Which works assume prominence in a re-invention process and why? And how do localized ‘events’ – individual passages, sections etc. – ultimately contribute to a deeper understanding of the process of stylistic re-alignment? No doubt claims could be made for the stylistic significance and originality of events in a whole host of musical domains (formal, motivic, thematic, harmonic, tonal, textural and rhythmic) in individual Mozart Viennese instrumental works; requiring such events and procedures to be set in historical-theoretical and aesthetic contexts – and thus to be regarded as stylistic means to ends rather than ends in themselves –
29 30
On Haydn’s famous statement about Eszterháza, situated in the context of discussions of originality and genius in the late eighteenth century, see Bauman ‘Becoming Original’. By ‘stylistic re-invention’ I certainly do not intend the often cynical, modern meaning of the term, whereby a pop artist ‘re-invents’ him or herself primarily for commercial gain or a politician ‘re-invents’ him or herself in order to garner the popular vote.
10
INTRODUCTION
still leaves open numerous avenues of investigation. In determining which procedures, events and works to prioritize in my study I am guided by the confluence of striking contextual factors relating to Mozart’s situation at a given moment in a given genre, informed by contemporary aesthetic perspectives that cast light on this situation. As Leonard Meyer makes clear in the most substantial theoretical deliberation on style in recent times, any stylistic study with a historical dimension needs to accommodate factors external to the music under consideration (cultural, aesthetic, ideological etc.) as well as technical features of the music, ideally bringing both ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’ perspectives to bear on explanations of style change.31 Those works that resonate in pronounced ways with fundamental aesthetic features of individual genres (above all concerto, string quartet and symphony), while also occupying prominent places in Mozart’s instrumental oeuvre for any number of musical and/or non-musical reasons, thus receive special attention. My perspective on stylistic re-invention as an on-going process also affects the choice of works accorded significance. If stylistic change arises as a result of the type of process outlined in the paragraph above, then originality will be predominantly ‘strategic’, whereby Mozart devises new ways of working with existing stylistic ‘rules’, rather than overhauling them completely in a purportedly more radical act of originality.32 The first six chapters of this book focus on Mozart’s piano concertos (Chapters 1–3), string quartets (Chapters 4–5) and symphonies (Chapter 6); discussions of works from other genres are included, most notably the string quintets in Chapter 5, but come to real prominence only in Chapter 7, which adopts a broad, intergeneric perspective. The genre-centred approach in no way indicates that the concertos, quartets and symphonies are hermetically sealed entities insusceptible to stylistic influences outside their immediate generic surroundings; such a view is plainly unsustainable. But for each of the concertos, quartets and symphonies considered in detail in this study, Mozart’s primary stylistic reference points would seem certainly to comprise works in the same genre: the piano concerto K. 449, left incomplete for over a year, was composed alongside both K. 413–415 and K. 450, 451 and 453; another concerto K. 491 came at the end of a two-year, ten-work sequence (K. 450–491, 1784–86), during which the concerto dominated Mozart’s creative energies and the projection of his public persona; the string quartets K. 465 and K. 575, 589, 590 were conceived in genre-specific sets (the ‘Haydn’ and ‘Prussian’ respectively); and the ‘Jupiter’ symphony K. 551 follows hot on the heels of Eb major and G-minor symphonies (K. 543 and K. 550) in the summer of 1788. Only the final two piano concertos, K. 537 and K. 595, 31
32
See Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989). Meyer’s principal focus in the later part of this book is the music of the Romantic period. Meyer distinguishes between these two types of stylistic originality in Style and Music, p. 31, defining ‘strategies’ as ‘compositional choices made within the possibilities established by the rules of the style’ (p. 20). He also identifies Mozart as one of music’s ‘incomparable strategists’ (p. 31).
MOZART AND STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
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chronologically detached from Mozart’s main body of work in the genre, are different: as we shall see, internal musical evidence points in any case to Mozart’s closer stylistic engagement with earlier piano concertos than with any of his other preceding or contemporary works. Where Mozart’s early Viennese piano concertos are concerned, the trail begins with No. 14 in Eb, K. 449 (1782–84). Mozart draws attention himself to a shift in his stylistic conception of the genre from the small-scale works that could be performed without wind-instrument accompaniment (K. 413, 414, 415) to ‘grand’ concertos (from K. 450 onwards) that feature obligatory wind instruments and a larger orchestra. He situates K. 449 – written in a self-professed ‘entirely special manner’ – at the precise nexus between these two different conceptions. Other original features of K. 449 by Mozart’s standards of the time, including formal characteristics of the first and second movements, point to an important stylistic juncture in Mozart’s piano concerto oeuvre. The stylistic nexus between small-scale and ‘grand’ concerto is mirrored in the compositional genesis of the first movement – K. 449 is interrupted at the end of the solo exposition probably in late 1782 and picked up in spring 1784, being initiated alongside K. 413–415 and completed alongside K. 450, 451 and 453 – thus adding grist to the mill. Chronological and contextual factors coalesce in the development section of the first movement; the first music composed after the compositional hiatus contains a demonstrably original type of interaction between piano and orchestra in Mozart’s piano concertos (confrontation) that pertains to the orchestra’s role and status in the concerto genre and thus to Mozart’s own proclamations about stylistic change in the context of a new type of involvement for the orchestra in ‘grand’ works. The solo-orchestra confrontation itself develops from an intensification of procedures witnessed in the three preceding piano concertos and re-appears in Mozart’s later piano concertos and other works as well. But the influence of the technique of confrontation introduced in K. 449 on Mozart’s later works is only one part of the stylistic equation; it is necessary also to determine in broader terms the relationship between the events of K. 449 and Mozart’s subsequent concerto style. By illustrating that Mozart re-configures fundamental aesthetic and stylistic features of the concerto – as extrapolated from late eighteenth-century discussion – in his works from K. 450 onwards, we are able to appreciate K. 449 more vividly as a hinge between the old and the new. K. 449 is a stylistic hybrid of K. 413–415 and the later ‘grand’ concertos in a number of respects, and it is the development section confrontation that dramatizes this status most clearly, since it intersects directly with aspects of intimacy, grandeur and brilliance that are central to an appreciation of Mozart’s concerto style and to an understanding of the changed role of the orchestra (to which Mozart himself draws attention). Just as the nascent opposition of piano and orchestra in K. 413–415 intensifies in K. 449 to the point where Mozart introduces direct confrontation, so the balance of intimate, grand and brilliant stylistic characteristics from K. 450 onwards reaches its zenith in K. 491. Again, the work’s context alerts us to its
12
INTRODUCTION
important stylistic position in Mozart’s concerto oeuvre. It is the last in a sequence of ten piano concertos from K. 450 onwards (eleven if we include K. 449) written in an intensive two-year period; and it features the longest and most formally complex first movement and the most orchestrally ornate slow movement in Mozart’s piano concerto oeuvre. Mozart juxtaposes passages of the greatest grandeur and intimacy in the first movement development and recapitulation sections and introduces unparalleled wind brilliance in the slow movement. After K. 491, as after K. 449, stylistic elements are reconfigured, first in K. 503 and later, more systematically (as explained in detail in Chapter 3), in the two remaining piano concertos K. 537 and 595, confirming K. 491’s position as a hinge in Mozart’s re-invention process. The changes put into effect in K. 537 and 595, moreover, enable us to cast the concept of ‘experimentation’ in a corpus of late eighteenth-century instrumental works in a more positive light than is traditionally the case.33 Mozart’s experimentation in these works represents neither a lapse in quality, nor uncertainty and lack of commitment vis-à-vis the concerto genre; instead, it demonstrates active engagement with the re-invention process. As with Haydn (at least as reported by Griesinger), experimentation and originality go hand in hand. Mozart’s written comments on stylistic change in the 1782–83 and spring 1784 piano concertos are lacking for his string quartets. It is more difficult then to navigate a path through these works in order to identify re-invention strategies and procedures. But, in the ‘Haydn’ set in particular, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century reception – if not Mozart’s words then the words of those temporally close to him – provides an important catalyst. Mozart’s contemporaries recognize the extreme technical difficulty of these works, above all their harmonic and tonal intricacies, and consider no individual section more problematic in this respect than the slow introduction to the ‘Dissonance’ quartet, K. 465. In a set replete with harmonic audacity, we need to explain why Mozart left his greatest audacity until the last quartet, what function he intended his slow introduction (the only one in the set) to fulfil and how the passage relates (if at all) to the earlier ‘Haydn’ works. In the process of addressing these issues, we establish that the K. 465 slow introduction manipulates material and technical procedures from earlier works (as do the first movements of K. 449 and K. 491) in order to produce a rhetorical peroration; the resulting contrast between the slow introduction and the ensuing allegro, moreover, is most striking of all. Moving on to the ‘Prussian’ 33
James Webster takes a similarly positive step in this direction, in relation to Haydn’s instrumental music. Explaining that ‘experimentation’ has traditionally represented an implicit mark against a work (since a putative style has not reached fruition), he argues for a positive understanding of the term: instead of ‘an evolutionist interpretation according to which [Haydn’s] maturity and “Classical style” are linked, as the foreordained results of a teleological historical process . . . I would argue that experimentation was a fundamental aspect of his musical personality, throughout his life’. See Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 335–73 (passim) and especially pp. 361–66 (quotation at p. 361).
MOZART AND STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
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quartets, K. 575, 589 and 590, we explain that heightened contrast – for which K. 465 is the stylistic precursor – takes centre stage, a re-configuration of stylistic and aesthetic paradigms in the wake of the exceptional events of K. 465/i. Mozart’s six Viennese symphonies again challenge a theory of re-invention. Each symphony could lay claim to significant originality in the context of Mozart’s works in the genre, in particular the ‘Prague’ K. 504 for its topical heterogeneity, the G-minor K. 550 for – among other features – its lithe, sinuous opening (seemingly in mid phrase) that is difficult to relate to an eighteenth-century style category, and the ‘Jupiter’ for its dazzlingly contrapuntal finale. But the most clearly climactic movement – interpreted by so many as his symphonic apotheosis – is the last. Like other hinges in the re-invention process, K. 465 and K. 491, it draws an extended series of works to a close (three symphonies completed in less than two months in the summer of 1788), also offering through dialogue – a popular late eighteenth-century metaphor for instrumental participation in a symphony – an immediate stylistic point of comparison with Mozart’s earlier symphonic works. We are of course deprived of the opportunity to determine how Mozart’s symphonies might have changed stylistically after the ‘Jupiter’, as this is his final contribution to the genre. My theory of stylistic re-invention, then, is practically and empirically based, but grounded in the notion that two related aesthetic phenomena play active roles – the innovative, putatively inspired idea itself (confrontation, contrast, rhetorical peroration, taut dramatic dialogue etc.) and the industrious, erudite process through which this idea takes shape, effects a moment of stylistic climax and leads to stylistic re-formulation. In essence, then, stylistic re-invention comprises a two-stage process: Mozart manipulates pre-existent features of his music to climactic effect, in so doing introducing a demonstrably ‘new’ stylistic dimension with broad aesthetic resonance; he subsequently re-appraises his style in response to the dimension in question. Thus, through contemplating musical procedures from his earlier Viennese piano concertos and string quartets, especially in the development section of K. 449/i, the development and recapitulation of K. 491/i and the slow introduction of K. 465/i, Mozart not only writes movements exhibiting stylistically climactic qualities – in terms of piano/orchestra confrontation in K. 449, heightened intimacy and grandeur in K. 491 and rhetorical peroration and strong contrast in K. 465 – but also movements that prompt significant alterations to his stylistic paradigms. (Only the first of the two stages is evident in the Viennese symphonies.) By its very nature the causal connection between climactic moment and subsequent style change remains an interpretative hypothesis on my part, based on internal musical evidence above all; it has indeed been recognized from a theoretical standpoint that single salient innovations can often have a wider impact on compositional styles and that ‘incremental modifications’ can result in a ‘trended change’.34 At any rate it is my hope that stylistic
34
Meyer, Style and Music, p. 150.
14
INTRODUCTION
re-invention will satisfactorily explain the relationship between Mozart’s stylistically climactic works, his preceding works and his subsequent stylistic re-appraisals, thus offering a theory of compositional development in his Viennese instrumental music. By representing a complex of related musical procedures in Mozart’s Viennese instrumental works – including his manipulation of existing musical procedures to climatic effect or in response to a stylistic climax, and his extended re-appraisal of standard modus operandi in a genre – stylistic re-invention can be identified both as a specific procedure manifest in a specific passage of a Mozart movement and, in a more wide-ranging way, as a dynamic process behind, and powerful impetus for Mozart’s stylistic evolution. Since, as we shall discover, the musical procedures in question result in tangibly original works, movements or passages in the context of Mozart’s instrumental oeuvre, it is no coincidence that most of the key works under discussion here are among the most consistently misunderstood or undervalued in Mozart’s Viennese repertory (for example, the piano concertos K. 449, 503, 537, 595 and the string quartets K. 575, 589, 590); the others, at the very least, are among the most hotly debated (the string quartet K. 465, piano concerto K. 491, and symphony K. 551). It is vital in coming to an appropriately well-developed understanding of all of these works, and of how they collectively embody re-invention processes, that both similarities and differences from preceding, contemporary and succeeding works are sufficiently well represented; such stylistic contextualization thus forms an important part of my study. No-one would surely suggest that these particular works bear Mozart’s distinctive fingerprint any less markedly than his Viennese works not exhibiting pronounced tendencies towards re-invention. It is only by accounting for the distinctively Mozartian qualities of the instrumental works upon which we focus in this study that we fully appreciate stylistic re-invention as a consistent and coherent – rather than an ad hoc and incoherent – manifestation of stylistic development. While the majority of this volume explains stylistic re-invention predominantly (but by no means exclusively) in the respective contexts of Mozart’s piano concertos, string quartets, and symphonies, the rich vein of stylistic cross-fertilization affecting all genres in the late eighteenth century together with mutable generic boundaries and innumerable generic cross references, necessitates broader, more wide-ranging consideration of stylistic re-invention as well. To this end, Chapter 7 situates those Viennese instrumental works that most clearly embody generically hybrid qualities, such as the piano trios and quartets, and the Piano and Wind Quintet K. 452, as well as other groups of instrumental works (the violin sonatas and piano sonatas in particular; the string quintets are discussed in Chapter 5) in the context of Mozart’s stylistic re-invention in the piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies. This contextualization of re-invention allows us, in turn, to draw broad conclusions about the periodization and categorization of Mozart’s Viennese instrumental works – internal periodic divisions and concepts of late style in particular – as well as
MOZART AND STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
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about prevalent aesthetic and stylistic trends, such as the progressive increase in dramatic concentration in the instrumental music of his final years. It would be too much to claim that my study offers a completely comprehensive account of stylistic development in Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies. Those adopting different perspectives – an entirely inter-generic one, say, focusing on individual formal, thematic, motivic, rhythmic, gestural or textural elements, or on topical usage and development across a diverse selection of works – will likely detect further re-invention procedures, foregrounding the same or different works. I have deliberately prioritized biographical, contextual and reception factors – motivated as I am by historical considerations – in determining initial points of re-invention; a scholar choosing not to do so may well locate different points. Given that the waves of re-invention detected here by no means coincide in temporal terms – in spite of highpoints of activity in 1784 and 1786 – I see the plurality of re-invention possibilities as entirely positive. For re-invention highlights, above all, the great energy and vibrancy associated with Mozart’s stylistic renewal – we ultimately unveil richly interwoven musical tapestries that reveal that Mozart’s extraordinary musical mind is constantly engaged with the complementary and contrasting resonances of his music. If such tapestries are revealed by future scholars to be richer still, this will be a cause for celebration.
.I. PIANO CONCERTOS
1 ‘An Entirely Special Manner’: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in E b, K. 449, and the Stylistic Implications of Confrontation
A
HIGHPOINT in Mozart’s career as a composer-performer in Vienna came rduring the spring of 1784. In a letter to his father Leopold, dated 4 March 1784, Mozart listed an astonishing 22 engagements for the period 26 February to 3 April, including three concerts in a subscription series at the Trattnerhof, two at the Burgtheater (one of which was subsequently cancelled) and several at the salons of Prince Galitsin and Count Esterházy.1 According to Mozart, the Trattnerhof and Burgtheater performances were particularly well received: he ‘won extraordinary applause’, had a hall that was ‘full to overflowing’ and was praised repeatedly for the first subscription concert on 17 March. He described the Burgtheater concert – for which he performed the Piano Concertos Nos. 15 and 16 in Bb and D, K. 450 and 451 and the Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452 – as ‘most successful’ and remarked that it was ‘greatly to my credit that my listeners never got tired’.2 Even if Mozart can hardly be relied upon as an impartial witness to his own success, his list of subscribers to the Trattnerhof series, containing 176 names (‘thirty more than Richter and Fischer together’), many from the highest artistic, intellectual, cultural and aristocratic echelons of society,3 testifies to the high regard in which he was held. The Wunderkind who had charmed the Viennese in his youth had become a fully endorsed member of the Viennese musical establishment. The foundation for Mozart’s considerable successes in early 1784 was laid by the three piano concertos composed for the aforementioned Trattnerhof and Burgtheater concerts, K. 449 in Eb, K. 450 in Bb, and K. 451 in D (Nos. 14–16), as well as by K. 453 in G (No. 17), performed by Mozart at a subsequent concert at the Burgtheater on 29 April.4 Sending these works to his father on 15 May 1784,
1 2 3 4
See Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, pp. 869–70. Ibid., pp. 872, 873. Mozart gives a complete list of his subscribers for these concerts, boasting of his greater popularity than Richter and Fischer, in a letter to his father on 20 March 1784. See Ibid., pp. 870–72. The concertos K. 449, 450, 451, 453 were entered into Mozart’s thematic catalogue, the Verzeichnüss, on 9 February, 15 March, 22 March, 12 April respectively.
20
PIANO CONCERTOS
Mozart distinguished K. 449 from the later three concertos on the grounds that it was scored for a smaller accompanying orchestra: I regard them both [K. 450 and K. 451] as concertos which are bound to make the performer perspire. From the point of view of difficulty the Bb concerto beats the one in D. Well, I am very curious to hear which of the three in Bb, D and G you and my sister prefer. The one in Eb does not belong at all to the same category. It is a concerto of an entirely special manner, composed rather for a small orchestra than for a large one. So it is really a question of the three grand concertos.5
Two weeks earlier, Mozart had even suggested that K. 449 – like his first set of Viennese Piano Concertos from 1782–83, K. 413 in F, K. 414 in A and K. 415 in C – ‘can be performed a quattro without wind instruments’ in contrast to his self-professed ‘grand’ concertos, all three of which ‘have wind-instrument accompaniment’.6 The newly intricate and sophisticated writing for woodwind in K. 450, 451 and 453 – indeed the prominent role given to the orchestra in these works generally – has elicited much critical comment from the late eighteenth century onwards. A reviewer for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in October 1799, for example, comments very favourably on K. 450’s accompanimental writing, and particularly on the ornate nature of several of its wind passages: it is not as well-crafted as some better known and newer concertos by the same composer: on the other hand, though, its delicateness accounts for a great deal lighter and more suitable instrumental accompaniment, more practical on the whole than some of the others. It is certainly easier to find ten pianists who completely perfect even the most difficult of these concertos, before one finds a single good accompanying orchestra. But in the last Allegro of the concerto in question there are also some short passages in the first oboe which, if they are to be performed well, in style and with precision, require just as much practice and assurance as any passage in the concerto part.7
5
6
7
Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch and J.H. Eibl, eds., Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Gesamtausgabe. Band III: 1780–86 (Kassel and London: Bärenreiter, 1963), p. 315. Translation adapted slightly from Anderson, Letters, p. 877. Mozart’s representation of K. 449 as a ‘ganz besonderer Art’ is better rendered ‘an entirely special manner’ than Anderson’s ‘a quite peculiar kind’. Although Mozart’s stylistic pronouncement about K. 449 is unique in his correspondence (to my knowledge), it is intriguingly similar to Haydn’s famous remarks from letters in 1781 about his Op. 33 set of string quartets constituting ‘an entirely new and special manner’ (‘eine gantz neue besondere Art’). For Haydn’s comments, see Dénes Bartha, ed., Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichungen (Kassel and London: Bärenreiter, 1965), pp. 106–107. Anderson, Letters, p. 877. For Mozart’s reference to the a quattro performance of K. 413, 414 and 415 see his ‘musical announcement’ in the Wiener Zeitung of 15 January 1783, reprinted in Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, p. 212. As Neal Zaslaw pointed out, Mozart’s a quattro reference in all likelihood designated performance in four parts and not necessarily by four instruments with one to each part. See ‘Contexts for Mozart’s Piano Concertos’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos: Text, Context, Interpretation, ed. Zaslaw (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 7–16, at p. 10. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 2 (1799–1800), cols. 12–13. ‘Zwar ist es nicht so sehr gearbeitet,
‘AN ENTIRELY SPECIAL MANNER’
21
In similar fashion, a reviewer for the Musikalische Korrespondenz der teutschen Filarmonischen Gesellschaft remarks in 1792 on the ‘scoring and obbligato writing’ that require K. 451 to be performed ‘by large, fully-manned orchestras’, identifying this concerto as ‘among the most beautiful and brilliant that we have from this master, with respect to both the ritornellos and the solos’.8 Twentieth-century writers have followed the lead of their late eighteenthcentury counterparts, readily acknowledging the originality and ‘brilliance’ of the orchestral writing in K. 450, 451 and 453. Numerous critics explain the stylistic significance of K. 450 in Mozart’s oeuvre in terms of the originality of its woodwind writing, several drawing special attention to the interweaving of the woodwinds and the strings in the opening bars of the first movement. For Charles Rosen, K. 450, ‘the first [Mozart concerto] to employ the winds with a complete sense of their color and their dramatic possibilities’, uses the woodwinds to ‘boldly open the concerto on their own, as if to proclaim the new venture from the beginning’.9 In like-minded fashion, Leonard Ratner clarifies that ‘The new role of the winds was initiated precisely at the opening of the Bb major Concerto, K. 450 . . . From this time, the winds become prominent in the concertos’,10 and Irving R. Eisley explains that Mozart’s ‘concertato’ orchestra, in which the
8
9 10
als manche bereits bekanntern und neuern Konzerte desselben Verfassers: dahingegen aber sowohl wegen der schwächern als ungleich leichtern und bequemeren Instrumentalbegleitung im Allgemeinen brauchbarer als manches von diesen. Sicher findet man eher zehn Klavierspieler, die, selbst die schwersten dieser Konzerte ganz fertig durcharbeiten, ehe man ein einziges Orchester zum guten Akkompagnement dazu auftreibt. Doch sind auch in dem letzten Allegro des vor uns liegenden Konzerts in der ersten Hoboe einige Kleinigkeiten, die, wenn sie gut und in Ansehung der Manieren bestimmt und deutlich herausgebracht werden sollen, vielleicht eben so viele Uebung und Gewissheit erfordern, als irgend eine Stelle in der Konzertstimme.’ Quoted in translation in Cliff Eisen, New Mozart Documents, p. 124. Other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century critics identifying active participation by the orchestra in Mozart’s piano concertos do not mention specific works. Citing Mozart’s concertos as his model, Heinrich Christoph Koch explains that in ‘a well-worked out concerto . . . the accompanying voices are not merely there to sound this or that missing interval of the chord’ but rather to engage in a ‘passionate dialogue’ with the soloist. See Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt, 1802; reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), col. 854; translation from Nancy Kovaleff Baker’s edition of Koch’s earlier treatise – Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition (1783–92) – in which the same remarks were made, Introductory Essay on Composition: the Mechanical Rules of Melody, Sections 3 and 4 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 209. August Frederick Christopher Kollmann states that ‘The best specimens of good modern Concertos for the Piano-Forte, are those by Mozart, in which every part of the accompaniments is interesting, without obscuring the principal part’, in An Essay on Practical Musical Composition (London, 1799; reprint New York: Da Capo, 1973), p. 15. And a writer for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung pointed out that Mozart thoroughly worked all instruments in the accompanying orchestra, allowing the soloist to be only the ‘most striking [hervorstechendsten]’ among all the performers, in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1800–01), cols. 25–35, 51–54, at col. 28. For a study of Koch’s remarks, see Simon P. Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos: Dramatic Dialogue in the Age of Enlightenment (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2001), pp. 9–23. See Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (London: Norton, 1971), p. 220. See Leonard G. Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form and Style (London and New York: Schirmer, 1980), p. 297.
22
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woodwinds assume an equal or higher position than the strings in the orchestral pecking order, ‘appears abruptly, with little or no hint to be found in the earlier concertos, in the Bb concerto’.11 K. 451 is praised most often for its symphonic quality, through which the orchestra is ‘liberated’.12 Cuthbert Girdlestone and Arthur Hutchings rank the involvement of the orchestra in K. 451 especially highly, remarking respectively that it ‘contains the most splendid instances in all Mozart of interplay between the protagonists’ and the clearest examples of ‘the solo [speaking] . . . both through and with its newly augmented orchestra’.13 Recent critics find K. 453 ‘even more elaborate’ in its use of woodwinds than K. 450 and K. 451, demonstrating ‘a finer integration of soloist and orchestra [than K. 450 and 451], approaching a chamber music style, particularly in the blending of woodwinds and piano and in the sharing of thematic material’.14 Just as Mozart distinguished the Eb concerto, K. 449, from K. 450, 451 and 453 on orchestration and performance grounds, so twentieth-century critics distance K. 449 from its immediate successors according to criteria of orchestration and affect. Many remark on the absence of refined and prominent writing for the woodwind in K. 449;15 whilst K. 450 and 451 could be described as either ‘piano concertos with obbligato orchestra or symphonies with obbligato piano solo’ the same could not be said of K. 449.16 Others observe striking affective dissimilarities between K. 449 and K. 450, 451, 453, finding K. 449 ‘quite unlike the gay, elegant Mozart of 450 and 453’ and ‘of [a] very different character’ and less urbane manner than K. 450.17 In addition, K. 450 and 451 are described as ‘twins’ in which ‘Mozart returns to more familiar paths’ than in K. 449.18 In fact, the unique qualities of K. 449 have not passed unnoticed. For Girdlestone, the concerto is ‘something exceptional’, on account of its first movement ‘born of an unstable, restless mood, sometimes petulant and irascible’.19 He even goes so far as to state: ‘In reality, it is isolated in Mozart’s work; its first and last movements fall in with 11 12 13
14
15
16 17 18 19
Irving R. Eisley, ‘Mozart’s Concertato Orchestra’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1976/7, p. 9. Denis Forman, Mozart’s Concerto Form: The First Movements of the Piano Concertos (London: Praeger, 1971), p. 184. Cuthbert M. Girdlestone, Mozart’s Piano Concertos (London: Cassell, 1948), p. 213 (first published in French in 1939 as W. A. Mozart et ses concertos pour piano); Arthur Hutchings, A Companion to Mozart’s Piano Concertos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948; eighth corrected impression reissued 1998), p. 100. Stanley Sadie, The New Grove Mozart (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 105; Mario Mercado, The Evolution of Mozart’s Pianistic Style (Carbondale, Illinois: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1992), p. 84. See, for example, H.C. Robbins Landon, ‘The Concertos: (2) Their Musical Origin and Development’, The Mozart Companion, ed. Landon and Donald Mitchell (London: Norton, 1956), p. 261; Sadie, New Grove Mozart, p. 104; Mercado, Mozart’s Pianistic Style, p. 82. Alfred Einstein, Mozart: His Character, his Work, trans. Arthur Mendel and Nathan Broder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), p. 302. See Forman, Mozart’s Concerto Form, p. 175, and Philip Radcliffe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), p. 33. Einstein, Mozart, p. 302. Girdlestone, Mozart and his Concertos, p. 178.
‘AN ENTIRELY SPECIAL MANNER’
23
no group of his compositions and do not bear clearly the mark of any period in his life.’20 Einstein agrees, arguing that the first movement is extraordinary on account of ‘[voicing] an unrest that never tires of introducing contrasting themes’ and that, as a whole, ‘Mozart never wrote another concerto like it, either before or afterwards’.21 As a result of its common perception as unique, K. 449 has a somewhat uncertain stylistic position in the secondary literature among Mozart’s piano concertos. For the most part it is credited as the first of Mozart’s genuinely mature works in the genre, constituting the initial concerto in an uninterrupted two-year stream of eleven masterpieces (K. 449–491, spring 1784 – spring 1786).22 There are dissenting voices, however. Forman, for example, regards K. 450 as the first mature concerto on account of ‘notable advances’ such as the woodwind writing, the varied repetition of certain phrases and the easy-going self-confidence of the piano in a variety of different moods.23 In contrast to Forman, Girdlestone and Hutchings actually consider K. 449 a more forward-looking work than K. 450. For Girdlestone, ‘on the whole . . . K. 449 is in advance of its successor, not only in the depth of its emotional life but also in its symphonic development’.24 Equally, Hutchings points out both that K. 450 ‘reverts to an older style than the operatic K. 449’ and that ‘the strings in the E flat work are used as never before in a concerto – far more passionately and colourfully than in [K. 450]’.25 Others find K. 449 something of an anomaly, in general stylistic terms. Rosen explains that ‘The series of six [concertos from 1784] . . . begins apparently somewhat timidly with the Concerto in E flat major’ but that ‘in spite of its modest appearance, K. 449 is a bold, even revolutionary concerto’.26 Eric Blom finds a basic contradiction between the first movement’s tempo/character marking and the overall mood it conveys: ‘Although . . . [it] is marked allegretto vivace, it never shows the least vivacity of spirit.’27 In addition, Philip Radcliffe alludes to the concerto’s peculiar qualities when he writes of the work’s ‘curious inner intensity’, of the ‘curious coincidence’ whereby the opening theme of the first movement is a melodic inversion of the corresponding theme in K. 491, and of the ‘mysterious chromatic passage’ in the piano that immediately precedes the recapitulation of the first movement.28 In fact, it is no surprise that critical consensus gives way both to critical
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Ibid., p. 191. Einstein, Mozart, pp. 302, 301. Girdlestone, Mozart and his Concertos, p. 191; Einstein, Mozart, pp. 300–301; Sadie, New Grove Mozart, p. 104; Mercado, Mozart’s Pianistic Style, p. 82. Forman, Mozart’s Concerto Form, p. 176. Girdlestone, Mozart and his Concertos, p. 210. Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 90. See Rosen, The Classical Style, p. 219. Eric Blom, Mozart (London, 1935; first Collier Books edition, 1962, second printing, 1966), p. 199. Radcliffe, Mozart Piano Concertos, p. 30.
24
PIANO CONCERTOS
disparity and to intimations of anomalous status where K. 449 is concerned. For no other Mozart piano concerto – perhaps no other work in Mozart’s entire instrumental oeuvre – can boast quite as many compositional, stylistic and chronological idiosyncrasies as K. 449. Although (as explained below) K. 449 was written for the most part in spring 1784, Mozart actually began the first movement two years earlier, concurrent with his first set of Viennese piano concertos, K. 413–415. As a result, the majority of K. 449, scored for a small complement of wind instruments (2 oboes, 2 horns), was composed at a time when a larger complement (flute, 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets in K. 451 and flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in K. 453, for example) was establishing itself as Mozart’s norm; K. 449 appears, therefore, at the precise nexus between the a quattro tradition of K. 413–415 and the ‘grand concerto’ tradition from K. 450 onwards. In addition, Mozart did not himself distinguish any single instrumental work from its immediate successors in as clear and direct a fashion as he distinguished K. 449 from K. 450, 451 and 453. If K. 449 rests intriguingly between two of Mozart’s stylistic practices, it also initiates another important venture in his life, the cataloguing of his works. For K. 449 is Mozart’s first entry into his famous thematic catalogue, the Verzeichnüss aller meiner Werke, on 9 February 1784.29 In addition to general stylistic and chronological peculiarities, specific musical features of the first movement are also remarkable. Proportionally speaking, the orchestral exposition (or opening ritornello) of K. 449 is longer than the corresponding section of any other piano concerto.30 Moreover, the orchestra in this section introduces the theme that becomes the ‘secondary’ theme in the solo exposition, in the dominant rather than the tonic, the only such occasion in Mozart’s piano concerto first movements. At the other extreme of the first movement, K. 449 contains the only instance of a final cadential trill in the piano immediately preceding the cadenza that does not confirm the tonic key, inflecting instead to the relative minor. The unusual circumstances surrounding the composition of K. 449, the unique nature of Mozart’s pronouncement, the fascinating chronological and stylistic position of the work in Mozart’s oeuvre, and the originality of various features of the music itself suggest that a more detailed and systematic examination of K. 449’s stylistic position among Mozart’s piano concertos will greatly enhance our understanding of the considerable significance of the work in his compositional output. As we shall see, characterizations of K. 449 as sui generis – ‘an entirely special manner’ in Mozart’s own words – as a climactic work in Mozart’s initial 29
30
Daniel N. Leeson and David Whitwell posit that Mozart began his catalogue in early November 1784, rather than in February, entering the first nine items retrospectively. Although they suggest that the dates entered for the Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452 and the Piano Concerto No. 18 in Bb, K. 456 postdate the actual completion of these works, they conclude that 9 February 1784 is accurate for K. 449. See ‘Mozart’s Thematic Catalogue’, The Musical Times, 114 (August 1973), pp. 781–83. Robert D. Levin, Who Wrote the Mozart Four-Wind Concertante? (Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon, 1988), p. 336.
‘AN ENTIRELY SPECIAL MANNER’
25
sequence of Viennese piano concertos, and as a work of central importance to Mozart’s subsequent stylistic development (in the concerto and elsewhere) are not mutually exclusive but rather bring to life the work’s significance in the context of stylistic re-invention. In fact, K. 449’s hybrid qualities are precisely what make it such a significant moment of stylistic re-invention, particularly in regard to confrontations between the piano and the orchestra in the first movement.
K. 449 as a hybrid of Mozart’s 1782–83 and spring 1784 concertos In his groundbreaking study of the paper types of Mozart’s autograph manuscripts, Alan Tyson has shown that Mozart began work on the first movement of K. 449 in 1782, alongside his first three Viennese concertos K. 413, 414, 415, composing as far as bar 170 (the beginning of the orchestral tutti immediately following the solo exposition). He then ‘abandoned the score, scribbled in the margins, and sketched an aria on the blank side. Much later – perhaps over a year later, at the beginning of 1784 – he resumed work on the concerto, deleted the aria sketch, and completed the score.’31 K. 449 was not the only Viennese piano concerto Mozart left incomplete for an extended period: three bifolia from the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 predate the completion of the work (4 December 1786) by nearly two years; the first eight leaves of the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488 probably date back to the 1784–85 season, although the work was entered into the Verzeichnüss on 2 March 1786; and the entire first and second movements of the Piano Concerto No. 27 in Bb, K. 595 almost certainly precede the Verzeichnüss date of 5 January 1791 by around three years.32 However, for reasons described above – especially the way in which it straddles the a quattro and ‘grand’ concerto fashions – the status of K. 449 as an temporarily incomplete work has potentially the greatest stylistic significance of all. In light of the interrupted gestation of K. 449, key musical issues surface in relation to K. 449, namely the extent to which Mozart was influenced by his stylistic practices from K. 413–415 when he returned to work on K. 449 in early 1784, and the extent to which the continuation of K. 449 prefigured stylistic practices in the succeeding ‘grand’ concertos from the spring of 1784, K. 450, 451 and 453. The development and recapitulation sections of the first movement provide a particularly illuminating source for studying these issues, since they would have been written immediately after Mozart’s extended compositional hiatus, and (one can assume) would have provided him with his greatest challenge in terms of maintaining musical continuity. Let us begin by examining an extraordinary passage in the first movement of 31 32
Tyson, Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 19. See Ibid., pp. 151–56.
26
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K. 449, the end of the development section leading into the recapitulation (see Ex. 1.1), in relation to corresponding passages in K. 413, 414, 415 and K. 450, 451, 453. While the dominant is established in bar 218 of K. 449, well in advance of the beginning of the recapitulation (bar 234), it is coloured by inflections to the dominant minor (Cbs, Gbs, Dbs) in the subsequent bars (223–29). The major-minor ambiguity is preserved until the moment of recapitulation by an enigmatic, chromatic ascent in all three lines of the solo piano, embodying an irresolute bVI – IV6 – bVII – V6 progression. The orchestra’s forte assertion of the main theme at the beginning of the recapitulation abruptly cuts off the piano’s ascending chromatic line, contrasting its presentation of the main theme with the piano’s ‘preparatory’ material in no uncertain terms; it is as if the full orchestra is irritated by the piano’s chromatic wandering and therefore brusquely puts it to an end. Ex. 1.1: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 14 in Eb, K. 449, 1st movement, bars 228–45
Although the transition from the development to the recapitulation sections of K. 449 is in one sense unique in Mozart’s concerto repertory, since it conveys at once a more fervent and enigmatic quality than the corresponding moments of Mozart’s earlier and later works, in another sense it is not unique at all, as its musical procedures are foreshadowed by those in K. 413, 414 and 415. The recapitulation of K. 414 (bars 196ff.), for example, is approached by ascending and descending chromatic lines in the piano and the strings (bars 192–94) and is immediately preceded by two ostentatious pauses (bars 194, 195, see Ex. 1.2). While the first pause, the point of arrival for the chromatic motion, constitutes
‘AN ENTIRELY SPECIAL MANNER’
27
dominant second inversion harmony moving to dominant root position harmony for the second pause (bar 195), both pauses – together with the piano’s virtuosic flourish – disrupt the smooth musical continuity and interaction characteristic of the movement thus far. In K. 449, then, Mozart combines two of the features of K. 414, chromatic motion and interactional disjunction (bars 230–34), intensifying the former with three unaccompanied chromatic lines that provide uncertain preparation for the moment of recapitulation and the latter with an orchestral presentation of the main theme that contrasts acutely with the immediately preceding material in the piano. The final bars of the development sections of K. 415 (Ex. 1.3) and K. 413, like K. 414, also prefigure the corresponding passage from K. 449. Following the establishment of the dominant G (bar 192) in preparation for the recapitulation, the piano in K. 415 inflects to the minor for six bars (192–97), just as the piano and strings provide minor colouring for seven bars in K. 449 (223–29); in addition, the emphatic use of a German Augmented 6th in both K. 413 and 415 – accentuated in K. 413 by an Adagio marking (bar 224) and by the orchestra’s only participation in the final fourteen-bar stretch of the development section, and in K. 415 by reiterated fp indications and a substantial presence for four complete bars (188–91, Ex. 1.3) – foreshadows the use of bVI harmony (albeit not as a German Augmented 6th), as the distinctive starting point for the chromatic rise in K. 449. (As in K. 414, musical continuity at K. 415’s moment of recapitulation is compromised by a pause and a flourish in the piano; K. 415’s pause bar is also marked Adagio, in contrast to the prevailing Allegro.) Ex. 1.2: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 12 in A, K. 414, 1st movement, bars 191–95
Two of the concertos that follow K. 449 assimilate all three of the aforementioned technical features in the bars immediately preceding their recapitulations (namely minor inflections, German Augmented 6th harmony and chromatic lines). In K. 450 (Ex. 1.4), the arrival of dominant harmony (bar 182) is followed by Bb minor 6/4 and German Augmented 6th harmonies in successive bars (187–88) and, in turn, leads to rising chromatic lines passed from the strings (A-Bb-B-C, C-Db-D-Eb, bars 189–92) to the piano (A-Bb-B-C, Bb-C-C#-D, bars 193–94) that are transformed into the main theme in the winds at the beginning of the recapitulation (D-Eb-E-F, bars 196–98). Similarly, the establishment of
28
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Ex. 1.3: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 13 in C, K. 415, 1st movement, bars 189–201
dominant harmony in bar 219 of K. 453 is followed by minor colouring of the tonic (bars 220 and 223), a German Augmented 6th (bar 222) and an ascending chromatic line in the piano that leads directly to the main theme at the beginning of the recapitulation (bars 226–27). Although the chromatic preparations for the recapitulation in K. 450 and 453 on the one hand, and K. 449 on the other could not be more different in overall effect, they use similar musical devices. Significantly, however, Mozart adjusts these devices in order to create mellifluous, elegant links between the development and recapitulation (especially in K. 450), rather than an abrupt and sudden shift as in K. 449. Thus, the final bars of K. 449’s development section through to its moment of recapitulation represent a hybrid of corresponding passages from K. 413, 414, 415 and 450, 451, 453: techniques from the former are manipulated in K. 449 to produce climactic confrontation; the resultant procedure in K. 449 is subsequently altered in the latter to produce smooth sectional transitions. Whereas the lack of musical continuity between the development and recapitulation situates K. 449 closer to K. 414 and 415 than to K. 450, 451, and 453, the rising chromatic line immediately preceding the recapitulation is more closely akin to the later than the earlier concertos. In any case, Mozart’s isolation of the chromatic line in K. 449 – which draws attention to itself through its solo performance, indecisive harmonic progression and initial bVI harmony – conveys a sense of confrontational intensity between the piano and the entering orchestra not witnessed at the corresponding juncture of the other concertos.33 33
Although confrontation, opposition and conflict carry slightly different inferences, it would be
‘AN ENTIRELY SPECIAL MANNER’
29
Ex. 1.4: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 15 in Bb, K. 450, 1st movement, bars 186–98
To be sure, the three musical procedures outlined above – minor inflections, German Augmented 6th harmony and chromatic lines – are also fairly common in the latter stages of the development sections of the first movements of Mozart’s later piano concertos. Never again, however, are all three used in quick succession after the establishment of the dominant in preparation for the recapitulation (as in K. 449, 450, 453). In addition bVI (or Augmented 6th) harmony after the establishment of the dominant is not given the emphasis in later concertos that it acquires in the corresponding passages of K. 413 and 449; nor do pronounced chromatic lines in the run-up to the recapitulation again create the interactional disjunction witnessed in K. 414 and 449.34
34
almost impossible to distinguish accurately between them in the context of interaction among instrumental ‘characters’. I shall therefore use these terms synonymously. Although David Grayson interpreted the piano’s solo chromatic ascent immediately before the recapitulation of K. 466/i as the final moment in a protracted confrontation between the piano and the orchestra, in which the soloist ‘[faces] the inevitable and [deals] with the consequences’ (Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 21 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 40),
30
PIANO CONCERTOS
The first half of the development section of K. 449, like the section’s concluding bars, combines a confrontational intensity new to Mozart’s piano concertos with a fusion of techniques from corresponding passages of earlier and later works. The piano initiates the development of K. 449 (bars 182–88) with an adapted repeat of the orchestral theme that immediately precedes it (bars 176–82), remaining in the dominant Bb. The ensuing passage, however, juxtaposes starkly contrasting material, that is two-bar forte unison statements of the trill figure in the orchestra and the arpeggiated writing in the piano (bars 188–204, see Ex. 1.5), moving through Bb minor, F minor and C minor. The dynamic, textural, thematic and rhythmic contrasts between the piano and orchestral segments give the strong impression of a confrontation between the protagonists, one that resurfaces at the end of the section. In fact bars 188–204 of K. 449 correspond closely both to a paradigm of confrontational dialogue identified by the Czech theorist Antoine Reicha in his important Traité de mélodie of 1814 and to musical manifestations of confrontation witnessed on the stage, and in several programmatic symphonies. According to Reicha, equal length phrases that are sharply opposed in character produce ‘continual contrast’ and ‘a sort of opposition’. Although Reicha sees ‘dramatic music’ as a particularly appropriate medium for the application of this technique, his definition and explanation of dialogue in general includes dialogue among instrumentalists as well as among vocalists.35 In addition, the specific alternation of loud unisons and contrasting material (often a melody accompanied homophonically) might have been recognized as a sign of confrontation by Mozart’s Viennese audiences, since it appears in this guise in works such as Gluck’s ballet Don Juan (1761) and operas Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767), and in Dittersdorf’s programmatic symphonies based on tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c.1782).36 The openings of the development sections of K. 413, 415, 450 and 451 either foreshadow or recall the corresponding segment of K. 449, but without possessing its confrontational intensity. The brief tutti interjection in bars 183–85 of K. 413 contrasts thematically, texturally and dynamically with the preceding material in
35
36
I would prefer a more co-operatively inclined reading, whereby the piano sets up a chromatic ascent that is subsequently adopted by both the orchestra and the piano at the beginning of the recapitulation (bars 261–67). In any case, the piano’s initial solo ascent leads smoothly into the orchestra’s statement of the main theme at the beginning of the recapitulation, and does not recreate the disjunctive effect of the orchestra’s entrance in bar 234 of K. 449. The same could also be said for the chromatic ascents in the oboe and bassoon in bars 229–32 of K. 456/i. See Antoine Reicha, Traité de mélodie (Paris, 1814), p. 91. Reicha states that dialogue can take place ‘between two or more voices or instruments, or even between an instrument and a voice’ and constitutes one of four procedures: ‘executing the full periods alternately; . . . distributing the phrases (or members of the periods) among the different voices that are to execute the melody; . . . by motives [dessins], that is to say, by little imitations; . . . by starting a phrase with one voice and finishing it with another.’ (p. 89). For a study of Reicha’s idea of dialogue and its applicability to late eighteenth-century instrumental music, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 24–41. See Richard Will, ‘When God Met the Sinner, and Other Dramatic Confrontations in EighteenthCentury Instrumental Music’, Music & Letters, 78 (1997), pp. 175–209, at pp. 186–91.
‘AN ENTIRELY SPECIAL MANNER’
31
Ex. 1.5: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 14 in Eb, K. 449, 1st movement, bars 188–96
the piano; however, it also endorses the piano’s confirmation of G minor, and prepares for the unison texture and dotted rhythm of the piano’s subsequent phrase (bars 185ff.). The development of K. 415, like K. 449, begins with a six-bar solo statement in the piano which cadences in the dominant (bars 160–66, albeit not repeating the preceding orchestral theme). The orchestra’s subsequent modulation to C (bars 166–68), employing staccato quavers and a crescendo that contrast with the piano’s preceding material, and the piano’s sequential repeat of its thematic material from bar 160 in bars 168ff., suggest that an alternating sequential pattern of contrasting material will be established, although one does not in fact materialize. In K. 450 and K. 451, too, elements of the developmental passage from K. 449 resurface. The piano at the beginning of the development of K. 450 telescopes two procedures from K. 449 – the modulation from the dominant to the dominant minor and the repetition of immediately preceding orchestral material – into two bars: the piano elaborates the strings and winds’ consequent from the previous phrase, while moving to F minor (see bars 152–56). In K. 451 (Ex. 1.6), on the other hand, the piano takes up the antecedent from the orchestra’s previous phrase at the opening of the development (bars 187–89), passing it back to the winds (189–91) before B9 harmony sets up a confirmation of E minor (bars 191–93). Arpeggios contrasting with the antecedent figure are introduced into the piano in bars 191–92 and 199–200 (F#9), thus invoking the opposition of the trill figure and the piano arpeggios from K. 449.
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Ex. 1.6: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 16 in D, K. 451, 1st movement, bars 187–201
As at the end of the development section of K. 449, the opposition of piano and orchestral material at the beginning conveys a more intense feeling of confrontation between the piano and the orchestra than the equivalent passages in K. 413–415 and K. 450, 451, 453. Although bars 189–95 and 197–200 of K. 451 are especially similar to bars 188–204 of K. 449 in their alternation of contrasting conjunct and arpeggiated lines, the piano/orchestra confrontation therein is less protracted and less forceful, given the alternation between the winds (marked piano) and the piano (K. 451) rather than the full orchestra (marked forte) and the piano (K. 449). Equally, K. 450, evolving from relational unease in the solo exposition to fully-fledged co-operation in the recapitulation, contains less intense individual instances of confrontation than its immediate predecessor.37 The confrontational intensity in the development section of K. 449/i can be linked in a general way to the exposition’s affective quirks, especially the unusual combination of riverenza, agitato, imposing trill and buffa patter, as well as to Mozart’s contemplation of pre-existent stylistic practices. Indeed many of the peculiarities of the movement as a whole have recently been explained in terms of Charles Rosen’s well-known claim that the ‘charged force’ of material in the
37
On relational development in the first movement of K. 450 and its implications for understanding the drama therein, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 45–74.
‘AN ENTIRELY SPECIAL MANNER’
33
classical style ‘no longer unfolds . . . but is literally impelled from within’.38 Interpreting confrontation in this development section as an exploration of the musical potential of material presented in the exposition gives an entirely internal context for events and adds to our understanding of how confrontation evolves. But it does not supersede the notion that Mozart engages contemplatively with musical procedures from earlier works, since the music of the exposition in no way renders inevitable the subsequent course of events in the development. The ostensibly ‘inspired’ idea of confrontation itself can be attributed with no more certainty to the nature of material in the exposition than to hints of confrontation in the earlier Viennese piano concertos; after all, the bold material of the exposition could itself be seen to derive from nascent oppositions in the earlier works. As with many of Mozart’s musical inspirations, then, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of the specific idea (confrontation); but the musical process through which it comes into being is more readily explainable. If the development section of the first movement of K. 449 combines musical procedures and manifestations of confrontation from K. 413–415 and K. 450, 451, 453, intensifying the latter in a remarkable fashion, the slow movement of K. 449 draws upon or foreshadows the formal types of the surrounding works to create a formal hybrid of unprecedented ingenuity. Although Girdlestone described the movement as an introduction, three stanzas and a coda and Hutchings as ‘two strophes of lengthy cantilena by the orchestra, repeated or decorated by the piano’,39 it is best understood as a hybrid of concerto, rondo and ABA’ forms.40 Manifestations of concerto form include a substantial orchestral introduction (bars 1–22) analogous to an orchestral exposition, a subsequent solo section that features first and second themes in the tonic and dominant respectively (bars 23ff. and 41ff.) and a final section recapitulating both themes in the tonic (bars 80ff. and 98ff.). Rondo form is implied by the reappearance of the main theme (in Ab, bars 52ff.) shortly after the dominant material, and, more generally, by the four statements of the main theme across the movement as a whole. Equally, ABA’ would be appropriate designations for the sections beginning in bars 23 (preceded by an orchestral introduction), 52 and 80, given the middle section’s procedural ‘irregularity’ (according to sonata form criteria) of transposing the first solo section down a tone. In mixing concerto and rondo elements in particular, Mozart combines the concerto form of the slow 38
39 40
Stephen Rumph, ‘Mozart’s Archaic Endings: A Linguistic Critique’, in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 130 (2005), pp. 159–96, at pp. 167–68. For the Rosen quotation, see The Classical Style, p. 120. Wye Jamison Allanbrook describes the topical oddities of the opening of the first movement in ‘Comic Issues in Mozart’s Piano Concertos’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Neal Zaslaw, pp. 75–82. Girdlestone, Mozart and his Concertos, pp. 185–87; Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 85. James Webster also labels the second movement of K. 449 a hybrid of these three forms. See ‘Are Mozart’s Concertos “Dramatic”: Concerto Ritornellos versus Aria Introductions in the 1780s?’ in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Neal Zaslaw, p. 113. Similarly, Radcliffe identifies it as ‘a cross between sonata and rondo’ in Mozart Piano Concertos, p. 30.
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movements of the three preceding concertos with the rondo structure that resurfaces in K. 451, again situating K. 449 at the stylistic nexus between K. 413–415 and 450, 451, 453.41 The hybrid form of K. 449, moreover, both encapsulates in microcosm the general shift from the uniformity of concerto form in the slow movements of K. 413–415 to the formal diversity of the corresponding movements of K. 450, 451 and 453 (Theme and Variations, Rondo and Concerto respectively), and also provides a structure unique among Mozart’s instrumental works.42 In sum, stylistic and formal features of the first and second movements of K. 449 make vivid the work’s position as, at one and the same time, a pivotal point in Mozart’s concerto oeuvre and a masterpiece sui generis. But this position and individuality only partially explain K. 449’s stylistic significance in Mozart’s compositional output of the 1780s. For the terseness of the confrontations between the piano and the orchestra – unique in Mozart’s concerto repertory as of spring 1784 and at the heart of stylistic re-invention manifest in the work – resonate not only beyond the confines of Mozart’s concertos from 1784, but also beyond his concerto repertory in general.
The stylistic implications of confrontation in K. 449 A recurrent critical thread running through twentieth-century discussions of K. 449 concerns the operatic nature of the work. For Hutchings, the first movement – especially the orchestral exposition – is saturated with operatic qualities. The orchestral themes in this first section, for example, ‘seem to belong to a dramatic altercation’ and could easily be mistaken for ‘the orchestral accompaniment to 41
42
Although neither the slow movement of K. 413 nor the corresponding movement of K. 415 include a development section, their concerto form structures are unambiguous and unmistakeable. The rondo of K. 451 is labelled ‘(Sonata-)rondo’ by Webster (‘Are Mozart’s Concertos “Dramatic”?’ p. 113), presumably in order to draw attention both to the extended passage in the dominant after the first solo statement of the main theme (see bars 16–35) and to the subsequent restatement of the main theme in the tonic (bars 38–45). The absence of the dominant material transposed to the tonic in the final section (the one that would constitute the sonata-rondo ‘recapitulation’), however, negates the sonata component. Both Girdlestone and Hutchings regard the movement simply as a rondo. See Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, pp. 227–33, and Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 101–102. In similar fashion, Carl Schachter has remarked that in the second movement of K. 449 ‘[both] form and structure are highly unusual – indeed as far as I know, unique in Mozart’s output’. See ‘Idiosyncratic Features of Three Mozart Slow Movements: the Piano Concertos K. 449, K. 453, and K. 467’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Zaslaw, p. 316. Several of the extraordinary features of the movement outlined by Schachter, in particular the absence of a cadential passage to stabilize the secondary key area in the first solo section (p. 318), somewhat undermine the sonata structure of the movement, adding to the sense of formal ambiguity. Karol Berger’s investigation of the unusual ‘punctuation’ of K. 449/ii – whereby ‘a sense of adequate closure’ is achieved not by ‘the simple return to the home key at bar 80’ but rather by ‘a significantly extended full cadence’ concluding the tonally closed thematic statement in bars 98–112 – compromises the sonata component still further. See Berger, ‘The Second-Movement Punctuation Form in Mozart’s Piano Concertos: The Andantino of K. 449’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1991, pp. 168–72, at 170–71.
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one of the great concerted scenes from Mozart’s operas’.43 The beginning is heard as ‘the changing thoughts and exclamations of a character moved by rival or conflicting impulses, or by the presence of other personalities on the stage’, the material at bar 31 as ‘Susanna and the Countess bickering, then pleading, in first staccato thirds then flowing sixths’ and the ‘imperious thumps’ of the forte dotted theme in bar 63 as the ‘Almaviva gesture’.44 In fact, K. 449 marks nothing less than the first moment at which ‘that greatest of Mozarts, the creator of Figaro, Elvira, Papageno, Basilio and the Countess . . . dares show himself in an instrumental work’.45 In contrast to Hutchings, Rosen founds his operatic analogy on the ‘combination of contrapuntal art with opera buffa style’ in the finale of K. 449. He points out that ‘Not one of the entrances of the main theme is the same, the comic-opera style and rhythm enabling Mozart not so much to decorate it as to transform and enliven it each time.’46 Wye Jamison Allanbrook rightly takes both Hutchings and Rosen to task, the former for his ‘unsatisfactorily impressionistic’ analogies between K. 449 and Figaro which overlook the significant topical dissimilarities between the passages in question, and the latter for interpreting the style of the finale as operatic rather than instrumental in origin.47 Proposing instead that similarities between Mozart’s comic operas and concertos reside in ‘endings, cadences, finales – issues in the word’s terminal sense, of processes completed’, and in repetitive cadential gestures in particular, she cites the patter cadences from bars 47–54 and 70–76 of K. 449 as a case in point.48 The quality of solo/orchestra confrontation in the first movement of K. 449 – unique to Mozart’s piano concertos as of spring 1784 and arguably the most striking feature of the work as a whole – casts further light on this concerto’s stylistic intersection with Mozart’s operatic practice, in the process reinforcing the pivotal significance of K. 449 among Mozart’s concerto and operatic works. Once established in the first half of the development section of K. 449, the alternation of starkly contrasting piano and orchestral phrases placed in the context of a modulatory sequence, for example, resurfaces at corresponding points in a number of Mozart’s later piano concertos. In addition to interchanging two-bar units in bars 189–201 of the first movement of K. 451 as discussed above, Mozart alternates orchestral presentations of the first four bars of the main theme of K. 451’s sonata-rondo finale with the piano’s semiquaver arpeggios (see bars 172–88 in the ‘development’/C section), situating this altercation in the context of a sequential progression from G major to E minor to C major. The first half of the development section of K. 466 sets the orchestra’s presentation of the main theme in stark opposition with the piano’s presentation of its first solo theme (bars 43 44 45 46 47 48
Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 83. Ibid., pp. 83–85. Ibid., p. 85. Rosen, The Classical Style, p. 219. Wye Jamison Allanbrook, ‘Comic Issues in Mozart’s Piano Concertos’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Zaslaw, pp. 76–85. Ibid., p. 86.
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192–227), the orchestra effecting modulations to G minor and Eb through forceful full-orchestral statements of D7 and Bb7 harmonies (marked with a sudden forte) in bars 204 and 218 respectively. Most remarkable of all, however, is the hostile alternation of chromatic oscillations in the orchestra and semiquaver arpeggios in the piano that spirals relentlessly from G6/5 to C6/5 to F6/5 to Bb6/5 in the development section of the first movement of the C-minor Concerto, K. 491 (bars 330–45). The four-fold alternation of sharply contrasting material in equal two-bar phrases, the inclusion of semiquaver arpeggios in the piano, and the mobilization of the forte full orchestra against the piano make this passage strikingly similar to bars 188–205 of K. 449. In K. 491, however, the confrontation – one of the most pronounced in Mozart’s entire instrumental and operatic repertories – is more intense still than the corresponding confrontation in K. 449; the orchestra is larger than in the earlier work thus maximizing piano/orchestra contrast, and the harmonized and syncopated chromatic oscillations convey an even harsher and more aggressive sense of opposition with the piano material than the unison trill figures in K. 449.49 The piano/orchestra confrontation in the first half of the development section of K. 449 – situating a powerful alternation of contrasting material in the context of equal two-bar units and a modulatory sequence – resonates not only with Mozart’s later Viennese piano concertos, but also with crucial character confrontations in the operas that immediately follow his two-year sequence of eleven concertos (K. 449–491), Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787).50 Donna Anna, Zerlina, Ottavio and Masetto’s two most emphatic denials of Donna Elvira’s request for mercy on behalf of Don Giovanni (Leporello in disguise) in the Act 2 Sextet of Don Giovanni contrast piano, sparsely scored 1-bar chromatic descents (bars 86, 94) with forte, fully orchestrated 1-bar diatonic descents (bars 87, 95), in the process thrusting Elvira’s V/g harmony to VI on both occasions, and resolving it authoritatively to G minor two bars after the second such exchange (bar 98). Similarly, the severest interruptions of the eponymous hero and Leporello by the opposing group (Donna Anna, Don Ottavio, Donna Elvira, Zerlina, Masetto) in the Act 1 Finale of Don Giovanni, pit ascending unison quaver scales in the two voices, oboes and lower strings against a harmonized sequence of descending crotchet chords in the five voices and the full orchestra, and feature alternating (and overlapping) two-and-a-half bar units (bars 569–77, 598–606).51 In Figaro, the Act 3 Sextet, which solidifies perhaps the single most 49
50 51
For a more extended investigation of patterns of interaction between the piano and the orchestra in the opening movement of K. 491, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 75–100. Jonathan P.J. Stock addresses piano/orchestra interaction in the Larghetto of K. 491 in ‘Orchestration as Structural Determinant: Mozart’s Deployment of Woodwind Timbre in the Slow Movement of the C Minor Piano Concerto K. 491’, Music & Letters, 78 (1997), pp. 210–19. For more detail on the operatic examples discussed in the paragraphs below, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 101–46. Dialogic confrontations are typical of the texts and plots of late eighteenth-century opera buffa finales. John Platoff explains that librettists provide ‘an active dialogue followed by an expressive
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important relational twist in the opera (the realization that Figaro is Marcellina and Bartolo’s son and, now absolved of his promise to marry Marcellina, is free to wed Susanna), includes a forceful opposition of material akin to the piano/ orchestra confrontation in K. 449; Don Curzio and the Count (in unison with the strings), and Susanna, Figaro, Marcellina and Bartolo juxtapose dynamically, texturally, instrumentally and rhythmically contrasting 1- and 2-bar (overlapping) units (bars 111–24).52 Given that Reicha used analyses of Mozart’s works (including the Overture to Figaro and the first movement of the ‘Hunt’ Quartet, K. 458) to demonstrate the application of his theoretical ideas and, in any case, held Mozart’s music in very high esteem, it is quite possible that he had passages such as those above in mind when describing confrontational dialogue – ‘all the responding phrases are of an opposed character to that of the opening phrases: it is a continual contrast’ – in the Traité de mélodie.53 In addition, Mozart’s operatic confrontations exemplify a number of the ‘musical means for finding opposed effects’, such as ‘the difference between instruments and the difference in their timbres; . . . the difference in the value of notes; . . . the different chords; . . . the forte and the piano; . . . the choice of keys; . . . high and low notes; . . .the succession of unison and harmony; . . . the different sections of which the orchestra is composed; etc. etc.’ described by Reicha in his later treatise on opera, L’art du compositeur dramatique.54 Although the character opposition generated by the aforementioned operatic confrontations is quite considerable and has precedents in the operas from the 1760s and 1770s by other composers,55 we must recognize that Mozart’s earliest alternations of starkly contrasting materials in his concerto and operatic repertories are found in K. 449 not in Figaro or Don Giovanni. To be sure, Mozart’s first putatively ‘mature’ operas, Idomeneo (1780–81) and Die Entführung (1782), which immediately precede his first set of Viennese piano concertos (K. 413–415),
52
53
54
55
tutti’ and, during a finale, ‘escalate and already existing dramatic conflict into a crisis’. See Platoff, ‘Musical and Dramatic Structure in the Opera Buffa Finale’, Journal of Musicology, 7 (1989), pp. 191–230, at pp. 213, 223. The examples from the Act 1 Finale of Don Giovanni and the Act 3 Sextet of Figaro are, with their unison writing, also very similar to the aforementioned type of operatic confrontation discussed by Richard Will in ‘When God Met the Sinner’, pp. 186–91. Traité de mélodie, p. 91. ‘toutes les phrases répondantes sont dans un caractère opposé à celui des phrases commençantes: c’est un contraste continuel’. For an account of Reicha’s analyses of the Overture to Figaro and the first movement of K. 458, see Nancy Kovaleff Baker, ‘An Ars Poetica for Music: Reicha’s System of Syntax and Structure’, in Musical Humanism and its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude Palisca, ed. Baker and Barbara Russano Hanning (Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon, 1992), pp. 419–49, at pp. 441–42 and 438. Reicha, L’art du compositeur, ou Cours complet de composition vocale (Paris, 1833), p. 43. ‘les moyens musicaux pour trouver des effets opposés ne manquent pas: il les trouvera dans la différence des instruments et de leur timbre; dans celle des valeurs de notes; dans les différents accords; dans le forté et le piano; dans le choix de tons; dans les notes élévées et les notes graves; dans la succession de l’unisson et de l’harmonie, dans les différentes masses dont se compose l’orchestre etc. etc.’ See Will, ‘When God Met the Sinner’, pp. 186–91.
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illustrate character confrontations through the kind of tonal shifts and modulatory sequences prevalent in the first half of the development section of K. 449. On several occasions in Entführung, for example, a character moves to the major or minor mode upon answering his or her interlocutor, another illustration of confrontation in dialogue according to Reicha,56 and one manifest in the piano’s shift to Bb minor (from the orchestra’s Bb major) in bar 190 of K. 449. After Osmin’s initial criticism of Pedrillo in the Duet No. 2, Belmonte explains ‘Ihr irrt, ihr irrt, ihr irrt, es ist ein braver Mann’ (‘You’re wrong, he [Pedrillo] is an honest man’), to which Osmin responds ‘So brav, so brav, so brav, dass man ihn spiessen kann’ (‘So honest, that one could impale him on a spit’), repeating Belmonte’s strident forte phrase almost note for note (bars 111–117) but shifting the music from C major to C minor. Pedrillo and Belmonte contradict Osmin in a very similar fashion in the Trio, No. 7, ‘Marsch, Marsch, Marsch’. Although the key signature of the ensemble changes from C minor to C major immediately before Osmin’s ‘Marsch, fort, fort, fort, fort, fort’ (‘March off you go’, bars 98–99) the requisite E natural appears neither in the vocal line nor the orchestral accompaniment. The first E naturals coincide with Belmonte’s and Pedrillo’s subsequent ‘Platz, fort, fort, fort, fort, fort’ (‘Give way’, bars 100–103) leaving the definite impression that Belmonte and Pedrillo are contradicting Osmin in the tonal as well as the textual realm. Modulatory sequences also accompany character confrontations in Entführung, just as they underscore the stark piano/orchestra alternation in K. 449. In the same trio No. 7, for example, two other confrontational dialogues between Belmonte/Pedrillo and Osmin (‘Don’t come any nearer’ ‘Stand away from the door’ and ‘March! Off you go!’ ‘Give way!’ before the aforementioned shift to C major) feature a circle of 5ths (C-F-Bb-Eb-Ab, bars 22–26) and a spiralling, descending progression (bars 41–46) respectively. Even setting aside these tonal precedents for the piano/orchestra confrontation in K. 449, however, there are no precedents in Entführung or Idomeneo for its terse alternations of contrasting material between the protagonists. While general intersections between musical and dramatic processes in Mozart’s operas are universally admired features of his compositional modus operandi,57 and general manifestations of character confrontation the lifeblood of his operatic plots, analogous musical procedures involving confrontation between Mozart’s piano and orchestral ‘characters’ in the first movement of K. 449 have received little recognition. It is striking, for example, that the forceful, 56 57
Reicha, Traité de mélodie, p. 91. The secondary literature on this subject is vast. For a recent contribution see the provocative essay by Jessica Waldoff and James Webster, ‘Operatic Plotting in Le nozze di Figaro’, in Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. Stanley Sadie (Oxford: Oxford University, 1996), pp. 250–95. The authors expand the notion of ‘plot’ to encompass the ‘dynamic of text, action and music’: ‘Anything that happens can be understood as an operatic event: an action in recitative, a contemplative aria, a complex ensemble; a horn call, a melisma, a reminiscence; a seduction, a duel, an act of forgiveness. Even as these events constitute the operatic plot, all are constituted in text, action and music’ (p. 255).
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poignant and sophisticated dramatic manipulations and resolutions taken as a given in Mozart’s operas are more than matched by the extraordinarily succinct and ingenious resolution to the piano and orchestra’s conflict – comprising the ascending chromatic lines in the run up to the recapitulation as well as the stark alternation of contrasting material earlier in the development section – in the first movement of K. 449 (see Ex. 1.1). When the presentation of the main theme at the beginning of the recapitulation is passed from the orchestra to the piano, the latter takes up exactly where it had left off in its disruptive preceding bars (i.e. with chromatic motion in three separate lines in bars 242–43), but now in the context of an entirely accommodating split-theme dialogue. In this statement, moreover, Mozart brings together the first eight bars of the orchestral exposition (bars 234–41, corresponding to 1–8) and the second eight bars of the solo exposition (bars 242–49, corresponding to 97–104), an especially succinct and effective manner of presentation given that a first-movement recapitulation in a classical concerto must accommodate two exposition sections.58 Thus, Mozart meets the dramatic demands of relational resolution and formal unification in one gesture of remarkable ingenuity.59 * The dual status of K. 449 – the first movement in particular – as both a hybrid of Mozart’s surrounding piano concertos and as a progenitor of an inter-generic type of confrontation between instrumental and vocal characters affords the work an exceptional stylistic position in Mozart’s oeuvre. Ultimately, Girdlestone and Einstein are right to emphasize its isolation and uniqueness among Mozart’s works (see above), but wrong (in Girdlestone’s case at least) to claim that it ‘[does] not bear clearly the mark of any period of his life’. For it is precisely the work’s protracted genesis in Mozart’s early years in Vienna (1782–84), sandwiched between and closely connected to two very different groups of concertos (K. 413–415 and K. 450, 451, 453), that renders it so fascinating. Moreover, if we consider the piano/orchestra confrontations in the first movement as a central component of K. 449’s ‘entirely special manner’ in Mozart’s words, we are justified in speculating that the confrontations themselves stem from K. 449’s hybrid position in regard to the role of the accompanying orchestra in the preceding and succeeding sets: as in K. 450, 451 and 453, the orchestra in K. 449 assumes a higher profile than in Mozart’s earlier concertos; but, as in K. 413–415, it speaks to all intents and purposes as a unified voice, rather than as two closely related and semi-independent wind and strings voices. Not yet exhibiting
58
59
In similar fashion (although not in the context of a concise reconciliation of the piano and the orchestra) the beginning of the recapitulation of the first movement of K. 414 states consecutively the first eight bars of the orchestral exposition and the first fourteen of the solo exposition (bars 196–217). For an examination of Mozart’s integration of co-operation and competition across the entire first movement of K. 449, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 64–8.
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the large woodwind contingent that becomes standard in Mozart’s piano concertos from K. 450 onwards, the orchestra in K. 449 instead asserts its independence as a single unit that stands its ground by confronting the piano. Excluding the surrounding piano concertos, K. 449 is perhaps most closely akin to the String Quartet in G major, K. 387 (completed on 31 December 1782) among Mozart’s contemporary instrumental works. Both constitute the initial works in sequences of Viennese masterpieces in their respective genres: K. 387 was written after a nine-year lay-off from composing string quartets; and K. 449 completed after an unusual two-year hiatus in its composition. Both works also surpass the musical intensity and passion of Mozart’s earlier contributions to the string quartet and concerto repertories by considerable margins. In addition, Mozart would have had significant reasons – over and above the norm perhaps – for wanting to impress the initial listeners to these two works: K. 449 was almost certainly the first piano concerto he performed for his very first subscription concert (at the Trattnerhof) on 17 March 1784; and K. 387 was the first of six string quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn in 1785, in the hope that Haydn ‘will not consider them wholly unworthy of [his] favour’.60 Just as Mozart drew attention to such ‘special’ musical features of K. 449 as the piano/orchestra confrontation in the first movement and the hybrid form of the second movement, so he called attention to two movements of K. 387 in particular. The second and fourth movements of the quartet, like the first two movements of K. 449, are ambitious in the extreme. The 147-bar minuet and trio is over twice the length of the longest scherzo and trio from Haydn’s Op. 33 set, the second movement of No. 2 in Eb, contains a greater wealth of thematic material than Haydn’s counterparts and, introducing a modulation to the dominant and ‘new’ material midway through the first section (bars 21ff.), suggests an expansion of the minuet to include sonata procedures.61 Equally, the finale boldly integrates fugal writing into a sonata structure, weaving a rich tapestry of learned and galant styles, and bringing together – symbolically given the quartet’s dedicatee – the two formal types employed by Haydn in the six finales to his Op. 20 set.62 Whatever the motivation 60
61
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For the complete translated text of Mozart’s dedication of his six string quartets K. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, and 465 to Haydn, see Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, pp. 891–92. Haydn had already expressed his approval of these works earlier in 1785, as Mozart explains in the dedication. According to Leopold, moreover, Haydn remarked after playing three of the six quartets in February 1785: ‘Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.’ See Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 886. Wolfram Steinbeck argues that Haydn opened the way to synthesizing minuet and sonata forms in his Op. 33 set, but that Mozart, not Haydn, fully exploited this potential. See Steinbeck, ‘Mozart’s Scherzi: Zur Beziehung zwischen Haydn’s Streichquartetten Op. 33 und Mozart’s HaydnQuartetten’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 41 (1984), pp. 208–31. See Mark Evan Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery? Mozart’s “Haydn” Quartets and the Question of Influence’, Studi musicali, 22 (1993), pp. 365–409, at p. 379. For an intelligent discussion of the integration of learned and galant styles in this movement, see Elaine R. Sisman, Mozart: The ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, No. 41 in C major, K. 551 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 71–74.
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behind Mozart’s compositional responses to Haydn’s preceding quartets – homage, competition, or a combination of the two63 – Mozart leaves us in little doubt of his intense desire to prove his compositional mettle. In addition to circumstantial affinities between K. 387 and 449, there is a striking musical similarity between their uses of chromatically ascending lines to startling effect. As we have seen, the piano leads directly into the recapitulation of the first movement of K. 449 with a jarring chromatic ascent. Likewise, the cello introduces a surprising chromatic rise from D to G – accentuating bVI for three bars – in the recapitulation of K. 387’s finale (bars 220–27, Ex. 1.7). While the first theme of the second group (bars 209ff.) is recapitulated in G major, it has yet to bring with it a strong cadential confirmation of the tonic; indeed, as of bar 220, we still await the first such confirmation in the entire recapitulation, because the material from the first group is reiterated in the subdominant rather than in the tonic (bars 175–89). Thus, preceding the first affirmation of the tonic and following a four-bar dominant pedal at one and the same time, the shift to bVI in bar 221 is initially heard as a disruption. However, just as the piano’s chromatic transition to the recapitulation of K. 449 is immediately transformed from agent of relational unease to agent of co-operation in the ensuing split-theme dialogue, so the chromatic ascent and affirmation of bVI in K. 387 ultimately underscores, rather than detracting from, the subsequent confirmation of G (bVI – vii6/v – v6 – V6/5 – I – vii7/vi – vi – vii7/V – I6/4 – V7 – I, bars 221–33), in the process aligning the formerly contrapuntal lines into a more ‘uniform’ 1+3 texture.64 In both passages Mozart masterfully manipulates his chromatic lines to concise dramatic effect. Ex. 1.7: Mozart, String Quartet in G, K. 387, 4th movement, bars 221–33
63 64
For an extended discussion of this issue, see Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery?’ Sisman considers bars 221–33 especially important to the finale in stylistic terms, representing a ‘middle ground’ between the learned and the galant in which ‘accommodation is possible through dance, the universal solvent’. See Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, p. 74.
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Even K. 387, however, cannot lay claim to K. 449’s unique blend of crossbreeding (in compositional genesis and musical attributes) and pivotal stylistic significance. While it was K. 450, completed only five weeks after K. 449, that established the woodwinds’ special role as an inimitable feature of Mozart’s piano concertos, it was K. 449 that set the precedent for the elevated role of the orchestra in general, and that established a new terse and dramatic style of confrontation that would infiltrate his later concertos and operas.65 Revealingly, a number of writers regard K. 449 and the great C-minor Concerto, K. 491 (1786), as kindred spirits, Einstein pointing out, for example, that K. 449 ‘seeks to express in Eb major what a later movement in the same meter [K. 491/i] completely realizes’ and Girdlestone explaining that K. 449’s ‘closest relationship’ is with K. 491.66 As the final concerto in a two-year sequence of eleven masterpieces, K. 491 is, fittingly enough, a climactic work in a new process of re-invention as we shall see in Chapter 2, a tour de force of erudition and sophistication that ultimately transcends its predecessors in terms of interactional intensity and ingenuity and in the nature of the balance among intimate, grand and brilliant stylistic qualities. It is to this stylistic balance in Mozart’s ‘grand’ concertos K. 450–503 – formulated in the wake of K. 449’s initiation of re-invention – that we shall now turn.
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Kurt von Fischer identified a newly pronounced dramatic quality in Mozart’s piano concertos from spring 1784, but directed his remarks towards the ‘grand concertos’ – K. 450, 451 and 453 – rather than K. 449. See ‘Das Dramatische in Mozarts Klavierkonzerten 1784 mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des ersten Satzes von KV 453’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1986, pp. 71–74, at p. 72. See Einstein, Mozart, p. 301 and Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 178. Radcliffe also notes that ‘By a curious coincidence [the main theme] is a melodic inversion of the opening theme of the C minor Concerto, K. 491’, in Mozart Piano Concertos, p. 30.
2 On the Grand, Brilliant and Intimate: Mozart’s Piano Concertos K. 450–K. 503 (1784–86)
T
HE unique position and far-reaching significance of K. 449 in Mozart’s concerto oeuvre encapsulates the stylistic ‘problem’ he faces in moving from one conception of the genre in the a quattro works (K. 413–415) to a fundamentally different one in the ‘grand’ works (K. 450 onwards). While the ‘entirely new and special manner’ of K. 449 ultimately owes its distinctive stylistic identity – and, by extension, its status in a process of stylistic re-invention – to the confluence of these two concepts, the subsequent piano concertos reside in a different realm. Mozart makes it clear to his father that K. 450, 451 and 453 cannot be performed without the considerable contingent of wind instruments he employs;1 and (with one possible exception) the same clearly applies to his remaining Viennese piano concertos as well.2 The presence of a larger accompanying orchestra in the concertos from K. 450 onwards than in K. 413–449 is in fact only one of several fundamental changes Mozart carried out: the increases in the level of virtuosity present in the solo part – K. 450 and K. 451 are designed to ‘make the performer perspire’ by Mozart’s own admission3 – and in the intricacy and intimacy of the piano’s engagement with the orchestra (especially the winds) are equally noteworthy. Thus, the crucial stylistic issues that must be addressed in Mozart’s post K. 449 piano concerto repertory – and issues that have received little systematic attention to date – are the precise relationship between these new attributes of Mozart’s concerto style and the extent to which the relationship itself demarcates a change in style. Can we accommodate Mozart’s identification of his piano concertos from K. 450 as ‘grand’ works, as well as a contemporary view (1800) that ‘the concerto [for Mozart] is the greatest from the point of view of intimacy [im Zarten]’?4 How can we assess the aesthetic and stylistic ramifications of co-existing (perhaps competing?) phenomena of increased brilliance in the piano and increased intimacy in the
1 2
3 4
Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 877. The possible exception is the ‘Coronation’ Concerto in D, K. 537, which Mozart recorded as having ad libitum wind and brass. See Chris Goertzen, ‘Compromises in Orchestration in Mozart’s Coronation Concerto’, Musical Quarterly, 75 (1991), p. 148. Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 877. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1800–01), col. 28.
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relationship between the piano and its accompanying orchestra? Does Mozart reveal a consistent approach to the weighting of grandeur, intimacy and brilliance in his works? And where does K. 449 sit in relation to the new style of grand concerto? All of these questions require an initial grounding in late eighteenthcentury theoretical and aesthetic writings on the concerto.
Grandeur, intimacy and brilliance in late eighteenth-century concerto criticism Writing on the concerto in 1799, the prominent composer and theorist Augustus Frederick Christopher Kollmann repeats Mozart’s distinction between the smallscale and large-scale piano concerto: ‘the smallest number of accompaniments generally used for a Concerto on the Piano Forte is: two Violins, a Tenor, and a Bass; though Christian Bach has even omitted the Tenor in a set dedicated to Her Majesty. To these may be added Flutes or Hautboys, and Horns, or all the instruments of a grand Orchestra, as circumstances permit or require it’.5 The association between grandeur – ‘one of the principal characteristics of Concertos’6 – and the participation of the orchestra is made explicit in Kollmann’s discussion. He distinguishes, for example, between the ‘grandeur of Harmony’ and ‘fullness’ of orchestral tuttis on the one hand and ‘brilliant passages’ and ‘nicety’ of solo sections on the other,7 reinforcing the distinction in his discussion of the solo exposition of the first movement: ‘The second subsection [solo exposition] begins with, and chiefly consists of, a Solo, calculated to show the powers of the principal instrument, and the abilities of the principal performer . . . This Solo is occasionally relieved by short Tuttis, to keep up the grandeur of the piece.’8 Even though Kollmann does not explicitly criticize the concerto on account of the virtuosity it contains, his implicit suggestion that figurative writing is incommensurate with grandeur (since the orchestra has to enter in order to re-establish it) resonates with earlier and contemporary reactions to the genre. For the most part writers in the second half of the eighteenth century condemn the concerto as empty and meaningless on account of the excessive figurative writing featured in the solo part – ‘staggering octaves’, ‘running, jumping and hopping’ and so on – and would agree with Johann Karl Friedrich Triest’s dismissive statement that as the ‘special proving ground for virtuosity . . . hardly one in a hundred can claim to possess any inner artistic value’.9 Even when virtuosity in the concerto is con5 6 7 8 9
Kollmann, An Essay on Practical Musical Composition (London, 1799; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1973), p. 23. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., pp. 24, 20–1. Ibid., p. 21. See William Jackson of Exeter, Observations on the Present State of Music in London (London, 1791), p. 20; F.S. Sander in Musikalischer Almanach 3 (1784), as quoted in Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 114; and Triest, ‘Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century’, trans. Susan Gillespie, in Haydn
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sidered a genuine attribute, the ‘leaps, runs [and] arpeggios’ of the soloist still need to be ‘well-chosen’ (wohlgewählte), implying that indiscriminate virtuosity is never a virtue.10 In spite of a prevailing climate of negative criticism in the late eighteenth century, some writers on the concerto recognize that a balance could be struck between appropriate levels of brilliant and grand writing and, by implication, that the genre could be imbued with aesthetic significance. Although primarily concerned with early eighteenth-century concertos, Pierre-Louis Ginguené, in his article on the concerto from the Encyclopédie méthodique (1791), is especially attuned to the issue of stylistic balance.11 Over-dependence on virtuosity is unequivocally condemned by Ginguené: Vivaldi, for example, looks less for melody and harmony in his concertos than for brilliance, difficulties and bizarre traits; and, in similar fashion, Locatelli ‘tried rather to exercise the hand than to flatter the ear’ (il chercha plûtot à exercer la main qu’à flatter l’oreille), his goal being ‘to excite surprise more than pleasure’ (d’exciter la surprise plus que le plaisir).12 In addition, Ginguené prizes grand and noble writing in the concerto, citing the ‘noble and expressive melodies’ (des chants nobles et expressifs) of Tartini, the ‘grandeur and nobility’ (grandeur et noblesse) of Stamitz’s concerto style, and the ‘larger and more noble effects’ (plus grands & . . . plus nobles effets) in Corelli’s orchestral writing than in Torelli’s (a factor contributing to the superiority of Corelli).13 Above all, stylistic balance is at the heart of a successful concerto. For Ginguené, Giuseppe Tartini is supreme in this respect. As well as ‘learned but natural traits’ (traits savans, mais naturels) and ‘motifs sustained with infinite art without the air of slavery and of pedantry’ (motifs suivis avec un art infini, sans l’air de l’esclavage & du pédantisme), Tartini maintains equilibrium in regard to grandeur and brilliance – his first movements feature ‘a pomp without swelling’ (une pompe sans enflure) and his finales are ‘brilliant and varied, light without pettiness, and light-hearted without extravagance’ (brillans & varies, legers sans petitesse, & gais sans extravagance). Stamitz is almost as successful as Tartini, lending his tuttis ‘a force and a majesty worthy of Tartini’ (une force & une majesté dignes de Tartini) and his solos both originality and cutting traits.14 Even though Ginguené does not explicitly state that excessive virtuosity precludes grandeur and nobility, it is implicit in his argument since these positive
10
11 12 13 14
and his World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 370. For an account of negative criticism of the concerto in the late eighteenth century see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, Chapter 1, especially pp. 10–11, 15–16. Johann Adam Hiller, ‘Abhandlung von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik’, in Historisch-Kritische Beiträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (Berlin, 1754; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), vol. 1, p. 543. Pierre-Louis Ginguené, ‘Concerto’, in Encyclopédie méthodique, ed. Nicholas Etienne Framery and Ginguené (Paris, 1791), vol. 1, pp. 319–21. Ibid., p. 320. Ibid., p. 320. Ibid., p. 320.
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attributes are not mentioned in works believed to exhibit excessive passagework. (And the same can be said of other late eighteenth-century commentators on the concerto as well.) Heinrich Christoph Koch’s re-appraisals of the concerto in the Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition and Musikalisches Lexikon bring this relationship into sharper focus. While most soloists ‘merely aim at displaying mechanical dexterity’ and ‘far from applying this acquired skill in order to arouse in their listeners beautiful feelings and to gratify them in a noble way . . . seek only to draw attention to the mechanics of their art’15 the skilled concerto composer will write a ‘passionate dialogue’ for soloist and orchestra such that the latter will ‘stimulate . . . noble feelings’ in the former.16 Formulating his commentary on the concerto as a defence against its detractors (especially Johann Georg Sulzer in the Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste) while also upholding the damaging effects of virtuosic excess, Koch pays the accompanying orchestra of a well-composed concerto the ultimate compliment in likening it to the Chorus of an ancient tragedy, thereby thoroughly endorsing its role as a grand and noble participant.17 Koch’s remarks on the concerto are significant not only as historical testimony to the nascent aesthetic import of the genre, but also to the intersection of grandeur, brilliance and intimacy. On the one hand, it is not a surprise that Koch identifies the accompanying orchestra as a central component of concerto grandeur. Other late eighteenth-century writers such as Ginguené and Kollmann (discussed above) do the same; and John Hoyle’s definition of the concerto grosso refers to ‘the great or grand Chorus of the Concert [i.e. concerto]’.18 And since the symphony is routinely assigned attributes of grandeur in the late eighteenth century, it is natural that the orchestra’s participation in a concerto should be considered in a similar way.19 On the other hand, Koch outlines a new dimension to concerto grandeur, one that resides in ‘passionate dialogue’ between soloist and orchestra. For, according to Koch, it is dialogue that directly precipitates the ‘noble feelings’ stimulated in the soloist by the orchestra and the situation analogous to ancient tragedy whereby ‘the actor expressed his feelings . . . to the chorus’. Moreover, this exchange does not exist simply at the level of broad tutti/solo alternation but also comprises more intimate dialogue – ‘brief imitations’ in Koch’s words – that occur during solo sections.20 Thus, Koch argues for grandeur not
15
16 17 18 19
20
As given in Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment: Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch, ed. Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 153. Koch, Introductory Essay, p. 209. On Koch’s commentary on the late eighteenth-century concerto, including its historical significance, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 9–23. Hoyle, Dictionarium Musica (London, 1770), p. 18. On grandeur in the symphony see, for example, Sulzer in Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, ed. Baker and Christensen, p. 106; Koch in Introductory Essay, pp. 197–98; Bernard Germain Comte de La Cépède, La poétique de la musique (Paris, 1785), vol. 1, pp. 330–31, 337; and Kollmann, Essay, pp. 92–93. Koch, Introductory Essay, pp. 209, 211.
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exclusively of a bold, majestic kind, but also of a more intimate kind involving subtle interaction of the soloist and the orchestra over the course of a movement. In addition, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung critic who identifies Mozart’s piano concertos as ‘greatest from the point of view of intimacy’ goes on to explain that these works have ‘the greatest resemblance in spirit, tendency and clear artistic worth’ (die grösste Aehnlichkeit in Geist, Tendenz und reinem Kunstwerth) to Mozart’s ‘accomplished’ quartets.21 Given the predilection in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for drawing an aesthetic analogy between the string quartet and intimate conversation, it is quite possible that the common ‘spirit [and] tendency’ of Mozart’s quartets and concertos would have extended to intimate dialogue between the participants in their respective genres. In sum, historical sources point towards two aesthetic perspectives on the intersection of grandeur, brilliance and intimacy in Mozart’s grand concertos. The formal alternation of tutti and solo sections in the first movements of his works, for example, might suggest a fundamental oscillation of grand and brilliant sections – albeit brilliant sections that feature measured and not excessively demonstrative virtuosic writing. Recognition of dialogue as an intimate kind of grandeur with ramifications beyond the broad alternation of tutti and solo sections, however, suggests a more refined relationship between grandeur, brilliance and intimacy in Mozart’s grand concertos than that offered by straightforward sectional and aesthetic equivalence (i.e. tutti and solo sections equating with grandeur and brilliance respectively). Thus, our investigation of Mozart’s grand concertos will focus above all on the interaction of ‘intimate grandeur’, a concept true to the spirit of Koch’s commentary on the concerto and manifest in the dialogue between the solo pianist and the orchestra, and solo brilliance.
Grandeur, brilliance and intimacy in Mozart’s piano concertos Mozart does not comment directly on either the formal workings of his piano concertos or on the interaction of his solo and orchestral protagonists, but his most famous and oft-quoted proclamation on the genre overlaps in several respects with contemporary aesthetic views. Discussing his so-called ‘subscription’ set of piano concertos (K. 414, 413, 415), Mozart remarks: These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which the connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.22
Mozart directs his comments to three concertos that are more lightly scored and less technically challenging for the pianist than his post K. 449 repertory, but 21 22
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 3 (October 1800), col. 29. Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 833.
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addresses issues that are as pertinent to the grand as to the a quattro works. His ‘happy medium’ between easy and difficult and related idea of brilliance avoiding emptiness aligns closely with the kind of stylistic balance proposed a few years later by Ginguené. Other writers recommend the middle ground in regard to virtuosity too, Charles Avison remarking that ‘elegance of taste [in a concerto] consists not in those agile motions, or shiftings of the hand . . . but in the tender and delicate touches’ and Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart explaining that ‘artifice in concertos must stand out noticeably’ (Zwar muss die Kunst in Concerten merklich hervorragen) but not to the exclusion of ‘gracious motions, the charms of the musical style’ (die anmuthigen Gängen, die Grazien des musikalischen Styls).23 Mozart’s intended appeal to both the connoisseur and the less learned is a venerable, oft-articulated ideal in eighteenth-century musical circles, one that resonates for Mozart well beyond his first three Viennese piano concertos.24 Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers explicitly or implicitly clarify that Mozart successfully avoids the pitfalls of excessive virtuosity in his concertos. Mozart adopts a measured approach to virtuosic writing for the piano, as Ernst Ludwig Gerber explains: the ‘difficulties’ (Schwierigkeiten) in his music are always subordinated both to rules of harmony and melody and to expression, novelty and beauty. Virtuosity is not accommodated in the natural world, but Mozart turns virtuosity to his advantage by not overestimating the value of technical dexterity.25 The historical argument in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1800) that Mozart transforms the concerto from a purely soloistic vehicle with minimal orchestral involvement to a genre fully integrating the entire orchestra into a musical fabric in which the piano is the most striking instrument but not overtly dominant, tacitly acknowledges Mozart’s appropriate balance of pianistic virtuosity and orchestral participation.26 And Koch, in his Musikalisches Lexikon (1802), cites Mozart as the exemplary composer of the type of piano concerto in which ‘passionate dialogue’ overrides vacuous brilliance.27 The historical perception of Mozart as an exceptional orchestrator provides further testimony to the equilibrium achieved between solo virtuosity and orchestral involvement. Unlike 23
24
25 26 27
Avison, An Essay on Musical Expression (London, 1752), p. 124; Schubart, Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst, ed. Ludwig Schubart (Vienna: Degen, 1806; reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969), p. 356. (Schubart originally wrote this work in 1784–85.) On the distinction between Kenner and Liebhaber categories, see Katalin Komlós, Fortepianos and their Music: Germany, Austria and England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 109–21. For comments elsewhere in Mozart’s correspondence about works similarly orientated to a broad range of listeners, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 182. For a new interpretation of Mozart’s famous letter broadening its significance to include the initial ‘Haydn’ quartets, see Elaine Sisman, ‘Observations on the First Phase of Mozart’s “Haydn” Quartets’, in Words About Mozart: Essays in Honour of Stanley Sadie, ed. Dorothea Link and Judy Nagley (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 33–58. Gerber, Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1812–14), col. 496. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1800–01), col. 28. Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon, col. 854.
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Daniel Steibelt, in a display orientated piano concerto, Mozart’s handling of solo and accompanying instruments, is ‘difficult to forget’.28 Another entry in the AmZ (1802), after apologizing for printing excerpts from the Clarinet Concerto (K. 622) in short not full score, remarks: ‘What extraordinary effects Mozart could achieve through the precise knowledge of all the customary instruments and their most advantageous employment; that especially in this respect Mozart has been equalled by nobody; this everyone knows, and will therefore, I hope, give due consideration to it regarding these examples.’29 Even though the solo part is ‘difficult, even very difficult, whereof anyone even partially familiar with the clarinet will be easily convinced by the most fleeting perusal of a few places’,30 the high level of solo complexity obviously does not detract – for this AmZ writer at least – from the significance of the orchestral participation in the work.
Mozart’s piano concertos, K. 450–503 (1784–86) Stylistic balance, comprising equilibrium among grandeur, brilliance and intimacy, is best considered in the outer movements of Mozart’s piano concertos where technical virtuosity, so deeply unpopular with late eighteenth-century critics, is most prominent.31 Do Mozart’s works accommodate in practice the theoretical positions outlined above, and if so, how? And what role does K. 449 (discussed in Chapter 1 as a hinge in the re-invention process) play in the formation of a new stylistic paradigm? The solo expositions of the first movements of K. 450–503 provide early indications of Mozart’s careful integration of brilliant writing – virtuosic passagework and figuration – and the intimate grandeur manifest in dialogue between the piano and the orchestra. Eight of the eleven concertos (K. 451, 453, 456, 459, 466, 467, 482, 503) feature dialogue between the piano and the orchestra at the initial entry of the soloist, thus establishing right at the outset intimate interaction between the two parties.32 The subsequent transition sections, which often coincide with the re-entry of the piano after a tutti interjection, are dominated by passagework and figuration,33 but sometimes include a limited amount of 28 29 30 31
32
33
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 2 (1799–1800), col. 696. As given in William McColl’s translation in Colin Lawson, Mozart: Clarinet Concerto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 80. As given in Lawson, Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, p. 79. I do not mean to suggest that virtuosity is absent from the middle movements of Mozart’s grand concertos but simply that the virtuosity is not generally of the flashy, ‘staggering octaves’ kind so detested by critics. For more on dialogue at the entry of the piano, including the types of dialogue Mozart employs, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 77. Parts of the ensuing discussion of dialogue and virtuosity in the first (but not third) movements of Mozart’s piano concertos can also be found – without recourse to grand and intimate aesthetic criteria – in Keefe, ‘The Concertos in Aesthetic and Stylistic Context’ in The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, ed. Keefe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 78–91. See K. 450, bars 87ff.; K. 451, bars 98ff.; K. 453, bars 97ff.; K. 456, bars 87ff.; K. 459, bars 87ff.; K. 466, bars 115ff.; K. 467, bars 91ff.; K. 482, bars 106ff.; K. 491, bars 124ff.; K. 503, bars 146ff.
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dialogue.34 The secondary theme highlights piano/orchestra dialogue in nine of eleven movements, adding to the interactional intimacy evident in the first theme’s presentation.35 Solo virtuosity (passagework and figuration) takes centre stage between the end of the secondary theme and the cadential trill, often beginning with an unaccompanied solo passage (between 3 and 11 bars) that contains either passagework (K. 450, 482) or a solo extension to the preceding thematic material (K. 451, 456, 459). In any case, the piano’s figurative writing either coincides with the final cadence of the secondary theme and is uninterrupted until the cadential trill that concludes the solo exposition (K. 450, 451, 466, 482, 503; brief thematic digressions in K. 456, 467, 459) or, in similar fashion, follows a succession of secondary theme and orchestral ritornello material (K. 453, 488).36 Thus, the alternation of tutti and solo sections (orchestral ritornello – solo exposition – ritornello) that demarcates the most basic formal alternation of grand (orchestra) and brilliant (piano) participation, is complemented by a more subtle oscillation of intimate grandeur (dialogue) and brilliance in Mozart’s solo expositions. His stated aim of striking a stylistic and aesthetic balance is already evident. Accommodating grandeur and brilliance takes more heterogeneous forms in the development sections of the first movements of K. 450–503 than in the solo expositions. Every development section incorporates piano passagework, although the amount varies considerably37 as does its placement in the section; and piano/orchestra dialogue, less frequent than in the solo exposition, is by no means absent.38 Even though piano figuration and no dialogue are most common in segues to the recapitulation, three movements privilege dialogue or simple piano/orchestra alternation.39 The status of dialogue as purveyor of intimate grandeur, however, is often compromised in development sections by confrontational characteristics – the quick-fire modulations and affirmative orchestra gesture in K. 482, bars 214–22, the modal shift in K. 450, bars 149–56 and the harsh juxtaposition of piano semiquavers and snarling orchestra in bars 330–45 of
34 35
36
37 38 39
K. 451, bars 116–18; K. 459, bars 106–12; K. 466, bars 115–21; K. 467, bars 108–10; K. 482, bars 126–29. K. 451, bars 128ff.; K. 453, bars 110ff.; K. 456, bars 128ff.; K. 459, bars 131ff.; K. 466, bars 127ff.; K. 467, 128ff.; K. 488, bars 99ff.; K. 491, bars 147ff.; K. 503, bars 170ff. See the tabular representation of secondary theme dialogue in Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 78. K. 491/i’s formal expansiveness, leading to a kind of double solo exposition demarcated by two separate cadential trills (bars 199–200 and 263–65), follows the first of these patterns in bars 165–200. Passagework in the second half of the solo exposition works in an analogous fashion to the first of the two patterns as well: it begins in bar 220, is interrupted for dialogue in bars 249–56, and then features until the cadential trill (bars 257–62). From 42 bars (231–73) and 52 bars (309–61) in K. 467 and 491 to 16 bars in K. 456 (202–10; 222–28). See K. 450, bars 149–56, 189ff.; K. 451, bars 185–98; K. 459, bars 229–35; K. 482, bars 214–22; K. 488, bars 143–56, 164–70; K. 491, bars 289–92, 330–45; K. 503, bars 228–53, 260–75. For figuration at this juncture, see K. 451, bars 211ff.; K. 456, bars 222ff.; K. 466, bars 242ff.; K. 467, bars 266ff.; 482, bars 253ff.; 488, bars 189ff.; 491, bars 354ff. For dialogue and straightforward alternation, see K. 450, bars 189ff.; K. 453, bars 219ff.; K. 459, bars 241ff.
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K. 491 (discussed below).40 These exchanges demonstrate grandeur in as far as the piano is set against a large orchestra (which participates in full in the K. 491 passage and at the conclusion of the K. 482 passage), but not the kind of grandeur associated with intimate and refined interaction (as witnessed in solo expositions). Unsurprisingly given its formal function, the recapitulation recaptures the intimate grandeur of Mozart’s solo-exposition dialogue. The reprise of material from two sections (orchestral ritornello and solo exposition) rather than one also emphasizes the interweaving of grandeur, intimacy and brilliance. At the opening of the recapitulation Mozart characteristically brings together musical procedures from the onset of the orchestral ritornello and solo exposition sections in the context of dialogue between the piano and orchestra. This comprises successive reprises of material originating at the beginnings of both sections, either reproduced exactly (K. 453, 459, 482) or modified slightly (K. 450, 451, 456, 466, 488).41 It is as if Mozart is symbolically integrating the grandeur of the orchestra’s archetypal role exemplified by the orchestral ritornello with the intimate grandeur of the piano’s and orchestra’s dialogue from the solo exposition, in order to reinforce the aesthetic and stylistic (as well as the self-evident formal) significance of the moment of recapitulation. The restatement of significant thematic material from the orchestral ritornello that is omitted in the solo exposition again casts light on Mozart’s integration of grandeur, intimacy and brilliance. The return of this category of material in six of the eleven piano concertos under discussion includes dialogue between the piano and the orchestra in every case except one;42 even orchestral ritornello material not selected for inclusion in the solo exposition, then, later demonstrates intimate grandeur. With the exception of only one movement (K. 482), in which the relevant orchestral ritornello themes reappear early in the recapitulation, the reprise of material is followed immediately by the onset of brilliant passagework that builds to the piano’s final cadential trill.43 The direct progression from piano/ orchestra dialogue new to the recapitulation to solo passagework thus helps maintain equilibrium between intimate grandeur and solo brilliance. In sum, the first movements of the eleven grand piano concertos from 1784–86 actively negotiate the stylistic and aesthetic balance required of the concerto by late eighteenth-century writers and articulated by Mozart himself. The formal alternation of tutti and solo sections provides a foundation for alternating 40
41 42
43
On the confrontational qualities of these dialogues in K. 450 and 482 in the context of the movements in their entirety and set in historical/aesthetic perspective, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 45–74. For details on the specific procedures in each of these movements, see Keefe, ‘Concertos in Aesthetic and Stylistic Context’, pp. 86–7. K. 450, bars 249ff.; K. 459, bars 358ff.; K. 467, bars 351ff.; K. 482, bars 276ff., 314ff.; K. 491, bars 452ff. The exception – a theme from bar 51 of K. 503 that returns without dialogue in bar 365ff. – is discussed below. K. 450, bars 264ff.; K. 459, bars 348ff.; K. 467, bars 359ff.; K. 491, bars 463ff.
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aesthetic qualities and is refined in the oscillating intimate grandeur and brilliance of the solo exposition; the piano/orchestra confrontations in the development section add an unambiguously grand dimension to piano/orchestra dialogue; and the reprise of orchestral ritornello material in the recapitulation accentuates still further the co-existence of intimate grandeur and brilliance. The finales of K. 450–503 also demonstrate concern for balancing grandeur, intimacy and brilliance. Nine of the eleven movements (K. 450, 451, 456, 459, 466, 467, 482, 488, 503) are cast in a sonata-rondo form that integrates elements of concerto form (especially the ritornellos at the beginning of the movement and at the end of the solo exposition), and can be referred to as concerto rondos.44 Mozart’s standard procedure in these movements – ensuring basic equilibrium between the intimate grandeur of piano/orchestra dialogue and the brilliance of piano passagework – is to begin each of his formal sections except C with dialogue and to incorporate figurative writing at the end of the A and B sections and during C. Often the dialogue is of a straightforward, full-theme variety at the beginning of every section excluding C (K. 450, 456, 459) or at the beginning of almost every section (K. 482, excluding A’’’ and K. 488, excluding A’’); otherwise a variety of techniques are employed at these junctures such as split-theme and imitative dialogue in addition to full-theme dialogue (K. 451, K. 467, K. 503). Even though K. 466 operates somewhat differently – the dialogic role of the main theme diminishes uncharacteristically over the course of the movement45 – Mozart compensates for the relative absence of dialogue in this context by incorporating it elsewhere. At the (re-)entry of the piano, for example (bar 64), the closing gesture in the flute, 2nd oboe and 1st violin (A-C#-D) is taken up by the soloist in a thematic echo of the opening solo theme from the first movement of K. 466 (bar 77). In addition, the F-minor theme (bar 93) incorporates thematic dialogue between piano and orchestra (bars 93–102) and the return of the solo re-entry theme in G minor includes both intricate give and take between piano and winds (bars 241–46) and a rapid antecedent-consequent dialogue (piano/winds, bars 247–62). In light of these dialogic subtleties it is overstating the importance of the piano and orchestra’s exchange of the main theme in the context of interaction in K. 466/iii as a whole to assert that ‘an aberrant rondo theme for the piano . . . [destroys] the very concept of the mutual rondo’ (that is, a rondo characterized by reciprocal solo and orchestral statements of the main thematic material).46 In fact, the apparently ‘radical’ features of this concerto rondo – the return of B in tonic major at the end (bar 355), the F-minor theme heard at a point at which the B
44
45 46
James Webster coins the term concerto rondo for these Mozart movements in ‘Are Mozart’s Concertos “Dramatic”? Concerto Ritornellos versus Aria Introductions in the 1780s’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Zaslaw, p. 113. Most commonly, they are ABACABA or ABACBA in design. Compare the beginning of the movement (bars 1–18), the opening of A’ (bars 168–83) and the final statement of the main theme that gives way to the tonic major version of B (bars 347–54). Joseph Kerman, Concerto Conversations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 109.
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section might reasonably have been expected (bar 93) and the reprise beginning in the minor subdominant with the solo re-entry theme (bar 231) – could be explained as Mozart compensating for the relative lack of piano/orchestra engagement with the main theme by providing opportunities for interaction elsewhere; each of these passages includes dialogue of one sort or another. Mozart juxtaposes dialogue (intimate grandeur) and passagework (brilliance) in the finales of K. 450–503 as another way of maintaining balance between them. In all three movements of Mozart’s concertos, the piano commonly elaborates and embellishes its dialogic responses to orchestral material, or plays arpeggiated and scalar material during an orchestral response; in league with the orchestra, though, the piano combines or blurs the distinction between passagework and dialogue in most pronounced fashion in the finales. This takes several forms. Sometimes the piano and orchestra engage in dialogue with the kind of brilliant-style material that is normally presented by the soloist alone.47 Elsewhere, the piano right and left hands simultaneously integrate figurative writing and dialogue with the orchestra, an especially striking example being the C section of K. 467/iii (bars 240–313), which, unusually for this section of a concerto rondo, features piano/orchestra dialogue almost throughout (bars 240–70; 278–95).48 The dialogue/passagework juxtaposition thus adds another dimension to the stylistic ‘medium’ sought by the composer. Just as piano/orchestra dialogue – following Koch – integrates intimacy and grandeur, so simultaneous dialogue and passagework incorporates intimacy, grandeur and brilliance.
K. 449 re-visited K. 449, its first movement in particular, foreshadows several of the aforementioned stylistic characteristics associated with K. 450–503, such as the confrontational dialogue at the opening of the development section (bars 188–204) and the synthesis of orchestral ritornello and solo exposition at the beginning of the 47
48
The strings and bassoons produce two bars of figurative material in response to the piano at the end of the A section of K. 451/iii (bars 51–2); the strings play four bars of semiquaver scales that echo preceding quaver-crotchet figures in the winds and also semiquaver scalar passagework in the piano in K. 459 (see bars 221–22; 225–26 recapitulated in 409–10, 413–14); the winds participate in a brilliant-style antecedent-consequent dialogue in K. 466/iii (bars 247–63) featuring quick-fire, sequential quaver motion; and the winds extend the full-theme piano/orchestra dialogue at the beginning of the B section of K. 482/iii with an elaborate semiquaver flourish in the flute that pre-empts – in its trill-like oscillation – the subsequent passagework in the piano (see bars 128–47, especially 144ff.). The sequential quaver dialogue between the oboes/bassoons and the piano left hand in bars 278–95 is heard concurrently with semiquaver figurative writing in the piano right hand. Given the paucity of passagework in the C section (only bars 295–304 in addition to the segment in question) and the expectation – based on Mozart’s standard practice in his concerto rondos from 1784–86 – that passagework will feature prominently in this section, it is possible that the right-hand figuration in bars 278–95 is designed not only to integrate intimate grandeur and brilliance but also to provide a more equitable balance between the appearance of both techniques across the section as a whole than would have been witnessed had it been omitted.
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recapitulation (see Chapter 1). Along with its three predecessors K. 413–415, K. 449 also integrates dialogue and passagework – especially in the first movement again – in many of the same ways as K. 450–503. K. 413/i, 414/i and 449/i feature dialogue in the main theme of the solo exposition (bars 53–60, 80–4 and 95–104 respectively) and the secondary theme of the same section (bars 120ff., 115ff., 137ff.); all four concertos highlight solo passagework in the transition, in the final stages of the solo exposition and in the development section; and K. 414 (like K. 449) brings together the openings of the orchestral ritornello and solo exposition at the beginning of the recapitulation to create orchestra-piano dialogue (see bars 196–217), subsequently reprising in dialogue thematic material not heard since the orchestral ritornello (bars 252–63). K. 413–449 and K. 450–503 are demonstrably different too. Lacking the high level of technical virtuosity of K. 450–503 as well as the large orchestra – with concomitant intricate wind writing and forceful sonic presence from the entire group – K. 413, 414 and 415 are more modest in scope than later works. As a result they are able to strike a ‘happy [stylistic] medium’ more straightforwardly than their successors since brilliant virtuosity, orchestral grandeur and piano/orchestral intimate grandeur are each less pronounced and the possibility of imbalance is consequently less marked. While K. 449 sets the stylistic stage for the ensuing grand works, it cannot be regarded as a grand concerto – as Mozart informs us himself – on account of the smaller orchestra employed. But we need to probe the stylistic resonance of K. 449 more deeply if we want to appreciate the significance of Mozart’s new grand concerto conception, with aesthetic and stylistic balance at its core. In the development and at the opening of the recapitulation of the first movement of K. 449, Mozart brings grandeur, brilliance and intimate grandeur into sharper relief than before and in contexts that open up new stylistic horizons. In their confrontation in the early stages of the development section – the first of its kind in Mozart’s concerto oeuvre as we have seen – the piano and orchestra juxtapose brilliant segments with grand segments in the type of grand exchange that is apparent in later works. Above all, Mozart ensures genuine parity between brilliance and grandeur at this juncture by featuring equal-length segments and by avoiding a resolution to the confrontation that would indicate that either the piano or the orchestra – and their respective worlds of brilliance and grandeur – had prevailed. In fact, both parties give ground in the aftermath of the confrontation, the piano by adopting the orchestral trill figure (perhaps as a gesture of reconciliation) and the orchestra by foregoing their stark forte unisons for more harmonious, piano movement in thirds (bars 204–12); the piano and orchestral material subsequently moves into closer relation too (see the arpeggios and octaves in bars 214–18). Mozart is equally careful to balance contrasting aesthetic characteristics at the end of the section, on this occasion orchestral grandeur and the intimate grandeur of piano-orchestra dialogue. Extending our discussion from Chapter 1, the grandeur associated with the orchestra’s confrontational interruption of the piano’s meandering chromatic lines is followed just eight bars later at the piano’s re-entry by a delicate dialogue
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that transforms one of the previous agents of instability (the piano’s ascending chromatic lines) into a gesture of intimacy. On crucial occasions, then, K. 449’s orchestra behaves like a large one (especially in standing its ground against the piano) when in fact it is only a small one, thus illustrating – in conjunction with the piano – how intensification in one domain (grandeur) is best complemented by promoting another domain as well (brilliance or intimate grandeur). This in turn provides a blueprint for stylistic balance in the ensuing grand concertos. It is no accident that the arrival of the grand orchestra in K. 450 coincides with greater solo virtuosity. A simple comparison of the volume of passagework in the first movements of K. 449 and K. 450–53 supports Mozart’s claim that the later concertos are the ones that are ‘bound to make the performer perspire’: while K. 449 contains 73 bars in a first-movement total of 347, K. 450, 451 and 453 each contain 108, 88 and 85 in movements of 308, 325 and 349 bars respectively.49 A larger orchestra results in a greater orchestral presence and also more dialogue, since all orchestral voices are thoroughly ‘worked’ (gearbeitet)50 and since the wind now participate more actively and independently than in Mozart’s previous concertos; a greater element of grandeur and more pronounced intimate grandeur necessitate a greater volume of solo virtuosity in order to maintain aesthetic and stylistic balance. Such balance is not new to K. 450–503, but becomes a governing aesthetic and stylistic principle of Mozart’s new grand concerto style. Moreover, it is K. 449 – introducing a novel type of active orchestral engagement while paying due attention to the stylistic implications of so doing – that stimulates Mozart’s imaginative leap in the direction of greater grandeur, intimacy and brilliance all at the same time.
K. 491 and K. 503 The grand concerto from 1784–86 that illustrates Mozart’s stylistic balance at its most extreme is the C-minor concerto, K. 491. Already identified as an apotheosis among Mozart’s piano concertos for its dialogue51 it must also now be recognized as a climactic work in terms of stylistic equilibrium. And as such, it represents the beginning of a new process of stylistic re-invention in Mozart’s concertos. The first movement of K. 491 contains both the most powerful confrontation between piano and orchestra in Mozart’s concerto repertory (bars 330–45) and the most protracted sequence of piano/orchestra dialogue in his first movements (bars 362–463). Just as increased solo virtuosity and increased orchestral participation in the earlier grand concertos are mutually dependent, so are the con49
50 51
These totals include semiquaver and triplet-quaver passagework. See K. 449: bars 104–11, 113, 115, 117–19, 154–67, 186–87, 190–91, 194–95, 198–99, 202–03, 223–25, 249–54, 256, 258, 260–66, 301–18; K. 450: bars 60, 62, 63–68, 81–84, 96–101, 109–10, 112–35, 154–65, 170–85, 207–09, 225–30, 241–48, 264–82; K. 451: bars 84–95, 108, 110–15, 145–68, 191–92, 199–218, 229–37, 268–82, 297–305; K. 453: bars 91–93, 99–108, 124–32, 153–69, 184–206, 275–83, 304–17. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1800–01), col. 28. See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 75–100.
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frontational and intricate dialogic passages in K. 491/i. Bars 330–45 (see Ex. 2.1) – a paradigmatic example of confrontational dialogue (see Chapter 1) – not only pit the piano against the orchestra but also starkly juxtapose orchestral grandeur and solo brilliance: Mozart marshals his entire orchestral ‘army’ for the forte tuttis (with the exception of the trumpets and the timpani) and sets it against archetypal brilliance (arpeggiated semiquavers) in the piano. But the orchestra do not enter in this context merely ‘to keep up the grandeur of the piece’ in Kollmann’s words. For the dialogue itself is the grandest of Mozart’s concerto exchanges, the piano and orchestra asserting their respective positions with unprecedented force and majesty and moving further from the intimate grandeur model of piano/ orchestra dialogue than any other passage in Mozart’s concerto oeuvre. Correspondingly, the beginning of the recapitulation up to the piano’s semiquaver arpeggios and scalar flourishes preceding the recapitulation’s concluding cadential trill (bars 362–463) feature an unparalleled volume of piano/orchestra dialogue of the intimate grandeur variety.52 Almost every bar from 362–427 consists of either the first or the second segment of a piano/orchestra dialogue; even the ensuing piano brilliance (428–43) is complemented by dialogue among wind instruments, before piano/orchestra dialogue re-appears in bars 452–63.53 The organization of dialogue in the recapitulation section as a whole – both between piano and orchestra and among individual instruments and piano right and left hands – fulfils a structural role, namely bringing together symmetrical arrangements from the orchestral ritornello and solo exposition sections.54 But there is an aesthetic and stylistic purpose as well. By re-establishing intimate grandeur in such a pronounced fashion in the recapitulation, Mozart provides a perfect foil for the remarkable grand confrontation from the development section; equilibrium among grandeur, brilliance and intimacy is uppermost in Mozart’s mind in K. 491/i, its extremes intensified considerably in relation to preceding works. K. 491/ii, following the first movement’s example, brings intimate grandeur and brilliance into a more striking relationship than in earlier slow movements. In the B and C sections of this Rondo (bars 20–38 and 43–62 respectively), the wind lead full-theme dialogues with the piano, performing without accompaniment. The wind are given a type of ornate writing in the B section in particular that is normally only the soloist’s domain (see the demisemiquaver flourishes in bars 21–22 and 29–30), initiating brilliance themselves rather than leaving it to the piano. As a result of the elaborate wind writing, the piano’s dialogued passages embellish the preceding material only slightly; the intimate grandeur of pianowinds dialogue is complemented by the brilliance of both interlocutors. Several of Mozart’s grand concerto slow movements foreshadow the 52 53 54
Although bars 467–70 in the piano part are written as dotted minims, semiquaver scalar elaboration is almost always added. See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 75–100, especially Figure 2, p. 85. Ibid., pp. 85, 91–94.
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Ex. 2.1: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, 1st movement, bars 329–46
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prominent writing for the wind (often unaccompanied) in K. 491/ii. In the sonata-rondo of K. 451/ii, the piano and the wind engage in a number of dialogues: they share the main theme in bars 9–16, perform a split theme in bars 16–24, and imitate each other in bars 45–51, 65–67 and 85–92 (also including split-theme dialogue in 91–92). In K. 482/ii (a hybrid of theme and variation and rondo forms), two extended passages highlight solo roles assigned to the wind: the 28-bar B section consists exclusively of elaborate wind writing (bars 65–92); and the C section (bars 125–44) contains dialogue between flute and bassoon with material just as elaborate as that from the B section of K. 491/ii. And the B section in K. 488/ii (ABA’ form) begins with a solo theme in the flutes, clarinets and bassoons (bars 35–38; with a one-line cello accompaniment) that includes a pianistic triplet semiquaver accompaniment in the 2nd clarinet. K. 491/ii, not without precedence in its exposed and elaborate wind writing, combines intimate grandeur and brilliance in more marked fashion than Mozart’s earlier concerto slow movements. The wind contributions to piano/ orchestra dialogue in K. 451/ii are less brilliant than those in K. 491/ii; and the extended solo passages for wind in K. 482/ii and the single 4-bar passage for solo wind in K. 488/ii lack the intimate grandeur of K. 491/ii, containing no dialogue with the piano (K. 482) and obfuscating dialogue through wind/piano doubling at the beginning of the consequent phrase (K. 488, bars 39–40). In sum, wind participation in K. 451/ii, 482/ii and 488/ii paves the way for the apotheosis of aesthetic balance in K. 491/ii, but does not match it.55 If aesthetic equilibrium reaches its zenith in K. 491, what of Mozart’s next piano concerto, No. 25 in C, K. 503, completed a few months later on 4 December 1786? K. 503 and K. 491 have traditionally been regarded as kindred spirits: K. 503 is ‘deliberately complementary to its great predecessor’, ‘the rival and the complement of the C minor’, a ‘triumph whence every shadow of strife has vanished’ as opposed to a ‘conflict which no victory had ended’ (K. 491), and an ‘epic’ that matches the preceding ‘tragedy’.56 K. 503 is also by common consent one of Mozart’s greatest masterpieces in the concerto genre, a ‘summit’ among his mature concertos, demonstrating ‘a concentration of workmanship and a grandeur which make it the counterpart to the “Jupiter” Symphony among the 55
56
An analogous argument could also be made for K. 491/iii, which features a level of wind involvement unrivalled by Mozart’s earlier grand concerto variation movements – the wind performs each half of variations 2, 4 and 6 by themselves (with the exception of isolated string lines). Irving R. Eisley even goes so far as to claim that K. 491/iii is the ‘[concerto] movement most completely dominated by the winds’. See Eisley, ‘Mozart’s Concertato Orchestra’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1976/77, p. 16. On Mozart’s variation movements – including those from the grand concertos – as they relate to matters of rhetorical detail, see Elaine R. Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 196–234. See Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 176; Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, pp. 416, 420; Radcliffe, Mozart Piano Concertos, p. 62. Stanley Sadie also remarks that ‘the C minor [K. 491] is more profitably considered alongside the other 1786 concerto, the C major K503, for in these two the symphonic approach of K466 and 467 is pursued alongside the treatment of colour and character of K482 and 488’. See New Grove Mozart, p. 125.
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concertos’ and the best specimen of ‘Mozart’s fusion of the concerto with Haydn’s principles of thematic and motivic development’.57 Indubitable greatness aside, K. 503 is more revealing for its departures from Mozart’s preceding piano concerto style – especially in the first movement – than for its similarities. The beginning of the solo exposition, for example, is unparalleled in its rapid combination of orchestral grandeur, intimate grandeur (piano/orchestra dialogue), intimate interaction more generally, and solo brilliance. The piano enters innocuously, imitating the orchestra’s outline of C major harmony and its trill (modified in triplet quavers and semiquavers; bars 91–6); it then introduces nine bars of semiquaver figurative brilliance (bar 103–11) as a segue to the return of the archetypically grand main theme (bar 112). The intimate grandeur of piano/orchestra dialogue is almost always present at the initial entry of the soloist in Mozart’s first movements (as explained above) and brilliant writing heard on several occasions, but the integration of both styles in a clear, unambiguous fashion is unusual.58 At any rate, Mozart saves his succinct, unprecedented masterstroke for the ensuing passage (see Ex. 2.2). In the 7th bar of the orchestra’s restatement of the main theme the piano re-enters with figurative semiquavers (bars 118–19) that support the underlying V7 harmony, purged of the ostentatious brilliance of bars 103–11. Re-visiting its registral highpoint from the semiquaver build-up (f’’’) and emerging imperceptibly from the shadow of the flute’s sustained f’’’ (bars 116–18), the piano creates remarkable intimacy – if not exactly the intimate grandeur of dialogue, then intimacy generated from simultaneous close engagement with the orchestra and re-appropriation of brilliance. The piano’s re-entry, moreover, lays a foundation for the subsequent transformation of the main theme (bars 120–25). The grand theme presented forte by the entire orchestra now assumes a delicacy born of its piano presentation in the winds and dialogic echoes in the piano; archetypal grandeur in the orchestra (bars 112–17) morphs into intimate grandeur (bars 120–25). The passage from the piano’s initial entry in K. 503 until the dialogued statement of the main theme (bars 91–125) is notable not because it challenges Mozart’s prevailing aesthetic balance of grandeur, brilliance and intimacy, but because it so assiduously demonstrates this balance in such a short space of time. Intimate grandeur gives way to brilliance and a grand theme; brilliance is integrated into an intimate context; and a grand theme is transformed into one that exhibits intimate grandeur. In the passage as a whole, then, grandeur and brilliance are neatly circumscribed by intimate grandeur. 57
58
See Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 175; Blom, Mozart, p. 207; H.C. Robbins Landon, ‘The Concertos: (2) Their Musical Origin and Development’, in The Mozart Companion, ed. Landon and Donald Mitchell (New York: Norton, 1969; first published 1956), pp. 264–65. K. 451 includes a one-bar imitation of the orchestra’s closing gesture (bars 75–76) before embarking on a brilliant, embellished version of the main theme (bars 77ff.); and K. 467 introduces the piano in bar 74 with a semiquaver variant of the preceding material in the solo wind, immediately becoming a figurative build-up to the V7 pause in bar 79. For solo brilliance at this juncture, see also K. 450, bars 63–70 and K. 482, bars 89–93.
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Ex. 2.2: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503, 1st movement, bars 116–26
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Like the development section confrontation and recapitulation dialogue in K. 491/i but on a smaller scale, the passage under consideration from K. 503 confirms the privileged position of aesthetic and stylistic balance in Mozart’s concertos. K. 503/i is the only Mozart piano concerto first movement that comes close to rivalling K. 491/i in overall length and scope (432 bars to K. 491/i’s 523 bars); it is unsurprising then that aesthetic equilibrium should again take a striking form. However, the brevity and succinctness of the K. 503/i passage – placed symbolically at the first point in the work that the ‘worlds’ of the piano and the orchestra collide – also initiates modest experimentation on Mozart’s part in regard to the distribution of brilliance and intimate grandeur. At several moments Mozart departs from the standard practices of his earlier grand concerto first movements. The two orchestral interruptions of the piano’s brilliant figuration in the run-up to the cadential trill of the solo exposition (bars 195–98; 202–04), for example, are out of the ordinary. The soloist disrupts its own figuration at this juncture of several of Mozart’s earlier works,59 but not in K. 503/i, where the orchestra (wind) interrupts the piano’s passagework. The wind effect is also more marked than corresponding effects in earlier works, since slow-moving, homophonic fragments are inserted into a texture dominated by rapid piano passagework. The temporary suspension of piano brilliance and concomitant sense of disjunction in bars 195–98 and 202–04 of K. 503/i is accentuated in the concluding bars of the solo exposition. Instead of maintaining forward momentum in the run-up to the cadential trill through semiquavers (K. 451, 453, 456, 466, 488, 491), triplet quavers (K. 459), or a combination of the two (K. 450, 467, 482), the piano in K. 503/i introduces a thrice-repeated 7-quaver pattern (bars 208–10). Heard against only a sustained D in the flute and a repeated semibreve D in the piano left hand, the 7-quaver pattern creates momentary metric uncertainty, undermining the rhythmic drive to the cadential trill. Thus, the piano forgoes brilliance at the very point that we would least expect it to do so. The development and recapitulation sections of K. 503/i also demonstrate original approaches to intimate grandeur and brilliance. The contrapuntal opening of the development features a dialogic tour de force (piano, wind and strings; bars 228–53), going against the grain of Mozart’s grand concerto development sections.60 Three-way dialogue continues, moreover, for a further 16 bars (260–76), now combined with scalar and arpeggiated figuration in the piano. A new procedure is also evident in the recapitulation. In each of the grand concerto first movements preceding K. 503 that delay the reappearance of a theme from the orchestral exposition until the recapitulation, the theme in question is presented
59
60
Cases in point are the sforzando syncopated writing and ensuing bar of quavers/semiquavers in bars 152–55 and 159–61 of K. 456/i, and the new thematic material heard unaccompanied in bars 171–72 of K. 459/i and bars 163–68 of K. 467/i. For an explanation of this passage, including a diagrammatic representation of dialogue, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 94–95.
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in dialogue between the piano and the orchestra on its return.61 In K. 503/i, though, the march theme from the orchestral exposition is heard only in the wind (bars 365–72; originally bar 51), the first half against a piano trill and the second against semiquaver arpeggiated figuration. Thus, intimate grandeur is unexpectedly eschewed, the piano taking an opportunity to exploit brilliant passagework instead (bars 369ff.) In K. 503/i, Mozart’s modifications to his standard methods of combining grandeur, brilliance and intimacy reveal not a wholesale shift away from aesthetic balance, but a reconfiguration of this balance in light of stylistic experimentation. Neither the wind interruptions to the piano passagework towards the end of the solo exposition nor the piano’s subsequent 7-quaver patterns ultimately detract from the function of this passage as a virtuosic showpiece for the piano; as a result, the broad alternation of intimate grandeur and brilliance across the solo exposition (discussed above) remains in place. Similarly, in spite of the prominence of dialogue in the development, Mozart continues to highlight piano passagework in the second half of the section, perhaps rendering the piano writing especially ostentatious in the re-transition (bars 282–89; see in particular the arpeggiated semiquavers in contrary motion in bars 286–89) in order to compensate for an absence of figurative writing in the first half of the section. In addition, the lack of piano/orchestra dialogue at the return of the theme from bar 51 in the recapitulation does not weight this section too heavily in favour of brilliance – for four bars at least (365–68) the prevailing piano passagework is set aside, as it is again in the homophonic wind interpolations and the piano’s 7-quaver pattern originally heard in the solo exposition (bars 380–82, 386–87, 393–95). Stylistic experimentation in K. 503/i is significant even though aesthetic and stylistic balance remains a priority. Above all, Mozart continues a process of re-invention in K. 503 that was initiated by the climactic K. 491; more systematic reappraisals of his concerto style will follow in his final two works in the genre, K. 537 and 595 (see Chapter 3). Just as K. 449 initiates re-invention, stimulated by contrasting conceptions of the concerto genre and an interrupted genesis of the first movement that sets the two conceptions in sharp focus, so K. 491 begins a new process, manipulating existing procedures to a point where Mozart deemed stylistic change necessary. For Mozart had reached a stylistic apotheosis in K. 491: dialogue will never again be as protracted, sophisticated or carefully designed in a piano concerto first movement; dialogic confrontations will never approach the level of intensity of the first movement development section; the wind will never
61
See K. 450, bars 248–64; K. 459, bars 341–47; K. 467, bars 351–59; K. 482, bars 276–94 and 314–30; K. 491, bars 452–62. Three themes from the orchestral exposition of K. 491 not appearing in the solo exposition are brought back consecutively in the recapitulation, but only the third features piano/orchestra dialogue (bars 452–62). I would argue that Mozart forgoes piano/orchestra dialogue in bars 435–44 and 444–52 in order to invoke the symmetrical arrangements of both the orchestral and solo expositions across the recapitulation as a whole. See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 82–88, 91–94.
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again be as prominent across an entire movement as in the second movement; and formal schemes will never be as complex – nor will a movement be as protracted – as K. 491/i. Retaining the broad scope and gravitas of its predecessor’s first movement, K. 503/i re-appraises certain aspects of Mozart’s concerto style, setting the stage for further change in K. 537 and K. 595.
3 A Complementary Pair: Stylistic Experimentation in Mozart’s Final Piano Concertos, No. 26 in D, K. 537 (the ‘Coronation’), and No. 27 in Bb, K. 595
W
ITH his Piano Concerto No. 25 in C, K. 503, completed in Vienna on 4 December 1786, Mozart brought an extraordinary sequence of Viennese concertos to a close. In the space of four years (1782–86) he had composed 15 masterworks, endearing himself to the Viennese public through acclaimed performances at the Burgtheater, Trattnerhof and Mehlgrube.1 Alongside his singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), his opera Le nozze di Figaro (1786), and his six string quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, 465, published in 1785), these concertos established Mozart as a leading light on the Viennese musical scene. In contrast to his prolific concerto production of 1782–86, Mozart completed only two more piano concertos between the end of 1786 and his death in 1791: No. 26 in D, K. 537, nicknamed the ‘Coronation’ on account of Mozart’s performance of the work at the coronation festivities for Leopold II in Frankfurt on 15 October 1790, and No. 27 in Bb, K. 595.2 In spite of the success of the former on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century concert stage, neither is among his most popular instrumental works, nor – with the notable exception of several commentaries on the latter – among his most critically acclaimed.3 In fact, no major instrumental work from Mozart’s entire Viennese period has suffered
1
2
3
Mozart testifies to the success of his piano concerto performances in letters to his father dated 24 March and 10 April 1784. In addition, he lists an impressive 176 subscribers for his series of subscription concerts in the spring 1784 season. See Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, pp. 870–73. Mozart entered K. 537 and 595 into his thematic catalogue, the Verzeichnüss aller meiner Werke, on 24 February 1788 and 5 January 1791 respectively. However, K. 595 probably had a protracted genesis stretching back to 1788, the stylistic ramifications of which are discussed below. See Tyson, Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores, pp. 153, 156. It is also possible that Mozart’s initial ideas for K. 537, a 21-bar fragment for the first movement and a sketch for the second, date back to early 1787, or even (in the case of the former) December 1786. See Tyson, ‘Mozart’s Piano Concerto Fragments’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Neal Zaslaw, pp. 70–71. Two French critics even suggest that it is partly because K. 537 was so popular in the nineteenth century that it was often shunned in the twentieth century. See Jean Massin and Brigitte Massin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Paris: Fayard, 1970 [first published 1959]), p. 1070.
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comparable ignominy in the hands of commentators as K. 537. Cuthbert Girdlestone identifies it as ‘one of the poorest and emptiest’ of Mozart’s piano concertos; Denis Forman describes it as ‘an occasional piece of the second rank’ which is ‘uneven in workmanship’; Georges de Saint-Foix regards it as less ‘profound’ than its predecessors in the concerto genre, ‘intended rather for the glory of a great virtuoso’; Philip Radcliffe finds it ‘slight and sketchy’; Jean and Brigitte Massin represent it as an attempt on Mozart’s part to get back in touch with his musical public ‘and not [as] a work of profound exploration’ (exploration profonde); Eric Blom comments that it is ‘curiously empty’, making a ‘rather static impression’; Jean-Victor Hocquard considers it ‘very much inferior’ (bien inférieur) to Mozart’s 12 preceding piano concertos (K. 449–503); and Arthur Hutchings, going furthest of all in his condemnation of the second movement, wishes he ‘had the end seats . . . only [regretting] that Mozart stooped so low’.4 Setting aside gratuitous dismissals of K. 537, Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto is regarded in any case as stylistically distinct from his preceding sequence of works. Arthur Hutchings recognizes K. 537 both as ‘a reversion to the galanterie of J.C. Bach’ and ‘as an isolated phenomenon, not . . . a member of the progressing series’.5 Forman also identifies a stylistically backward quality to K. 537, stating that ‘[t]he orchestration generally has slipped back to the pre-[K.]449 style with scarcely any individual writing for the woodwind’.6 Girdlestone comments too that ‘the lack of all interplay . . . is particularly distressing; no concerto since 1782 had been so devoid of it’.7 Even Chris Goertzen’s detailed study of the orchestration of K. 537, explaining ‘regressive’ features such as unison doublings, the absence of chordal antiphony in the strings and winds, and the absence of the winds for the majority of the first movement’s solo exposition as ‘compromises’ that accommodate performances without wind instruments, comes across as an extended apology for weaknesses not evident in Mozart’s other Viennese concertos.8 Positive appraisals of K. 537 also emphasize Mozart’s departures from his earlier concerto style. Charles Rosen, an eloquent proponent of the work, identifies stylistically progressive qualities, notably the emphasis on melodic succession, and therefore regards it as fundamentally different from Mozart’s preceding concertos, indeed as a ‘revolutionary’ work: ‘We cannot listen to it with the same 4
5 6 7 8
See Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 456; Forman, Mozart’s Concerto Form, pp. 237, 243; Georges de Saint-Foix, W.A. Mozart: Sa vie musicale et son oeuvre, vol. 4. L’épanouissement: Figaro, Don Juan et les grandes symphonies (Paris: Desclée, 1939), p. 318 (‘Il nous apparaît moins poussée en profondeur, et plûtot destiné à la gloire d’un grand virtuose’); Radcliffe, Mozart Piano Concertos, p. 65; Massin and Massin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, p. 1069; Blom, Mozart, pp. 133, 207; Jean-Victor Hocquard, La pensée de Mozart (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1958), p. 159; Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 188. Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 185, 186. See Forman, Mozart’s Concerto Form, p. 243. Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 458. See Chris Goertzen, ‘Compromises in Orchestration in Mozart’s Coronation Concerto’, The Musical Quarterly, 75 (1991), pp. 148–73.
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expectations that we have for the other works. It demands to be judged by later standards: viewed in this light, it can be seen as the greatest of early Romantic piano concertos’.9 In a similar fashion to Rosen, R.G. Reynolds argues in general terms that tonal relationships in the first movement of K. 537 anticipate the Romantic idiom, thus marking a departure from Mozart’s earlier practice.10 Although sanguine and insightful analyses – especially by Austro-German scholars – continue to rehabilitate K. 537 critically speaking, they do not directly address a major source of critical disgruntlement, and an issue vital to our appreciation of stylistic re-invention, namely the relationship of K. 537 to Mozart’s earlier piano concertos and to K. 595.11 In contrast to K. 537, K. 595 is distinguished from its Viennese predecessors in both stylistic and affective terms. Girdlestone, locating ‘neither the complexity nor the curious details of its great predecessors’, finds that ‘virtuosity is almost entirely absent. No other concerto is so devoid of it. . . . Mozart appears to renounce his very conception of the genre and bring his piano down to the level of an orchestral instrument’; Hermann Abert argues that K. 595 is similar in formal construction to the earlier works but ‘differs noticeably from them in its whole manner [Haltung]’, featuring a more personal and resigned tone sharply differentiated from the passion of the two preceding minor-key concertos, K. 466 and K. 491; Massin and Massin detect a lack of ‘strong dramatic tension’ (forte tension dramatique) in comparison to the 1785–86 concertos; Hocquard asserts that the ‘strange detachment’ (détachment étrange) and ‘serene indifference’ (indifférence sereine) of K. 595 far outweigh superficial similarities with Mozart’s preceding concertos and that affective contrasts in the first movement lack the feverishness and capriciousness of works from earlier years; H.C. Robbins Landon states categorically: ‘How different is K. 595 from the full-blooded concertos of the earlier Viennese period, with their infinite promise of things to come. The chromaticism in K. 595 is no longer restless . . . nor are there mysterious, hidden undertones of leashed passion’; and Forman, perceiving an ‘uneven work’, claims that ‘the gaiety and wit of the Melodic concertos have gone, the bustle and drive of the Galant style has become mechanical. The work does not aspire to the heroic plane of the great Symphonic concertos.’12 Even when K. 595 is not compared to 9 10 11
12
Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York: Norton 1971), pp. 259, 260. See Reynolds, ‘K. 537: Regression or Progression?’ Music Review, 34 (1974), pp. 142–48. On the first half of the first movement of K. 537 and on connections between tutti blocks from the orchestral exposition and similar timbral occurrences later in the movement, see Jutta Ruile-Dronke, Ritornell und Solo in Mozarts Klavierkonzerten (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1978), pp. 99–109 and 160–65. Ruile-Dronke also addresses the placement of specific ritornello material in the first movement of K. 537 and the ramifications of this placement for the integration of sonata form techniques into the concerto. See ‘Der Ort der Solokadenz im Konzert KV537: Überlegungen zur Satzanlage bei Mozart’, Mozart Studien, 5 (1995), pp. 173–82. For a brief, recent examination of the recapitulation of K. 537/i see Manfred Hermann Schmid, Orchester und Soloist in den Konzerten von W.A. Mozart (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1999), pp. 313–16. See Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, pp. 471, 478; Abert, W.A. Mozart: Zweiter Teil,
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Mozart’s earlier piano concertos, its unique attributes are implicitly or explicitly recognized. Saint-Foix identifies a ‘dreamy melancholy that flavors this whole astonishing masterwork!’13 Wolfgang Hildesheimer cites ‘the quality of a transfigured farewell’ often associated with K. 595.14 And Alfred Einstein, an effusive advocate of the work, asserts that it ‘stands “at the gate of heaven.” . . . It was not in the Requiem that he said his last word, however, but in this work. . . . This is the musical counterpart to the confession he made in his letters to the effect that life had lost attraction for him.’ K. 595, moreover, is ‘so perfect that the question of style has become meaningless’.15 Given the chronological separation of K. 537 and 595 from Mozart’s 1782–86 sequence of piano concertos (at least in regard to the completion dates of these final two works), it is no surprise that critics stress stylistic and affective departures from Mozart’s idiom. Nor is it remarkable, on account of the three-year gap between the completions of K. 537 and K. 595 (February 1788, January 1791), that writers draw attention to the striking stylistic differences between them (in particular the profusion of virtuosic writing for the soloist in K. 537 and its scarcity in K. 595). But the questions of how and, perhaps more importantly, why K. 537 and 595 depart from stylistic procedures evident in Mozart’s earlier Viennese piano concertos, and of precisely how the two works themselves relate to each other have never been addressed in detail. The possibility, for example, that the first two movements of K. 595 were composed in 1788, three years ahead of Mozart’s Verzeichnüss date of 5 January 1791 and at approximately the same time as the completion of K. 537 – recently proposed tentatively by Alan Tyson upon studying the paper types of the autograph score – renders connections between the two works especially intriguing, even accepting the possibility that parts of K. 537 itself date back to early 1787 and initial sketches even to December 1786.16 Despite sharply contrasting musical characteristics such as the piano’s ostentatious virtuosity in K. 537 and the more measured approach in K. 595, Mozart’s last two piano concertos share a number of important features. For the only time in his sequence of Viennese piano concertos, for example, Mozart casts the second and third movements of adjacent works in the same forms; both middle movements have an ABA design and both finales are sonata-rondos.17 In addition, the
13 14 15 16 17
1783–1791 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1956), p. 598; Massin and Massin, Mozart, p. 1125; Hocquard, La pensée de Mozart, p. 206; H. C. Robbins Landon, ‘The Concertos: (2) Their Musical Origin and Development’, in The Mozart Companion, ed. Landon and Donald Mitchell (New York: Norton, 1956), p. 278; Forman, Mozart’s Concerto Form, p. 248. Saint-Foix, W.A. Mozart: Sa vie musicale et son oeuvre, vol. 5. Les dernières années (Paris: Desclée, 1946), p. 170 (‘reveuse mélancholie, qui parfume cet étonnant chef-d’oeuvre tout entier!’). Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Mozart, trans. Marion Faber (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977; English edition, New York: Vintage, 1983), p. 300. Einstein, Mozart, pp. 314, 315. On K. 595, see Tyson, Mozart, 153, 156; on K. 537, Tyson, ‘Mozart Piano Concerto Fragments’, pp. 70–71. Among Mozart’s earlier Viennese piano concertos, two of the so-called ‘subscription’ set, K. 413 and K. 415 from 1782–83 – published in 1785 as Op. 4 nos. 2 and 3 respectively – come closest to K.
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second movements contain striking internal correspondences. Their initial A sections follow the same formal patterns (solo piano presentation of the main theme, orchestral presentation of the main theme, solo piano continuation of the theme leading back to a restatement of the beginning of the theme, concluding orchestral tutti), are similar in length (43 and 48 bars respectively) and include comparable writing in their concluding orchestral passages, where sudden full-orchestra fortes in the third bar succeed two piano bars scored for strings, horn(s) and bassoon(s); their B sections, in turn, are both in a ‘romance’ style, characterized by sparse orchestral scoring and eloquent simplicity and expression.18 Striking stylistic and formal similarities between the second movements of K. 537 and 595 inevitably encourage comparison of the ostensibly dissimilar first movements. Indeed, Mozart is at his most stylistically innovative in these movements; determining the relationship between his last two piano concertos is therefore particularly challenging in this context. In an attempt to gauge the experimental nature of K. 537 and 595, the complementary qualities of the two works, and ultimately their unique place in Mozart’s concerto repertory, I shall first turn to specific manifestations of stylistic experimentation in the first movements of K. 537 and 595, and then proceed to situate these manifestations in their wider compositional contexts. As we shall see, K. 537 and 595 represent a meticulously planned continuation to the process of stylistic re-invention initiated by the climactic K. 491 and by K. 503, albeit without fundamentally challenging the balance of grand, brilliant and intimate qualities that characterize Mozart’s grand concertos from K. 450 onwards.
Stylistic experimentation in the first movements of K. 537 and 595 The most stylistically remarkable passages in the first movement of K. 537 occur in the solo exposition and recapitulation. Eight bars into their statement of the secondary theme in the solo exposition (bar 172), for example, the strings fade away, allowing the piano to engage in a 14-bar solo passage (bars 180–93; see Ex.
18
537 and 595 in this respect. Both middle movements are in slow-movement concerto form (i.e. without a development section); however, K. 413’s sonata-rondo finale carries a ‘Tempo di Menuetto’ indication, while K. 415’s sonata-rondo incorporates two Adagio sections in bars 49–63 and 216–30. On connections among K. 413, 414 and 415, see Ellwood Derr, ‘Some Thoughts on the Design of Mozart’s Opus 4, the “Subscription Concertos” (K. 414, 413, and 415)’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Zaslaw, pp. 187–210. James Webster designates sonata-rondo movements that incorporate ritornello characteristics as ‘concerto-rondos’. See ‘Are Mozart’s Concertos “Dramatic”? Concerto Ritornellos Versus Aria Introductions in the 1780s’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Zaslaw, pp. 107–37, at p. 113. On the ‘Romance’ style in five of Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos see Kathryn L. Shanks Libin, ‘ “Romance” Style and the Narrative Voice in Mozart’s Keyboard Concertos: K. 451, 466, 467, 537, and 595’ (unpublished paper read at the study session of the Mozart Society of America, Boston, 30 October 1998). For a discussion of K. 466/ii, titled ‘Romance’, see Grayson, Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 21, pp. 57–63.
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3.1). Brief passages of figuration for unaccompanied piano are not uncommon immediately after the presentation of the secondary theme in the solo expositions of the first movements of Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos.19 In addition, several movements include unaccompanied extensions to the preceding presentations of the secondary theme.20 However, the K. 537 passage, an extension of the piano’s decorated version of the theme, is extraordinary, not only because it is longer than any of the corresponding passages in Mozart’s other Viennese concertos but because it demonstrates a harmonic richness and a contrapuntal and sequential intricacy that has little precedent earlier in the movement. While corresponding passages in earlier concertos remain harmonically unadventurous, K. 537’s passage uses Neapolitan harmony as a pivot to colourful ascending and descending sequential writing. It is as if Mozart’s piano has wandered off on its own monologic excursion, unaware of either Mozart’s typical procedure at this juncture or the stark harmonic contrast its material has created with the preceding secondary theme.21 An equally startling juxtaposition of contrasting harmonic styles occurs in the recapitulation of K. 537/i. Following the restatement of the secondary theme, Mozart segues to a theme heard in the orchestral but not the solo exposition (bars 383–94, originally bars 58–74). At a point where he previously introduced subdominant minor harmony in the strings (bar 70, although spelled with an A# in the violins rather than a Bb), Mozart now employs a full orchestra/piano fp subdominant minor chord (bars 395–96) as a springboard for a startling iv – dim7 (A-C-Eb-F#) – dim7 (B-D-F-G#) progression (bars 395–400, see Ex. 3.2) immediately preceding the extended I6/4 – V7 – I cadential progression (bars 401–409). Again, there is no comparable writing at the corresponding moments of those Mozart Viennese piano concerto first movements that delay the restatement of significant thematic material from the orchestral exposition until the recapitulation (K. 414, 450, 459, 467, 482, 491, 503). To be sure, the return of such thematic material is usually followed, as in K. 537, by the beginning of virtuosic figuration
19
20
21
K. 413 (bars 138–44), K. 414 (bars 127–36), K. 415 (bars 108–18), K. 449 (bars 154–61), K. 450 (bars 119–25), K. 482 (bars 171–78) and K. 595 (bars 153–57) all contain segments of solo piano writing between 3 and 11 bars in length. At the corresponding junctures of K. 466 and K. 503, solo bars in the piano are interspersed with accompanied material over more extended periods (bars 143–64 and 191–206 respectively) than in K. 413, K. 414, K. 415, K. 449, K. 450, K. 482 and K. 595. See K. 451 (bars 138–40), K. 456 (bars 136–41) and K. 459 (bars 144–48). Bars 136–41 of K. 456 are followed by the piano’s solo rendition of the antecedent phrase of a theme from the orchestral exposition (bars 142–45). In K. 467, the conclusion of the secondary theme (bars 128–43) is followed by the piano’s unaccompanied two-bar statement of the main theme’s head motif, subsequently passed to the strings and the woodwinds. The secondary theme is itself, according to Konrad Küster, the ‘most unusual’ (ungewöhnlichste) among the first movements of Mozart’s piano concertos, given the way in which its initial appearance in the orchestral exposition is modified in the solo exposition and shortened in the recapitulation. See Küster, Formale Aspekte des ersten Allegros in Mozarts Konzerten (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991), p. 160.
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Ex. 3.1: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, K. 537, 1st movement, bars 178–89
that builds to the piano’s concluding cadential trill,22 but on none of these occasions is the harmonic or affective contrast with the immediately preceding thematic material so stark as it is in K. 537. It is entirely typical of Mozart’s modus operandi in the concerto and elsewhere, of course, for distinctive harmonies, harmonic procedures, or progressions appearing early in a movement to be realized most emphatically later on (in this case, subdominant minor harmony, as well as the terse diminished triads previously featured in the piano part in bars 145–51 and 329–35). The alternation of arpeggiated semiquaver figuration and conjunct material (in one-bar units) in bars 395–400 of K. 537 also recalls the alternation of similar material (in two-bar units) in the extraordinary piano/ orchestra confrontations from the development sections of K. 449/i and K. 491/i (see Chapters 1 and 2). Bars 395–400 of K. 537/i are exceptional, however, for displacing this harsh alternation from the development to the recapitulation section while purging it of its confrontational quality (the piano and the orchestra are no longer set against each other as in the K. 449 and 491 passages) and placing it immediately after a diatonic thematic presentation. In fact, the abrupt harmonic contrast between bars 180–93 and 395–400 of K. 537/i on one hand, and the passages preceding these bars on the other, is 22
See K. 414, bar 264; K. 450, bar 264; K. 459, bar 348; K. 467, bar 359; K. 491, bar 463; and K. 503, bar 372. In K. 491, three orchestral exposition themes omitted in the solo exposition reappear in succession (bars 435–44, 444–52, 452–63). K. 482 is the odd movement out, with both of the orchestral exposition themes omitted from the solo exposition reappearing early in the recapitulation (bars 276 and 314).
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Ex. 3.2: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, K. 537, 1st movement, bars 395–401
characteristic of Mozart’s disjunctive continuations throughout the movement. Rosen cites ‘long athematic passages, setting off one section from another’ in the orchestral exposition (bars 32–37 and 57–58).23 Uneven transitions and odd discontinuities also prevail in the solo exposition. While the piano’s presentation of the secondary theme (bar 164), for example, ends on the tonic of the secondary key in bar 171, the restatement in the strings begins on the same harmony only in bar 172, leaving a bar of descending semiquaver filler in the piano, which in any case jumps awkwardly down an octave (a–A, bars 171–72). In addition, there is a somewhat unwieldy transition from the piano’s presentation of the main theme at the beginning of the section to the orchestra’s first tutti interjection of the solo exposition (bars 99–103). Whereas Mozart normally elides the piano’s cadence with the beginning of the first segment marked tutti to produce a smooth transition from piano to orchestral contributions, often incorporating piano/orchestra dialogue at the beginning or end of the tutti to enhance this fluid effect, he avoids an elision in K. 537/i (bar 99), makes no attempt to engage his piano and orchestra
23
Rosen, Classical Style, 259. For a brief discussion of the distribution of ritornello material in the orchestral exposition of K. 537 as compared to the distribution in subsequent ritornellos, see Robert Forster, Die Kopfsätze der Klavierkonzerte Mozarts und Beethovens: Gesamtaufbau, Solokadenz und Schlussbildung (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1992), p. 58.
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in dialogue, and stresses the rigidity of the sectional divide by prefacing the tutti with an unduly long ii6 (bars 91–95) – I6/4 (95–98) – V (98) – I cadential progression in the piano.24 It is as if Mozart is deliberately accentuating harmonic and thematic discontinuities in the movement as a whole in an attempt to contravene his established stylistic practices. While K. 537/i is stylistically experimental both in the solo exposition and recapitulation, K. 595/i contains a particularly remarkable development section. Like the preceding work, Mozart’s final piano concerto brings the issue of musical continuity to the fore mostly as a result of exploration in the harmonic domain. At the beginning of the development section, for example, the piano enters in B minor (bar 191), an augmented fourth from the dominant key established at the end of the solo exposition and a semitone above Bb, the tonic of the movement (for bars 185–204, see Ex. 3.3).25 No other first-movement development section in Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos begins in so distant a key.26 The majority open either in the dominant (K. 414, 415, 449, 456, 488), the dominant minor (K. 413, 450, 482, 537), or the relative major (K. 466, 491); three begin in the mediant key (K. 459, 467, 503), one in the flattened mediant (K. 453), and one in the supertonic (K. 451). Thus, each of the first 16 Viennese piano concertos begins its development section in a key closely related to the preceding dominant – bVI in K. 453, the result of an interrupted cadence in D, is the most distant of these – while K. 595 bucks the trend considerably.27 More striking than the actual choice of key for the piano’s re-entry at the beginning of the development section is its harmonic preparation in the preceding bars and the modulatory procedures of the succeeding passage (see Ex. 3.3). In bars 183–85, the dominant F is reconfirmed via a dim 7 – I 6/4 – V 7 – I progression;
24
25
26
27
For smooth transitions from piano to orchestral segments see K. 413 (bar 68), K. 414 (bar 82), K. 415 (bar 67), K. 453 (bar 94), K. 456 (bar 87), K. 459 (bar 106), K. 466 (bar 91), K. 467 (bar 107), K. 482 (bar 94), K. 488 (bar 82), K. 491 (bar 118), and K. 503 (bar 112). In several of these instances – K. 413, 415, 466, 482, 491, 503 – the first tutti constitutes an orchestral presentation of the main theme of the movement. For manifestations of dialogue at this juncture, see the transitions into the tutti section of K. 414 and out of the tutti sections of K. 413, 414, 459, 467, 488, 491, 595. I take the beginning of the development section in first-movement concerto form to coincide with the re-entry of the soloist following the orchestral tutti after the piano’s cadential trill. On a number of occasions, including K. 595/i, this tutti section modulates away from the dominant. The opening of the development section of K. 456’s sonata-rondo finale (also in Bb) offers something of a precedent for this moment; as in K. 595/i, the section begins in B minor. But the process of moving to B minor in each movement is very different. While the modulation is abrupt and disorientating in K. 595/i (as described in the paragraph below), it is fluent and lucid in K. 456/iii, moving from I/Bb – I4/2/Bb – VI7/Bb or VI7/b – i6/b – V9/b – dim7 (over dominant pedal) – V/b – i/b (bars 162–71). According to Karol Berger, the uniqueness of this passage in K. 595/i also extends to the formal punctuation in the bars immediately preceding the development section. For Berger, ‘the articulation at the end of the second tutti is blurred in a unique way: the preceding linked appendix (bars 183–85) seems to be repeated, but it almost immediately begins to modulate, and then is interrupted, to be followed by the second solo in bar 191’. See ‘The First-Movement Punctuation Form in Mozart’s Piano Concertos’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Zaslaw, pp. 239–59, at p. 253.
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Ex. 3.3: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 27 in Bb, K. 595, 1st movement, bars 185–204
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chromatic lines then lead to a different diminished seventh chord (Bb-Db-E-G) in bars 186, 188 and 190 (respelled C#-E-G-A#), and to the abrupt arrival of B minor in the piano in bar 191. In the space of a mere 6 bars, the music travels from F to the distant key of B minor, an uneven transition for which the first half of the movement had offered little preparation. But an even more audaciously disjunctive passage follows. After the piano’s statement of the main theme in B minor, the strings outline yet another diminished seventh harmony, the third in 12 bars (C-A-F#-D#, bars 194–96) and one that does not function either as a smooth successor to B minor (bar 194) or as an effective antecedent to the ensuing C major. The diminished seventh harmony in the strings and the subsequent stepwise descent in the oboes and bassoons (C,A – G,B – F#,A) render the arrival of C major in bar 197 extremely brusque; once again, the music has progressed to a point of far remove in the course of just 6 bars (B minor – C major, bars 191–97). Even the ensuing C major presentation of the main theme – which gives the impression of an unsettling restart to the development section after the previous unsuccessful attempt – is promptly contradicted by C minor and Eb major arpeggios in the winds and piano respectively (bars 201–204), with textural and harmonic continuity resuming at bar 202. The overt and startling experimentation at the outset of the development section of the first movement of K. 595 is complemented by covert and understated originality at the section’s close.28 Preparation for the recapitulation in the first movements of Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos usually features either dialogue between the piano and the orchestra (K. 413, 450, 459) or piano passage-work accompanied by the orchestra that segues into a restatement of the main theme (K. 451, 456, 467, 482, 488, 491, 503, 537).29 In K. 595/i, however, both techniques are uniquely combined at this juncture to create a mellifluous sectional transition. The piano’s modified version of the main theme (bars 231–34) passes to the oboes and bassoons (bars 235–41), and the piano’s triplet arpeggio figuration is subsumed by the orchestral texture rather than (as is almost always the case) standing out from it; the strings then recapitulate the main theme in full (bar 242).30 Resolution of the disjunction from the beginning of the 28
29
30
Konrad Küster also comments on the unusual, striking nature of the middle segment of the development section of K. 595/i – the central sequence – where the orchestra accompanies the piano’s sequenced figuration with ritornello material. See Küster, Formale Aspekte, pp. 142–43. K. 456’s recapitulation – in the latter category – is also preceded by a four-bar passage in the winds; and K. 453 features alternation between the piano and the orchestra, but not dialogue. K. 415 and 449 do not follow either pattern. For a discussion of the development-to-recapitulation transition of K. 449/i, somewhat pre-empted by the corresponding moments in K. 415, 413 and 414, see Chapter 1. This presentation of the main theme in the reprise (as in the solo exposition) is also unusual, at least in relation to the original statement of the theme at the beginning of the movement. As Konrad Küster explains, the absence of the initial ‘introductory’ bar in the solo exposition and recapitulation leads to adjustments to these statements of the main theme in order to accommodate regular phrasing (see bars 81–96 and 242–57) that complement the initial 16-bar statement in the orchestral exposition (bars 1–16). See Küster, Formale Aspekte, p. 192.
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development – smooth dialogue among the piano, winds and strings replacing the earlier stilted exchange – is enhanced by the harmonic progression in bars 235–42: the subtle move from D major to D minor harmony (bars 235–37) and the use of a diminished seventh (bar 239) to segue smoothly to the dominant of Bb replace the abrupt major/minor shifts (F-b, C-c-Eb) and diminished seventh harmonies that had begun the section. Just as two types of passages new to Mozart’s piano concerto development sections in K. 595/i are closely linked, the second resolving disjunctions from the first, so stylistic originality at the end of the recapitulation of the movement relates closely to innovation in the development. Immediately after its cadential trill in bars 334–35, the piano participates in an antecedent/consequent dialogue with the orchestra (bars 335–38), bringing back material that had preceded the B minor passage at the beginning of the development (bars 182–85). The orchestra’s ensuing chromatic line (bars 338–39, corresponding to bars 185–90 and 57–58) is followed by a bII6 – I6/4 – V7 progression in the piano (bars 340–42, Ex. 3.4, corresponding to bars 59–61 in the orchestral exposition), ultimately reconfirming the tonic Bb in bars 346 and 351–52. Thus at a moment analogous to the piano’s introduction of B minor at the beginning of the development (namely, after the ascending chromatic lines in the orchestra) as a means for effecting instability, the piano now reintroduces Cb harmony (enharmonically B) as a contribution to tonal stability (i.e. reconfirming Bb), re-establishing the conventional harmonic function for the sonority as a Neapolitan sixth. Although Mozart had reintroduced his soloist after the cadential trill (excluding cadenza sections) in K. 491/i, and in K. 271/i and 246/i in his Salzburg piano concertos, on none of these earlier occasions did he lend the reappearance such an explicit and succinct sense of harmonic resolution.31 Viewed collectively, Mozart’s stylistic experiments in K. 537/i and 595/i challenge fundamental aspects of his earlier concerto writing. Both movements introduce abrupt juxtapositions of harmonically contrasting material (the beginning of the development section of K. 595 and several aforementioned passages in the solo exposition and recapitulation sections of K. 537), while avoiding the outright opposition of piano and orchestral forces evident in Mozart’s earlier
31
In an article on the first movement of K. 595, David Rosen explains the return of the soloist in bar 336 as ‘an understandable response to a compositional problem: the incompatibility between Mozart’s usual formal procedure and the actual musical material of K. 595’. Although I take Rosen’s point that the return of bars 59–75 in bars 340–56 satisfies Mozart’s self-imposed ‘rule’ that all the material from the orchestral exposition must reappear at least once in the remainder of the movement, I fail to see that the piano’s presence is any more formally effective than would have been a straightforward repetition (or recasting) of the orchestral scoring from the earlier section. Why would Mozart have found it more effective for the orchestra ‘to reenter with a forte’ in bar 352 when the orchestra had already asserted its authority with sforzando chords in bars 335 and 338 following the piano’s cadential trill? See Rosen, ‘The Composer’s “Standard Operating Procedure” as Evidence of Intention: the Case of a Formal Quirk in Mozart’s K. 595’, Journal of Musicology, 5 (1987), p. 86.
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Ex. 3.4: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 27 in Bb, K. 595, 1st movement, bars 338–42
Viennese first movements (bars 188–204 of K. 449/i, bars 192–220 of K. 466/i and bars 330–45 of K. 490/i, for example); both experiment with piano figuration, omitting it when expected (after the secondary theme of K. 537) or reconstituting it at an important formal juncture (the end of the development section of K. 595); and both initiate unexpected thematic and harmonic disjunctions (the uneven transitions in K. 537 and the abrupt harmonic shifts and C-major ‘restart’ to the development in K. 595). That said, the fundamental feature of Mozart’s grand concertos, aesthetic and stylistic balance (Chapter 2), remains uncompromised in K. 537/i and K. 595/i, just as in K. 503/i. The solo passage after the secondary theme of the K. 537 exposition delays the onset of pianistic brilliance, but does not replace it; the startling segment after the reprise of the orchestral exposition theme in the K. 537 recapitulation coincides with the onset of piano figuration leading to the final cadential trill, maintaining the important role of solo brilliance at this juncture of the movement; and the pronounced and understated stylistic modifications at the beginning and end of the K. 595/i development section do not prevent piano figuration from gaining a foothold in between. In continuing the re-invention process initiated in K. 491, then, Mozart develops new stylistic techniques (a process he began in K. 503) rather than changing his aesthetic outlook on the genre. In sum, K. 537/i and K. 595/i are poles apart in overall mood and affect, but are both concerned at a basic level with similar issues of stylistic experimentation. This is perhaps not surprising when we take into account Alan Tyson’s suggestion that the first two movements of K. 595 could have been composed between December 1787 and February 1789 and possibly in the summer of 1788 alongside the last trilogy of symphonies; this would put them close to the completion of K. 537 in early 1788. But the similar spirit of stylistic experimentation in, and possible chronological proximity between K. 537 and 595 require us to explain why these movements are as they are, an issue that can only be addressed by moving beyond the confines of their first movements and indeed beyond Mozart’s concerto repertory altogether.
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Mozart’s stylistic experimentation in context Tyson’s hypothesis that Mozart wrote the first two movements of K. 595 at approximately the same time as the symphonies Nos. 39, 40 and 41 is supported by stylistic similarities between experimental passages in the first movement of the piano concerto and famous, harmonically audacious passages in the symphonies. Close correlations are particularly evident at the beginning of the development sections of K. 595/i, K. 550/i (Ex. 3.5) and 550/iv (Ex. 3.6), where Mozart employs very similar compositional devices to matching effect. Just as he precedes the piano’s re-entry in bar 191 of K. 595/i with chromatic lines that end on diminished seventh harmony, so he initiates the development section of K. 550/i with a two-chord extension to the Bb – V6/4/3 of G, ascending chromatically from F# – G – G# in the violins and winds and concluding on a diminished seventh chord (see bar 101). In addition, the piano wind descents in stepwise descending thirds in K. 595/i (bars 196–97) reappear in identical contexts – immediately following diminished seventh harmony and preceding a version of the main theme – in bars 102–105 of K. 550/i and 133–35 of K. 550/iv. Moreover, the first point of arrival for the chromatic lines (diminished seventh harmony and wind transition in bars 100–104 of K. 550/i) corresponds closely to the start of the development section of K. 595/i, which follows chromatic lines and diminished seventh harmonies: the remote key of F# minor for the statement of K. 550/i’s main theme (bar 105) is one semitone below the tonic, G, just as the distant B minor at the corresponding juncture of K. 595/i is one semitone above the tonic, Bb. Equally, the three different diminished seventh harmonies heard over 12 bars of K. 595/i (183–95) are outlined in successive bars in a remarkable segment of K. 550/iv (bars 129–32, Ex. 3.6) deemed ‘almost atonal’ (fast atonal) by one recent writer;32 the forte unison, linear presentation in K. 550/i also corresponds to the forte unison, linear statement of diminished seventh harmony in the strings in K. 595/i (bars 194–96). Thus Mozart employs the same compositional devices at the same juncture of each of his three movements in order to effect strikingly similar harmonic disjunction, providing the kind of ‘bizarre tonal sequences’ and ‘striking modulations’ often remarked upon by Mozart’s contemporaries.33
32 33
Peter Gülke, ‘Triumph der neuen Tonkunst’: Mozarts späte Sinfonien und ihr Umfeld (Kassel and Stuttgart: Bärenreiter-Metzler, 1998), p. 251. Writing in 1801, Johann Karl Friedrich Triest remarked on the ‘bizarre ideas in many of [Mozart’s] instrumental works, which have attracted the criticism of a number of grammarians,’ clarifying in a footnote that these included ‘bizarre tonal sequences’. According to Triest, however, Mozart ‘drowns out the voice of criticism . . . by striking modulations etc.’ See ‘Remarks on the Development of Music in German in the Eighteenth Century’, trans. Susan Gillespie in Haydn and his World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 365, 393. For late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century complaints about the complex nature of Mozart’s late works, including their harmonic and tonal procedures, see Neal Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 529–30.
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Ex. 3.5: Mozart, Symphony in G minor, K. 550, 1st movement, bars 99–105
Ex. 3.6: Mozart, Symphony in G minor, K. 550, 4th movement, bars 125–35
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Connections among daring passages in K. 595/i, 550/i and 550/iv reveal stylistic cross-fertilization between Mozart’s concertos and symphonies, illustrating that stylistic re-invention has important inter-generic implications and manifestations (on which much more will be said in Chapter 7). Correspondences between audacious passages in the first and third movements of K. 537 and 595 further reinforce the careful and systematic nature of Mozart’s harmonic experimentation in the context of his concertos. After the presentation of the B/‘secondary’ theme and shortly before the cadential trill in the dominant in the sonata-rondo finale of K. 537, for example, the piano and orchestra engage in a spiralling, vi6/4 – IV4/2 – II7 – dim7 – II4/2 – dim7 – I – i – bII6 – dim7 – I6/4 progression (bars 126–32). This progression, not found elsewhere at this juncture among Mozart’s rondo-based Viennese piano concerto movements, complements distinctive passages from K. 537’s first movement.34 Just as Neapolitan harmony acts as the starting point for the sequential solo piano progression after the secondary theme in K. 537/i, providing the impetus for harmonic exploration, now it functions (in bar 130) as the pivot back to the dominant, bringing the harmonic digression to a close; the distinctive, repeated alternation of diminished triads and diatonic harmonies in bars 146–51 of K. 537/i is invoked in the II7 – dim7 – II4/2 – dim7 – I progression in bars 127–29 of K. 537/iii; and the abrupt juxtaposition of three different diminished seventh harmonies in bars 210–11 of K. 537/i shortly before the solo exposition’s cadential trill parallels the appearance of three different diminished seventh harmonies at the very same formal juncture of K. 537/iii (bars 127, 128, 131). In addition, the beginning of the development (C) section of K. 537/iii closely resembles the opening to the development section of K. 595/i both in terms of tonal processes and in terms of the specific devices used to effect abrupt harmonic transition. Just as stark, forte unisons and ascending four-note chromatic lines contribute to harmonic disjunction in K. 595/i (for example, bars 194–96 and 185–90), so these same elements are pivotal in effecting a sharp modulation from the dominant of B minor to Bb major in the space of just four bars in K. 537/iii (184–88, Ex. 3.7; see in particular the F# unison in bars 184–85 and the four-note chromatic ascent in the flutes, oboes, and piano right hand in bars 185–86). Equally, the tonal starting points for both sections complement each other; whereas the development section of K. 595/i begins in B minor, a semitone above the tonic key, and is preceded by the dominant key, the development (C) section of K. 537/iii begins in Bb major, a semitone above the dominant, and is preceded (as expected in a sonata-rondo A’ section) 34
K. 537/iii is best characterized as a sonata-rondo of the ABACBA variety. Unusually in the development (C) section, Mozart incorporates an adapted repeat of music stretching from the solo theme to the B theme (bars 48–88, recast in bars 204–39) beginning in the subdominant and modulating to the tonic; thus, an ABACABA categorization would not be inappropriate. Mozart’s piano concertos K. 414, 415, 449, 450, 451, 456, 459, 466, 467, 482, 488, 503, 537 and 595 contain finales in rondo or sonata-rondo form. While two movements in addition to K. 537/iii include cadential trills in the dominant at the end of their B sections (K. 456 and 482) and almost all incorporate piano figuration, only K. 537/iii combines a bold harmonic progression with both of these features.
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by the tonic.35 The subsequent arrival of the subdominant key (Eb major, bar 202) in K. 595/i, following major and minor keys a third below (C major, bars 197–200; C minor, 201–202), marks an important moment in the development section – the reestablishment of textural fluidity and modulatory stability – just as the restatement of the piano’s main theme in the subdominant key in K. 537/iii (G major, bar 204), following major and minor keys a third above (Bb major, bars 188–95; Bb minor, 196–97), fulfils the important structural function of initiating an unusual recapitulatory section. Ex. 3.7: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, K. 537, 3rd movement, bars 184–88
K. 491 re-visited The crucial question as to which factors we should ultimately attribute Mozart’s harmonic and tonal audacity in K. 537 and 595 remains unanswered. In an often-cited article from 1984, Rose Rosengard Subotnik identifies Mozart’s last three symphonies as works that ‘give musical articulation to an incipient philosophical outlook’ in which reason and rationality are compromised by sensuous, irrational and illogical elements.36 The resultant ‘critical worldview’ is evident in ‘elements with intrinsic individuality, . . . elements that impair the primacy of functional significance by calling attention to sensuous values’37 and reveals itself 35 36
37
The A’ section comprises the piano statement of the main theme in bar 152 and the orchestra’s repeat in bar 159. V/b is established in bar 180. Rose Rosengard Subotnik, ‘Evidence of a Critical Worldview in Mozart’s Last Three Symphonies’, in Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 98–111; quotation from p. 99. This essay was first published in Edmond Strainchamps, Maria Rika Maniates and Christopher Hatch, eds., Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang (New York: Norton, 1984), pp. 29–43. Subotnik, ‘Mozart’s Last Three Symphonies’, p. 104.
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in a number of passages in these three works, including those already cited in K. 550. Given the aforementioned parallels between Mozart’s bold symphonic and concerto passages and the possibly close proximity in composition (or completion) of K. 543, 550, 551, 537 and the first two movements of 595 in 1788, is it conceivable that Mozart’s general outlook or ‘worldview’ underwent a significant transformation at this time? Subotnik gives no indication of what may have prompted Mozart’s ‘critical worldview’ in 1788; nor does stylistic evidence offered here support her general supposition that Mozart’s ‘intrinsic individuality’ and ‘sensuous values’ diverted his attention from ostensibly ‘logical’ or ‘rational’ compositional processes. On the basis of musical and contextual approaches to solo/orchestra relations, neither K. 537 nor 595 breaks the familiar mould of prevailing co-operation, as would have been expected had Mozart undergone a radical change in philosophical outlook. (This is true in spite of modifications to his standard first-movement relational paradigm.)38 And the use of similar compositional devices in symphony and concerto at the same structural junctures and to very similar harmonic effect, as well as the cyclic reappearance of these devices in K. 537, suggest a meticulous and organized approach to harmonic experimentation, one that cannot be identified meaningfully as more or less ‘irrational’ than corresponding procedures in earlier works. In the context of the piano concertos at least, one of Subotnik’s manifestations of ‘universal reason’ characterizing the ‘pre-critical’ Enlightenment, ‘the necessity of rational resolution within form’,39 is sooner confirmed than contradicted by Mozart’s harmonically bold and experimental writing. From a formal perspective, the deliberately awkward and unexpected disjunctions of harmony and instrumental interaction at the beginning of the development section of K. 595/i necessitates the elegant dialogue and fluid modulatory process at the end of the section and, in turn, the ‘correct’ use of Neapolitan harmony after the cadential trill at the end of the recapitulation; furthermore, the striking nature of this process is enhanced by the originality of each of these moments by comparison with corresponding passages in Mozart’s earlier concertos. Although Mozart’s experimentation in K. 537 and 595 cannot be attributed convincingly to a shift in his philosophical outlook around 1788, it can be explained as a continuation of the concerto re-invention process initiated in 1786. Mozart’s sequence of piano concertos reached its zenith in 1786, as we have seen in Chapter 2, with K. 491’s climactic integration of grand, intimate and brilliant stylistic qualities. The special significance of K. 491, as well as its immediate successor K. 503, was recognized shortly after his death – Beethoven explained to
38
39
See Keefe, ‘The Stylistic Significance of the First Movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor: A Dialogic Apotheosis’, Journal of Musicological Research, 18 (1999), pp. 248–52, and Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 94–96. See Subotnik, ‘Mozart’s Last Three Symphonies’, pp. 101–05 for brief explanations of this and three other categories.
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Johann Baptist Cramer after attending a performance of K. 491 in 1799 that ‘We shall never be able to do anything like that!’ and Rochlitz remarked in 1798 that K. 503 was ‘the most magnificent and difficult of all his hitherto known concertos, which his wife published after his death’ and ‘[maybe] the most magnificent of all the concertos which have ever been written’40 – and admiration has continued to the present day.41 Whether intentionally or not, critics have cast an uncertain shadow over K. 537 and 595 by emphasizing the relentless intensity of K. 491 and the magnificence of K. 503, transcendent qualities that neither of the later works replicates. While such comparisons give the impression that K. 537 and 595 are something of an anti-climax in affective as well as qualitative terms, an understanding of the process of stylistic re-invention leads us to a significantly different and entirely more positive appraisal. There is evidence in the first movements of both K. 537 and 595 that Mozart reshaped aspects of his concerto style specifically in response to the corresponding movement of K. 491. As explained above, the juxtaposition of semiquaver arpeggios and conjunct writing in equal-length units of K. 537’s recapitulation (bars 395–400) invokes the big confrontation from the development section of K. 491/i (bars 330–45). However, the innovative quality of this moment in K. 537/i – its appearance in the recapitulation and its avoidance of alternating piano and orchestra to oppositional effect – is especially revealing as a compositional response to K. 491/i. For, as we have seen, the corresponding passage in K. 491/i is itself a climactic moment in Mozart’s concerto oeuvre, invoking passages from earlier works and transcending their level of confrontational intensity at the same time.42 Given that the orchestra employed in K. 537 is smaller than that of K. 491, and that Mozart possibly wrote K. 537 to accommodate performances without wind instruments in any case,43 it is quite likely that he would have been unable to replicate the extraordinary oppositional force of the K. 491 passage even if had wanted to do so. By retaining the musical characteristics of the earlier passage, relocating them in a different section and transforming their
40
41
42 43
See Elliot Forbes, ed., Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 209, and Maynard Solomon, ‘The Rochlitz Anecdotes: Issues of Authenticity in Early Mozart Biography’, in Mozart Studies, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 24–25. The modern representation of either or both K. 491 and K. 503 as Mozart’s greatest achievements in the piano concerto genre was solidified in Anglo, French and Germanic critical traditions by Donald Francis Tovey, Cuthbert Girdlestone and Alfred Einstein respectively. Tovey uses an analysis of the first movement of K. 503 ‘to discover the true concerto form’ in his seminal 1903 essay, ‘The Classical Concerto’. See Essays in Musical Analysis: Concertos and Choral Works (London, 1935–39; reprint London: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 16–23. Girdlestone describes K. 491 and K. 503 as ‘the glorious culmination of Mozart’s work as a concerto writer’ in Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 389. And Einstein explains K. 503 as ‘a grandiose conclusion’ to Mozart’s ‘great period of concerto writing’ in Mozart: His Character, his Work, pp. 312, 311. See Keefe, ‘Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor’, p. 243, and Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 89–91. See Goertzen, ‘Compromises in Orchestration’.
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interactional function, Mozart showed that he could re-work a distinctive stylistic feature of his piano concertos to innovative effect. Combined transformation and innovation by comparison with K. 491/i also characterizes the first movement of K. 595. The re-introduction of the piano after its cadential trill in the recapitulation (excluding the cadenza) occurs only in K. 491 and K. 595 among Mozart’s Viennese concertos. In both cases, the piano’s reappearance, together with accompanying orchestral material, illuminates a connection to the development section. The staccato, arpeggiated figures passed among the winds after K. 491/i’s cadenza (bars 509–17) have appeared previously only at the end of the development section (bars 355–61); in addition, they are combined with semiquaver figuration in the right hand of the piano and dotted minims in the left on both occasions. In K. 595/i, as we have seen, the ‘correct’ use of Neapolitan resolves the disjunctive use of B minor at the beginning of the development, as well as constituting part of an extended formal resolution – the reappearance of material absent since the orchestral exposition. Thus, just as dialogue among the winds in bars 509–17 of K. 491/i fulfils an important structural function, reinforcing the symmetrical balance of interactional groupings characteristic of the movement as a whole,44 so the passage after the piano’s cadential trill in the K. 595 recapitulation is connected directly to the most striking harmonic moment in the entire movement; rigour in dialogic organization exemplified by the concluding passage of K. 491/i gives way to an original, integrated approach to disjunctive and fluid harmonic progressions epitomized by the corresponding passage of K. 595/i. Given the formal and dialogic complexity of the first movement of K. 491, it is perhaps no surprise that Mozart experimented with his standard paradigm of solo/orchestra relations – dialogic co-operation in the solo exposition and recapitulation sections and less intimate, often confrontational exchange in the development – in the corresponding movements of K. 537, K. 595 and K. 503 as well.45 It is more remarkable, however, that the continuation of re-invention through stylistic experimentation was so carefully planned for complementary effect in the first movements of K. 537 and 595. Mozart’s musical approach in regard to the piano concerto is consistent in K. 537 and 595, since he contravenes his standard approaches to harmonic and thematic succession at important formal junctures and his typical attitudes towards the placement of piano figuration in both movements. But the points at which K. 537/i and 595/i are at their most uncompromising are quite different: whereas the former is stylistically innovative among Mozart’s piano concertos in the orchestral exposition, solo exposition and recapitulation sections, the latter breaks new ground in the development and after the recapitulation’s cadential trill. Mozart’s experimentation at complementary 44 45
See Keefe, ‘Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491’, especially pp. 237, 244–48, and Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 85, 91–94. Keefe, ‘Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491’, pp. 248–52, and Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 94–96.
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locations covering all principal sections of the movement and important stylistic issues of harmony, thematic succession, formal function and piano virtuosity, points to a systematic re-assessment of his compositional modus operandi in the piano concertos – continued re-invention, then, carried out in organized, methodical fashion. * Ultimately, our study necessitates a significant reappraisal of the position of K. 537 and 595 in Mozart’s concerto oeuvre. While the commonly held view that Mozart was less interested in the piano concerto in the years 1787–91 than in 1782–86 is not unreasonable given his drastic decrease in productivity (two works, as opposed to 15, over a similar time period),46 it does not do justice to the significance of K. 537 and 595 either as important concertos in their own right or as a complementary pair of innovative works that continue the re-invention process initiated in K. 491. To be sure, Mozart might have composed K. 537 in a hurried fashion, which uniquely among the Viennese piano concerto autograph scores is incompletely notated in the solo part. But hasty work on Mozart’s part is not commensurate, of course, with a lack of compositional rigour or with the absence of a process of stylistic re-evaluation.47 (After all, how often in his Viennese years was Mozart not up against a pressing compositional deadline of one sort or another?) By engaging in an organized, self-reflective re-assessment of important facets of his piano concerto style in his last two works, Mozart demonstrated both a persisting commitment and a careful, methodical approach to the genre, in spite of the relatively brief amount of time it occupied in the compositional activities of his final years. Just as critical judgments of K. 537 are clouded by supposed lapses, hurriedness, and disinterest on Mozart’s part, so judgments of K. 595’s position in Mozart’s oeuvre – even when the work itself is greatly admired48 – are somewhat misrepresentative in their combined emphases on the nostalgic, resigned, reticent, introspective, and departing qualities of the work. For example, Girdlestone reports on the ‘resignation and nostalgia’ in all three movements, Abert on the ‘resigned tone’, (resigniertes Ton) Saint-Foix on a type of enchantment witnessed ‘at the end of the day [for Mozart]’, (la fin du jour) Hutchings on ‘an economy and restraint that make it seem confidential between composer and listener’, Hocquard on the ‘strange detachment’, Einstein on the ‘mood of resignation’ in 46
47
48
Most recently, Küster explains Mozart’s decrease in concerto productivity as ‘yet another example of a genre having served its turn and retreated for a time to the background of his interest’, even detecting the beginnings of a loss of interest in the 1785–86 concertos. See Küster, Mozart: A Musical Biography, trans. Mary Whittall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 252. In any case, the important passages in the first movement discussed above are all notated in full in the autograph score in both piano and orchestral parts. See Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 26 in D major (‘Coronation’), K. 537: the Autograph Score (New York: Dover, 1991). In addition to Einstein’s praise for K. 595 quoted above, Girdlestone comments that K. 595 ‘is in every point the equal of the finest’. See Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 489.
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which ‘every stirring of energy is rejected or suppressed’, Blom on ‘a kind of chastened mood’, Landon on a work that is ‘no longer restless’ and completely different from ‘the full-blooded concertos of the earlier Viennese period, with their infinite promise of things to come’, Hildesheimer on the ‘quality of transfigured farewell’, Rosen on the ‘iridescent’ chromaticism of the first-movement development section conveying an emotion that ‘never disturbs the grace of the melodic line’, and Forman on the first movement as ‘an appropriate epitaph’ to Mozart’s concerto sequence.49 It is not that these remarks are necessarily imperceptive or inappropriate, but rather that they detract from the central stylistic significance of the work by implying that the composer dwells on past achievements in K. 595, and – somehow aware that this would be his final contribution to the piano concerto genre – signs off with an exquisitely measured swan song. For however much we wish to hear affective qualities of resignation, nostalgia, or restraint in K. 595, we must conclude that the compositional reality was very different. Nothing if not practical and pragmatic, Mozart was looking decisively to the future in both K. 595 and K. 537, attempting in overt and covert fashions to re-invent his approach to the genre.
49
See Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 471; Abert, W.A. Mozart, p. 598; Saint-Foix, W.A. Mozart, vol. 5, p. 175; Hutchings, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 191; Hocquard, La pensée de Mozart, p. 206; Einstein, Mozart: His Character, his Work, p. 314; Blom, Mozart, p. 207; Landon, ‘The Concertos’, p. 278; Hildesheimer, Mozart, p. 300; Rosen, Classical Style, p. 263; Forman, Mozart’s Concerto Form, p. 248.
. II . STRING QUARTETS
4 An Integrated ‘Dissonance’: Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ Quartets and the Slow Introduction of K. 465
E
VER since their completion and publication in 1785, Mozart’s six string rquartets dedicated to Haydn, K. 387 in G, K. 421 in D minor, K. 428 in Eb, K. 458 in Bb, K. 464 in A and K. 465 in C, have elicited strong reactions from musicians and critics alike. The private performance of the last three works of the set with Mozart and Leopold in Vienna on Saturday 12 February 1785, less than a month after Mozart had finished K. 465, prompts Haydn’s famous proclamation to Leopold: ‘Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.’1 The remarkable technical proficiency of these works is echoed shortly thereafter by the theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch, who admires ‘their special mixture of the strict and free styles and the treatment of harmony’ and by Mozart’s first biographer Franz Xaver Niemetschek who identifies ‘a treasure-house of the finest thoughts, and a model and example of the art of composition’ in which everything ‘is carefully considered and perfected’.2 But praise for the ‘Haydn’ quartets was by no means universal in the years following their publication. In the 23 April 1787 edition of Karl Friedrich Cramer’s influential Magazin der Musik a reporter accuses Mozart of ‘[aiming] too high in his artful and truly beautiful compositions . . . [His] new quartets . . . may well be called too highly seasoned – and whose palate can endure this for long?’3 Likewise, Dittersdorf – although motivated by a desire in 1788 to promote his own six quartets to Artaria as more marketable than Mozart’s – confirms that the ‘Haydn’ quartets ‘because of their unrelenting, extreme artfulness . . . are not everyone’s purchase’.4 Other musicians had problems playing
1 2
3 4
See Bauer, Deutsch and Eibl, eds., Briefe, vol. 3, p. 373; translated in Anderson, ed., Letters, p. 886. See Koch, Introductory Essay on Composition, p. 207; Deutsch, Documentary Biography, p. 505. Deutsch quotes from the second edition of Niemetschek’s biography published in Prague in 1808; the first edition dates from 1798. See Deutsch, Documentary Biography, p. 290. Quoted in translation in Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies, p. 529. Daniel Heartz remarks on Dittersdorf’s shrewd skills as a publicist in Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 1740–1780 (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 449.
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them, Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari commenting on receipt of a copy from Mozart’s student Thomas Attwood in the late 1780s, that he had ‘tried them . . . with various dilettanti and teachers, but we could not play anything but the slow movements, and even these only with difficulty’ and John Marsh remarking in 1799 that he and his fellow musicians ‘found them so very difficult, that . . . none of us co’d do them anything like justice’.5 Specific criticism of the ‘Haydn’ quartets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – pace Koch – invariably focuses on harmonic and tonal issues. As Constanze reports in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of 1799: ‘Now and then these quartets had a curious fate. When the late Artaria sent them to Italy, he received them back “because the engraving was so very faulty” – that is, the many unfamiliar chords and dissonances were taken there for engraving errors.’6 Needless to say, the most notorious passage was the slow introduction to the first movement of K. 465 (see Ex. 4.1 for its opening bars), source of the quartet’s nickname the ‘Dissonant’ or ‘Dissonance’. Beginning with Giuseppe Sarti, who, writing between 1784 and 1802, harshly reprimands Mozart for cross relations, nineteenth-century critics treat the introduction as a theoretical cause célèbre.7 François-Joseph Fétis and A.C. Leduc (a pseudonym, in all likelihood for Raphael-Georg Kiesewetter or Peter Lichtenthal) engage in a volatile debate about the merits of this passage between 1829 and 1832, attempting to outdo each other with different ‘corrections’ to the opening bars.8 Fétis’ corrections, which soften the dissonances by delaying the initial A in the first violin by one crotchet and the viola F# and 2nd violin C# by one quaver each, are subsequently praised by Alexandre Oulibicheff in his famous Mozart biography of 1842, on the grounds that musicians had long considered the dissonance resulting from the 1st violin’s An inherently wrong.9 In addition, Gottfried Weber (1832) takes issue with the Ab/A cross relation in the slow introduction to K. 465, citing the contrary expectations aroused by these two notes. In response, he offers a total of six alternative versions to Mozart’s opening bars, all of which negate the offending cross relation.10 Even the most influential theorists of the twentieth century, Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg, draw attention to these extraordinary opening bars. Schenker claims that ‘the A-flat and the A approach each other so closely
5
6
7 8 9 10
See Georges de Saint-Foix, ‘A Musical Traveler: Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari (1759–1842)’, The Musical Quarterly, 25 (1939), p. 460, quoted in Eisen, New Mozart Documents, p. 81; and Brian Robins, ed., The John Marsh Journals: The Life and Times of a Gentleman Composer (1752–1828) (Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon, 1998), p. 701. See Eisen, New Mozart Documents, p. 79. Although Eisen issues a cautionary note about the truthfulness of Constanze’s anecdotes in general, he finds no reason to doubt her comments about the reception of the ‘Haydn’ quartets. See Julie Anne Vertrees, ‘Mozart’s String Quartet K. 465: The History of a Controversy’, Current Musicology, 17 (1974), pp. 96–114. Ibid., pp. 99–105. Ibid., p. 101. Ibid., p. 106.
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that the ear is tempted to hear them together, and it becomes difficult to make an immediate and clear distinction between the different functions of these two tones’.11 In contrast, Schoenberg acclaims the enduring ‘thrill of novelty’ at the beginning of K. 465: ‘I feel it over and over again when there is that daring contradictory entry of the first violin on A, directly after the A-flat just left by the viola.’12 Ex. 4.1: Mozart, String Quartet in C, K. 465, 1st movement, bars 1–5
There is, of course, much more to the chromaticism of K. 465’s slow introduction than the initial Ab/A cross relation, disproportionately emphasized in critical discussions of the section. Evaluating the mysterious, enigmatic quality of the section as a whole, twentieth-century writers have often strayed into descriptive or critical hyperbole. For Hermann Abert, in his seminal biography of Mozart, the slow introduction presents ‘the picture of a mind weighed down by gloomy forebodings and striving to master its spiritual oppression’ in which Mozart ‘does not leave the stage of unconsciousness. Only in the allegro does the composer open his eyes, so to speak, and pursue the battle consciously’.13 Eric Blom finds it exceptional in its ‘curiously ambiguous’ methodology in which ‘the riddle remains’. Nevertheless, ‘one could not do without the sharp sting this passage never fails to give to one’s emotions or even without its ever-new incitement to one’s curiosity’.14 In sympathy with Abert, Marshall Brown identifies the slow introduction as an early example of a musical ‘reverie’ in which the ‘gradual emergence of conscious form out of chaos’ in metrical, tonal and sonorous domains 11
12
13 14
Schenker, Harmony (1906), trans. Oswald Jones (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 346–47. For a graph of the Adagio introduction to K. 465 see Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz) (New York: Longman, 1979), Fig. 99 (3). ‘On the Question of Modern Composition Teaching’ (1929), in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1st paperback edition with revisions]), pp. 374–75. Abert, W.A. Mozart, vol. 2, pp. 145–46. Translation from Marshall Brown, ‘Mozart and After: The Revolution in Musical Consciousness’, Critical Inquiry, 7 (1980–81), pp. 689–706, at p. 697. Blom, Mozart, pp. 214–15.
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foreshadows a type of opening common in the nineteenth century, exemplifying ‘the generation of form from within rather than its imposition from without’.15 Mozart’s introduction does nothing less than ‘[call] the genre [of the string quartet] into question, just as it does the tonality’.16 Most recently, Maynard Solomon, in a tour de force of exaggerated prose, suggests that the opening bars ‘immediately plunge into the center of symbiotic terror . . . Here, Mozart has simulated the very process of creation, showing us the lineaments of chaos at the moment of its conversion to form. He has created an unprecedented network of disorientations, dissonances, rhythmic obscurities, and atmospheric dislocations. Without knowing precisely where we are, we know that we are in an alien universe.’17 The clear message from secondary sources, then, is that the slow introduction to K. 465 occupies a special place in Mozart’s oeuvre. But the extent to which the passage represents a point of stylistic climax for Mozart and a hinge for future development – that is, a locus of re-invention – requires scrutiny. However insightful, general critical studies and specific analytical commentaries have not usually situated the slow introduction in its wider compositional context and have thus failed collectively to address the simple question central to understanding the section’s possible contribution to a re-invention process: why exactly did Mozart begin K. 465 in such a rich, intense and ostensibly audacious way? To be sure, the Adagio can be explained as an introduction in the traditional functional sense of heightening the anticipation of the ensuing Allegro, creating a feeling of arrival at its onset (the darkness to light analogy is common in the secondary literature, including in a Masonic context18) and predicting many of its musical events – motivic, thematic, harmonic, rhythmic etc.19 From a rhetorical perspective, for example, the Hauptsatz or main idea, understood as ‘the polyphonic network of all four voices at the beginning of the introduction’ is ‘reinterpreted’ and ‘reconstituted’ in various ways in the ensuing Allegro.20 Equally, the prominent conflict between the Ab and An in bars 1–2 of the introduction re-surfaces later in the first movement and in each of the three subsequent movements.21 But according to standard practice in the late eighteenth century, Mozart 15 16 17 18
19 20 21
Brown, ‘Mozart and After’, pp. 698, 694. Ibid., p. 701. Solomon, Mozart: A Life (New York, 1995), p. 200. See Jacques Chailley, ‘Sur la signification cachée du quatuor de Mozart K. 465, dit “les Dissonances” et du 7ème quatuor du Beethoven’, in Natalica musicologica: Knud Jeppeson septuagenario colleges oblata, ed. Bjorn Hjelmborg and Soren Sorensen (Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, 1962), pp. 283–92. See William DeFotis, ‘Rehearings: Mozart, Quartet in C, K. 465’, 19th Century Music, 6 (1982–83), pp. 31–8, at pp. 33–5. See Mark Evan Bonds’ analysis of the slow introduction and exposition of K. 465 in Wordless Rhetoric, pp. 102–10. (Quotation taken from p. 102.) See James M. Baker, ‘Chromaticism in Classical Music’, in Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. Christopher Hatch and David W. Bernstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 233–307, at pp. 289–91. For other connections between musical procedures in the slow
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would have been expected to integrate his slow introduction into the musical fabric of his quartet in these sorts of ways, irrespective of the content of the introduction.22 In short, techniques of inter-sectional integration explain neither the remarkable stylistic and affective contrast between the Adagio and Allegro nor Mozart’s possible reasons for writing this highly distinctive opening in the first place. In order to gauge the stylistic profile of K. 465’s slow introduction and to ascertain its stylistic significance, we must look beyond the confines of K. 465 itself. As is well known, Mozart draws attention to the connection between his six works and his dedicatee’s preceding set of quartets by referring explicitly to Haydn’s Op. 33 set – on at least one occasion (K. 421/iv) taking a Haydn movement as his model (Op. 33, no. 5/iv) – raising the spectre of Haydn’s compositional influence on Mozart and of Mozart’s professional and personal motivations towards Haydn.23 In this context, Mark Evan Bonds has suggested that K. 465/i represents a transformation of Haydn’s Op. 33, no. 3/i, Mozart ‘[following] Haydn’s lead in numerous points of texture, rhythm, harmony, and large-scale form . . . while establishing the unique identity of his own opening movement’.24 Even if we accept that Mozart’s slow introduction alludes procedurally to the opening of Haydn’s Op. 33, no. 1, both passages undermining the tonic at an unexpected juncture,25 we cannot consider the correlations between the two passages in question Mozart’s only reason for writing his Adagio in this highly distinctive way. For K. 465’s Adagio (unlike Haydn’s implicit introduction) also
22
23
24
25
introduction of K. 465 and those in the second, third and fourth movements, see DeFotis, ‘Mozart, Quartet in C, K. 465’, pp. 35–36. The theorist Francesco Galeazzi remarks in 1796: ‘It is good practice that the Introduction (if there is one) be sometimes recalled in the course of the melody, so that it should not seem a detached section and be entirely separated from the rest.’ See Bathia Churgin, ‘Francesco Galeazzi’s Description (1796) of Sonata Form’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 21 (1968), pp. 181–99, at p. 191. On formal and motivic correspondences between Mozart’s slow introductions and subsequent first-movement material, see Rudolf Klinkhammer, Die langsame Einleitung in der Instrumentalmusik der Klassik und Romantik (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1971), pp. 84–93. See Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery?’ pp. 365–409. For an overview of the issue of influence in the second as well as the first half of the 1780s, see Simon P. Keefe, ‘Haydn’s Influence on Mozart: the Case of the String Quartet’, Haydn Society of Great Britain Journal, 15 (1995), pp. 2–17. Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery?’ pp. 380–87, at p. 387. On the possible influence of K. 465/i – both the slow introduction and the Allegro – on the first movement of Beethoven’s string quartet Op. 59, no. 3, see James Webster, ‘Traditional Elements in Beethoven’s Middle-Period String Quartets’, in Beethoven, Performers, and Critics, ed. Bruce Carr and Robert Winter (Detroit, 1980), pp. 94–133, at pp. 103–11. Jacques Chailley links K. 465 to Beethoven’s earlier ‘Razumovsky’ quartet, Op. 59, no. 1, on account of the connections both quartets exhibit with Freemasonry rituals. See ‘Uber die Bedeutung des Dissonanzen-Quartetts von Mozart und des 7. Quartetts von Beethoven’, Wiener Figaro, 38 (May 1970), pp. 6–14. For general resemblances between the opening of K. 465 and openings of several nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century works, see DeFotis, ‘Mozart, Quartet in C, K. 465’, pp. 37–38. Bonds, ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery?’ pp. 383–84.
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stretches the slow introductory paradigm from the 1780s to its limits. While a contemporary symphonic section typically consists of ‘a stable tonic passage at the beginning and a stable dominant passage at the end, with or without intervening material or clear paragraph divisions’, and opens with a ‘memorable rhythmic profile’,26 Mozart’s K. 465 famously clouds the tonic with tonally nebulous and rhythmically indistinctive entries in the viola, 2nd violin and 1st violin at the beginning, a segue to a Bb pedal via F# to Bb stepwise motion in the cello (bars 4–5) after the establishment of V6/5 in bar 4 (see Ex. 4.1), and the sequential repeat of bars 1–4 a whole tone lower in bars 5–8. Even the establishment of the structural dominant as the inevitable ‘goal’ of a slow introduction27 is compromised in K. 465; the chromatic intensity of the bars preceding the establishment of the dominant in bar 16 is more than a means to an end, drawing attention to its own luxuriance through a striking V7 – half dim. – VI7 – v6/5 – V6/5 – I – dim. – dim. – v6 – vi7 – bVI7 – iv6 – Italian Aug. 6th – V progression in bars 13–16. Given the rich vein of chromaticism running through the ‘Haydn’ works, noted by almost every commentator, K. 465’s Adagio could be heard as a harmonic climax to the set as a whole as much as it is heard as an introduction to the ensuing Allegro of the first movement – a view we shall investigate in more detail below. In any case, the Adagio’s problematic status as an introduction per se is a sufficient reason for extending an investigation of it to small-scale procedures and large-scale organization in Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets, in an attempt to gauge the function and significance of this remarkable passage in the context of the complete ‘Haydn’ set and, indeed, Mozart’s Viennese string chamber music repertory in its entirety.
K. 465/i and the ‘Haydn’ set The overall tonal and formal arrangement of the ‘Haydn’ quartets (see Fig. 4.1 below), with K. 465 as the final work of the set, demonstrates careful and cogent planning on Mozart’s part, even in spite of a protracted compositional genesis that included a break of at least one year between summer 1783 and late 1784.28 Each quartet features three movements in the tonic and a slow movement in the 26
27 28
See Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, p. 162 and Elaine R. Sisman, ‘Genre, Gesture, and Meaning in Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony’, in Mozart Studies 2, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1997), pp. 27–84, at p. 33. For comprehensive surveys of slow introductions from the classical period, see Klinkhammer, Die langsame Einleitung, and Marianne Danckwardt, Die langsame Einleitung: Ihre Herkunft und Ihr Bau bei Haydn und Mozart (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1977). Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, p. 163. On the genesis of the ‘Haydn’ quartets, see Tyson, Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores, pp. 82–105. Mozart planned a six-work set from the start. In a letter to the publisher J.G. Sieber on 26 April 1783 (at which point he had completed only K. 387) Mozart explained that he had been ‘composing six quartets for two violins, viola and cello’. See Bauer, Deutsch and Eibl, eds., Briefe, vol. 3, p. 266, and Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 846. Since Mozart, on at least one occasion in 1781, distinguished between composing and writing music out – ‘Of course, I composed a lot but wrote down nothing’ (Bauer, Deutsch and Eibl, eds., Briefe, vol. 3, p. 121; Anderson, ed. and
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subdominant (or the relative major in the minor-key work, K. 421); and adjacent pairs of quartets (i.e. K. 387 and 421, 428 and 458, 464 and 465) alternate the placement of minuet and slow movements.29 This careful tonal and formal planning is not unique to the ‘Haydn’ works among Mozart’s string quartet sets. The three-movement quartets, K. 155–160, composed in Northern Italy in 1772 and early 1773, are arranged in a descending circle of 5ths (the keys of D–G–C–F–Bb–Eb) with major-key slow movements in the outer works and minor-key slow movements in the second, third, fourth and fifth. In addition, the K. 168–73 set, written in Vienna in August and September 1773, places the slow movement third in the middle quartets (K. 170, 171) and second in the first, second, fifth and sixth, closing the first and last quartets in the sequence with fugal finales (K. 168 and 173). Mozart even demonstrates sensitivity towards overall layout in his three late ‘Prussian’ quartets, choosing different tempi, character indications, and meters for his outer movements, and perhaps rejecting an initial 6/8 finale to K. 590 because it would have reproduced the 6/8 character of the K. 589 finale.30 In the ‘Haydn’ set, Mozart strengthens formal, tonal and structural affinities among quartets by connecting symmetrically arranged works (i.e. K. 387 and 465, 421 and 464, 428 and 458). The keys of the ‘paired’ works are situated a fifth apart (G and C, d and A, Eb and Bb), and the quartets linked in other ways as well. K. 421 and 464, for example, are the only two featuring theme and variation movements, and the only two with slow movements not cast in sonata or slow-movement sonata form; K. 428 and 458, the middle works in the set, are the only ones in flat keys, the Bb tonality of K. 428’s trio predicting the tonality of K. 458. The links between K. 387 and K. 465 are, perhaps, strongest of all. They are the only two quartets with trio sections in the tonic minor; their adjustments to the straightforward exposition-development-recapitulation sonata design occur in complementary movements (the finale of K. 387 and the first movement of K. 465); and they both demonstrate thematic and motivic links to Mozart’s G-minor fragment, K. 587a, probably written contemporaneously with K. 387.31 In addition to ‘pairing’ works, Mozart accentuates other affective and procedural connections between his six quartets. The overall ‘character’ of each work reveals a careful arrangement of the whole, the colourful inner works (K. 421, 428, 458, 464) complementing the less complex outer works (K. 387, 465).32 In more
29 30
31 32
trans., Letters, p. 737) – it is not impossible that many ideas for his six quartets were already in place in his mind when he wrote to Sieber in April 1783. The original Artaria edition from 1785 features K. 428 and 458 in reverse order, thus alternating minuet and slow movements from work to work across the set. See Christoph Wolff, ‘Creative Exuberance vs. Critical Choice: Thoughts on Mozart’s Quartet Fragments’, in The String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven: Studies of the Autograph Manuscripts (Isham Library Papers, III), ed. Christoph Wolff and Robert Riggs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 191–210, at p. 199. Ibid., p. 202. See Wilhelm Seidel, ‘Sechs musikalische Charaktere: Zu den Joseph Haydn gewidmeten Streichquartetten von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1984/85, pp. 125–29.
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Fig. 4.1: The tonal and formal arrangement of the ‘Haydn’ quartets K. 387
K. 421
1. G – Sonata form
d – Sonata form
2. G/g – Minuet and trio
F – Ternary (ABA)
3. C – Slow mvt. Sonata form
d/D – Minuet and trio
4. G – Sonata form/fugue
d – Theme and variations
K. 428
K. 458
1. Eb – Sonata form
Bb – Sonata form
2. Ab – Sonata form
Bb – Minuet and trio
3. Eb/Bb – Minuet and trio
Eb – Slow mvt. Sonata form
4. Eb – Sonata rondo (ABACBA)
Bb – Sonata form
K. 464
K. 465
1. A – Sonata form
C – Sonata form (with slow introduction)
2. A/E – Minuet and trio
F – Slow mvt. Sonata form
3. D – Theme and variations
C/c – Minuet and trio
4. A – Sonata form
C – Sonata form
specific thematic terms, three Allegro movements from the ‘Haydn’ set, K. 458/i, 464/i and 464/iv, are interrupted by melodically related passages predominantly in semibreves and minims; according to Georg Knepler, these and several other passages from the set invoke the ‘Es lebe die Liebe’ motto from Die Entführung aus dem Serail, in the process strengthening motivic connections between works in the series.33 The rapprochement between minuet and sonata movement-types in all six minuets also brings Mozart’s cyclical conception to the fore.34 Furthermore, these minuets demonstrate similar compositional strategies, playing with phrase structures and deploying ‘unexpected suspensions, mutually contradictory elements of passagework, and other examples of harmonic audacity in the four-part writing’.35 It is possible that the integration of the individual ‘Haydn’ quartets is typical of Mozart’s thinking in his multi-opus published works in general. Ellwood Derr has explained that the three piano concertos published as Opus 4 in 1785 ‘coalesce . . . into one splendidly integrated larger work, in which operations set forth in K. 414 are expanded upon in K. 413 and finally culminated in K. 415’, offering additional 33 34
35
Knepler, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 243–45. See Walter Pfann, ‘ “Ein bescheidener Platz in der Sonatenform . . .” Zur formalen Gestaltung des Menuetts in den “Haydn-Quartetten” Mozarts’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 52 (1995), pp. 316–36, at p. 335. Küster, Mozart: A Musical Biography, p. 195.
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evidence of Mozart’s perception of ‘opus-wholeness’ in the collective publication of the six violin sonatas K. 296, 376, 377, 378, 379 and 380 as Opus 2 in Vienna in 1781.36 The Opus 10 ‘Haydn’ quartets, like the piano concertos Opus 4, were performed collectively on at least one occasion (Saturday 15 January 1785), giving the ‘audience’, most notably the dedicatee, an opportunity to appreciate the subtleties of the set’s organization first hand.37 The appearance of an especially startling opening gambit in the last quartet of the ‘Haydn’ series, K. 465, rather than in any of the preceding five,38 together with the cohesive structure of the set, offer clues to the function of Mozart’s extraordinary slow introduction in the set as a whole. On the one hand, the introduction’s topical content – the fantasia style replete with connotations of musical freedom and uncertainty, creative imagination and peculiarity of effect – unfolds in a self-evidently original way in the context not only of the ‘Haydn’ quartets but of Mozart’s entire instrumental oeuvre, ‘[transforming] tonality itself into a topic’ in unique fashion.39 On the other hand, however, its most striking harmonic procedures – the chordal build-up in the opening bars, the descending bass line through bVII to bVI and the manner of establishing the dominant – are drawn to a remarkable degree from Mozart’s earlier works in the set. These procedures from Mozart’s first five works, heard at moments that are functionally and/or positionally analogous to the K. 465 Adagio, are certainly modified and intensified in the K. 465 introduction; they are also combined in such a way as to establish the Adagio’s role as a harmonic culmination to the cycle. The striking cross relation and modally uncertain opening to K. 465’s Adagio, resulting from the initial, individual entries on C, Ab, Eb and A in bars 1 and 2, are pre-figured in K. 421/i, K. 428/i and 428/ii. The four-bar unison opening to K. 428/i, for example, sets an An dotted minim in bar 2 against an Ab minim in bar 4, 36 37
38
39
See Derr, ‘Some Thoughts on the Design of Mozart’s Opus 4, the “Subscription Concertos” (K. 414, 413, 415)’, in Mozart’s Piano Concertos, ed. Zaslaw, pp. 187–210, at p. 190. See Leopold’s letter to Nannerl of 22 January 1785 in which he explained that ‘last Saturday [Mozart] performed his six quartets for his dear friend Haydn and other friends, and . . . has sold them to Artaria for a hundred ducats’ in Bauer, Deutsch and Eibl, eds., Briefe, vol. 3, p. 368; and Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters of Mozart, p. 885. The opening of K. 428/i is also remarkable, Hans Keller labelling the first four bars an ‘anti-tonal motif’. See ‘The Chamber Music’, in The Mozart Companion, ed. Landon and Mitchell, pp. 90–137, at p. 122. But the radical opening of K. 428/i dictates the entire course of the first movement in a more pronounced fashion than the slow introduction to K. 465, thus standing out from subsequent material in a less vivid way than the opening material of the later quartet. As Wye J. Allanbrook writes in her engaging interpretation of K. 428/i: ‘This opening quietly confounds the conventional initiatory codes, and the movement takes its course from there, stressing the piquant and the disjunct; to describe the progress of the exposition is to describe a string of the contingent and the arbitrary.’ See ‘ “To Serve the Private Pleasure”: Expression and Form in the String Quartets’, in Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and Music, ed. Stanley Sadie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 132–60, at p. 156. See V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 47. On the fantasia style in general, see Ratner, Classic Music, pp. 308–15.
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exploits this opposition in the ‘genuinely shocking dissonance of the movement’ (bars 23–24) when the two notes are heard as a cross relation in the first violin and viola,40 and playfully interchange the two notes in the subsequent bars of the transition (25–29). The dissonance created by the An at the opening is certainly different in effect to the corresponding dissonance in bar 2 of K. 465; while the former acts as a chromatic lower neighbour note, resolving to Bb in the same bar and initiating further chromatic neighbour notes in bar 3, the latter is left exposed in a more striking fashion. The procedural connection between the opening of K. 428/i and bars 1 and 2 of K. 465 is rendered more explicit, however, at the beginning of the development section (Ex. 4.2); overlapping dominant- and tonicorientated statements of the main theme in bars 69–72 and 71–74 of K. 428/i lead to an alternation of Abs and an An (bars 73–74), including a cross relation between the second violin and viola/cello, in the process of confirming the key of C minor. The ensuing two bars of repeated quaver Cs in the cello (bars 75–76), marked piano, reinforce the link between this passage and the opening two bars of K. 465. Equally, Eb and An, heard as the third interval in bar 2 of K. 465, form the second interval of K. 428 (bars 1–2), again in the context of both a piano dynamic and a striking texture (the unison opening of K. 428 and the high, protruding An in K. 465). Just as Eb and An are juxtaposed in K. 465 (bar 2) in the context of an imitative process in C minor/major, so they are also juxtaposed starkly in the imitation at the beginning of K. 428/i’s development section in the course of a modulation to C minor (bar 72, Ex. 4.2). The Eb/A ‘dissonance’ is realized in an especially potent fashion, moreover, in the development section of K. 428/ii, establishing it as an important ‘motif’ in the quartet as a whole. Imitation in inversion from bars 45ff. (see Ex. 4.3), complementing the imitative entries at the opening of K. 465, culminates in bar 48 in a remarkable juxtaposition of Eb minor harmony and an A-major triad in the viola (spelled, enharmonically, as Db, Fb, Bbb). Given the very close proximity between the composition of K. 428/ii and K. 421/i,41 it is no surprise that the Eb/A relationship, realized in startling fashion in K. 428/ii, surfaces in the corresponding section of the D minor work as well. Here, the development begins by lurching into Eb, subsequently modulating quickly to A (see bars 42–50). Just as the cross relation and the Eb/A juxtaposition from bars 1–2 of K. 465 are foreshadowed in dramatic fashion in K. 421 and 428, so thematic material and musical procedures from the K. 465 Adagio are presaged in K. 421, 428, 458 and 464. At the beginning of K. 428/ii (bars 6–7), for example, the imitative entries one beat apart and in ascending order, marked piano and with quavers in the cello are similar to bars 1 and 2 of K. 465. In addition, the second theme from the exposition of the slow movement of K. 458 (bars 14ff., Ex. 4.4) redistributes all of the principal elements from K. 465’s opening bars: the entry of each instrument in 40 41
Allanbrook, ‘Expression and Form in the String Quartets’, p. 156. Alan Tyson has suggested that Mozart began K. 421 at the time at which he was completing the slow movement of K. 428. See Studies of the Autograph Scores, p. 85.
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Ex. 4.2: Mozart, String Quartet in Eb, K. 428, 1st movement, bars 69–76
Ex. 4.3: Mozart, String Quartet in Eb, K. 428, 2nd movement, bars 45–48
ascending order, culminating in the 1st violin a sixth above the cello, the repeated notes in the cello subsequently descending in semitones, and a sequential repeat a whole-tone lower (bars 15 and 16) all foreshadow K. 465. The finale of K. 464 – completed only four days before its successor according to Mozart’s Verzeichnüss dates of 10 January and 14 January 1785 respectively – anticipates K. 465 on two occasions. At the beginning of the development section, a bar of repeated quavers (marked piano) in the cello (bar 85) precedes an ascending sequence of imitative entries (again marked piano), as in K. 465. The imitated motif itself resembles the initial imitated figure in the K. 465 slow introduction, both featuring a minim–crotchet–crotchet–minim (dotted crotchet in K. 465) chromatic unit. The final bars of K. 464/iv also anticipate the beginning of K. 465: the 1st violin concludes K. 464 and begins K. 465 on the same note (a’’); and the inner voices end K. 464 with pianissimo, four-note chromatic motifs (minim–crotchet– crotchet), resuming at the opening of K. 465 with motivically, rhythmically and dynamically similar figures in the same register. Thematic and procedural foreshadowing of the opening bars of K. 465 is complemented by harmonic foreshadowing of the Adagio section in K. 387 and 421. The establishment of the dominant in bars 14–16 of the Adagio (harmonically annotated in Ex. 4.5a and discussed above) is a close re-working of bars 65–66 from K. 421/i (see Ex. 4.5b). The harmonic progressions are audibly similar, featuring consecutive diminished chords, submediant minor 7th
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Ex. 4.4: Mozart, String Quartet in Bb, K. 458, 3rd movement, bars 14–16
harmony and an Italian Augmented 6th – V preceded by a subdominant minor chord in first inversion (which is, admittedly, a fairly routine harmonic precursor to the Augmented 6th); both incorporate chromatic motion in the first violin and cello; and both end with similar semiquaver figurations in the 1st violin. The two passages also occur at analogous moments, the establishment of the dominant in preparation for the exposition in K. 465 complementing the establishment of the dominant in preparation for the recapitulation in K. 421. The most harmonically colourful passage in the slow movement of K. 387 (bars 58–69), the secondary development, also begins by foreshadowing the Adagio introduction to K. 465. In bars 58–62 (Ex. 4.6), the cello’s distinctive bass line aligns closely to that of the first nine bars of K. 465: the C–F# corresponds to bars 1–4 of K. 465, the Bb–E to bars 5–8 and the Ab to bar 9. Moreover, the imitative nature of the K. 387 passage descending sequentially by a whole tone, with chromatic movement in the inner voices and a piano dynamic, again predicts the opening of K. 465. The minuets from K. 387 and 421 also foreshadow K. 465’s outlined progression – once more in imitative contexts – from tonic to bVI via bVII in bars 1–9. The beginning of the reprise in K. 387/ii features a I – V – nVII – IV6 – bVI progression (bars 63–70); and the opening of K. 421/iii a I – V6 – nVII –IV6 – Augmented 6th progression (bars 1–7), also incorporating the chromatically descending bass line characteristic of K. 465 (bars 1–10). Viewed collectively, the anticipations of distinctive processes from K. 465’s Adagio underscore systematic working on Mozart’s part. In keeping with the careful organization and integration of individual works in his ‘Haydn’ set (discussed above), Mozart foreshadows the K. 465 Adagio in each of his preceding five quartets. Almost every striking procedure from the introduction – the initial ‘dissonances’ heard in an imitative context, the chromatically descending bass line in conjunction with a distinctive progression from tonic to bVI harmony via bVII, and the rich segue to V in preparation for the exposition – is anticipated earlier in the set. Moreover, the relevant material in K. 387–464 invariably occurs at a moment that is positionally and/or functionally analogous to the anticipated material, namely at the beginning of a movement (K. 421/iii, K. 428/i, K. 428/ii) or section (K. 421/i, bars 42–50; K. 428/i, bars 69–75; K. 464, bars 85–88), during the
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Ex. 4.5a: Mozart, String Quartet in C, K. 465, 1st movement, bars 13–16
Ex. 4.5b: Mozart, String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, 1st movement, bars 65–66
Ex. 4.6: Mozart, String Quartet in G, K. 387, 3rd movement, bars 58–62
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secondary development, where remaining in the tonic is the goal rather than modulating to the dominant (K. 387/ii, bars 63–70; K. 387/iii, bars 58–62),42 or as part of establishing the dominant in preparation for a return to the tonic (K. 421/i, bars 65–66). Thus, the remarkable opening to K. 465 is thoroughly integrated into the musical argument of the ‘Haydn’ set, combining and intensifying many of the most memorable procedures from earlier quartets in such a way as to represent an appropriate apotheosis to the complete cycle.
K. 465’s slow introduction as peroration The integration of K. 465’s Adagio opening into the ‘Haydn’ set as a whole, the section’s status as a climactic composite of earlier passages, and its startling contrast with the succeeding Allegro material, necessitates a serious re-evaluation both of the Adagio’s compositional function and of its significance to stylistic re-invention in Mozart’s string quartet oeuvre. As discussed above, the Adagio fulfils a standard introductory role of predicting musical events that occur later in the movement (and in the second, third, and fourth movements as well). In addition, the opening demonstrates musical qualities analogous to those of the rhetorical exordium. As Warren Kirkendale notes, Cicero distinguishes between two types of exordium ‘the principium, in plain and direct language . . . and the insinuatio or “subtle approach”, used to captivate a hostile audience by approaching the arguments unobtrusively and indirectly’.43 The beginning of K. 465 aligns with the insinuatio type often found in Baroque ricercars, in which ‘the voices creep in quietly one by one, gradually and almost imperceptibly increasing the number of parts from one, to two, three, four, with unobtrusive subjects avoiding large leaps or faster rhythms’.44 At the same time, however, the Adagio certainly transcends a basic function of the exordium, starkly contradicting the commonly articulated requirement that, in Quintilian’s words, ‘The style . . . should not resemble that of our purple patches . . . nor yet should it be prolix or continuously ornate; it should seem simple and unpremeditated.’45 The Adagio’s references to passages and procedures from K. 387, 421, 428, 458 and 464, summarizing many of the most remarkable moments from the ‘Haydn’ quartets in climactic fashion, represents less a harbinger of opus ‘unity’ – a
42
43 44 45
Although K. 387/ii is a minuet and trio movement, its expansive minuet structure and pretensions towards a synthesis of minuet and sonata forms have been well documented. See, in particular, Wolfram Steinbeck, ‘Mozart’s “Scherzi”: Zur Beziehung zwischen Haydns Streichquartetten op. 33 and Mozarts Haydn-Quartetten’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 41 (1984), pp. 208–31, especially pp. 221–27. See also Walter Pfann, ‘ “Ein bescheidener Platz in der Sonatenform . . .” ’, pp. 334–36. Kirkendale, ‘Ciceronians versus Aristotelians on the Ricercar as Exordium, from Bembo to Bach’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 32 (1979), pp. 1–44, at p. 26. Ibid., p. 27. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H.M. Hubbell (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920 [reprint 1989]), vol. 4, pp. 58–60. Quoted in Irving, Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, p. 120.
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problematic concept in any case – than a sophisticated rhetorical peroration to the set as a whole. Like an exordium, a peroration must be an ‘[aid] to memory’, (Aristotle)46 and must speak to the emotions of the listener, in the process summarizing facts and recollecting arguments from the main body of the oration.47 As has been ably demonstrated, allusions and quotations in concluding sections of several of Haydn’s and Mozart’s variation movements produce perorational effects.48 In addition, Mozart’s longest and most intricate symphonic slow introduction, that of the ‘Prague’ Symphony, K. 504 (1786), ends with a nine-bar passage (bars 28–36) that is classifiable as a peroration in topical and rhetorical terms.49 Just as the ‘wracking dissonance’ in bars 28–30 of the ‘Prague’ ‘[works] on the emotions of the audience’ and motivic material in bars 32–35 summarizes arguments from earlier in the section,50 so the taut dissonances and other distinctive harmonic procedures in the introduction to K. 465 fulfil both roles simultaneously for the complete ‘Haydn’ set. Thus, in a tour de force of ingenuity, Mozart infuses his exordial Adagio with the qualities of a peroration, cleverly rendering it both an ‘introduction’ sui generis and a moment of recollection par excellence. In addition to representing a peroration, the collective invocations of K. 387, 421, 428, 458 and 464 at the opening of K. 465 shed light on Mozart’s compositional motivations in the ‘Haydn’ set as a whole. As Wye J. Allanbrook has argued – taking Koch’s remark that chamber music should ‘serve the private pleasure of the regent or the court’ as her point of departure – Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets are replete with sophisticated inter-textual musical processes that would have appealed only to the connoisseur, illustrating ‘topical and combinatorial processes at their purest, in a kind of composer’s laboratory’.51 Inter-textual sophistication, cited by Allanbrook in connection with topical analysis, reaches its zenith in K. 465’s allusions to earlier quartets from the ‘Haydn’ set; the identification of these allusions, moreover, would have challenged even the most accomplished connoisseur in Mozart’s audience, the dedicatee. Mozart could conceivably have intended invocations of his own quartets in the K. 465 Adagio as a complement to his invocations of Haydn’s Op. 33 set in, for example, K. 421/iv and 428/iii. Just as K. 421/iv’s and 428/iii’s overt references to Haydn’s thematic material and formal procedures would have encouraged connoisseurs – Haydn in particular – to determine how Mozart departed from his models in radical fashion, so K. 465’s invocations of, and procedural allusions to his own quartets 46 47
48 49 50 51
Quoted in Irving, Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, p. 119. See Elaine R. Sisman, ‘Pathos and Pathétique: Rhetorical Stance in Beethoven’s C-Minor Sonata, Op. 13’, Beethoven Forum 3, ed. Christopher Reynolds (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 81–105, at pp. 87–88, and Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 47. See Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation, pp. 139–142, 150, 223. Sisman, ‘Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony’, pp. 33–45. Ibid., pp. 44–45. Allanbrook, ‘Expression and Form in the String Quartets’, p. 135.
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would have encouraged speculation as to how Mozart turned the resultant material into the highpoint of harmonic intensity in the cycle. Moreover, just as Mozart’s references to Haydn’s quartets are, irrespective of his motivations towards his elder in personal and professional terms, a recognition of both the importance and potential of this music (after all, Mozart would not have adapted another composer’s material for his own compositional purposes had he considered the original material musically unworthy), so the musical collage that is K. 465’s Adagio implicitly acknowledges the importance and significance of his material. Through actively contemplating his own achievements from K. 387–464 in the Adagio of K. 465, Mozart constructs a rarefied peroration, one that encapsulates the homogeneous conception of the set. But the stylistic implications of Mozart’s introduction to K. 465 are wide ranging and not limited to the ‘Haydn’ set. The very feature underscoring homogeneity in the set as a whole – Mozart’s integration of musical procedures from the first five ‘Haydn’ quartets at the beginning of K. 465 to climactic harmonic effect – actually denies a sense of homogeneity to the opening sections of K. 465/i. The contrast between the chromatic, harmonically lavish Adagio and the diatonic, harmonically straightforward first theme section in the Allegro is stark, unprecedented in fact in the ‘Haydn’ set. But the combination of stylistically climactic writing generated from Mozart’s contemplation of earlier passages on the one hand, and procedural innovation (strong sectional contrast) on the other is not paradoxical – it lies at the heart of Mozart’s process of re-invention, as we have already seen in the piano concertos. K. 449/i engenders a new style of confrontation from an intensification of existing musical procedures, precipitating a new approach to the balancing of stylistic qualities, and K. 491 and 503 collectively combine climactic passages of grandeur/intimate grandeur and the beginnings of stylistic re-alignment; in similar fashion, K. 465/i brings together stylistic intensification (in the harmonic domain) and innovation. The initiation of stylistic change in K. 503 pursued systematically in the final concertos K. 537 and 595 finds a parallel, moreover, in K. 465/i and its relationship to Mozart’s final string quartets. As we shall see in Chapter 5, the three ‘Prussian’ quartets, K. 575, 589 and 590, extend considerably the type of contrast witnessed in K. 465/i, pointing to Mozart’s re-alignment of key stylistic and aesthetic features of the genre.
5 Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ Quartets, K. 575, 589 and 590: Towards a New Aesthetic of the String Quartet
M
OZART wrote only four string quartets after completing the ‘Haydn’ set in r1785, the ‘Hoffmeister’ (K. 499) in August 1786 and the ‘Prussian’ quartets (K. 575, 589 and 590) dated June 1789, May 1790 and June 1790 respectively. Just as late eighteenth-century writers single out the ‘Haydn’ quartets for critical attention on account of harmonic and tonal intricacies (see Chapter 4), so they also refer to striking technical and affective qualities of Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets, casting the works in a positive light. A death notice in the Franckfurter Kayserliche Reich-Ober-Post-Amtszeitung on 7 December 1791 praises the ‘Prussian’ works, ‘in which . . . [Mozart] nearly surpassed himself in art, modulation and intensity of expression’.1 In addition, Artaria announcements in December 1791 and January 1792 – albeit with a vested interest in selling printed copies – explain that they were ‘received with such general acclamation’ and are among ‘the most estimable . . . of the composer Mozart . . . [displaying] all that musical interest in respect of art, beauty and taste which must awaken pleasure and admiration not only in the amateur, but in the true connoisseur’.2 While it is wise to remain circumspect about writers’ motivations for expressing lofty sentiments about K. 575, 589 and 590 either in the wake of Mozart’s death or in view of personal financial advancement, the references these contemporary writers make to specific musical features suggest a level of admiration that is strangely lacking – relatively speaking – in subsequent influential writings. The great nineteenth-century champion of Mozart’s music Otto Jahn, for example, gives a decidedly mixed report. He claims that ‘there is more stress laid upon elegance and clearness than upon depth and warmth of tone’ citing ‘deference no doubt to the King’s taste’, and recognizes ‘motifs and working-out portions . . . less important’ than expected from Mozart, and identifies ‘middle movements . . . very fine as to form and effect, but . . . without any great depth of feeling’. Thus, ‘these quartets completely maintain Mozart’s reputation for inventive powers, sense of proportion and mastery of form, but . . . lack that
1 2
See Eisen, New Mozart Documents, p. 72. Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, pp. 436 and 427–28.
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absolute devotion to the highest ideal of art characteristic of the earlier ones’.3 The ambivalent reception of Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets persists in twentieth-century criticism. In broad agreement with Jahn, Eric Blom maintains that these works are ‘more superficial in expression than the six dedicated to Haydn’, on account of their need to placate the supposed dedicatee, the King of Prussia, with ‘flatteringly elaborate cello parts’. While they ‘come . . . near to Mozart’s high-water mark in quartet writing’ they possess neither ‘the depth of the earlier set, nor quite the wonderfully adjusted craftsmanship and polished grace of the separate Quartet in D major (K. 499) – and do not reveal the composer so intimately’.4 And Hans Keller, characterizing the ‘Prussian’ quartets as Mozart’s ‘problem’ of having to write prominent cello parts for the King and his ‘solution’ of writing soloistically for all four instrumentalists, finds one movement – the minuet of K. 590 – in which the ‘problem has not been completely solved’.5 He concludes with a disparaging remark about K. 590 as a whole: ‘In any case, this is not a last quartet in the sense in which the “Jupiter” is a last symphony.’6 Even Georges de Saint-Foix, incisive and highly positive in his evaluation of the ‘Prussian’ quartets in general, remains doubtful about several movements, in particular the first movement of K. 590, which features counterpoint in the development section bordering on ‘savagery’ (sauvagerie) and a ‘bare, strange’ coda that suggests ‘an empty anxiety’ (un vide inquiétant).7 Writers on biographical and stylistic issues in Mozart’s oeuvre often direct their remarks on the ‘Prussian’ quartets towards Mozart’s soloistic cello writing.8 This is understandable, not least from an historical perspective; both the Artaria advertisement of 28 December 1791 and Franz Niemetschek’s early biography of Mozart from 1798 refer to K. 575, 589 and 590 as concertante quartets, a popular genre in the late eighteenth century commonly featuring (as in the ‘Prussian’ works) soloistic prominence of individual instruments and frequent exchange of full periods and phrases.9 Important though this concertante dimension is, it 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Otto Jahn, Life of Mozart (1856), trans. Pauline D. Townsend (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1970), 3 vols., vol. 3, p. 16. Blom, Mozart, pp. 217–18. See Hans Keller, ‘The Chamber Music’, in The Mozart Companion, ed. Landon and Mitchell, pp. 131–32. Ibid., p. 132. Saint-Foix, W.A. Mozart, vol. 5, p. 115. Influential writers to whom this applies include Charles Rosen, Classical Style, p. 281, and Konrad Küster, Mozart: A Musical Biography, pp. 317–22. For the Artaria advertisement and the biographical reference see, respectively, Deutsch, Documentary Biography, p. 427 and Niemetschek, The Life of Mozart, trans. Helen Mautner (London: Leonard Hyman, 1956), p. 85. My definition of concertante derives from three secondary sources: Ulrich Mazurowicz, Das Streichduett in Wien von 1760 bis zum Tode Joseph Haydns (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1982), pp. 130–33; Hubert Unverricht, Geschichte des Streichtrios (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1969), p. 213; and Roland Würtz, Dialogué: Vorrevolutionäre Kammermusik in Mannheim und Paris (Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel, 1990), p. 82. For a detailed study of the Quatuors Concertant tradition see Janet M. Levy, ‘The “Quatuor Concertant” in Paris in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century’, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1971. For a brief examination of
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accounts only cursorily for stylistic differences between the ‘Prussian’ quartets and their illustrious predecessors in the ‘Haydn’ set. As we shall see, these differences are considerable, calling into question Mozart’s compositional and aesthetic principles in the quartet genre and, as a result, perhaps accounting in a general way for nineteenth- and twentieth-century critical negativity. It is not surprising that Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets, relative to the extraordinary volume of writing on his instrumental music in general, are often passed over in the secondary literature. Instrumental works from Mozart’s last five years competing for air-time include the formidable string quintets (K. 515, 516, 593 and 614) – ‘[by] general consent, Mozart’s greatest achievement in chamber music’ in Charles Rosen’s trite formulation10 – and final trilogy of symphonies, Nos. 39–41 (K. 543, 550 and 551), upon which critical attention has been lavished. In addition, Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets never attained the level of popularity on the twentieth-century concert stage of his ‘Haydn’ quartets, much like the final two piano concertos K. 537 and 595 in relation to his earlier concertos. In fact, as the ensuing investigation clarifies, the concertos K. 537 and 595 and the quartets K. 575, 589 and 590 are kindred spirits in stylistic terms, their significance residing in the parallel re-invention processes in which they engage, carried out in response to earlier practices in both genres. As we shall see, this is especially apparent in the musical contrasts contained in K. 575, 589 and 590, contrasts that owe their origins in Mozart’s string quartet oeuvre to the juxtaposition of the Adagio and Allegro sections in K. 465/i. I shall look first at how Mozart manipulates musical contrast in the technical sense (harmony, theme, melody, dynamics etc.) such that it becomes a defining stylistic feature of these works and distinguishes them from the ‘Haydn’ quartets (with the exception of the opening of K. 465/i); I shall then set the treatment of contrast in context by discussing precedents for it in Mozart’s string chamber works and by evaluating its aesthetic significance, thus establishing the ‘Prussian’ quartets’ place in Mozart’s process of stylistic re-invention.
Musical contrast in the ‘Prussian’ quartets Musical-rhetorical and topical processes, central components of the classical lingua franca, require a composer’s attention to contrast at both the local level and at the level of completing a coherent discourse, as does the principle of unity in variety that surfaces continually in eighteenth-century compositional thought;11 in fact the combination and contrast of musical topics is so fundamental to late eighteenth-century music that it can be regarded as one of the defining features of
10 11
Mozart’s treatment of concertante style (but not discussing the ‘Prussian’ quartets) see Hermann Jung, ‘Mozarts “Concertante”-Behandlung: Einfluss oder Nachklang der “Mannheimer Schule”?’ Mozart-Jahrbuch 1991, pp. 77–85. Rosen, Classical Style, p. 264. See Ratner, Classic Music, p. 219; Bonds, Wordless Rhetoric, p. 95.
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so-called ‘classical’ style.12 The exact technical nature of permissible musical contrasts in instrumental music remains a hot topic of aesthetic debate in the second half of the eighteenth century, even though the practical need for them is never at issue.13 As Thomas Busby explained un-contentiously in his definition from 1801: ‘Contrast in music is that opposition and relief produced by the difference of style in the several movements of a composition; or the chiara oscura of the several passages in the same movement: the alternate crescendos and diminuendos, pianos and fortes, employed by the composer, to awaken the attention, and interest the feelings, of his audience.’14 While the concept of unity and the premium placed upon conveying a lucid sequence of musical ideas provokes some resistance to introducing significant contrast in mid-to-late eighteenthcentury aesthetic circles – writers such as Engel and Reichardt go as far as to consider extreme affective changes illustrative of madness15 by implication condemning strong musical contrasts – aestheticians in general become progressively willing to devise ‘[new], more dynamic, theories of the emotions . . . to justify ever higher levels of contrast and variety in instrumental music’.16 Programmatic instrumental music, including ‘characteristic’ symphonies, brought strong musical contrasts directly into the instrumental arena,17 and the prevailing late eighteenth-century analogy between symphony and Ode legislates for strong internal contrasts as well.18 Marked contrasts in closely juxtaposed expressive materials are also clearly evident in a number of Haydn string quartet and symphonic movements of the 1780s and 1790s.19 And the musical sublime, according to William Jackson, can be produced by contrast of the most forceful kind: ‘what would become of our Sublimities, if it were not for the short cut of a Pianissimo, so delicate as almost to escape the ear, and then a sudden change into all the Fortissimo that Fiddling, Fluting, Trumpeting and Drumming can bestow?’20 By the 1780s, indeed, Carl Friedrich Cramer could claim that listeners 12 13
14 15 16
17 18
19 20
Ratner, Classic Music, p. 26. For ample evidence of the combination and contrast of musical topics see, in particular, Agawu, Playing with Signs, and Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart. See, for example, the articles on contrast in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768), p. 121, and Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon, cols. 390–91. Both writers acknowledge the benefits of employing musical contrast, but recognize that contrasts need to be monitored carefully and not abused. Thomas Busby, ‘Contrast’, in A Complete Dictionary of Music (London, 1801), no page numbers. Richard Will, The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 137. On the concept of Abwechslung (contrast) in eighteenth-century German aesthetic thought, see Bellamy Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th-Century Germany (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), passim. (Quotation taken from p. 222.) See Will, The Characteristic Symphony, passim. See Henning Bey on Klopstock’s ode ‘Frühlingsfeier’ and Haydn’s Symphony No. 82, set in broad theoretical and aesthetic context, in Haydns und Mozarts Symphonik nach 1782: Konzeptionelle Perspektiven (Neuried: Ars Una, 2005), pp. 102–37. See Elaine Sisman, ‘Haydn, Shakespeare, and the Rules of Originality’, in Haydn and his World, ed. Sisman, pp. 3–56, especially pp. 29–35. William Jackson, Observations on the Present State of Music in London (London, 1791), p. 16.
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to a C.P.E. Bach fantasy were astonished (in a positive sense) by ‘the novelty of so many often quite heterogeneous, but still . . . interconnected ideas, their unexpectedness and constant surprises, the boldness of the modulations, of the digressions and returns . . . the variety of the separate figures that together comprise the whole’; Cramer thus implicitly condones contrasts of all sorts.21 From a generic perspective Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets are a world away from late eighteenthcentury fantasias, of course, but are similar in at least one respect: as in numerous fantasias, sharp contrast seems to represent a raison d’être for many movements, affecting formal procedures as never before in Mozart’s string quartet repertory. The ‘Prussian’ quartets, as we shall see, do much more than confirm Mozart’s status as ‘the greatest master at mixing and coordinating topics’22 and go far beyond demonstrating that the widespread eighteenth-century compositional and aesthetic principle of unity in variety is alive and well in Mozart’s chamber music. Exactly which types of contrast are to be privileged in our examination of the ‘Prussian’ quartets, and why? The late eighteenth-century references to these works cited above draw attention to both expressive and technical-procedural elements (intensity as well as artfulness/modulatory skill) and it is the impact of Mozart’s musical procedures on intense expression and contrast that is of most interest for present purposes. Expressive intensity and contrast are by no means synonymous, but are inevitably mutually reinforcing: sharp juxtapositions of very different types of material and of very different ways of organizing musical materials ultimately accentuate expressive discrepancies. (Saint-Foix is right to draw attention to the acute contrast between ‘savage’ counterpoint and bare passages in the first movement of K. 590, but – unaware that such contrasts are at the heart of Mozart’s compositional enterprise in the ‘Prussian’ works – is misguided in parsing this contrast negatively.) Thus, I focus my attention on those contrasts in musical procedures and materials that lend the ‘Prussian’ works their distinctive stylistic identity in the context of Mozart’s string chamber oeuvre – for example, juxtapositions of leisurely and frenetic writing, of passionately contrapuntal and thematically empty writing, of complex chromatic and ostentatiously straightforward harmonies, of flowing and halting harmonic progressions, and, indeed, of disjunctive and florid writing in general. In short, I am interested in those musical ‘extremes’, in Thomas Busby’s definition of the term from 1801, ‘which are the greatest distance from each other in point of gravity or acuteness’.23 On account of the pronounced nature of their juxtapositions, the contrasts I describe seem
21
22 23
Carl Friedrich Cramer, ed., Magazin der Musik, 2 vols. (Hamburg, 1783–86), vol. 2, p. 1251. ‘Das Neue so vieler oft ganz heterogenen, aber doch . . . zusammengewebter Gedanken, ihr Unerwartetes . . . immerdar Ueberaschendes; die Kuhnheit der Modulationen, der Abschweifungen und Wiedereinlenkung . . . die Mannigfaltigkeit der einzelnen Figuren, aus denen das Ganze zusammengesetzt ist.’ Ratner, Classic Music, p. 27. Busby, A Complete Dictionary of Music, no page number.
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self-conscious; perhaps Mozart draws attention to his own compositional involvement in an analogous way to the late eighteenth-century composer who makes his or her presence felt through humour.24 Turning to the first movements of the ‘Prussian’ quartets, we see that the division of much of the material into clearly articulated textural ‘blocks’, as well as the nature of the blocks themselves, accentuate musical contrasts. In K. 589/i, the leisurely unfolding of self-contained first theme (bars 1–20), transition (bars 21–45) and secondary theme (bars 45–60) sections stands in opposition to the fast and furious counterpoint of the exposition’s codetta (bars 61–71). Whereas the spacious first and secondary themes divide neatly into beginning-middle-end subsections in the former (bars 1–6; 6–12; 12–20) and repeated statements passed from cello to first violin in the latter, against a prevailing piano dynamic and different textural combinations for each subsection (3+3+4 voices in the first theme; 2+3 in the second), the codetta features concentrated four-voice counterpoint, marked forte, and a rapid circle of fifths progression (D7–G7–C7–F7–ii/F– I6/4–V7–I), unprecedented procedures in the movement thus far. For much of the development the frenetic codetta material (bars 72–76; 104–108) is set against derivations of the principal thematic material (bars 77–103), abruptly alternating singing and brilliant styles in the process; the two musical worlds are reconciled in bars 108–15 and alternated – featuring the head motif and triplet fragments – in bars 116–21. A recomposed passage in the recapitulation (bars 154–61) explores musical contrast further: the chords of a conventional vi–ii6–v–i6 progression articulated on the first beats of bars 154–57 alternate with diminished intervals (F–B, E–Bb, D–Ab) accentuated by chromatic passing notes and sforzando indications. Imitations and reduced scorings (1st violin/2nd violin and viola/cello doublings in bars 154–57) characterize both the exposition and development sections, but the combination here of textural austerity and harmonic adventurousness – as well as the contrast with preceding and succeeding material – renders the passage distinctive. It offers a succinct, small-scale exposé of contrast, complementing the larger-scale alternations of opposing materials in the exposition and development sections. While K. 589/i – pace bars 154–57 – sets ‘blocks’ of opposed material against one another, K. 590/i employs clearly delineated ‘blocks’ and smooth transitions, creating procedural contrasts and unusual formal quirks in addition to the types of textural and affective contrast that characterize K. 589/i. Smooth thematic and textural continuity is maintained between the end of the exposition (bars 73–74) and the beginning of its repeat (bar 1), between the exposition and the development (bars 73–76), and between the recapitulation and coda (bars 184–88) through unison writing and descending semiquaver scales that transcend sectional divisions; subsequent material in the development and coda sections,
24
On humour in this context, see Mark Evan Bonds, ‘Haydn, Laurence Sterne and the Origins of Musical Irony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 44 (1991), especially pp. 69–72.
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however, creates blocked contrast. Prior to the establishment of the dominant for the re-transition (beginning in bar 104), the development divides into two opposing segments (bars 77–93 and 94–103; see Ex. 5.1 for the end of the first and beginning of the second). Contrasts between them, and between the first segment and the preceding unisons, include not only the dynamics and procedures employed – piano homophony against fast and furious forte, brilliant-style counterpoint (bars 94–103) and forte, descending, brilliant-style unison scales (bars 74–75) – but also the respective approaches to thematic working. The first segment is remarkably sparse thematically: the two crotchets in the cello (bars 76–82, 90–93) and first violin (83–93) are heard in a similar context (in the first half of the bar and in conjunction with an intervallic leap) only in bars 15 and 76, and even then as closing gestures; the chromatic units (1st violin, bars 77–82 and cello, bars 83–88) feature in the second theme section of the exposition but are now presented in abstract, generic form; and the inner-third/sixth accompanimental writing prevalent in the 2nd violin and viola (bars 77–93) and found in both the first and second theme sections of the exposition, again lacks thematic distinction. It is as if Mozart has deliberately chosen his most undistinguished material from the exposition for developmental purposes! In complete contrast, bars 94–103 (like bars 74–75) employ the descending semiquaver scales that derive from bars 2–3, culminating in an ascending semiquaver scale in unison (bars 103–04) that invokes the opening both texturally and thematically. The coda (Ex. 5.2) heightens thematic and dynamic opposition from the beginning of the development, taking the thematic ‘emptiness’ of bars 77–93 a stage further. While the descending semiquaver unisons at the cross-over from exposition to development begin on the second and flattened seventh degrees of the scale (D and Bb in the context of C, bars 74–75), subsequently outlining G minor harmony (bar 76), the same descending unisons at the cross-over from recapitulation to coda extend the sequence to the flattened sixth degree as well (Db in the context of F, bar 187) and conclude with a stark diminished 7th interval (bar 188); they therefore accentuate still more the contrast with the ensuing material. The concluding bars of the coda (197–98) are also pared down thematically to an even greater extent than the corresponding bars in the development (bars 92–93), the texture thinning progressively in bars 196, 197 and 198, until only the crotchet leaps remain (bar 198). The opposition of the forceful unison (bars 185–88) and the ‘anti-climactic’ concluding bars (189–98) is, in fact, the most pointed musical contrast in the movement. Inevitably, we need to explain how stylistic contrasts discussed above distinguish the late quartets from their first-movement counterparts in the ‘Haydn’ set, putting aside for a moment their relationship to the progenitor of stark sectional contrast in Mozart’s string quartets, the opening of K. 465/i. To be sure, block-like construction in conjunction with textural change is a common feature of the first movements of Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets, as, of course, is frequent dynamic contrast between blocks. In addition, the topical universe is just as diverse and prone to localized contrasts in the first movements of the ‘Haydn’ set as it is in the
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Ex. 5.1: Mozart, String Quartet in F, K. 590, 1st movement, bars 92–98
Ex. 5.2: Mozart, String Quartet in F, K. 590, 1st movement, bars 186–98
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corresponding movements of the late quartets.25 However, none of K. 387/i, 421/i, 428/i, 458/i and 464/i features either as pronounced a contrast of large-scale blocks as K. 589/i and K. 590/i or as extreme a combination of smooth sectional segue and sharp formal delineation as K. 590/i. The combination of heightened musical contrast and ‘leisurely’ thematic unfolding (see the closed main themes of K. 575, 589, and the secondary themes of K. 589, 590 in particular) emphasizing the ostensibly conflicting pulls of formal relaxation and formal urgency, again distinguishes the ‘Prussian’ first movements from those of the ‘Haydn’ set. Mozart’s innovative approach to blocked contrast in the ‘Prussian’ works continues in his minuet and trios. In K. 589/iii the A and A’ sections of the trio are relatively diatonic and free flowing, whereas the B section (bars 60–76, Ex. 5.3) is highly chromatic and disjunctive. Diminished triads in bars 60 and 62 give way to Ab7 harmony in bar 64, subsequently moving to Db6, eb6/5 (ii6/5 of Db) and Ab7 harmonies (bars 66–67) in full expectation of a confirmation of Db; instead, a general pause leads to G major/C minor harmony (bars 69–71) which, given the harmonic incongruity with the preceding Ab7 and the return to the thematic material and texture of bars 60ff., conveys the impression of a ‘re-start’ to the B section. This passage, with both its pause underscoring thwarted harmonic and tonal expectations, and its apparent ‘re-start’, resembles the beginning of the development section of Mozart’s final piano concerto K. 595/i (discussed in Chapter 3).26 For at least one late eighteenth-century critic too, Karl Ludwig Junker, pauses are identified as useful mechanisms for conveying intense emotional states and affective changes,27 thus making them valuable tools for conveying strong contrasts between musical materials as well. The minuet of K. 575, like the minuet of K. 589, takes its B section as the focal point for strong sectional differentiation (see Ex. 5.4). In contrast to the surrounding A and A’ sections, the B section is un-harmonized, unison textures in the first seven bars (31–37) accentuated by sharp drops in register, by fp dynamic indications and by unclear harmonic implications and harmonic direction. The subsequent four-bar delineations of diminished and minor 9th harmonies (bars 37–40 and 41–44) maintain the textural sparseness and continue to contrast vividly with the richer A and A’ sections. In K. 590/iii (Ex. 5.5), the minuet rather than the trio offers alternations of lush chromatic and straightforward diatonic writing. Bars 15–25 from the B section and bars 29–37 from the A’ incorporate sensibility-style chromaticism – a succession of C, f/D b, D7 and C7 harmonies over a C pedal in bars 16–19, entirely 25 26
27
For topical heterogeneity in the ‘Haydn’ set see in particular K. 428/i as analysed by Allanbrook in ‘Expression and Form’, pp. 153–60. Another distinctive concerto quality appears in the A’ section of K. 589/iii, where the 1st violin incorporates four bars of semiquaver arpeggiated, concertante figuration (bars 95–98), a passage without precedent in Mozart’s ‘mature’ quartets. On Haydn’s incorporation of concerto characteristics – gestural, figurative and formal – into his string quartets, see Floyd K. Grave, ‘Concerto Style in Haydn’s String Quartets’, The Journal of Musicology, 18/1 (2001), pp. 76–97. Karl Ludwig Junker, Tonkunst (Bern, 1777), p. 60.
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Ex. 5.3: Mozart, String Quartet in Bb, K. 589, 3rd movement, bars 60–77
Ex. 5.4: Mozart, String Quartet in D, K. 575, 3rd movement, bars 31–48
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Ex.5.4: cont.
Ex. 5.5: Mozart, String Quartet in F, K. 590, 3rd movement, bars 15–42
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Ex. 5.5: cont.
chromatic writing in the three upper voices in bars 23–25, and diminished and augmented 6th harmonies (bars 32, 35) over chromatic part writing and a tonic pedal in the A’ section; the concluding bars of the B and A’ sections go to the other extreme, providing ostentatiously diatonic, Ländler-like cadential formulations (bars 26–28 and 38–42). The melodic, harmonic and thematic straightforwardness of these gestures contrasts starkly with the intricacies of the preceding material; their self-conscious unfussiness belongs to a less stylized type of minuet than the chromatic passages, rustic simplicity thus juxtaposed with cultivated erudition. Like the first movements of K. 589 and 590, the minuet and trios of K. 575, 589 and 590 distinguish themselves stylistically from the corresponding movements in the ‘Haydn’ set. None of the ‘Haydn’ minuet and trios match the harmonic disjunction of the B section from the K. 589 trio, the juxtaposition of chromatic refinement and bucolic cadential activity from the K. 590 minuet, or the abrupt opening of the B section of the K. 575 minuet, where alterations in dynamic, textural and harmonic procedures produce sectional contrast. To be sure, the minuets of K. 464 and 465 display localized topical and stylistic contrasts, each conveying the impression of a ‘Ländler gone haywire’28 and, as a result, somewhat foreshadow the K. 590 minuet. Nevertheless, a new, self-consciously stiff and curt quality characterizes the stylistic interchange in K. 590’s minuet; the corresponding interchange in K. 464 and 465 is fluid by comparison. The end of the B section of K. 590 gives the impression (unlike, say, the Ländler-like cadences in K. 465, bars 16–20 and 55–63) that the rustic, cadential gesture is pulling the chromatic ‘indulgences’ back into line – the dissimilarity with the preceding music is marked and the chromaticism is brought to a close in brusque fashion. The B section of the K. 464 minuet is the closest precursor to K. 589 and 575: a sudden, forte, half-diminished chord for four consecutive crotchets presented tutti and followed by a two-beat silence (bars 42–43), temporarily derails the expected confirmation of D. But it is appreciably different from the later movements too. In K. 464 the disruptive moment becomes a feature of the musical argument,
28
See Allanbrook, ‘Expression and Form’, p. 140.
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reappearing in the A’ section in full diminished-seventh form (bars 63–64). The procedural integration of the disruptive gesture in K. 464 finds no parallel in the abrupt sectional and gestural contrasts in the ‘Prussian’ movements.29 The main aim of the B sections of the K. 575 minuet and K. 589 trio appears to lie in providing direct, self-contained contrast with surrounding material, rather than in stimulating subsequent alterations to the expected course of musical events in the reprise. The tour de force of sectional contrast in Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets comes, fittingly, in his final movement in the genre, K. 590/iv. The transition section features an explosive, Sturm und Drang passage (bars 52–65) prior to the establishment of V/C (bar 66), beginning with a perfect cadence into vi, D minor (bars 51–52). The leaps in the first violin line, presented forte, are foreshadowed by the 2½-octave drop and accompanying forte in bar 38, but the rhythmic and textural intensity of the passage comes out of the blue; textural concentration increases on account of each instrument presenting a different type of material (an angular melodic line in the 1st violin, accompanimental semiquavers deriving from the head motif in the 2nd violin, syncopation in the violas, and a chromatic, quaver descent in the cello). Furthermore, the syncopation in the violas rhythmically underscores several of the 1st violin leaps on the second quaver of the bar (see bars 56, 60, 62). In the ‘Haydn’ set the closest point of comparison – again in D minor – is the second variation of the K. 421 finale. Although the distinct instrumental strands, syncopations and offbeat fps parallel K. 590/iv, the K. 421 passage ultimately lacks the ferocity of its later counterpart. The Sturm und Drang passage in K. 590/iv is unremarkable in isolation, of course, given the frequency with which the topic surfaces in similarly abrupt contexts in late eighteenth-century instrumental music, but it is significant for foreshadowing a development section (Ex. 5.6) of considerable musical extremes, one that integrates disjunction and smooth continuity in equal measure. The beginning – a sudden shunt into bVI (Db) marked forte, for which the exposition’s harmonic processes leave us unprepared – draws attention to the sectional demarcation in no uncertain terms; at the end, in contrast, the first violin’s semiquavers flow seamlessly into the recapitulation in classic, re-transitional fashion, with the three-note repeating pattern that derives ultimately from bars 122ff. cancelling (in bar 184) the preceding three-against-four effect.30 Yet the effortlessness with which this motif merges into the main theme and reconfirms F belies 29
30
Although the emphasis on diminished 7th harmonies in the B section of the K. 575 minuet could perhaps be regarded as a stimulus for the new, fp diminished 7th in bar 56, the connection here is much less explicit in textural, rhythmic, gestural and dynamic respects than the corresponding connection in the K. 464 minuet. The articulation is consistent with the duple meter, but a three-against-four effect results from the continual reiterations of a conjunct, three-note semiquaver descent. This is particularly evident in bars 179–80 where the viola’s semiquavers are accompanied only by tied notes in the violins and cello. Albi Rosenthal has recently offered this version of the main theme as a musical analogue of the anagrams and word plays evident in Mozart’s letters. See ‘Mozart’s Key Signatures: A Peculiar
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the harmonic idiosyncrasies it has wrought earlier in the development. Passed from 1st violin to cello to 2nd violin in the opening 16 bars of the development section, the motif in question then links a viola statement (bars 150–55) to an harmonic twist; the C6/5 harmony dominating the preceding five bars gives way to A/f# harmony (bars 150–52), as if signalling contempt for an implication of the tonic, F, at this juncture. Furthermore, the ensuing circle of 5ths in bars 155–65 (A7–D7–G–G7–C7–F–F7–Bb) is obscured harmonically by continued imitation of the motif in the context of chromatic neighbour notes and three-note repeated descents that disguise the harmonized tones and create a bizarre effect. In several respects, the development section of K. 590/iv is closely akin to the corresponding section of the Piano Concerto No. 27 in Bb, K. 595/i discussed in Chapter 3. Both deploy moments of disjunction in the early part of the section and unspoiled continuity at the end; and both articulate the beginning of the section with a bold and unprepared modulation (a semitone up from the tonic in K. 595/i and a semitone up from the dominant in K. 590/iv). Moreover, just as Mozart, in the development of K. 595, engages in a seemingly self-conscious act of re-invention in regard to his typical modus operandi in the piano concerti, so in the development of K. 590/iv he draws attention in similarly self-conscious fashion to a generic aspect of his compositional style, the circle of 5ths. The imitated semiquavers in bars 155–64 seem wilfully to obstruct what otherwise would have constituted a clear and straightforward progression; it is as if Mozart is experimenting with the juxtaposition of stylistic normality and abnormality by problematizing the ostensible simplicity and straightforwardness of a basic harmonic procedure. Stylistic experimentation allied with re-invention, evident in the complementary qualities of the last two piano concertos, K. 537 and 595 (see Chapter 3), also provides a key to understanding the significance of Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets in his Viennese string quartet oeuvre. (The intervening work between the ‘Haydn’ and ‘Prussian’ sets, K. 499, is discussed below.) In addition to the qualities of contrast already outlined, the formal organization of individual movements from the ‘Prussian’ quartets bears witness to new compositional thinking. While in the ‘Haydn’ set 9 out of 11 first and last movements in either sonata or sonata-rondo form greet the firm confirmation of the secondary key in the exposition with putatively ‘new’ thematic material, only three of six do the same in K. 575, 589 and 590.31 The remaining three in the ‘Prussian’ set exemplify Mozart’s heterogeneous
31
Feature of his Autograph Scores’, in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven: Studies in the Music of the Classical Period, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 147–50, at 147–48. In the ‘Haydn’ set, see K. 387/i, bars 25ff.; K. 387/iv, bars 92ff.; K. 421/i, bars 25ff.; K. 428/i, bars 40ff.; K. 428/iv, bars 60ff.; K. 458/iv, bars 48ff.; K. 464/i, bars 37ff.; K. 465/i, bars 71ff.; and K. 465/iv, bars 55ff. The two exceptions are K. 458/i, which adapts an immediately preceding semiquaver figure after the confirmation of the dominant in bars 53–54, and K. 464/iv, which restates the head motif of the main theme at the same juncture (bars 40ff.). In the ‘Prussian’ set, see K. 589/i, bars 45ff.; K. 575/iv, bars 58ff. and K. 590/i, bars 31ff.
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Ex. 5.6: Mozart String Quartet in F, K. 590, 4th movement, bars 132–88
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120 Ex. 5.6: cont.
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approach: K. 590/iv delays the firm, cadential confirmation of the secondary key area until late in the section – bar 121, after harmonic excursions through D/d, C/c, Bb7, Eb7, Ab7 (bars 81–95) – whereupon the short and concise nature of the ensuing material conveys a codetta-like quality; K. 589/iv restates the main theme immediately after confirmation of the secondary key (bar 48); and K. 575/i reiterates the bars 7–8 motif in bars 49–57 and the first five bars of the main theme (in diminution) in bars 64–66 after the confirmation of the dominant in bars 48–49.32 In addition, one of the sonata finales – K. 589/iv – is formally anomalous, perhaps providing further evidence of Mozart’s experimental mindset at this stage of his career as a string quartet writer. While the A (repeat) B, A’ (repeat) structure of K. 589/iv’s theme (bars 1–28) strongly implies a rondo movement of some kind, a sonata structure prevails instead.
K. 465 re-visited It is necessary at this stage to re-visit the opening of K. 465, since the strong musical contrast between the Adagio and Allegro of K. 465 is, in at least two respects, quite different from the contrasts we have now witnessed in the ‘Prussian’ works. The tempo change from one section to the next helps accentuate the contrast between musical material, and has no parallel in the contrasts we have discussed in the ‘Prussian’ set; and the extended dominant preparation (bars 16–22) for the confirmation of C major at the beginning of the Allegro smoothes the harmonic transition from Adagio to Allegro as distinct from many of the passages from the ‘Prussian’ works which modulate abruptly in the process of conveying sharp contrast. But probing further we also discover a kinship between the contrasts engendered by the succession of Adagio and Allegro in K. 465 and the juxtaposition of starkly differentiated musical procedures in the ‘Prussian’ set. As is often the case in a fantasia – the prevailing topic of K. 465’s Adagio – the ‘possible directedness’ of the slow introduction to K. 465, just like the progression from one contrasting segment to another in the ‘Prussian’ quartets, becomes less of an issue than ‘the sheer pleasure of disorientation’;33 even if we hear references to earlier works in the ‘Haydn’ set in the K. 465 Adagio and understand it as a peroration to the set as a whole (Chapter 4), or hear thematic connections between strongly contrasted 32
33
I resist the term ‘monothematicism’ in the context of these procedures, given the absence of a widely accepted definition. To some extent the distinction between a ‘new’ theme and the statement of pre-existent material is clouded by the prevailing, late eighteenth-century rhetorical view that a composer should adapt and elaborate a single basic idea over the course of a movement, integrating different material in a variety of musical domains. Nevertheless, there is an audible difference between the tonal and thematic procedures from the six K. 575, 589 and 590 expositions discussed above and corresponding procedures in the ‘Haydn’ set, where secondary thematic material is appreciably different from material that precedes it. Annette Richards, The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 49.
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segments in the ‘Prussian’ set, we are surely invited to experience a degree of disorientation too (later critics certainly attest to this experience in K. 465). Valuing the contrast between the harmonic indulgence of the Adagio of K. 465 and the light efficiency of the ensuing first theme section, and between the contrasting segments in the ‘Prussian’ quartets, is an end in itself; hearing just teleological progression from one to the next misses the point. The fundamental lack of integration between Adagio and Allegro from K. 465 and between contrasting segments from K. 575, 589 and 590 results in localized stylistic incongruity, even if thematic links are also found among the contrasts. But such incongruity by no means prevents us from reflecting upon general relationships between the contrasting segments or sections in question. As Baumgarten explains in his foundational mid eighteenth-century work on aesthetics: ‘All differences, dissimilarities and inequalities are relations. Consequently if one thinks simultaneously of two things opposed to each other, one thinks not only of each one in itself, but also at the same time of their relationship. Thus the thought becomes very clear in that way and can also become vivid as a result.’34 The darkness-to-light analogy popular in critical assessments of the opening of K. 465 brings to life the Baumgartian proposition that obscure and vivid concepts, ideas, or indeed musical materials are more appreciated the more they contrast.35 And the same applies to the ‘Prussian’ quartets. The strong contrasts at play – harmonic, gestural and procedural – enhance our appreciation of the diverse materials that are juxtaposed. Unlike Haydn’s string quartets the incongruities and discontinuities in the ‘Prussian’ set are not fundamentally witty or humourous. Like Haydn’s works, however, they highlight moments of formal articulation, playing with expectations and conventions and consequently drawing attention to the mechanics of their musical construction; contrast becomes a raison d’être of the style, not a by-product. In their connections to the movement initiating stylistic re-invention (K. 465/i), the ‘Prussian’ quartets are also closely akin to the final piano concertos, as well as to the grand concertos that follow the beginning of the re-invention process in K. 449. As we have seen, Mozart re-appraises his concerto style in K. 503, K. 537 and K. 595 in light of the stylistically climactic K. 491 and exploits from K. 450 onwards the potential for prominent orchestral participation initiated by K. 449; equally, in the ‘Prussian’ works, he develops a new intensity of contrast to his string quartet writing from the startling contrast between the Adagio and Allegro of K. 465/i, a contrast that itself owes its origins to the Adagio’s manipulation to perorational harmonic effect of musical materials from earlier ‘Haydn’ works (Chapter 4).
34 35
Cited in Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views, p. 95. Translation amended. Ibid., p. 95.
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The ‘Prussian’ quartets in musical and aesthetic context Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets together embody an impressive array of contrasts. Harmonic disparities between the middle sections of minuet and trios and their outer sections, combinations of both blocked contrast and fluent formal continuation in a single movement, and conflicting indications of relaxed musical unfolding and formal urgency serve to establish intense musical contrast as a fundamental stylistic feature of these works, a feature that ultimately distinguishes them from their predecessors in the ‘Haydn’ set. But crucial questions remain. How exactly do we account for Mozart’s apparent change of stylistic course in the ‘Prussian’ set and how does this change of course ultimately affect the aesthetic position of these works vis-à-vis contemporary perceptions of the late eighteenth-century string quartet? The search for precursors in Mozart’s string chamber music to the stylistic procedures witnessed in the ‘Prussian’ quartets leads inevitably to three major works written between the ‘Haydn’ and ‘Prussian’ sets – the isolated D-major quartet K. 499, the ‘Hoffmeister’ (dated 19 August 1786), and the great string quintets K. 515 in C and K. 516 in G minor (19 April and 16 May 1787).36 The first movement of the string quartet K. 499 is a modest stylistic forerunner to the ‘Prussian’ works. Just as K. 590/i combines smooth sectional transition and abruptly contrasting material, so K. 499/i integrates continuity and overt sectional demarcation, albeit in a less pronounced fashion than K. 590/i.37 The self-contained first theme (bars 1–22) divides unmistakably into three units: a four-part, primarily homophonic opening (bars 1–12), an imitative middle (bars 13–20) and an imitative closing segment featuring one-bar cadential gestures. Distinct musical blocks, demarcated by a cadence in the dominant and a textural change, continue to appear after the close of the first theme (see bars 23–40, 40–52, 53–57, 57–65, 65–73). Here, however, the avoidance of a full confirmation of the dominant key at the end of each block – bars 52, 56–57 and 64–65 each feature an interrupted cadence in A – delays the articulation of the secondary theme; moreover, the principal candidate for secondary theme status among these passages (the violin melody beginning on the upbeat to bar 49) coinciding with the arrival of I6 harmony in A, is compromised by textural continuity (the 1st violin/cello imitation, the sustained E in the viola, and the quaver accompanimental figure in the 2nd violin). The same combination of unambiguous sectional articulation and smooth sectional continuity occurs in the development. While the beginning draws attention to itself with two distinct, two-bar
36 37
Another of Mozart’s important string chamber works from this period, the string trio, K. 563, is discussed in Chapter 7, as are his Viennese piano quartets and piano trios. For a detailed, section-by-section analysis of K. 499/i, focussing on harmonic and thematic processes, in particular the domineering role of the main theme, see Wolfgang Gerstoffer, ‘Thema und harmonischer Prozess: Analytische Uberlegungen zum Kopfsatz des “Hoffmeister”Quartetts KV 499’, Mozart Studien, 3 (1993), pp. 191–207.
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units (in A major and A minor respectively) separated by rests, the end features a fluent segue into the recapitulation, with the re-constituted, harmonized head motif and quaver imitation in bars 138–41 flowing with no hint of unevenness into the unison texture of the reprise of the main theme (bars 142ff.). The coda of K. 499/i, like the corresponding section of K. 590/i, extends the disjuncture from the beginning of the development section, adding a self-contained two-bar unit (bars 241–42) to the existing unit (bars 239–40); musical focus is again placed on the submediant degree (albeit nvi, rather then K. 590’s bVI). K. 499/i, with its simultaneous propensity for blocked contrast and fluent sectional continuity and its procedural affinity between development and coda sections, thus foreshadows the first movement of K. 590. In the formal realm, too, K. 499 prefigures stylistic features of the ‘Prussian’ quartets. Like K. 590/iv, K. 499/i delays the firm, cadential confirmation of the secondary key area until late in the section – bar 73 after excursions through f# and F (bars 57–69) – and again produces concise, codetta-like material at this point. In addition, the finale of K. 499 includes material that is ambiguous in functional terms (themes from bars 1 and 44), foreshadowing in a general way the ‘Prussian’ quartets’ spirit of experimentation and contrast. At the opening, for example, the immediate sequencing of material (bars 1–3, 5–7), the disjunction caused by silent fourth and eighth bars, the irregular harmonic structure of the initial seven bars (ii4/2 – IV6/4, bars 2–3; I – I7, bars 6–7) and the bridge-like sequence (bars 22–33), are more suggestive of a transition than a main theme section; the conclusion of this passage on a V7 minim pause, prepared by four preceding bars of V7 harmony, also suggests the end of an introductory section. In contrast, the theme from bars 44–59 – by when a transition would be expected given the scope of the exposition – is entirely regular: 4+4 and 4+4 phrases, over a tonic pedal in the first eight bars and a conventional I–ii6–V7–vi–I6–ii6/5–V7–I harmonic progression in the second. Thus, bars 44–59 have a more appropriate profile for a main theme than the preceding material. This apparent functional reversal occurs again towards the end of the exposition when the two portions of thematic material reappear in quick succession in the secondary key area. The bar 44 theme is heard in bars 131–45, endorsing the dominant key, while the ensuing bar 1 material (bars 145–55) ultimately assumes a transitional role, leading back to the tonic D for the repeat of the exposition, and to D7 harmony and a collective one-bar rest at the opening of the development, whereupon the onset of the bar 44 theme in the subdominant G (bar 163), heard as a moment of arrival, recreates the effect of the D major V7–I progression from bars 43–44. In the recapitulation, both the curtailed, 8-bar presentation of the bar 44 theme in nIII, F major, rather than in the tonic (see bars 237–44), and the dominant nature of the bar 1 material in the Coda (bars 334–83) – in the context of musical closure rather than formal transition (see bars 359ff.) – redress the prevailing ‘imbalance’; the opening theme of the movement finally asserts itself as primary thematic material. In short, K. 499/iv, demonstrating neither the intensity of surface musical contrasts nor the expressive extremes of ‘Prussian’ movements, nonetheless reveals a
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potent disparity between thematic placement and formal function, foreshadowing the self-conscious manipulation of formal procedures and functions in the later quartets. Neither of the first movements of the K. 515 and 516 string quintets – perhaps surprisingly given their broad expressive scope – prefigures the heightened contrast and disjuncture of the ‘Prussian’ quartets to the same degree as K. 499.38 K. 515/i, though manifesting a wide array of topics together with co-existing claims at the local level to opposition and unity and to contrast and continuity, ‘essays its course carefully and with exemplary dimensional balance’ in Kofi Agawu’s words, avoiding the kind of pronounced textural and harmonic disjuncture witnessed in the late quartets.39 K. 516/i is also devoid of abrupt disjuncture, in spite of its division into the type of compositional blocks articulated by textural change40 that is characteristic of the late quartet movements. In fact, the exposition as a whole reveals a carefully graded approach to harmonic and textural intensification: the 3 + 3 statements of the first theme (bars 1–16) lead to a 5-voice conclusion (bars 18–28); the tonic theme (I(b), bars 29ff.) features similar – but texturally denser – accompanimental writing to that of the first theme; the relative major version of theme I(b) ups the ante harmonically (bars 50ff.) and then texturally (with the introduction of imitation in bars 56–62); and the secondary theme material following the cadential confirmation of Bb (bars 63–64) increases the level of textural complexity by adding scotch-snap and semiquaver figures to the existing imitative and accompanimental writing (bars 64–75). The curt harmonic and textural shifts of the late quartets are not in evidence. 38
39
40
A number of recent articles have addressed in varying degrees of detail the general stylistic position of the late quintets (K. 515, 516, 593 and 614) vis-à-vis Mozart’s quartet repertory, albeit not in the context of heightened contrast. Ludwig Finscher discusses the intersection of textural procedures in the late quintets and ‘Prussian’ quartets in ‘Bemerkungen zu den späten Streichquintetten’, in Mozarts Streichquintette: Beiträge zum musikalischen Satz, zum Gattungskontext und zu Quellenfragen, ed. Cliff Eisen and Wolf-Dieter Seiffert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1994), pp. 153–62. Harmut Schick considers the increased thematic and textural density and complexity of K. 515 in light of the achievements of K. 465 in ‘Ein Quintett im Diskurs mit dem Streichquartett: Mozarts Streichquintett C-Dur, KV 515’, in Mozarts Streichquintette, ed. Eisen and Seiffert, pp. 69–101. Wolf-Dieter Seiffert looks briefly at how groups of Mozart’s quartets (e.g. K. 80–173 and K. 387–499) expose stylistic features that are subsequently incorporated into his quintets (e.g. K. 174 and K. 515–516) in ‘Vom Streichquartett zum Streichquintett: Satztechnische Bezüge zwischen kammermusikalischen Früh- und Spätwerk bei Mozart’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1991, pp. 671–77. In contrast, Thomas Christian Schmidt explains the process in reverse; textural and thematic procedures first evident in the string quintets K. 515 and 516 subsequently infiltrate the ‘Prussian’ quartets. See ‘ “Vom Streichquintett zum Streichquartett”? Zur Satztechnik in Mozarts später Kammermusik für Streicher’, in Mozart-Jahrbuch 1996, pp. 1–22. For a penetrating analysis of K. 515/i, focussing on the ‘extroversive’ semiotic qualities of topical interplay, see Agawu, Playing with Signs, pp. 80–99. (The above quotation is taken from p. 99.) Other important studies of this movement include Rosen, The Classical Style, pp. 266–74, and Ratner, Classic Music, pp. 79–80 and passim. On the last movement, see Rudolf Bockholdt, ‘Der Schlusssatz von Mozarts Streichquintett in C-Dur, KV 515: Bau im Grossen und Geschehen im Kleinen’, in Mozarts Streichquintette, ed. Eisen and Seiffert, pp. 103–26. See, for example, bars 1–8, 9–17, 18–25, 26–28, 29–44, 49–63, 64–71 and 72–75 in the exposition.
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The inner movements of K. 515 and 516 move closer to the style of abrupt contrast from the ‘Prussian’ works.41 The minuet and opening of the trio of K. 515 feature rhythmic instabilities and asymmetries countered by a symmetrical Ländler theme at the end of the trio’s A section (bars 65–72).42 The rhythmic contrast between the Ländler theme and preceding material (Ex. 5.7) is accentuated by dynamic contrast (forte to piano), by marked textural change and by the sudden intervention of diatonic writing after uncertain chromaticism (bars 57–61 imply a I–III6/4–vi6–III6/4–vi6 progression obscured by chromatic neighbour notes in the 1st and 2nd violin). In these respects the A section of K. 515’s trio foreshadows the opposition of material in the corresponding section of K. 590’s minuet, even if the quintet does not boast as clear a juxtaposition of elegant chromatic refinement and brusque, heavy-footed diatonicism as its quartet counterpart. Like the trio of K. 515, the minuet and trio of K. 516 anticipates the contrasts from the late quartets. In the Minuet’s B section an unexpected shift from the key of C minor to Bb7 harmony (bar 18) on route to Eb (bar 19), coincides with both a sudden dynamic and textural alteration, and an abrupt change from the ‘deeply pathetic mood’ in the minor mode43 to the singing style in the major, once again modestly predicting the K. 590 minuet. The sudden change of gear in this movement co-exists with a fluent, carefully crafted transition between minuet and trio sections, whereby the final bars of the former (bars 40–43) are re-worked as the opening bars of the latter (bars 43–46). As in K. 499/i, 590/i and 590/iv, then, subtle continuity and unmistakeable discontinuity reside under the same roof. The celebrated slow movement of K. 516 offers a clearer precursor to the contrast of the ‘Prussian’ quartets than any other movement in K. 515 or 516. The fantasy and Sturm und Drang music in bars 5–8 and 18–22 seems to have been chosen deliberately by Mozart to maximize opposition with preceding and succeeding material in the first theme and transition sections respectively. While the first four bars are texturally rich and completely diatonic, the next four are sparse, chromatic and fragmentary; similarly, the diatonic and rhythmically rigid bars 18–20 sharply contradict the chromatic and metrically irregular bars 14–18. A prominent disjunction also characterizes the secondary theme section; there is a sudden jolt back to the texture, rhythm and homophonic writing of the opening in bars 33–35 following the semiquaver and demisemiquaver movement in bars 30–32. Thus, each of the principal segments of the exposition of this movement (first theme, transition, secondary theme) includes striking contrasts and disjunctions, which collectively fulfil a similarly prominent role to corresponding features in the ‘Prussian’ movements. 41
42 43
The order of the inner movements in K. 515 is a matter of debate, since the autograph and Artaria first edition differ in their placement of these two movements. See Isabelle Putnam Emerson, ‘A Question of Order: Andante, Minuet, or Minuet, Andante – Mozart’s String Quintet in C Major, K. 515’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1989–90, pp. 89–98. Ratner describes it as ‘a delicious Ländler tune . . . totally satisfying in its perfect symmetry’, in Classic Music, pp. 78–79. Ratner, Classic Music, pp. 10–11.
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Ex. 5.7: Mozart, String Quintet in C, K. 515, 2nd movement, bars 57–68
To some degree, then, the contrasts of the ‘Prussian’ quartets are a part of Mozart’s string chamber music vocabulary – evident in K. 499, K. 515, K. 516 and, of course, K. 465/i – before the composition of K. 575, 589 and 590 in 1789–90. But their pervasiveness in the ‘Prussian’ quartets, and their overall level of musical intensity, represents a change of stylistic emphasis for Mozart, one with important aesthetic ramifications. As is well known, the string quartet was persistently likened to a conversation in the late eighteenth century, the common perception being that themes and motifs passed from instrument to instrument was comparable to the easy, yet cultivated spirit of salon conversation.44 But late eighteenthcentury descriptions of the art of conversation and Mozart’s stylistic practice in the ‘Prussian’ quartets are fundamentally different. Conversationalists en masse strongly recommend avoiding confrontational scenarios by remaining sensitive at all times to one’s company: Samuel Johnson counsels James Boswell that the ‘happiest conversation’ involves ‘no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments’; Baron von Knigge advises ‘accommodating ourselves to the capacities of those with whom we converse’ displaying ‘an unruffled and
44
On the widespread nature of the analogy between the string quartet and conversation in the late eighteenth century see in particular Ludwig Finscher, Studien zur Geschichte des Streichquartetts 1: von den Vorformen zur Grundlegung durch Joseph Haydns (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1974), pp. 285–89.
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serene countenance’; and Jean d’Alembert stipulates that ‘conversation is a relaxation and . . . neither a fencing match nor a game of chess’.45 Individual participants in the ‘Prussian’ quartets show no signs of confronting one another directly, but harshly contrasting blocks and sections establish oppositions between portions of the quartet discourse – and these oppositions would seem at odds with conversational decorum since they explicitly condone abrupt changes in the style and content of the ‘discussion’. The relationship between the quartet-as-conversation metaphor and the ‘Prussian’ quartets is, however, considerably more complex stylistically and historically than it might initially appear. For a start, Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets do not equate any more straightforwardly than the ‘Prussian’ quartets with paradigms of conversational discourse formulated by writers such as Knigge, Mme. de Staël, and the Earl of Shaftesbury.46 While conversationalists cite equality of participation as a fundamental principle, it is inappropriate as a general characterization of the texture of the ‘Haydn’ works. Similarly, the rhythmic, harmonic and expressive idiosyncrasies and irregularities (as described by Allanbrook) provide an analogy, at best, with a kind of down-to-earth, everyday conversation replete with interactive imperfections rather than with the etiquette-laden conversational art described by theorists.47 The relationship between the ‘Prussian’ quartets and the aesthetics of conversation is made even more problematic than this relationship in the ‘Haydn’ set on account of the musical contrasts Mozart puts into effect. The concertante dimension of the ‘Prussian’ quartets partially explains aspects of dialogue that differentiate K. 575, 589 and 590 from their ‘Haydn’ predecessors (the leisurely, extended repetitions of the secondary themes of K. 589/i and K. 590/i, for example) as well as the premium placed on textural changes, textural variety and soloistic writing.48 But the increase in surface intensity in K. 575, 589 and 590 through contrast and disjuncture etc. attests to a dramatic quality to the discourse (if not
45
46
47
48
See Colby H. Kullman, ‘James Boswell and the Art of Conversation’, in Compendious Conversations: the Method of Dialogue in the Early Enlightenment, ed. Kevin L. Cope (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992), p. 82; Baron von Knigge, Über den Umgang mit Menschen, trans. P. Will as Practical Philosophy of Social Life or the Art of Conversing with Men (Lansingburgh, New York: Penniman, 1805), pp. 29, 16; and (for the d’Alembert quotation) The Philosophical Dictionary or, the Opinions of Modern Philosophers on Metaphysical, Moral and Political Subjects, 4 vols. (London: Elliot, 1786), vol. 1, pp. 150–51. See Knigge, Art of Conversing; Anne Louise Germain Staël-Holstein, Germany, trans. from the French (Anon.) (New York: Eastburn, 1814); and Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (London, 1711; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olm, 1978). This is even more the case for Haydn’s string quartets than for Mozart’s. See Gretchen A. Wheelock, Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humor (New York: Schirmer, 1993), pp. 90–115. For an account of the popular Quatuor Concertant repertoire in the late eighteenth century outlining the importance of these stylistic characteristics, see Levy, The ‘Quatuor Concertant’ in Paris. An informative series of definitions of concertant is given on p. 15.
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specifically the dialogue between individual instruments) that is much less pronounced in Mozart’s earlier string chamber works. Neo-classical writers on mid to late eighteenth-century drama stipulate types of dialogic interaction that characterize effectively the interaction of individual sections and blocks in the ‘Prussian’ quartets. Joseph de Laporte specifies that characters must engage in ‘a battle of feelings . . . feelings which clash, repel one another, or triumph over one another’; Jean Marmontel argues for ‘the interlocutors [having] views, feelings or passions which are in opposition to one another’; and both Denis Diderot and Louis Sébastien Mercier stress the importance of characters ‘struggling’ with each other as they convey their respective sentiments.49 The contrasting sections of K. 589/i, 589/iii, 590/i, 590/iii and 590/iv give an impression that the collective quartet unit is in opposition with itself, at least in terms of the contrasting ‘sentiments’ expressed and the divergent musical processes demonstrated. Drama, then, provides a ‘sense of the spirit that animated’ the contrasts in the ‘Prussian’ quartets, to quote Johann Karl Friedrich Triest (1801) on the Mozart imitators who include ‘vehement digressions’ in their stylistic portfolio without understanding Mozart’s motivation for incorporating them.50 The dramatic import of the ‘Prussian’ quartets runs deeper, though, than their analogy with theoretical writings on the theatre, affirming a kinship with their contemporary, more ostensibly dramatic instrumental counterparts, the late piano concertos. Concerto resonances – particularly virtuosic and soloistic writing – and references to standard concerto styles and topics such as the brilliant style are inevitable (especially given the concertante dimension of the works), but specific procedural parallels between the ‘Prussian’ quartets and K. 537/595 are more revealing. As we have seen, both the B section of the K. 589 trio and the development section of K. 590/iv are closely connected to the remarkable development of K. 595/i (probably composed in 1788, well ahead of the ‘Prussian’ quartets) – K. 589/iii in thwarting harmonic and tonal expectations and producing a stop-start effect, and K. 590/iv in combining vivid disjunction and mellifluous continuity. Moreover, the complementary quality to the stylistic experimentations in K. 537 and 595 (described in Chapter 3) finds a parallel in the ‘Prussian’ works. While the middle section of the K. 575 minuet offers sharp contrast to the surrounding material and the corresponding section of the K. 589 trio does the same, the K. 590 minuet and trio internalizes (as it were) disjunction
49
50
See Laporte, Dictionnaire Dramatique (Paris, 1776), vol. 1, p. 385; Marmontel, ‘Dialogue’, in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, par une société de gens de letters (Paris, 1751–65), vol. 10, p. 883; Diderot, De la poésie dramatique (1758) in Diderot’s Writings on the Theatre, ed. F.C. Green (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936; reprint New York: Da Capo, 1978), pp. 177–78; Mercier, Du Théâtre, ou nouvel Essai sur l’Art Dramatique (Amsterdam, 1773), p. 182. For more on the link between confrontational dramatic dialogue as described by late eighteenth-century dramatists and musical dialogue in Mozart’s piano concertos, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 45–74. Triest, ‘Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the 18th Century’ (1801), trans. Susan Gillespie, in Haydn and his World, ed. Sisman, p. 366.
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by incorporating it into individual B and A’ minuet sections. In a similar vein, the abrupt juxtapositions of musical units in K. 589/i and 590/i are ‘answered’ by the development of K. 590/iv, a section that merges disjunction and continuity, contrast and similarity, and ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ musical process (the circle of fifths and its surface-level disruption). In fact, K. 590 – in both the minuet and the development section of the finale – represents a fitting climax to contrasts in the three-quartet set. It would be difficult to suggest that Mozart underwent as systematic a process of stylistic re-evaluation in the ‘Prussian’ quartets as that that he undertook in his last two piano concertos, given the smaller number of Viennese string quartets preceding K. 575, 589 and 590 (seven) than Viennese piano concertos preceding K. 537 and 595 (fourteen). We can conclude, however, that the last three quartets tap into a similar vein of re-invention. Mozart’s departures from his stylistic norms in K. 537 and 595 often seem stylistically self-conscious, like passages from K. 575–590. As we have observed, the imitated semiquavers in bars 155–64 of the development section of K. 590/iv seem to be designed deliberately to draw attention away from the clear-cut harmonic outline of the circle of fifths. The co-habitation of different aesthetic and stylistic philosophies in the minuet and trio of K. 575 appears equally self-conscious. The audacious opening of the minuet’s B section – disorientating in its combination of bold chromaticism and un-harmonized, octave texture – comes from the same stable as the openings of the development sections of K. 595/i and the G-minor Symphony first movement and finale (K. 550/i and 550/iv); these bars are far removed from the kind of intimacy conveyed by the late eighteenth-century ‘quartet as conversation’ metaphor. But in a complete volte face, Mozart gives us a trio section a few bars later that comes as close to the ideal of conversational equality, or ‘Privilege of Turn’ as Lord Shaftesbury aptly puts it,51 as any string quartet section he ever wrote. At one stage or another, each of the four instruments presents each of the section’s three principal musical elements;52 we witness textural parity, even though in purely temporal terms the cello has more melodic material than any other instrument.53 The self-consciously marked stylistic incongruity between the minuet B section and the trio feeds directly into the ‘Prussian’ set’s stylistic re-alignment in favour of heightened surface-level contrast. Like the two late piano concertos, the two string quintets composed shortly after the ‘Prussian’ quartets – K. 593 in D, dated December 1790 in the 51 52
53
See Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, vol. 1, p. 76. The three principal elements are the quaver figure introducing the melody (for example, bars 75–76, 103–04, 109–10), the melody itself (bars 77ff., 105–08, 111–14), and the quaver accompanimental writing (bars 77–94, 95–102, 105–07, 111–13). The stylistically hybrid status of this movement of K. 575 is accentuated in another respect too. The sonata-like expansion of the Minuet A section to incorporate the dominant key confirmation by mid section followed by a ‘secondary’ theme is witnessed in the ‘Haydn’ minuet movements K. 387/ii and 428/iii, of course, but is given an additional twist in K. 575 – the ‘secondary’ theme (bars 17ff.) is simply a variant of the opening motif.
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Verzeichnüss but partly written earlier in 179054 and K. 614 in Eb, dated 12 April 1791 – support Mozart’s stylistic re-appraisals in the ‘Prussian’ set. For example, an air of stylistic eclecticism similar to that in K. 575, 589 and 590 pervades the first movement of K. 593. Its tour de force of topical interaction – not least in the first eight bars of the main theme55 – is no more or less remarkable in itself than, say, the corresponding movement of the C-major quintet, K. 515, but its widely assorted textures (memorably likened by Leonard Ratner to a ‘crazy-quilt’56) and striking combination of disjuncture and continuity in the context of structural innovation (the return of the slow introduction at the end of the movement) distinguish it from its quintet predecessors and liken it to the contrast-orientated procedures in K. 575, 589 and 590. In basic textural terms, this movement is the most rigorously ‘blocked’ of Mozart’s Viennese string quintet first movements. The main theme is divisible into successive fanfare, alla zoppa, brilliant and alternating-chord topics in the first instance (bars 22–29),57 paving the way for structural divisions in the remainder of the exposition that are clearly demarcated by textural change.58 In addition, the topical discrepancy between the magisterial slow introduction – a recitative obligé – and the rapid, quick-fire changes of the main theme, effects the kind of heightened surface-level contrast that is characteristic of the ‘Prussian’ set, even accepting the possibility of thematic links between the introductory and first-theme sections.59 At the same time, however, Mozart complements his strict segmentation with formal fluidity, much as he integrates formal continuity and disjuncture in the ‘Prussian’ quartets and the piano concerto K. 595.60 The final four bars of the exposition, for example, recreate the musical atmosphere of the end of the slow introduction by invoking the falling second (in the cello), the arpeggiated rise in the 1st violin, the protracted V7 harmony, and the collective pause (bar 101) from bars 20–21, thus segueing neatly into the repeat of the exposition. Moreover, the continuation of the alternating chords across the exposition-development divide (bars 97–104) smoothes over a moment of formal articulation that we might reasonably expect to be more clearly demarcated on account of the segmentation of the exposition into distinct blocks. Finally, the end of the recapitulation merges into the reprise of the slow 54 55 56 57 58
59 60
See Tyson, Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores, p. 33. See Ratner, Classic Music, pp. 129–30, and Agawu, Playing with Signs, pp. 72–79. Ratner, Classic Music, p. 130. See Ratner, Classic Music, p. 130, and Agawu, Playing with Signs, pp. 76–77. Namely the contrapuntal transition (bars 42–63), the return of the main theme fanfare in the dominant (bars 65–69), the fanfare with contrapuntal additions (bars 70–74), the ‘singing’ style melody in the cello with crotchet accompaniment in the upper voices (bars 75–80), the alla breve writing in the lower voices and brilliant-style writing in the first violin (bars 81–88), the imitative codetta theme over three separate accompanimental strands in the violas and cello (bars 89–96), and the imitative, alternating chords (bars 97–100). See Charles Rosen, Classical Style, p. 282 for a connection between bars 1–4 and 22–25 in the first movement. In a similar vein, Kofi Agawu observes a discrepancy between the main theme’s ‘erratic’ topical surface and its ‘cogent, connected, and coherent’ quality, in Agawu, Playing with Signs, p. 75.
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introduction through a combination of minor-mode colouration and a thinning of the texture, such that ‘the quiet sound of the cello alone, as at the opening of the work, seems too natural and inevitable to surprise’.61 K. 593/i, then, takes rapid textural change and textural contrast further than the ‘Prussian’ works, and harmonic disjuncture less far, but reveals a similar propensity for stylistic eclecticism to its quartet and piano concerto contemporaries.62 The first movement of K. 614 takes us back to the world of Mozart’s concertos, reinforcing the impression provided by the late quartet movements K. 575/iii, 589/iii and 590/iv of stylistic cross fertilization from the final piano concertos to the late string chamber music. Prominent invocations of the brilliant style are not unexpected, of course, but affinities between K. 614 and Mozart’s concertos run deep. The exposition begins with a quasi opposition of solo and tutti in bars 1–4,63 and is brought to a close by a quintessentially concerto-like succession of semiquaver runs, arpeggiated fanfare figurations and cadential trill in the first violin (bars 72–78). The development section goes further, bringing in alternations of sharply opposed musical material (the sensibility and Sturm und Drang writing in bars 87–106; see Ex. 5.8).64 In Chapter 1 we observed that oppositional confrontation gained a stylistic foothold for Mozart in the development section of the first movement of his piano concerto K. 449, resurfacing in the corresponding sections of K. 451/i, 466/i and 491/i among the concertos, and in ensembles from Figaro and Don Giovanni among the operas. But outright, alternating oppositions of a level of intensity similar to those in the piano concertos and operas (albeit not in dialogue as such), do not appear in Mozart’s string chamber music until his ‘Prussian’ quartets and final string quintet. In this respect, bars 87–106 of K. 614/i represent a zenith in oppositional writing in Mozart’s chamber music – lightly textured, piano versions of the head motif against heavily textured, irregularly accented forte renditions of ostensibly new thematic material – and rival bars 330–45 of K. 491/i in their raw alternation of opposing passions. Thus, bars 87–106 of K. 614/i capture in microcosm Mozart’s fertilization of his final string chamber works with the kind of dramatic intensity previously witnessed only in his larger-scale works. In sum, the compositional context for the ‘Prussian’ quartets – taking into account the preceding quartets, quintets and two late piano concertos, as well as the two slightly later string quintets – refines and qualifies, but does not ultimately detract from, the innovative nature of these works in Mozart’s quartet oeuvre. The ‘Prussian’ works demonstrate neither the kind of homogeneity witnessed in the ‘Haydn’ set (Chapter 4), nor the systematic stylistic experimentation of the
61 62
63 64
Rosen, Classical Style, p. 283. For more on links (especially thematic and textural) between the string quintets K. 593/i and K. 614 and the ‘Prussian’ quartets, see Ludwig Finsher, ‘Bemerkungen zu den späten Streichquintetten’, in Mozarts Streichquintette, ed. Eisen and Seiffert, pp. 153–62. Ratner, Classic Music, p. 129. For a detailed analysis of the first movement of K. 614 in topical terms, see Ibid., pp. 237–45.
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Ex. 5.8: Mozart, String Quintet in Eb, K. 614, 1st movement, bars 87–106
last two piano concertos (Chapter 3), and are partly pre-empted in terms of heightened contrast in Mozart’s string chamber music by the K. 515 and 516 quintets. But they are no less stylistically uncompromising as a result. Transcending the contemporary aesthetic notion of the string quartet as conversation, the ‘Prussian’ quartets represent a decisive stylistic move towards dramatic contrast, a move characterized – as in the final piano concertos – by stylistic re-invention.
. III . SYMPHONIES
6 The ‘Jupiter’ Symphony in C, K. 551: The Dramatic Finale and its Stylistic Significance in Mozart’s Orchestral Oeuvre
D
ISCUSSION of stylistic re-invention in Mozart’s Viennese symphonies is rinherently more problematic than corresponding discussion of his concertos and quartets: after all, he wrote only six symphonies in Vienna as opposed to 17 piano concertos and 10 string quartets. In contrast to his pre-1781 orchestral output (numerous serenades, cassations and divertimenti and at least 34 symphonies) the Viennese symphonies occupy only a small place in his compositional output as a whole, a discrepancy in numbers of pre- and post-1781 works that is either not evident, or not as pronounced, in his concerto and quartet repertories. What is more (and even by his own remarkable standards), Mozart apparently composed all of his Viennese symphonies, with the possible exception of the ‘Prague’, K. 504 (1786), in real haste,1 a state of affairs perhaps not conducive at first glance to the reflection and re-appraisal that comprise stylistic re-invention. It is difficult to argue, however, that a stylistic study of the relationship between Mozart’s Viennese symphonies set in historical and aesthetic contexts is not a worthwhile topic for scholarly investigation. Collectively these works are contenders for Mozartian highpoints in a number of stylistic domains, including topical and gestural heterogeneity and complexity (K. 504), conspicuous harmonic audacity (K. 550, see Chapter 3) and contrapuntal intricacy and sophistication (K. 551/iv).2 It is hard too to counter the oft-voiced opinion that the Viennese symphonies represent Mozart’s greatest achievement in orchestral genres (setting aside the concerto), especially for stylistic issues such as instrumental interaction, orchestral effects and obligato wind writing, even accepting
1
2
Mozart confesses to writing the ‘Haffner’ Symphony, K. 385 ‘as fast as possible’ and the ‘Linz’, K. 425 at ‘breakneck speed’. See Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, pp. 808 and 859. The final trilogy of symphonies, K. 543, 550, and the ‘Jupiter’, K. 551 were completed in less than two months in the summer of 1788. David Wyn Jones suggests tentatively that ‘preliminary work’ on the final trilogy might have begun earlier in 1788. See Jones, ‘Why Did Mozart Compose his Last Three Symphonies? Some New Hypotheses’, Music Review, 51 (1990), p. 284. On the ‘Prague’ Symphony, see Sisman, ‘Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony’, in Mozart Studies 2, ed. Eisen, pp. 27–84.
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that earlier benchmark works exist, including the G-minor Symphony, K. 183 (1773), the ‘Paris’ Symphony, K. 297 (1778) and the ‘Posthorn’ Serenade, K. 320 (1779).3 Confronted with a small number of works written over a six-year period, an embarrassment of musical riches, and no clear documentary lead from Mozart on the stylistic significance of individual works, how do we orientate our discussion of re-invention, acknowledging its central stylistic components of originality, climax and re-appraisal? We can take our lead here, I think, from the Viennese piano concertos and quartets. As initial points in re-invention procedures, modifying and manipulating pre-existent stylistic practices to climactic and original effect, K. 449, K. 491 and K. 465 all appear at the end of a contiguous sequence of works in their genres (or in K. 449’s case at the end of one and the beginning of another); the special stylistic status of each of these works is supported either by Mozart’s own words or by contemporary and later reception. Circumstantial evidence, then, points to the finale of the ‘Jupiter’, K. 551, as the first phase of a re-invention process in Mozart’s symphonies – it is the last movement of a trilogy of works composed in quick succession and is labelled a ‘triumph of the new music’ (Triumph der neuen Tonkunst) by Johannes Christian Kittel as early as 1803, implicitly recognizing its climactic qualities.4 None of Mozart’s other contenders for stylistic highpoints among his Viennese symphonic movements surely match either the self-conscious manipulations of the ‘Jupiter’ finale (the five themes virtuosically combined in the coda must have been pre-planned by Mozart to operate in this way), or the extensive thematic integration with earlier symphonic and non-symphonic works brought about in particular by using the ^ ^ , ,^ ^ 1–2-4–3 theme with ‘summative intentions’.5 The weight of reception is considerable too in assigning the ‘Jupiter’ finale special status in re-invention terms; few instrumental movements before or since have been the subject of such openly reverential commentary (largely directed towards the contrapuntal processes) that attest to its climactic status. Just as the harmonic procedures in the slow introduction to K. 465, the opposition of piano and orchestra in K. 449, and the extremes of piano-orchestra engagement in K. 491 are situated in aesthetic contexts of rhetorical peroration, confrontation and heightened intimacy/grandeur respectively, so the intricate counterpoint of K. 551/iv projects into the aesthetic domain of dialogue. Imitative and fugal counterpoint, which dominate 3
4 5
For a discussion of the aforementioned stylistic issues in K. 183, K. 297 and K. 320 and other orchestral works Mozart composed between 1769 and 1779, see Simon P. Keefe, ‘The Orchestral Music’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, ed. Keefe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 92–104, especially 94–100. See also Keefe, ‘The Aesthetics of Wind Writing in Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony in D, K. 297’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 2006, forthcoming. Given in Stefan Kunze, Mozart. Sinfonie in C-Dur KV 551, Jupiter-Sinfonie (Munich: Fink, 1988), p. 130. On the latter point, see in particular Peter Gülke, ‘Triumph der neuen Tonkunst’: Mozarts späte Sinfonien und ihr Umfeld (Kassel and Stuttgart: Bärenreiter-Metzler, 1998), pp. 74–83, 121–24, 209–13 and passim. (Quotation taken from p. 211.)
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Mozart’s finale to a degree unprecedented in his orchestral works, both feature prominently in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century understandings of dialogue; we benefit, moreover, from marrying dialogue, frequently discussed by late eighteenth-century commentators on the symphony, with drama, another aesthetic preoccupation of writers on the symphony. A systematic investigation of dramatic dialogue in the ‘Jupiter’ finale, then, situated in the context of dramatic dialogue in Mozart’s earlier Viennese symphonies, will identify the movement’s position in Mozart’s symphonic re-invention process. K. 551/iv’s status as Mozart’s final symphonic movement will not provide a complete picture of a re-invention cycle, but the initial stage of the cycle will confirm parallels with other Viennese instrumental works. After a brief overview of the reception of the ‘Jupiter’ finale and an explanation of the relevance of late eighteenth-century discussions of dramatic dialogue to our appreciation of classical symphonies,6 we shall probe the nature and structure of dramatic dialogue in K. 551/iv. This new historical perspective will, in turn, shed light on the stylistic significance of the movement in Mozart’s orchestral oeuvre.
The ‘Jupiter’ finale: reception and context Few works in the western music tradition have received more lavish praise than Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony. Although periodically criticized at the end of the eighteenth century and in the nineteenth century for its over-abundance of ‘harmonic riches’, erudition and ‘laborious technical procedures’, in short for ‘[pushing] things a little far’,7 the ‘Jupiter’ quickly established itself as a classic, a symphony perceived as shattering, exalted and ‘wholly above discussion’, featuring a last movement that is ‘without doubt the most successful masterpiece’ in the symphonic medium.8 While down-to-earth twentieth-century analytical 6
7
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Late eighteenth-century theoretical discussion of the multi-faceted nature of dialogue in opera – literal and musical alike – is much less common than corresponding discussion of theatrical dialogue. In any case, late eighteenth-century symphonies (and chamber works), while no less immune than contemporary concertos to expressive and topical links with opera, are texturally dissimilar at a basic level to operatic numbers (equal-voice texture, paradigmatically, as opposed to soloist(s)/orchestra). As a result, parallels between the interaction of symphonic and operatic ‘characters’ do not form part of this study. See James Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 212; Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: ‘La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris’, 1834–80 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 91; Jean-Maurice Bourges’s comment of 1843 quoted in Georges de Saint-Foix, The Symphonies of Mozart (1932), trans. Leslie Orrey (London: Dobson, 1947), p. 153; Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1 (1798), col. 153, given in Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies, p. 530. See Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 10 (1808), col. 495 for the assignation of ‘classic’ status; Robert Schumann, On Music and Musicians, ed. K. Wolff, trans. P. Rosenfeld (New York: Norton, 1969), p. 82 for its untouchable standing; and J.C. Kittel, Der angehende praktische Organist oder Anweisung zum zweckmässigen Gebrauch der Orgel bei Gottesverehrungen in Beispielen (Erfurt, 1801–03), 3 vols., vol. 3, p. 15, quoted in Kunze, Jupiter-Sinfonie, p. 130, for the statement on the finale. For more examples of early nineteenth-century reception of the ‘Jupiter’ (1800–28), see
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studies of the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony inevitably set deified views of the work into welcome relief, they cannot obscure the fact that a large proportion of twentieth-century commentators are to all intents and purposes in awe of it, especially its famous finale.9 Influential critics from the first half of the century lace their writings with free-wheeling superlatives. For Georges de Saint-Foix the ‘Jupiter’ is not only ‘the veritable symphonic testament of Mozart’ but also a decisive, climactic moment in sweeping historical terms, Mozart ‘[revealing] to us all that music has achieved up to this time, and what it will do nearly a hundred years later’.10 Eric Blom is scarcely more circumspect, deeming extended commentary superfluous in light of Mozart’s achievement: ‘The dizzy culmination comes in the coda [to the finale], where all five themes appear together in various juxtapositions. . . . We may leave the Symphony at that, I think. What more could be said?’11 Even in the more sanguine, post-war musicological climate, critical hyperbole has continued to infiltrate scholarly discourse: Robert Dearling, admitting to a kind of critical impotence where the extraordinary finale is concerned, explains that ‘[a]ll a writer can do is to list the themes that are involved and point out a landmark or two’, and ends with a highfalutin description of the
9
10 11
Kunze, Jupiter-Sinfonie, pp. 129–33. Mendelssohn’s compositional response to the ‘Jupiter’ is discussed in R. Larry Todd, ‘Mozart according to Mendelssohn: a Contribution to Rezeptionsgeschichte’, in Perspectives on Mozart Performance, ed. Todd and Peter Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 158–203, at pp. 162–71. Analytical literature on the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony is vast. For substantial and probing twentiethcentury analyses of the symphony, the finale in particular, see (listed here in chronological order): Johann Nepomuk David, Die Jupiter-Symphonie: Eine Studie über die thematisch-melodischen Zusammenhängen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953); G. Sievers, ‘Analyse des Finale aus Mozarts Jupiter-Symphonie’, Die Musikforschung, 3 (1954), pp. 318–31; Hans Grüss, ‘Zur Analyse der Sinfonien g-moll (KV 550) und C-dur (KV 551) von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’, in Festschrift Heinrich Besseler zum sechzigsten Geburtstag (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1961), pp. 367–75; William Klenz, ‘ “Per Aspera ad Astra,” or The Stairway to Jupiter’, The Music Review, 30 (1969), pp. 169–210; John E. Rogers, ‘Pitch-Class Sets in Fourteen Measures of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony’, Perspectives of New Music, 9–10 (1971), pp. 209–31; Elwood Derr, ‘A Deeper Examination of Mozart’s 1–2-4–3 Theme and its Strategic Deployment’, In Theory Only, 8 (1985), pp. 5–45; Kunze, Jupiter-Sinfonie; Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony. For recent philosophically driven, quasi analytical studies, see Subotnik, ‘Evidence of a Critical World View in Mozart’s Last Three Symphonies’, in Developing Variations, pp. 98–111 and Gernot Grüber, Mozart Verstehen, pp. 241–58. Important nineteenth-century studies of the ‘Jupiter’ include Simon Sechter, Das Finale von W.A. Mozarts Jupiter-Symphonie (1843), ed. Friedrich Eckstein (Vienna, 1923), and Alexandre Oulibicheff, ‘The “Jupiter” Symphony of Mozart’, Dwight’s Journal of Music, 27 (26 October 1867), pp. 121–22; reprinted in Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, pp. 80–5. Recent speculation on why Mozart composed his final trilogy of symphonies and on whether they were performed during his lifetime can be found in Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies, pp. 421–31; Jones, ‘Why did Mozart Compose his Last Three Symphonies?’; and Andrew Steptoe, ‘Mozart and his Last Three Symphonies – a Myth Laid to Rest?’ The Musical Times, 132 (1991), pp. 550–51. Saint-Foix, The Symphonies of Mozart, pp. 151–52. Blom, Mozart, p. 188. The liberal application of superlatives to the ‘Jupiter’ finale can be found in other important Mozart literature from the first half of the twentieth century. See for example, Eustace J. Breakspeare, Mozart (London: Dent, 1902 [‘Master Musicians’]), pp. 131–32 and Henri Ghéon, In Search of Mozart, trans. A. Dru (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1934), p. 262.
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movement’s coda as ‘a grand summation, a fugal apotheosis that combines all six subjects in a transcendental display of polyphony to form a magnificent peroration’; Hugh Ottoway explains the finale as ‘one of the marvels of Classical music’, Wilhelm Spohr as a ‘triumphant exaltation’ (sieghafte Erhebung) and Jean-Victor Hocquard as a religious movement with connotations of ‘Assumption’, ‘glory’ and ‘a light atmosphere of heavenly peace, as imponderable as an ancient mystery’; Heinrich Eduard Jacob claims for the symphony as a whole ‘the allure of a God, who idly opens his hand to release it from a world’; Stanley Sadie describes the Finale’s coda as ‘an apotheosis of invertible five-part counterpoint without parallel in the symphonic literature’; and, most recently, Robert Gutman writes that the finale is ‘a movement of unexcelled diversity and intellectual power . . . in which an astonishing variety of plot, counterplot, and subplot all converge and reach denouement within an overarching structure of universal pardon’.12 It would appear that in some critical circles Charles Rosen’s statement that the D minor Piano Concerto, K. 466, is ‘as much myth as work of art’ is just as relevant to the reception of Mozart’s final symphony.13 It is surprising that attempts to ‘de-mythologize’ the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony (especially its finale) have not focussed systematically – until recently at least – on the significance of the work in its immediate aesthetic, theoretical and cultural contexts.14 Accounting only for superficial musical detail, Mozart could have written his finale in full view of Johann Georg Sulzer’s and Johann Abraham Peter Schulz’s technical prescriptions for the symphony in the monumental Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, such is the close correspondence between theoretical description and practical realization. Mozart delivers forcefully on Sulzer’s and Schulz’s requirements that the ‘allegros of the best chamber symphonies contain profound and clever ideas . . ., an apparent disorder in the melody and harmony [e.g. bars 233–53], strongly marked rhythms of different types [passim] . . . free imitations of a theme (often in fugal style) [passim], sudden modulations and digressions from one key to another [bars 158–224], strong gradations of loud and soft [passim] . . . [and the combination of] all the voices with one another such that the resulting sound seems almost like a single melody that is in need of no accompaniment [especially bars 372–401]’.15 To be sure, Sulzer’s and Schulz’s 12
13 14 15
See Dearling, The Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Symphonies (East Brunswick, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), pp. 159, 161; Ottoway, Mozart (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980), p. 159; Spohr, Mozart: Leben und Werk (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1951), p. 351; Hocquard, La pensée de Mozart (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1958), p. 180 (‘la beatitude légère, impondérable comme le mystère’); Jacob, Mozart, oder Geist, Musik und Schicksal (Frankfurt: Verlag Heinrich Sheffler, 1955), p. 387 (‘die Allüre eines Gottes, der lässig die Hand geöffnet halt, um aus ihr eine Welt zu entlassen’); Sadie, The New Grove Mozart (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 131; Gutman, Mozart: A Cultural Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), p. 689. Rosen, The Classical Style, p. 228. Recent studies breaking the trend include Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony (discussed below), Gülke, ‘Triumph der neuen Tonkunst’, pp. 206–26 and (to a lesser extent) Kunze, Jupiter-Sinfonie. ‘Symphonie’, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Leipzig, 1771–74), 4 vols., vol. 4, p. 479. Translation from Thomas Christensen, in Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the
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theoretical prescriptions are realized in numerous late eighteenth-century symphonic movements. But their invocations of the aesthetics of the sublime – the exalted style to which the symphony should aim – appear, at an initial glance, especially appropriate to the ‘Jupiter’ finale.16 As Elaine Sisman has recently argued with considerable scholarly panache, the fugal writing and learned style manifest in the finale characterize an elevated style opening access to the sublime.17 Three passages in the recapitulation – the continuation of the main theme in the secondary development (bars 233–53), a brief, sequential extension towards the end of the section (bars 326–32) and the double fugue and canon in five-part invertible counterpoint in the famous coda (bars 371–401) – embody, in Sisman’s formulation, ‘an ecstatic trajectory, identifying a sublime turn, creating bafflement and blockage, and finally exultation’.18 The ‘contrapuntal chaos’ of the coda, moreover, captures the overwhelming nature of Immanuel Kant’s mathematical sublime, ‘[revealing] vistas of contrapuntal infinity’ and creating ‘a cognitive exhaustion born of sheer magnitude’.19 To some extent, Sisman’s reading of the sublime in the ‘Jupiter’ finale renders explicit in historical and aesthetic terms the innumerable expressions of awe in the critical literature. For in order to appreciate the sublime a listener or reader must experience bewilderment; as Horace explains ‘we are excited and exalted and overwhelmed by its speed and energy, it is useless to argue and analyse, we are swept away as soon as we begin to read’.20 In addition, the mathematical sublime involves, in Neal Hertz’s formulation, ‘the fear of losing count or of being reduced to nothing but counting . . . with no hope of bringing a long series or a vast scattering under some kind of conceptual unity’21 thus accounting for the bafflement of critics who feel that prose is an inadequate mechanism for conveying the extraordinary qualities of the movement. Whether in the coda to the ‘Jupiter’ finale Mozart actually crosses the line between on the one hand counterpoint that can be fully absorbed by a cultivated listener cognizant of contemporary musical and aesthetic trends, and on the other hand ‘vistas of contrapuntal infinity’ revealing a ‘mass of simultaneously writhing fragments, at all rhythmic levels and in all instruments . . . [that] cannot be taken in’,22 is difficult to judge. But it is certainly possible that ‘ideal’ late eighteenthcentury listeners – say Heinrich Christoph Koch’s intelligent listeners ‘who come
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
German Enlightenment: Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch, ed. and trans. Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 106. ‘Symphonie’, Allgemeine Theorie, vol. 4, p. 479 and Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, p. 106. See Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, pp. 9–15 and 71–72. Ibid., p. 78. Ibid., p. 79. Quoted in Ibid., p. 14. Hertz, The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 40; also quoted in Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, p. 19. Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, p. 79.
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entirely dispassionate to the place where music will be performed’23 – could have ‘taken in’ the musical sophistication of this section, at least in such ways as to have been able to process their experience in a sanguine rather than an exalted and reverential fashion. Early nineteenth-century references to the ‘Jupiter’ as a ‘fearful symphony’ and a ‘great, all-powerful and shattering’ work by Rochlitz and Carl Maria von Weber, respectively, allude to the sublime.24 But in the absence of specific references to the overwhelming, sublime-orientated nature of the contrapuntal segments of the finale’s recapitulation and coda, Sisman’s interpretation of the function of this section remains open to question. While sublime characteristics of the recapitulation of the ‘Jupiter’ finale are debatable, dramatic qualities of the movement – broadly conceived as intense musical processes – are unambiguous. It would be very difficult not to envisage the last movement as an ‘apotheosis finale’ given the thorough synthesis of learned and galant styles, as James Webster points out,25 and therefore not to hear the movement in general terms as a denouement with considerable dramatic import. Moreover, it would be equally difficult to interpret the finale’s own conclusion (the contrapuntal segment of the coda) as anything other than the movement’s climax, given the prevalence of fugal and imitative counterpoint in the main body of the movement and the intensification of these contrapuntal procedures in the coda. Although generalized notions of drama and the dramatic in late eighteenth-century orchestral music reflect a long-standing critical preoccupation with its anthropomorphic qualities, their use in an a-historical fashion is unlikely to cast late eighteenth-century works in sharp critical perspective.26 Historical contexts, however, alert us to the possibility of approaching Mozart’s symphonic drama in well informed fashion. Stylistic features of several of Haydn’s so-called Sturm und Drang symphonies, for example, closely parallel events and plotrelated activities in plays performed in close temporal and physical proximity to the composition of the symphonies. The recognition among late eighteenthcentury writers that symphonies can represent the ‘theatre style’ in addition to the church and chamber styles, also adds grist to the hermeneutic mill.27 Furthermore, Mozart’s own piano concertos have a deep theoretical and practical affinity with contemporary operatic and spoken theatre, arguably rivalling – in the intensity of both dramatic process and of relations among ‘characters’ – the very best on offer on the late eighteenth-century stage.28 Specific references to the dramatic 23 24 25 26
27 28
Quoted in Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, p. 146. See Gruber, Mozart and Posterity, pp. 78–79. Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, p. 185. Witness Charles Rosen’s influential and otherwise highly insightful book The Classical Style. Rosen refers freely to drama and to dramatic processes – indeed they are central to his appreciation of this style – but without evaluating the significance of these concepts in historical terms. On both of these points, see Elaine R. Sisman, ‘Haydn’s Theater Symphonies’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), pp. 292–352. See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos.
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qualities of classical symphonies proliferate in the early nineteenth-century writings of Jean Paul, Ludwig Tieck and E.T.A. Hoffmann,29 but they are also evident in late eighteenth-century symphonic criticism, as we shall see.
Dramatic dialogue and the late eighteenth-century symphony In 1785, three years before the composition of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, the prominent French aesthetician Bernard Germain, Comte de Lacépède renders explicit the dramatic characteristics of the late eighteenth-century symphony. Lacépède is unlikely to have written with Mozart’s works uppermost in his mind, but his admiration for purportedly ‘progressive’ late eighteenth-century German symphonists such as Franz Ignaz Beck and Johann Franz Xavier Sterkel reveals a cosmopolitan outlook on the genre, an outlook not limited to works by his French compatriots.30 The symphonic composer should be, in Lacépède’s words: considering them [symphonies] as just three great acts in a play, to be thinking that he was working on a tragedy, or a comedy or a pastoral . . . The first piece, the one that we call the allegro of the symphony would present so to speak the overture and the first scenes; in the andante or second piece, the musician would place the depiction of the tremendous events, the fearful passions, or the agreeable objects which were to constitute the basic content of the piece; and the last piece, which we usually call the presto, would offer the last effects of these frightful or touching passions; the dénouement would also show itself there, and we would see following it the pain, terror and consternation that a fateful catastrophe inspires, or the joy, happiness and frenzy to which pleasant and happy events give rise.31
Although Lacépède’s comments – indeed those of all French late eighteenthcentury critics who write positively about instrumental music – must be regarded 29 30
31
See Gruber, Mozart and Posterity, p. 79, and Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views, pp. 190, 227. Lacépède recommends for study the concertos, symphonies and symphonies concertantes of Beck and Sterkel, alongside those by the French composers Jean-Baptiste Davaux, Jean-Baptiste-Aimé Janson and his teacher François-Joseph Gossec. See Lacépède, ‘Des symphonies, des concertos etc.’, in La poëtique de la musique (Paris, 1785), 2 vols., vol. 2, p. 341. Lacépède, who moved to Paris in 1776, probably encountered Haydn’s symphonies while writing his treatise, given Haydn’s surge to symphonic prominence in the French capital in the early 1780s. On the latter point, see Bernard Harrison, Haydn: the ‘Paris’ Symphonies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially pp. 5–25. Lacépède, La poëtique de la musique, vol. 2, pp. 331–32. ‘Mais ensuite il faudroit qu’il ne les considérat que comme trois grands actes d’une pièce de théâtre, qu’il crût travailler à une tragédie, à une comédie, ou à une pastorale . . . Le premier morceau, celui que l’on appelle l’allegro de la symphonie, en présenteroit pour ainsi dire l’ouverture & les premières scenes; dans l’andante ou le second morceau, le musicien placeroit la peinture des évenemens terribles, des passions redoubtables, ou des objets agréables qui devroient faire le fonds de la pièce; & le dernier morceau, auquel on donne communément le nom de presto, offriroit les derniers efforts de ces passions affreuses ou touchantes; le dénouement s’y montreroit aussi, & l’on verroit à sa suite la douleur, l’effroi & la consternation qu’inspire une catastrophe funeste, ou la joie, le bonheur & le délire que seroient naître des évenémens agréables & heureux.’
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in part as a response to the prevailing French scepticism about the meaningfulness of instrumental music,32 his suggestion that the symphonic composer puts himself in the mindset of a playwright strikes a chord with Sulzer’s earlier suggestion that the composer of a work should draw on quasi dramatic inspiration in order to reach an appropriate emotional state: ‘The best thing to do would be to imagine some event, situation, or state which highlights most naturally what he wishes to present.’33 But Lacépède goes further than other contemporary writers in bringing the issue of drama in the symphony into close relation with late eighteenth-century preoccupations about the genre in general, most importantly in the textural domain. Shortly after outlining the dramatic shape of the symphony, Lacépède explains how individual segments of the drama might be formulated: In order to distinguish, as it were, between different interlocutors, we would choose the most prominent instruments in the orchestra, those whose nature best matched the characters we had imagined. We would use them to create a kind of dialogue accompanied by the rest of the orchestra; sometimes a single instrument would, as it were, speak, and we would have a kind of monologue; sometimes by joining together they would form a kind of scene with several characters; and when one needed to introduce choruses into the drama, the whole orchestra would play in a noisier and more emphatic way, representing a multitude adding its roars to the cries of passion of the most interesting characters.34
By describing dialogue among orchestral ‘characters’, Lacépède highlights one of the most popular metaphors for instrumental interaction in the symphony. In a similar fashion to Lacépède, Jean François de Chastellux explains in 1765 that the works of German symphonists ‘are a type of Concerto, in which the instruments shine in turn, in which they provoke each other and respond; they dispute and reconcile among themselves. It is a lively and sustained conversation.’35 Moreover, J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas – in praising the works of Gossec – cites dialogue
32
33 34
35
On fundamental trends in writings on French musical aesthetics from this period, see Maria Rika Maniates, ‘ “Sonate, que me veux-tu?” The Enigma of French Musical Aesthetics in the 18th Century’, Current Musicology, 9 (1969), pp. 117–40. ‘Ausdruck in der Musik’, in Allgemeine Theorie, vol. 1, p. 273, given in Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, p. 53. Lacépède, La poëtique de la musique, vol. 2, pp. 332–33. ‘Pour qu’on put en quelques sorte y distinguer différens interlocuteurs, on choisiroit dans l’orchestre les instrumens les plus saillans, et dont la nature conviendroit le mieux au caractères qu’on auroit feints; on s’en serviroit pour former des espèces de dialogues accompagnés par tout le reste de l’orchestre; tantôt un seul instrument parleroit, pour ainsi dire, et l’on verroit une sorte de monologue; et tantôt en se réunissant ils formeroient des espèces de scènes à plusieurs personages; & lorsqu’on auroit besoin d’introduire des choeurs dans le drame, tout l’orchestre jouant d’une manière plus bruyante & plus marquée, représenteroit une multitude qui joindroit ses clameurs aux cris des passions des personages les plus intéressans.’ Chastellux, Essai sur l’union de la poesie & de la musique (Paris, 1765), pp. 49–50; as given in Mark Evan Bonds, ‘The Symphony as Pindaric Ode’, in Haydn and his World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 143.
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as an illustration of ‘the good way to write’ (la bonne manière d’écrire) in the symphonic genre.36 In the context of theoretical writings on the late eighteenth-century symphony, references to dialogue often reflect the critical assumption that symphonies should aspire to textural equality among instrumental parts. Classical theorists citing connections between the string quartet and symphonic genres reinforce the primacy of participatory equality, since the quartet was widely acknowledged at the end of the eighteenth century as a metaphorical paradigm of intelligent conversation among equal interlocutors.37 Francesco Galeazzi states, for example, that the symphony is similar to the string quartet ‘with the sole difference of a quite extensive interlacing that must emanate from the various parts’.38 In addition, a writer for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in October 1800 finds Mozart’s symphonies similar in tendency and spirit to his quartets, albeit richer and more energetic.39 Critical references to the prominent role of all instrumental parts in symphonies imply equality of participation even when not invoking dialogue. Johann Karl Friedrich Triest (1801) follows Lacépède in implicitly recognizing as dramatic the symphony’s move towards participatory equality. He explains that composers such as Haydn and Mozart ‘took advantage of the more developed internal and external tonal mechanism to transform voices that had been mere accompaniments into more obbligato parts. This was done both in works for solo instruments . . . and in combinations of several instruments, for example in symphonies, quartets etc., where the intent was to achieve a result more or less the same as that produced by beautiful groups of figures . . . on the stage.’40 Other late eighteenth-century critics acknowledge the ‘excellence’ of Mozart’s instrumentation in his symphonies, at least according to Franz Niemetschek.41 Mozart exploits the potential of the entire orchestra, as Niemetschek explains with reference to the composer’s output in general: ‘He judged with extreme accuracy the nature and range of all instruments, plotted new paths for them and from each of them obtained the utmost effect, so that the greatest melodic potentiality was realized.’42 Historical references to dramatic dialogue in the late eighteenth-century 36 37
38 39 40 41 42
Meude-Monpas, Dictionnaire de musique, p. 193. On the quartet as conversation metaphor see Finscher, Studien zur Geschichte des Streichquartetts 1, pp. 285–89; Barbara R. Hanning, ‘Conversation and Musical Style in the Late EighteenthCentury Salon’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 22 (1988/89), pp. 512–28; Würtz, Dialogué: Vorrevolutionäre Kammermusik in Mannheim und Paris; Wheelock, Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art, pp. 90–115. Galeazzi, Elementi teorico-pratici di musica (Rome, 1796), 2 vols., vol. 2, p. 289; given in Bonds, ‘Symphony as Pindaric Ode’, pp. 144–45. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1800–1801), col. 27. Triest, ‘Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century’, trans. Susan Gillespie, in Haydn and his World, ed. Sisman, p. 370. Niemetschek, Life of Mozart (1798), trans. Helen Mautner (London: Hyman, 1956), p. 77. Ibid., p. 57.
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symphony, to the active participation of all instruments, and to Mozart’s skills as an orchestrator coalesce in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s insightful statement on Mozart’s symphonies in a long lecture on music from the 1820s: To blend the various kinds of string and woodwind, to learn how to introduce the thunder of the trumpet-blast, how to emphasize first one and then another class of distinctive sounds most effectively, has required long experience with the instruments themselves . . . Mozart is the great master of instrumentation in this respect. In his symphonies . . . the controlled passing from one class of instruments to another has often struck me as a dramatic interplay of dialogue of the most varied kind.43
The finale of the ‘Jupiter’ is a particularly good example of the process Hegel describes.44 It illustrates in an effective fashion Mozart’s ‘controlled passing from one class of instruments to another’, the fugal exposition in the strings (bars 36–52) leading to imitation between the first violin and cello (bars 56–64), a stretto in the strings and winds (bars 64–73), a contrapuntal combination of thematic material in the first violin and winds in the secondary theme (bars 74–86) and a flute/bassoon imitation on the same motif as the earlier first violin/cello imitation (bars 86–94). (See Figure 6.1 below.) In accordance with Lacépède, each of these passages could even be interpreted as a ‘scene with several characters’. But correspondences between Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ finale and theoretical discussions of drama and dialogue from the classical period go beyond superficial detail. For example Mozart’s reliance on fugal counterpoint, on standard fugal procedures such as stretto entries and on imitation (strict and informal) connects his movement to contemporary discussions of musical dialogue. For the late eighteenth-century fugue is often likened to dialogue among a group of people. In Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s formulation (1788), the fugue constitutes statements and responses of a passionate nature: Let us imagine a people made emotional by the account of a great event, envisaging initially a single member of this group, perhaps through the intensity of his feelings, being driven to make a short powerful statement as the expression of his feelings. Will not this emotional outpouring gradually grip the collective members of this 43
44
See H. Paolucci, ed. and trans., Hegel: On the Arts. Selections from G.W.F. Hegel’s ‘Aesthetics or the Philosophy of Fine Arts’ (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1979), p. 133. The complete text of Hegel’s extended lecture on music – with the above quotation in a different translation on p. 923 – is given in T.M. Knox, ed. and trans., G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 2 vols., vol. 2, pp. 888–958. For succinct accounts of Hegel’s views on music, see Stephen Bungay, Beauty and Truth: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 133–41, and Julian Johnson, ‘Music in Hegel’s Aesthetics: A Re-Evaluation’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 31/2 (1991), pp. 152–62. While Hegel does not elaborate on specific Mozart symphonies that fit his mould, he obviously knew the ‘Jupiter’ – he uses it as an example of ‘a realization of art through the particular form of music and . . . the sensuous reflection of the Idea as individual’. See Bungay, Beauty and Truth, p. 54.
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people and will he not be followed by first one, then several, then the majority, each singing the same song with him, modifying it according to his own way of feeling to be sure, but on the whole concording with him as to the basic feeling?45
Similarly, Georg Joseph Vogler draws attention in the 1790s to the conversational nature of fugue, in the process stressing the kind of equality of participation that is also required of the symphony: ‘the fugue is a conversation among a multitude of singers . . . a musical artwork where no one accompanies, no one submits, where nobody plays a secondary role, but each a principal part’.46 Musical imitation of a less formal nature also falls under the auspices of late eighteenth-century dialogue and constitutes the third of Antoine Reicha’s four definitions of dialogue in his important codification of 1814.47 A case in point is the style dialogué, which is characterized by the imitation of motivic material evenly distributed among individual instruments (in its paradigmatic form).48 Again this brings to mind symphonic and fugal equality of participation. The dramatic attributes of instrumental dialogue in Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ finale are best viewed through the lens of contemporary theoretical writings on dramatic dialogue. The most significant late eighteenth-century French writers on drama, for example, emphasize brevity, liveliness and concision as essential qualities of successful dialogue. Cailhava (1786) advises the writer of comedy in unambiguous fashion: ‘When the author is free to cut or not cut his dialogue, I exhort him not to hesitate. A shortened dialogue gives much more movement to the scene.’49 As a result, the writing for individual characters in a play must be succinct: ‘In order that the dialogue is shortened well, each character must, they say, reply appropriately, quickly and in few words to the question asked.’50 In sum, precision is paramount: ‘The dialogue must be precise: that’s the word. The art of giving it this quality consists not only in shortening it appropriately, in making it more or less rapid, according to circumstances: it also consists in not making a character speak when he has nothing to say.’51 Joseph de Laporte (1776)
45 46
47 48
49
50 51
Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (Leipzig, 1788, 1801), 2 vols., vol. 1, pp. 47–48. This translation is adapted from Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views, pp. 185–86. Vogler, System für den Fugenbau (Offenbach, 1811), p. 28; given in Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies, p. 544. As Zaslaw points out, Vogler’s remark dates back to the last decade of the eighteenth century. Reicha, ‘Huitième Proposition, Qui a pour but de dialoguer la mélodie’, in Traité de mélodie, pp. 89–92. The four procedures characterized as dialogue are given on p. 89. On musical characteristics of the style dialogué see Würtz, Vorrevolutionäre Kammermusik, pp. 55–86. See also Hanning, ‘Conversation and Musical Style’. For a summary of the differences between critical definitions of dialogue/dialogué and concertant, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 2–3. Cailhava, ‘Du dialogue’, in De l’art de la comédie (Paris, 1786), 2 vols., vol. 1, p. 181. ‘Lorsqu’un auteur a la liberté de couper son dialogue, ou de ne pas le couper, je l’exhorte à ne point hésiter. Un dialogue coupé donne beaucoup plus de mouvement à la scène.’ Ibid., p. 186. ‘Pour que le dialogue soit bien coupé, il faut, dit-on, que chaque personage répondre juste, vîte et en peu de mots, à ce qu’on lui demande.’ Ibid., ‘Du dialogue’, p. 189. ‘Le dialogue doit être précis: voilà le mot. L’art de lui donner cette
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adopts a similar position. Explaining that ‘the principles of dialogue’ are the same for comedy as for tragedy, he argues that ‘[o]ne of the greatest perfections of dialogue is liveliness’.52 Like Denis Diderot, Cailhava and Louis Sébastien Mercier, Laporte is especially enamoured by dialogue in Pierre Corneille’s plays, describing it as ‘lively and sharp’ (vif et coupé).53 In contrast, these writers find Racine’s dialogues unsatisfactory, the considerable length of each statement rendering them ‘less lively’ (moins vives) in the theatre than on the page (Laporte); unlike Corneille, Mercier explains, Racine does not understand the importance to dialogue of ‘liveliness’ (vivacité).54 The idea that dramatic dialogues should be ‘natural’ – frequently articulated in theoretical circles – also assumes the dialogic qualities prescribed by French classical writers. The influential Austrian intellectual Joseph von Sonnenfels identifies dialogue as a stumbling block for many eighteenth-century dramatists. Railing against long and meandering successions of verses that swell with emotion and become incomprehensible, Sonnenfels explains that dialogue should be natural, implicitly advocating clarity through concision.55 At the heart of insistences on brevity and concision in dramatic dialogue is the concept of rapidité.56 Laporte demonstrates its relevance to dramatic dialogue in his comparison of Molière’s dialogue to that of the less illustrious succeeding generation of playwrights. Dialogue in comedy ‘must flow naturally. This is one of the great merits of Molière. We do not see, in any of his plays, a single example of an out-of-place reply. His successors multiplied the tirades, the portraits etc. Nothing is more contrary to the rapidité of dialogue.’57 Friedrich Melchior (Baron von) Grimm, the eminent aesthetician who was Mozart’s landlord during his stay in Paris in 1778, was an especially enthusiastic advocate of rapidité. As he explains in an article in the monumental Encyclopédie, rapidité is obligatory in an opera, both as ‘a quality inseparable from music and one of the principal causes of its marvellous effects’ and as an essential component of a libretto in which ‘long and extraneous dialogues are nowhere more out of place’.58 Having probably discussed the concept with Grimm in Paris, Mozart amply demonstrates his own
52 53 54 55 56 57
58
qualité consiste non seulement à le couper, à propos, à le rendre plus ou moins rapide, selon des circonstances: il consiste encore à ne pas faire parler un personage lorsqu’il n’a rien à dire.’ Laporte, ‘Dialogue’, in Dictionnaire Dramatique, vol. 1, pp. 393, 385. ‘Une des plus grandes perfections du Dialogue, c’est la vivacité’. Ibid., p. 390. Ibid., p. 390; Mercier, Du théâtre, ou nouvel essai sur l’art dramatique (Amsterdam, 1773), p. 283. Sonnenfels, Briefe über die Wienerische Schaubühne (1768), ed. H. Haigler-Pregler (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1988), p. 243. The English rendering of rapidité as ‘rapidity’ does not sufficiently capture the notions of brevity and concision to which the concept is connected, so I leave the term un-translated. Laporte, Dictionnaire Dramatique, vol. 1, p. 393. ‘Il doit être celui de la nature même. C’est un des grands mérites de Molière. On ne voit pas, dans toutes ses Piéces, un seul exemple d’une réplique hors de propos. Ses successeurs ont multiplié les tirades, les portraits &c. Rien n’est plus contraire à la rapidité du Dialogue.’ As given in Knepler, Mozart, p. 50.
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commitment to the concision characteristic of rapidité in letters to Leopold from Munich (1780–81) in which he fastidiously details cuts and shortenings in Idomeneo.59 Moreover, Mozart considered rapidité relevant to his orchestral music as well as his operas, as illustrated by his plan in September 1778 to shorten his violin concertos: ‘In Germany we rather like length, but after all it is better to be short and good.’60 The preference for concision, brevity and liveliness in late eighteenth-century writings on theatrical dialogue relates in part to the critical predilection for short and sharp dialogic confrontations between characters. While late eighteenth-century discussions of confrontation in plays are directly relevant to the interaction of Mozart’s soloist and orchestra in several piano concertos, they are less relevant to the finale of the ‘Jupiter’, where the voluminous fugal and imitative dialogues engender a spirit of instrumental equality and where the concerto’s opposition of soloist and orchestra is obviously lacking.61 Nevertheless, musical dialogue in general, like its dramatic counterpart, benefits from concision, brevity and intensity even if not illustrative of confrontation. Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny acknowledges these dialogic qualities – albeit not specifically for symphonic dialogue – in comparing a segment of the first movement of Mozart’s String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, to the standard practice of a less experienced and less talented composer: ‘A student would have put all these imitations of the same subject [i.e. bars 53–58 in the development section] in the same part. Then we would no longer have heard anything but a kind of scale in place of this dialogue that is so compressed, so pressing, and so admirable.’62 Most important, the demand for dialogic concision in late eighteenth-century dramatic theory is intrinsically linked to a theoretical sine qua non, namely the demand for absolute clarity of dramatic procedures and structure. As Laporte explains, dialogue in a play must fulfil a teleological function: It is desirable that the arrangement of the subject should be such that in each scene we set out from one point in order to arrive at another determined point . . . that the dialogue should only serve the development of the action. Each step would be a new step towards the denouement, a new link in the plot; in a word a means of weaving or developing, of preparing a situation, or of moving to a new situation.63
59 60 61
62 63
Knepler, Mozart, p. 50. For the relevant Mozart letters on Idomeneo, see Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, pp. 659–710 (passim). Knepler, Mozart, p. 51; see also Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 615. On piano/orchestra confrontation in Mozart’s piano concertos, set in the context of late eighteenth-century theoretical discussion of drama, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, especially pp. 32–34, 45–74. In any case (as we shall see), the alternation of the strings/brass and woodwinds in the development of the ‘Jupiter’ finale (bars 187–207) is suggestive of confrontation. Given in Wye Jamison Allannbrook’s translation in Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History, ed. Leo Treitler (New York: Norton, 1998), p. 831. Laporte, Dictionnaire Dramatique, vol. 1, p. 394. ‘Il seroit à souhaiter que la disposition du sujet fût telle, qu’à chaque scène on parte d’un point pour arriver à un point déterminé . . . que le Dialogue ne dût servir qu’aux progrès de l’action. Chaque réplique seroit un nouveau pas vers le
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In a similar vein, Hegel’s ‘dramatic interplay of dialogue’ in Mozart’s symphonies, while not necessarily understanding dialogue in specific technical terms (imitation etc.), nonetheless highlights its directional quality. Immediately after the passage quoted above, Hegel clarifies how Mozart’s symphonic dialogue can enact a goal-orientated process: In one aspect of this [the dramatic interplay of dialogue in Mozart’s symphonies], the character of one variety of instruments is developed musically to the point where it anticipates and prepares the way for the character of another; or, approaching it from another side, the impression is that one kind of instrument is replying to another or is introducing something which could not have been adequately expressed by the sound of the preceding instrument; so that what arises out of all of this is a truly captivating colloquy, made up of sounds, with beginnings, progressions, and completions.64
It is reasonable to suggest that a symphonic movement such as the ‘Jupiter’ finale will need to embrace a philosophy analogous in musical terms to the ideas described above if it is to justify a ‘dramatic’ epithet in line with neo-classical thought. In any case musical dialogue (instrumental alone, and instrumental and textual combined) in Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787) demonstrates the close relationship between theoretical positions outlined above and Mozart’s dramatic practice, confirming the pursuit of musical-dramatic correspondences in Mozart’s symphonic repertory as a legitimate hermeneutic exercise. Numbers such as the Act 2 trio, Act 3 sextet, ‘Letter duet’ (‘Che soave zeffiretto’) and aria ‘Deh vieni’ from Figaro, and ‘La cì darem’, ‘Batti, batti’ and the Act 2 trio from Don Giovanni present succinct, concise and systematic dialogue supporting Mozart’s theoretical subscription to the idea of rapidité.65 In many instances, the accumulation of dialogue and resulting teleology across a number fulfils a function similar to that argued for theatrical dialogue by Laporte. Such musical processes often support a development in the operatic plot – progressively succinct and intricate dialogue among Don Giovanni, Zerlina and the accompanying orchestra in ‘La cì darem’ represents Don Giovanni’s seduction, and among the Count, Countess and Susanna in the Act 2 trio from Figaro the shared belief by the end that scandal must be avoided – and/or correspond to standard practices in late eighteenth-century opera buffa, including interlocutors uniting in the concluding stages of a dialogued duet and progressions from dialogue to tutti sections in finales.66
64 65 66
dénouement, des chaînons de l’intrigue; en un mot un moyen de nouer ou de développer, de préparer une situation, ou de passer à une situation nouvelle.’ Paolucci, ed. and trans., Hegel: On the Arts, p. 133. See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, Chapter 5, pp. 101–46. On ‘La cì darem’ and the Act 2 trio from Figaro, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 116–17. The dialogued duet is discussed in Elisabeth Cook, Duet and Ensemble in the Early Opéra Comique (London: Garland, 1995), especially pp. 228–45, and its relevance to eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century technical understandings of dialogue explained in Keefe, Mozart’s Piano
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Dramatic dialogue in the ‘Jupiter’ finale The virtues of dialogic conciseness and equality of participation articulated by dramatic theorists and music theorists are more evident in the finale of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony than in any of his preceding symphonic movements. This is due in part at least to Mozart’s reliance on imitative dialogue. In a definition of dialogue from 1814 that is significant in historical terms for its synthesis of relatively informal theoretical understandings of the concept from the eighteenth century, Antoine Reicha outlines only four possible manifestations of musical dialogue: ‘first by executing the full periods alternately; second by distributing the phrases (or members of the periods) among the different voices that are to execute the melody; third by motives [dessins], that is to say, by little imitations; fourth by starting a phrase with one voice and finishing it with another’.67 Since Reicha’s first, second, and fourth types of dialogue imply less frequent exchange from one instrument or voice to another than the third, they would be ostensibly less likely to reveal the qualities of brevity, concision and vivacity cited by dramatic theorists. More important, Mozart’s imitations in the ‘Jupiter’ finale are terse and brisk – in the exposition, for example, strettos, rapid combinations of motifs, imitations at a distance of one bar, and succinct fugal entries. (For a representation of dialogue in the entire finale, see Fig. 6.1.) Moreover, the active participation of all instrumental parts in the finale – a laudable stylistic trait in Mozart’s music as recognized by his contemporaries – is plain for all to see. The initial two dialogues in both the exposition and recapitulation are carried out by the strings, but wind instruments are equally as involved as their string counterparts in subsequent exchanges. More remarkable than the characteristics of dialogue in the ‘Jupiter’ finale is the manner in which dialogue is organized in individual sections and across the movement as a whole. The exposition features a rudimentary dialogic ‘balance’, while also revealing a marked increase in dialogic intensity from beginning to end. The midpoint of the exposition – the presentation of the second theme at bars 74–86 in a section of 157 bars – is both preceded and followed by an immediate succession of one-bar imitations (theme 3) and strettos; in addition, the first dialogue in the exposition, which involves only strings, is balanced by the final one, which features only winds. From a teleological perspective, however, Mozart progresses towards greater dialogic complexity in the second half of the section. After the second theme, the one-bar imitations of theme 3 are combined not with straightforward repeated quavers (as in bars 56–64) but with sequentially
67
Concertos, pp. 30–32 and Keefe, ‘Reicha’s Dialogue’, pp. 50–52. On dialogues and tutti in opera buffa finales see John Platoff, ‘Musical and Dramatic Structure in the Opera Buffa Finale’, Journal of Musicology, 7 (1989), pp. 213–14. Reicha, Traité de mélodie, p. 89. ‘1o. les périodes entières s’exécutent alternativement; 2o. en distribuant les phrases (ou membres de périodes) entre les différentes voix qui doivent exécuter la Mélodie; 3o. on dialogue par dessins, c’est-à-dire par de petites imitations; 4o. on commence une phrase par une voix, et on achève par une autre.’
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Figure 6.1: Dialogue in the Finale of K. 551 Procedural correspondences (‘symmetry’ etc.)
[]
Teleological dialogic process; increase in dialogic intensity Additional observations (harmonic, thematic, tonal etc.)
EXPOSITION First theme Bars 1–35: Statements of 1, continuation of 1, 2. No dialogue Transition Bars 36–52: Fugal exposition on 1 (1st vln – 2nd vln – vla – cello) [Passage is followed immediately by climactic f statement of 1 in the full orchestra (bar 53)] Bars 56–64: Sequential imitation on 3 (1st vln – cello) [Beginning of the modulatory process (bar 56); affirmation of V/G (bar 64)] Bars 64–73: Stretto on 2 (fl/1st vln/2nd vln – ob/bsn/vla/cello – horn) [Pattern repeated] [Affirmation of V/G (bars 64–73)] Second theme Bars 74–86: Exchange of 4, 5, 3, 2 (1st vln [4] – ob [5] – bsn [3] – fl [2]) [Pattern repeated] [G major] Bars 86–94: Sequential imitation on 3 (fl – bsn) [V/G pedal (bars 86–94)] Bars 94–110: Stretto on 4 (a) Bars 94–98 (fl/ob1/1st vln – bsn/ob2/cello [semibreves only]) (b) Bars 98–110 (1st vln – 2nd vln – cello – vla [sequence, x3]) [Cadential reconfirmation of G, following pedal, in bar 94] Bars 115–26: Imitation on continuation of 1 (1st vln – winds/brass; vla/cello – winds/brass) [Cadential reconfirmation of G (bars 114–15). End of imitation coincides with a iv6 – IV6 chordal progression (bars 127–30) preceding the perfect cadence in G in bars 134–35.] Bars 135–45: Stretto on 2 and 2 inverted (vla/cello – ob/fl – vlns [sequence, x3]) [Cadential reconfirmation of G (bars 134–35). Sequence is followed by a repeated harmonic pattern, affirming G through a repeated cadential action (bars 145–51)] Bars 151–57: Imitation on 2 (ob – bsn) [G pedal in the cellos/basses (bars 151–57)]
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DEVELOPMENT Bars 158–72: Alternation of 1 and 2 (including 2 inverted) (vlns/vla – ob/bsn; vlns/vla – fl/bsn) [Tonal progression: G – E (bar 166) – V/a (bar 172)] Bars 172–86: Stretto on 2 (hn/tr/tmp/cello – 1st vln – vla/fl/ob/bsn – 2nd vln [sequence, x4]) [Tonal progression in sequence: a–d–G–C] Bars 186–207: Alternation of 1 and 2; Stretto on 2 (including inversion) (strings/brass – winds [sequence, x4]) [Tonal progression in sequence: c–g–d–V/III] Bars 210–19: Imitation on 2 (including inversion) (1st vln – vla/cello – vlns/vla/cello) [V/III (bars 210–19)] Bars 219–24: Imitation of beginning of 2 (bsn1–bsn2–hn–1st vln [leading directly to 1 for recap]) [Chromatic descent in cello/bass (B–G, bars 219–23), including a dim7 – bVI#6 – I6/4 – V7 – I progression (bars 221–25) leading into the recapitulation] RECAPITULATION First theme Bars 225–32: 8-bar statement of 1 and continuation of 1. No dialogue. Secondary Development/Transition Bars 241–52: Stretto on 1 (partially hidden) (1st vln – 2nd vln) [Five-fold sequencing of 1 (bars 233–52)] Bars 253–62: Sequential imitation on 3 (cello – 1st vln) [Tonicization of IV (bar 254); affirmation of V/C (bar 262)] Bars 262–71: Stretto on 2 (fl/1st vln/2nd vln – ob/bsn/vla/cellos – hn/tr – tmp) [Pattern repeated] [Affirmation of V/C (bars 262–71)] Second theme Bars 272–84: Exchange of 4, 5, 3, 2 (1st vln [4] – ob [5] – bsn [3] – fl [2]; on repeat: 1st vln [4] – bsn [5] – ob/fl [3] – bsn [2]) Bars 284–91: Sequential imitation on 3 (ob – fl) [V/C pedal (bars 284–91] Bars 292–308: Stretto on 4 (a) Bars 292–96 (fl/ob1/1st vln – bsn/ob2/cello [minims only]) (b) Bars 296–308 (1st vln – 2nd vln – cello – vla [sequence, x3]) [Cadential reconfirmation of C, following pedal, in bar 292] Bars 313–24: Imitation on continuation of 1 (1st vln – winds/brass; cello/bsn – winds/brass) [Cadential reconfirmation of C (bars 312–13). End of imitation coincides with an extension to the corresponding passage from the exposition, including a climactic melodic ascent to E (flute, 1st vln, bar 332) and a iv6 – bII6/4 – bVI7 – I6/4 – V7 – I reconfirmation of C (bars 325–34)] Bars 334–44: Stretto on 2 and 2 inverted, pre-empted by dotted rhythms in winds/brass at the end of preceding phrase (bars 332–33) (cello/vla – fl/ob – vlns [sequence, x3]) [Cadential reconfirmation of C (bars 333–34). Sequence is followed by a repeated harmonic pattern, affirming C through a repeated cadential action (bars 344–50)] Bars 350–56: Imitation on 2 (including 2 inverted) (bsn – fl) [C pedal in the cellos/basses (bars 350–53)]
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Coda Bars 356–59: Imitation/Stretto on 2 and 2 inverted (strings – winds) [Articulation of I7 harmony (bars 356–59)] Bars 360–71: Stretto on 1 and 1 inverted (vlns – vla/cello/fl) [Ends with iv6 – V7 – I progression (bars 370–72), the end of which coincides with the beginning of the ensuing dialogue] Bars 372–402: Double fugue on 1 and 4 (strings, winds); Canonic combination of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (strings and winds in 5-part invertible counterpoint). Each string and wind instrument plays a different motif every four bars (e.g. bars 384–87, 388–91, 392–95, 396–99), curtailed to three bars at the end (bars 399–401), creating a tapestry of imitative dialogue in which all five themes are involved. Bars 402–23: Statements of continuation of 1 and 2. No dialogue.
The five themes from the Finale of K. 551
descending quavers in the violins that derive ultimately from the sequentially descending quavers in themes 2 and 4; the stretto in bars 98–110 is a four-entry stretto, taken through two further sequential repeats, as opposed to a three-entry stretto repeated only once (as in bars 64–73); and the stretto on theme 2 in bars 135–45 also intensifies the earlier stretto on the same theme by featuring two sequential repeats and by combining both the theme and its inversion.68 68
That the exposition and the development/recapitulation sections are marked for repeat in K. 551/iv should not detract from the dramatic import of the movement. Since late eighteenthcentury theorists of drama cited above – as well as other influential writers such as Lessing, Diderot and Goethe – extol the virtues of systematic, logical and clear dramatic procedures while
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Like the exposition, the development section demonstrates forward momentum in dialogic terms. While two procedures occur separately in the first half of the section – themes 1 and 2 are alternated in bars 158–72 and theme 2 heard in stretto in bars 172–86 – these two procedures are directly juxtaposed in the ensuing passage (bars 186–207). In line with Reicha’s writings on dialogue, the opposition of themes 1 and 2 in bars 158–72 and 186–207 imply the type of dialogic confrontation between strings and wind protagonists (especially in the later passage where opposing dynamics, rhythms, note values etc. accentuate the contrast between alternated material) that is witnessed between the soloist and the orchestra in the development sections of several of Mozart’s piano concerto first movements.69 Any remnants of confrontation between the strings (theme 1) and the winds (theme 2) are cancelled out, however, in the concluding bars of the section (bars 219ff.); the dotted rhythm beginning theme 2 is passed from the bassoons (bars 219–20), to the horn (bar 221) and finally to the first violin (bar 222) which states theme 2 in its entirety to merge this theme (at the end of the development) into the reprise of theme 1 (at the beginning of the recapitulation) and thus to negate the earlier opposition between them. The crowning glory of dialogic procedures initiated in the ‘Jupiter’ finale’s exposition and development sections comes in the recapitulation, where Mozart intensifies his goal-orientated processes. Alterations and additions to dialogue from the exposition provide the means to this end. For example, the first and last dialogic passages in the section as a whole – the stretto on 1 in the secondary development (bars 241–52) and the double fugue and five-part invertible counterpoint in the coda (bars 372–402) – are both new to the movement and stretch the extremities of the recapitulation’s teleological process beyond the corresponding extremities of the exposition; Mozart now progresses from entries of theme 1 in the terse secondary development that are concealed by the continuous semibreve movement in the violins (bars 241–52) to the contrapuntal zenith of the coda where each of the five principal motifs is simultaneously dialogued from one instrumental part to another in four-bar units (in bars 372–91, for example, theme 2 from viola – 2nd violin – 1st violin – bass – cello and theme 1 from the cello – viola – 2nd violin – 1st violin – bass). The interpolation of dotted rhythms in the flute, oboes, trumpets and timpani (bars 332–33) after the climactic sequential rise of bars 328–32 (itself a re-composed version of the exposition) pre-empts the dotted rhythms prevalent in the ensuing stretto on theme 2, thus intensifying this juncture of the recapitulation in relation to the corresponding passage in the exposition (bars 130ff.) by creating a direct dialogic link between material not linked in the exposition. The re-orchestrated version of the second theme in the recapitulation is also of significance to the section’s teleological
69
denigrating stereotypically ‘dramatic’ qualities of surprise and suspense, the repetition of specific dialogic patterns and processes will not in itself challenge their dramatic status. On Reicha’s explanation of confrontational dialogue, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 32–34.
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focus. While the repeated statement of the second theme in the exposition features identical scoring to the initial statement (see bars 74–86), the repeat of the second theme in the recapitulation re-scores the wind presentations of themes 5, 3 and 2 so as to illustrate the contrapuntal invertibility of the themes (see bars 272–84) and thus to foreshadow the invertible counterpoint of the coda. As well as intensifying the teleological structure of the recapitulation and coda, added dialogue in this section also retains (in re-shaped form) the interactional ‘balance’ of the exposition. The first and last dialogues from the recapitulation again square exclusive string participation (in the former) with exclusive wind involvement (in the latter). Equilibrium is further reinforced in the thematic domain by the stretto on theme 1 in original and inverted forms at the beginning of the coda (bars 360–71). The only other sustained passage of theme 1 semibreve writing in more than one part is the secondary development passage. As a result, there is an even stronger affinity between the beginning and end of the final section than between the corresponding junctures of the exposition. Moreover, the presence of a pseudo inversion of theme 1 in the cello in the secondary development passage (bars 243–50) – the only such occurrence before the coda – foreshadows the more overt manifestations of the inverted theme 1 in the later passage (bars 360–67). Irrespective of whether we regard the entire recapitulation and coda, or just the coda by itself, as the denouement of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ finale, we will acknowledge the dramatic intensity of the movement’s dialogic procedures. Just as Joseph de Laporte argues that each reply in theatrical dialogue ‘would be a new step towards the denouement . . . in a word a means of weaving or developing, of preparing a situation, or of passing to a new situation’, so the nature, organization and structure of Mozart’s dialogues in the exposition and development pave the way for the recapitulation and coda. Moreover, by preparing the listener so thoroughly in the exposition and development sections for the forceful drive, terse structure and intricate technique of the recapitulation and coda, Mozart writes individual dialogues that are, at one and the same time, inherently striking in themselves and powerfully directed towards even greater fulfilment. Goethe makes this very point in explaining what a theatrical piece requires in order to be fit for the stage: ‘each incident must be significant in itself, and lead to another still more important. The Tartuffe of Molière is, in this respect, a great example. Only think what an introduction is the first scene! From the beginning everything is highly significant, and leads us to expect something still more important.’70 Indeed, Mozart’s initial dialogue ‘scenes’ – the fugal exposition, protracted imitation and stretto in quick succession in the transition, for example – are striking as they stand, but quickly precipitate an even more remarkable chain of events – a goal-directed dialogic process in the exposition, an exposition and development that come to a
70
Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (1823–32), trans. J. Oxenford (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), p. 105.
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climax in procedural terms in the recapitulation, and a recapitulation that itself culminates in the glorious dialogue of the coda. Leading dramatic theorists of the Enlightenment often remark upon the importance of plays propelling themselves forward from beginning to end in a manner akin to the forward propulsion witnessed in the ‘Jupiter’ finale. Denis Diderot outlines in unambiguous fashion the kind of procedural rigour and dramatic impetus that must be incorporated into a play: ‘It [the incident beginning the action] will naturally lead to the second, the second scene to the third, and the act will be filled out. The important point is for the action to gather momentum and to be very clear.’71 Goethe, in contrasting the role of the principal character in a novel and in a drama, argues a similar point: ‘The novel must go slowly forward; and the sentiments of the hero, by some means or another, must restrain the tendency of the whole to unfold itself and to conclude. The drama, on the other hand, must hasten, and the character of the hero must press forward to the end.’72 These pronouncements are exemplified by dialogue in Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ finale. What is more, the consistency and clarity of dramatic procedure stipulated by late eighteenth-century dramatic theorists is realized at several levels in Mozart’s movement. The ‘tone’ of the dialogue – brisk imitation – is consistent throughout; and the make-up and structure of individual dialogues points relentlessly forward, as we have seen. Even the interactional balance identified in the separate sections extends in a general way to the structure of the movement as a whole. Just as Mozart opens his finale in galant style with orchestral tuttis and an absence of imitation and follows this with a fugal exposition, so he closes his movement with the reverse – a double fugue and five-part invertible counterpoint (bars 372–402) followed by a galant tutti.73 In addition, the middle section – the development – adds to the rudimentary sense of symmetry by dividing into two approximately equal segments, the first looking back primarily to procedures in the exposition and the second looking forward above all to the recapitulation and coda. By including a stretto on theme 2 that is treated sequentially and that features the entire orchestra, the first half (bars 158–86) invokes bars 64–73 and, in particular, bars 135–45 from the exposition; in contrast, the second half (bars 186–224), with both its abrasive sequence (bars 186–206) and its smooth integration of distinct themes (bars 222ff.), foreshadows the harsh sequences of the secondary development and the fluidic thematic exchange of the coda respectively. Given that the late eighteenth-century sublime becomes, according to Sisman, ‘part of a sequence of events, even the enactment of a plot’, it is theoretically possible for a historically-informed listener to hear the coda of the ‘Jupiter’ finale both as the climactic moment in an unfolding dramatic process and as a mani71 72 73
As quoted in Michael J. Sidnell, ed. and trans., Sources of Dramatic Theory: 2. Voltaire to Hugo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 65. Ibid., p. 141. See Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, pp. 74–76, 79.
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festation of the sublime, with its overwhelming ‘contrapuntal chaos’ and ‘vistas of contrapuntal infinity’.74 Ultimately, though, the identification of sublime chaos and contrapuntal infinity in the coda does not adequately account for the participation of one particular group of instruments whose involvement in this famous passage has often been ignored by commentators – the brass. While every string and wind part in bars 388–402 presents one of the five principal themes of the movement creating elaborate five-part invertible counterpoint and a rich tapestry of imitative dialogue, the horns and trumpets are conspicuously absent from this process. To be sure, late eighteenth-century horn and trumpet instruments would have been physically incapable of playing the unadulterated versions of themes 2–5 offered by the strings and winds, but had he so desired Mozart could certainly have made their material more closely related to the melodic and rhythmic content of these themes.75 As it stands, the material of the horns and trumpets could be heard either as pan-motivic or as non-motivic. We could argue that the dotted crotchet – quaver – minim rhythm in bars 3883–892 derives from the opening of theme 2, that the subsequent three minims (3893–90) originate in the opening of theme 4, and that the four minims in bar 391 loosely invert theme 5; but we might maintain with equal justification that the trumpets and horns offer ostensibly ‘new’ material, to all intents and purposes unrelated to the principal thematic argument of the movement. Irrespective of how we channel our interpretation, it is clear that the horns and trumpets stand apart from the dialogic melee (although they unambiguously partake in dialogic activity earlier in the movement), and that their straightforward lines – even accounting for the limited nature of late eighteenth-century brass instruments – contrast sharply with material presented by every other orchestral instrument (timpani excluded).76 Due recognition that the brass steer clear of the contrapuntal fray in bars 388–402 necessarily entails a re-evaluation of the function of Mozart’s coda. It is significant that the horns and trumpets perform a straightforward march; the military and ceremonial qualities so often associated with this topic, together with the characteristic participation of the brass, lend it an air of authority.77 Just as eighteenth-century aestheticians regard the march as ‘a primitive specimen from 74 75
76
77
Ibid., pp. 19–20, 79. Witness, for example, the statement of theme 1 in the horns earlier in the coda (bars 372–75). The brass, moreover, play a role in presenting motivic material earlier in the finale. The horns and trumpets participate in a rigorously motivic fashion throughout the development section, repeatedly contributing the opening of theme 2 to successions of stretto entries in the strings/winds (bars 172–86) and strings (bars 186–202). While the same cannot be said for the entire exposition and recapitulation sections, the horns and trumpets are frequently involved in motivic work. (See Figure 6.1.) Overt contrast between brass and wind/strings involvement is, of course, evident elsewhere in the finale (e.g. bars 136–45 from the exposition). Such contrasts between material presented by the brass and the winds/strings are less marked earlier in the movement, however, since the winds’ and strings’ counterpoint is less intricate than corresponding counterpoint in the coda. For accounts of typical musical qualities of the march topic, see Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’ (Chicago: University of
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which to trace the evolution of comparative artifices like the social dances’,78 so Mozart’s ‘primitive’ march in the brass provides a foundation for demarcating the contrapuntal intricacies of the strings and winds. The triumphant appearance of a brass march in the finale’s climactic passage, moreover, is an entirely appropriate conclusion to a movement highlighting the ceremonial and trumpeting qualities of the eighteenth-century Viennese trumpet symphony tradition.79 By offsetting the spiral of contrapuntal complexity with a simple and comprehensible musical reference point at the very moment that the counterpoint would have seemed most likely to run away with itself (namely in bar 388, the first simultaneous participation of every string and woodwind instrument in five-part invertible counterpoint), Mozart shields his listener from the overwhelming sight of contrapuntal infinity. Instead, he encourages his listener to contemplate the forceful rigour and intelligibility of his dramatic process, providing a fitting illustration of the extraordinary type of instrumental music that will, according to Adam Smith in 1795, ‘occupy, and as it were fill up completely the whole capacity of the mind, so as to leave no part of its attention vacant for thinking of anything else’.80
The stylistic significance of the ‘Jupiter’ finale in Mozart’s oeuvre The dramatic and stylistic ingenuity of the finale of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony must not obscure the fact that its emphasis on teleological and symmetrical structuring of dialogue, on equality of participation in dialogue and on the forceful rigour of dialogic procedures is foreshadowed in Mozart’s earlier Viennese symphonies (No. 35 in D, ‘Haffner’, K. 385; No. 36 in C, ‘Linz’, K. 425; No. 38 in D, ‘Prague’, K. 504; No. 39 in Eb, K. 543; and No. 40 in G minor, K. 550). Dialogic rigour in the dramatic domain also characterizes arias and ensembles from Mozart’s earlier Viennese operas, as mentioned above. The fundamental textural discrepancy between the ‘Jupiter’ finale and these operatic numbers, however, as well as the late eighteenth-century theoretical association of vocal/instrumental interaction in opera with instrumental interaction in the concerto (not the symphony), renders specific dialogic connections between K. 551 and Mozart’s
78 79
80
Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 45–48 and V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 38. Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture, p. 46. For detail on this tradition see A. Peter Brown, ‘The Trumpet Overture and Sinfonia in Vienna (1715–1822): Rise, Decline and Reformulation’, in Music in Eighteenth-Century Austria, ed. David Wyn Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 13–69. Brown argues that Mozart drew upon the trumpet symphony tradition only in his Viennese works, including the first and last movements of the ‘Jupiter’. In the finale, the fanfare-like quality of theme 2 represents ‘an effort to recapture the effect of multi-choired groups of trumpets responding to proclamations’ (p. 65). Adam Smith, ‘Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called the Imitative Arts’ (1795), in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W.P.D. Wightman and J.C. Bryce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 205.
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operas less historically significant than dialogic connections between K. 551 and Mozart’s earlier Viennese symphonies.81 In the first movement of the ‘Linz’ (1783) the coda fulfils a function similar to the coda of the ‘Jupiter’ finale, representing the defining moment in a dialogic process that stretches across the movement. Towards the end of each of the principal sections of K. 425/i Mozart highlights dialogue in one- and two-bar imitative units (see bars 8–17 [slow introduction], 105–10 [exposition], 158–61 [development], 251–55 [recapitulation]), taking this procedure further in the coda. Here, Mozart revisits the beginning of the development section (as is not uncommon in his sonata form codas in general82), featuring strings–wind dialogue similar to that of bars 131–39, while rendering the dialogue itself more succinct and procedurally significant. Bars 274–80 alternate one-bar units in the strings and winds: the use of one-bar imitation to bring individual sections to a close now extends to closing the entire movement. In addition, bars 274–78 combine one-bar alternations with a split-theme dialogue (winds–strings; winds–strings), thus concisely integrating at the end of the movement the principle dialogic trait of imitation with the secondary trait of thematic dialogue split between wind and strings (see exposition, bars 75–79; recapitulation, bars 221–25). The finale of the ‘Prague’ Symphony (1786) goes one step further than the first movement of the ‘Linz’ by predicting both the concise teleological design and rudimentary symmetrical organization of dialogue in the ‘Jupiter’ finale. For example, the midpoint of the 151-bar exposition – the presentation of the secondary theme in bars 66–98 – provides the single most balanced dialogue of the section, a repeated theme (66–81; 82–98) whose participation is split between the strings and the winds. In turn, this passage is framed at the beginning and end of the section by alternating presentations of the movement’s principal thematic material in the strings and wind (see bars 1–30, 31–46, 47–63 and 110–20, 120–38, 138–51). Interactional symmetry between these framing passages is reinforced, moreover, by the presence of tutti, forte material immediately before and immediately after the secondary theme (bars 47–63, 110–20). Mozart retains his broad symmetrical arrangement in the recapitulation, but renders his dialogue more concise by shortening considerably the initial, pre-secondary-theme exchange. In addition to cutting the strings’ opening presentation of the principal thematic material from 30 bars to 8 (bars 216–23), Mozart re-introduces full-orchestral forte minims (tremolo in the violins) into the subsequent wind presentation (see bars 228–31, 236–39) that correspond closely to full-orchestral forte passages
81
82
On systematic dialogic procedures in numbers such as ‘Martern aller Arten’ and the Act 2 Quartet from Entführung, the Act 2 Trio, Act 2 Finale, Act 3 Sextet, ‘Letter Duet’ and ‘Deh vieni’ from Figaro, and ‘Là ci darem’, ‘Batti, batti’, the Act 1 Finale, Act 2 Trio and Act 2 Finale of Don Giovanni as they compare to corresponding procedures in Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 101–46. Correspondences between the organization of dialogue in the ‘Jupiter’ finale and in one concerto movement, K. 491/i, are discussed below. See Esther Cavett-Dunsby, ‘Mozart’s Codas’, Music Analysis, 7/1 (1988), p. 47.
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interrupting very similar wind presentations at the beginning of the development (see bars 156ff.). By compressing his initial strings-wind-strings exchange, by connecting it to a passage from the development section, and by predicting the forte outcry of bar 244 with the interpolation of the preceding forte interruptions, Mozart follows in his recapitulation those late eighteenth-century dramatic theorists who advise cutting dialogue at every possible opportunity (‘When the author is free to cut or not cut his dialogue I exhort him hardly to hesitate’); by accentuating the fluid continuity and goal-orientated nature of his dialogic process he also realizes in practical terms the theoretical maxim that a ‘shortened dialogue gives much more movement to the scene’.83 Other Mozart Viennese symphonies foreshadow dialogue in the ‘Jupiter’ finale less clearly than K. 425/i and K. 504/iv, but often prefigure in a general way K. 551/iv’s drive towards the coda by progressively striving for dialogic equality between strings and winds. In K. 550/i, for example, the dialogic balance in the two exquisite presentations of the secondary theme (bars 44–57) – the initial statement is passed from strings to winds to strings and the repeat from winds to strings to winds – precipitates greater equality in the presentation of the principal thematic material in the remainder of the movement than witnessed hitherto. The end of the exposition twice features statements of the head motif passed from wind to strings (bars 73–80, 81–88); the end of the development includes protracted strings-wind imitation of the head motif (bars 139–52) and a graceful segue into the recapitulation as sequentially descending dialogue in the winds finally embraces the beginning of the 1st violin’s restatement of the main theme (bars 160–66); and the coda highlights a succession of imitative entries on the head motif in the strings and winds (bars 286–93). During its exposition section, K. 543/iv progressively increases the involvement of the winds in dialogue. The strings dominate the presentation of the main theme and quickly intervene when the wind attempt a split-theme dialogue from secondary theme material (see bars 43–44 and 49–50), but the winds subsequently present the head motif of the main theme first in imitation between flute and bassoon (bars 55–61) and then among the flute, clarinet and bassoon (bars 80–85), whereupon the strings finally take notice of the winds as it were and continue to dialogue the head motif themselves (bars 86–95). Now confident about asserting their rights as full-fledged interlocutors the winds interpolate their own split-theme dialogue into the presentation of the main theme at the beginning of the recapitulation (flute – bassoon, bars 153–60). Ultimately, the ‘Jupiter’ finale, though foreshadowed by earlier movements in Mozart’s symphonic canon, transcends its predecessors in dialogic intensity and ingenuity, thereby revealing itself as a climactic moment in Mozart’s symphonic re-invention process. The ‘Jupiter’ coda is a more powerful and concentrated 83
For the quoted material on dramatic dialogue see Cailhava, De l’art de la comédie, vol. 1, p. 181. For a differing interpretation of the dramatic nature of K. 504/iv, focussing on its ‘buffa tone’, see Sisman, ‘Genre, Gesture and Meaning in Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony’, pp. 80–83.
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dramatic climax to its finale than the K. 425 coda is to its first movement; and the ‘Jupiter’ finale as a whole demonstrates greater teleological thrust than, say, K. 504/iv, 550/i and 543/iv. In short, the cumulative dramatic process succinctly described by John Gregory in 1766 as ‘artful construction, in which one part gives strength to another, and gradually works the Mind up to those sentiments and passions, which it was the design of the author to produce’84 is nowhere more evident in Mozart’s symphonic oeuvre than in K. 551/iv. The work in Mozart’s orchestral repertory to which K. 551/iv is most closely akin is not a symphony, but a piano concerto, K. 491 in C minor (1786). As we will recall from Chapter 2, K. 491 initiates a process of stylistic re-invention by virtue of its intensification of the grand, brilliant and intimate qualities – including the distribution of piano–orchestra dialogue – witnessed in the piano concertos from 1784–86.85 Like K. 551/iv, K. 491/i organizes dialogues in a rudimentarily symmetrical fashion, especially in the solo exposition, where three-way exchanges among the winds, strings and piano at the beginning and end of the section (bars 118–30, 241–55) frame two-way, piano–winds and winds–piano exchanges in the middle (bars 147–64 and 200–220). Similarly, K. 491/i introduces a forceful dialogic opposition of interlocutors (piano and orchestra, bars 330–45) into the second half of the development section, as does K. 551/iv (strings/brass and winds, bars 186–207). Above all, the recapitulation of K. 491/i provides a dialogic tour de force to rival that of the corresponding section of K. 551/iv: both manipulate and intensify dialogic procedures and organizations from the exposition (orchestral and solo expositions in the case of K. 491) to effect decisive climaxes to the interaction in the two movements. Moreover, just as the ‘Jupiter’ finale intensifies dialogic procedures from Mozart’s preceding Viennese symphonies, so K. 491/i intensifies the standard pattern of dialogic interaction from the first movements of Mozart’s earlier Viennese piano concertos (K. 413–488), rendering his intimate dialogue (exposition) – conflict (development) – intimate dialogue (recapitulation) paradigm more taut and compelling than ever before. In contrast to K. 491, K. 551 is, of course, Mozart’s final essay in its genre, depriving us of the opportunity to see how his symphonic style would have evolved after the climactic finale. Predicting what Mozart might have done had he lived beyond 1791 is dangerously speculative, but we might very tentatively propose – given K. 491/i’s status in relation to the three remaining piano concertos – that he would have continued his symphonic re-invention process in a manner akin to the continuation of re-invention (after K. 491) in K. 503, 537 and 595. The first movements of K. 503, 537 and 595, in addition to the stylistic re-invention documented in Chapters 2 and 3, set aside patterns of dialogue and relational development from the preceding Viennese piano concertos (K. 84 85
Gregory, A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man, with those of the Animal World (London, 1766 [2nd edition]), pp. 116–17. Discussion of K. 491/i in this paragraph is drawn from Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 75–100.
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413–491) in favour of new designs; Mozart presumably felt that he had exhausted his relational paradigm from 1782–86 with his almighty effort in K. 491/i.86 Since dialogic equality and teleology of dialogic design are such pronounced features of the ‘Jupiter’ finale, it is difficult to see how Mozart could have continued towards greater participatory equality and more intense goal-orientated structure in a subsequent symphony, even had he so desired. A further connection between K. 551/iv and Mozart’s re-invention processes in his piano concertos and string quartets concerns stylistic self consciousness, a distinctive feature of the manipulation of musical materials and procedures in K. 449/i, K. 465/i, K. 590/iv and K. 595/i, as well as in the ‘Jupiter’ finale. It is difficult to deny, as Simon Sechter remarks in his analysis of the symphony in 1843, that the ‘five themes that combine contrapuntally in the final section must unquestionably have been worked together in counterpoint right from the start’; Mozart surely planned this in advance.87 Indeed, recognition of Mozart’s self-awareness in K. 551/iv runs through the secondary literature, culminating in Daniel Chua’s provocative assessment of the coda as ‘the contrapuntal apotheosis that ingeniously intertwines the disparate fragments into a single texture . . . a self-reflexive move that reveals the chemical make-up of the movement; the music comes into contrapuntal self-consciousness; it suddenly knows itself as the intellectual force that activates the structure of the work’.88 The personal significance of the finale to Mozart, possibly reflecting a combination of religious concerns, homage to Leopold, and a desire to escape past oppression,89 could also have contributed a self-conscious streak, as could Mozart’s realization of a stylistic apotheosis. In addition, since the late eighteenth-century theatre is ‘by nature a model of human self-consciousness’,90 and since one of the most ostensibly ‘dramatic’ passages in all of Mozart’s operas, the Act 2 Finale of Don Giovanni, is certainly self-conscious – in particular the extended quotation of ‘Non piu Andrai’ from Figaro to which Leporello adds ‘Questa poi la conosco purtroppo!’ (‘I know that tune only too well!’) – this quality might even be seen to enhance the dramatic significance of the movement. In any case, the ‘Jupiter’ finale simultaneously represents a supreme model of dramatic endeavour in the late eighteenth-century orchestral repertory and a movement sui generis in the intricacy and intensity of its dramatic dialogue.
86 87 88 89 90
See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 94–100. Sechter’s statement is quoted in Sisman, ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, p. 24. Chua, ‘Haydn as Romantic: A Chemical Experiment with Instrumental Music’, in Haydn Studies, ed. W. Dean Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 138. See Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies, pp. 541–44. See Benjamin Bennett, Modern Drama and German Classicism: Renaissance from Lessing to Brecht (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 94. Bennett refers on numerous occasions to the self-conscious nature of drama; see, for example, Modern Drama, pp. 54–55, 56, 94.
. IV . CONCLUSIONS
7 Mozart’s Stylistic Re-Invention in Musical Context
I
N Chapters 1–6 we have established that stylistic re-invention in Mozart’s rpiano concertos, string quartets and symphonies constitutes an on-going, two-stage process. First, Mozart contemplates his pre-existent stylistic procedures in a genre, manipulating them to climactic effect. Thus, the confrontation in the development section of K. 449/i takes to a new stylistic plateau the separation of piano and orchestra interlocutors and the characteristics of development– recapitulation transitions from K. 413–415; the manipulation of striking harmonic procedures from the first five ‘Haydn’ quartets in the slow introduction of K. 465/i produces a rich peroration to the set as a whole and a sense of heightened contrast (slow introduction–exposition) new to Mozart’s quartets; K. 491’s intensification of the complementary qualities of intimacy and grandeur evident in the 1784–86 piano concertos results in Mozart’s most dialogically sophisticated and confrontationally forceful concerto to date; and the voluminous, highly organized dialogue in K. 551/iv goes significantly further than its symphonic predecessors in terms of dramatic, teleological thrust. Next, as the second stage in the re-invention process, Mozart fundamentally reshapes stylistic features of his piano concertos and string quartets (but not his symphonies as K. 551 is his final work in the genre), reacting in various ways to innovative stylistic qualities of the climactic works. Thus, the accompanying orchestra’s emphatic presence in K. 449/i as an interlocutor capable of confronting the piano and of participating fully in the musical action, sets the stage for the prominent role of the orchestra in the ensuing ‘grand’ concertos, especially the part it plays in balancing complementary qualities of intimacy, grandeur and brilliance; the stark contrast of Adagio and Allegro sections of K. 465/i leads to the establishment of heightened contrast as a prevailing stylistic quality of the ‘Prussian’ quartets; and the stylistic apotheosis of K. 491/i stimulates a re-appraisal of how intimate grandeur (dialogue) and solo brilliance (piano virtuosity) are distributed in K. 503/i, 537/i and 595/i. The stylistic issue providing the primary focus for this chapter and only partially addressed in Chapters 1–6, is the extent to which re-invention in Mozart’s piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies is supported by musical procedures in his instrumental works outside these genres. We have already seen that the stylistic boldness of K. 449 and K. 551 has affinities with K. 387 and K. 491 respectively, that the harmonic and tonal audacity of K. 595 strikes a chord with passages from the last symphonies, and that the heightened contrast
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of the ‘Prussian’ quartets is best understood in light of musical procedures witnessed in the string quartet and string quintets written between K. 465 and K. 575, 589, 590. But the seemingly self-evident assumption that Mozart would have been influenced not only by stylistic procedures from his pre-existent piano concertos, say, when sitting down to compose a new concerto, but also by stylistic procedures from works outside the genre, necessitates a wider contextualization of stylistic re-invention. By broadening our investigation in this way, we will be in a position to evaluate whether specific stylistic practices associated with re-invention in the piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies – such as the dialogic intensifications of K. 491 and K. 551, the dramatization of the string quartet in the ‘Prussian’ works, the adaptations to confrontational paradigms in the final concertos and quartets, and the systematic stylistic experimentations of K. 537 and 595 – form part of more general stylistic trends in Mozart’s Viennese instrumental music. The works subjected to stylistic investigation in the first part of this chapter are Mozart’s chamber works that include the piano, as well as his piano sonatas. It is here, predictably given the prominent role assigned to the piano in a chamber music setting, that we encounter the most pronounced confluence of stylistic practices from Mozart’s piano concertos, symphonies and string quartets. An examination of several stylistic features of Mozart’s chamber works with piano as they compare to established practices in his string quartets and piano concertos (K. 449–503) reveals the hybrid nature of their collective stylistic identity in Mozart’s instrumental oeuvre. The transition and post-secondary-theme passages of their first movements provide particularly instructive points of comparison with Mozart’s Viennese string quartets and piano concertos, since the quartets and concertos differ markedly at these junctures – the ‘Haydn’ and ‘Prussian’ quartets always feature dialogic contributions from all four instruments in these passages and the piano concertos always showcase solo virtuosity with limited piano/orchestra dialogue.1 Transition sections from the piano quartets and trios, for example, freely integrate dialogue and piano passagework (albeit usually without the all-voice participation characteristic of the string quartets), thus integrating the prevalent features of the string quartets and piano concertos.2
1
2
On Mozart’s stylistic procedures at these junctures of his piano concertos, see Chapter 2. I take the post-secondary-theme section in Mozart’s chamber works to begin at the moment that the presentation of secondary theme material ends (usually with a perfect cadence), and to end at the close of the exposition. The piano quartet K. 478 includes dialogue on the head motif (bars 17–24) and piano figuration coinciding with dialogue among the strings (bars 30–44), while the piano quartet K. 493 incorporates dialogue among piano, violin and viola (bars 28–32, 42–46) followed by piano figuration (bars 50–58); the piano trios K. 496 and 548 feature dialogue between the violin and piano that incorporates figurative material (bars 22–35 and 24–28 respectively); and the piano trios K. 502 and 542 combine dialogue and passagework (bars 21–24, 25ff. and 34–42, 42–50 respectively). The transition section of K. 564/i is an exception among the first movements of Mozart’s Viennese piano trios, featuring piano semiquavers and no dialogue with the strings.
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Collectively, the post-secondary-theme sections of the piano quartets and piano trios also align with Mozart’s piano concertos and his string quartets: K. 478 highlights dialogue (bars 88–99), as do the string quartets, but does not include the cello as an interlocutor; K. 496 combines dialogue with glimpses of brilliant writing for the piano (bars 58–78); K. 502 combines piano passagework and violin-cello dialogue (bars 55–60), three-way exchange of brilliant semiquaver scales (bars 60–67) and three-way dialogue of material derived from the main theme (bars 69–82); K. 542’s thematic dialogue (bars 88–96) is followed by semiquaver flourishes in the piano (bars 96–100); and K. 548 and K. 564 both feature extended violin–piano dialogue on figurative semiquaver material (bars 38–53 and 30–39). Since the piano quartets and piano trios combine elements of Mozart’s piano concerto style and his string quartet style, is it possible that they also combine techniques associated with stylistic re-invention in the concertos and string quartets? If so, what does this reveal about re-invention in Mozart’s Viennese period as a whole? In an attempt to answer these questions, and to set the stylistic re-invention procedures from the piano concertos, symphonies and string quartets in the context of Mozart’s Viennese instrumental output in its entirety, I shall examine Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, piano quartets, piano trios and string trio, and piano sonatas and violin sonatas as they pertain to stylistic re-invention, turning subsequently to the ramifications of stylistic re-invention for understanding style and stylistic development in Mozart’s instrumental oeuvre.
The Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452 The Quintet in Eb for Piano and Winds, K. 452, occupies a significant position in regard to stylistic development in Mozart’s Viennese instrumental music. Entered into the Verzeichnüss on 30 March 1784 and premiered at the Burgtheater on 1 April 1784 alongside K. 450, K. 452 is situated at the nexus of Mozart’s first Viennese re-invention in the piano concerto genre, where K. 449 witnesses climactic confrontation between the piano and the orchestra and K. 450 subsequently initiates a new style of ‘grand’ concerto. As far as can be determined, K. 452 is the first work scored for piano and wind quintet (certainly by a major composer). For Mozart, its uniqueness – and its climactic position in his oeuvre pre 1784 – extended to the quality of the music: ‘I myself consider it to be the best work I have ever composed’, he wrote to his father on 10 April 1784.3 The original combination of instruments in K. 452 provides ample fodder for scholarly discussion about the genre and style of the work. Twentieth-century critics draw attention to the concertante style, often situating K. 452 closer to Mozart’s piano concertos than to his string chamber music.4 Many also point to 3 4
Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 873. See Hermann Abert, W.A. Mozart: zweiter Teil, 1783–91 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1956), p. 152; Georges de Saint-Foix, W.A. Mozart: sa vie musicale et son oeuvre: vol. 4, 1784–88.
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its generically hybrid qualities, Hermann Abert locating ‘ingenious’ (geistreich) motivic working associated with Mozart’s chamber music, Georges de Saint-Foix detecting the sinfonia concertante style, Cuthbert Girdlestone identifying a ‘composite style related to the concertos [of] its contemporaries in its piano part and, in its wind writing, to the great serenades of earlier years’, and Jean and Brigitte Massin stating that the styles of Mozart’s chamber music, wind serenades, piano concertos and sinfonia concertante are synthesized in this work.5 The high praise elicited by K. 452 almost always relates to Mozart’s mastery of texture and instrumentation: Otto Jahn calls it ‘a true triumph of the art of recognising and adapting the peculiar euphonious quality of each instrument’; Saint-Foix likens wind dialogue in the 2nd movement to ‘the conversation of the Gods’ and ‘heavenly conversation’; Einstein locates its ‘particular charm . . . in its feeling for the tonal character of each of the four wind instruments, of which none is disproportionately prominent’; and Wolfgang Hildesheimer explains that each instrument ‘is presented in its deepest individuality; each performs like a virtuoso soloist and at the same time in a cantabile fashion’.6 The significance of K. 452’s textural distribution and instrumental interaction for understanding Mozart’s stylistic re-invention, however, goes far beyond simple identification of generic hybridity and admiration of Mozart’s instrumental technique. For K. 452, especially in the first and second movements, reveals an elaborate system of dialogic organization that ultimately prefigures similar organization in the C-minor Piano Concerto, K. 491/i and the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, K. 551/iv. Like its great orchestral successors, K. 452/i shapes instances of dialogue in the exposition and recapitulation sections in symmetrical fashion (see Fig. 7.1 below). In the exposition, for example, the piano engages in dialogue with the wind group in its entirety at key formal junctures, namely the first theme (see bars 21–28), the secondary theme (bars 43–50) and the codetta (bars 61–64), but with independent wind interlocutors in the intervening passages (transition, bars 37–41; post secondary theme, bars 56–60); thus, dialogue between the piano and the wind band frames dialogue among the piano and independent wind interlocutors. Moreover, the inclusion of pianistic display at the two points expected in a Mozart piano concerto exposition – the transition (bars 31–33, 41–42) and post secondary theme sections (bars 50–53) – either side of the exquisitely balanced secondary theme, reinforces procedural symmetry. Dialogue
5
6
L’épanouissement: Figaro, Don Giovanni, et les grandes symphonies (Paris: Desclée, 1939), p. 35; Cuthbert Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos (New York: Dover, 1964), p. 238; Alfred Einstein, Mozart: His Character, his Work, trans. Arthur Mendel and Nathan Broder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), pp. 265–66. Abert, Mozart: zweiter Teil, p. 153; Saint-Foix, W.A. Mozart, vol. 4, p. 36; Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 238; Massin and Massin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Paris: Fayard, 1970; first edition, 1959), p. 963. Jahn, Life of Mozart, trans. Pauline D. Townsend (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1970), vol. 2, p. 468; Saint-Foix, W.A. Mozart, vol. 4, p. 468; Einstein, Mozart, pp. 265–66; Hildesheimer, Mozart, trans. Marion Faber (New York: Vintage, 1983), p. 175.
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is redistributed at the beginning and the end of the recapitulation, maintaining the symmetrical structuring of the exposition, albeit in modified form. In the first theme section leading into the secondary development, Mozart combines piano–wind band dialogue with dialogic segments for individual wind instruments: the piano statement (bars 82–83) followed by wind statement (bars 86ff.) is retained, but the latter incorporates new independent wind contributions, one-bar imitations passed among the four voices (bars 86–92) that compensate for the absence of the five-voice split-theme dialogue from the transition (bars 37–41). Similarly, the dialogue from the end of the exposition (bars 61–64) features a piano antecedent and a wind consequent in the recapitulation (reversing the pattern of the exposition), but with the wind segments given to the oboe and the clarinet/bassoon, rather than the four voices en masse (see bars 115–18). Evidence of Mozart’s systematic distribution of dialogue can be further adduced from the slow introduction to K. 452/i, where dialogues between the piano and the wind band in its entirety (bars 1–7; 12–15; 18–19) again frame dialogues among all five instruments (bars 7–12; 15–18). Hermann Abert’s implication that the slow introduction represents a kind of stylistic manifesto for Mozart’s chamber music with piano, displaying all of its most important stylistic components (such as concertante technique and motivic play),7 is relevant more specifically to the section’s relationship with the ensuing Allegro moderato, foreshadowing the symmetrical distributions of dialogue from the exposition and recapitulation. K. 452’s stylistic significance in Mozart’s Viennese instrumental oeuvre resides not only in its prediction of dialogic organization in two climactic movements from Mozart’s concertos and symphonies, K. 491/i and K. 551/iv, but in its alignment with, and foreshadowing of other contemporary and subsequent Mozartian stylistic procedures as well. The aforementioned elaborations of first-movement exposition dialogue in the recapitulation go hand in hand with Mozart’s standard modus operandus in the first movements of his Viennese piano concertos, especially K. 449 and the ‘grand’ works from K. 450 onwards.8 Similarly, the close relationship between dialogic procedures in the first movement of K. 452 and in a subsequent movement (the second) also brings this work closely into line with Mozart’s typical practice in his piano concertos; the increased independence of individual wind voices wrought by the dialogic elaborations in the recapitulation of K. 452/i is exploited fully in K. 452/ii, where for the first time the four wind instruments engage in dialogue without dialogic participation from the piano (bars 18–26; 92–99).9 What is more, the extraordinary harmonic progression in 7 8
9
Abert, Mozart: zweiter Teil, p. 153. See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 53–69, 91–94. Other elaborations of dialogue from the exposition of K. 452/i in the recapitulation include the semiquaver imitations among the clarinet, bassoon and oboe at the end of the restatement of the secondary theme (bar 102) and the thematic exchange from piano to wind in the final three bars (120–22). On the recurrence of dialogic procedures across the three movements of Mozart’s Viennese piano concerto cycles, see Ibid., pp. 149–78.
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Figure 7.1: Symmetrical distributions of dialogue in the slow introduction, exposition and recapitulation of K. 452/i SLOW INTRODUCTION Bars 1–7: Piano/Wind band
Bars 7–12: Pno/Cl&Hn/Ob&Bsn/Hn/Bsn/Hn/Cl/Ob/Pno Bars 12–15: Piano/Wind band Bars 15–18: Ob/Cl&Hn/Ob&Bsn/Pno Bars 18–19: Wind band/Pno EXPOSITION 1st theme Bars 21–28: Pno/Wind band Transition Bars 31–33: Pno display Bars 37–41: Pno/Ob/Hn&Bsn/Pno/Ob&Cl Bars 41–42: Pno display 2nd theme Bars 43–50: Pno/Wind band Post 2nd theme Bars 50–53: Pno display Bars 56–60: Cl/Ob/Pno/Cl/Ob/Pno/Bsn Codetta Bars 61–64: Wind band/Pno RECAPITULATION 1st theme/Secondary development Bars 82–92: Pno/Wind band (Ob/Cl/Hn/Bsn) Bars 92–95: Pno display 2nd theme Bars 96–103: Pno/Wind band (split into Cl/Bsn/Ob on repeat in bar 102) Post 2nd theme Bars 103–08: Pno display Bars 109–14: Cl/Ob/Pno/Cl/Ob/Hn/Pno/Bsn Coda Bars 115–21: Pno/Wind band (split in bars 116–19)
the secondary development of K. 452/ii (bars 106–08, see Ex. 7.1) – comprising three bars of diminished harmonies, each bar containing each of the three diminished chords, and underscoring a chromatically rising bass line from G# to F – is very close in spirit to the harmonically audacious writing witnessed in the late piano concertos K. 537 and 595, the G-Minor Symphony, K. 550, and the late string quartet, K. 589 (see Chapters 3 and 5). The overt originality of K. 452’s instrumentation is complemented, therefore, by a more covert stylistic originality. Reflecting nascent stylistic trends in the
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Ex. 7.1: Mozart, Quintet for Piano and Winds in Eb, K. 452, 2nd movement, bars 104–09
piano concertos, K. 452 also looks several years into the future, both to those works that lie at the heart of Mozart’s stylistic re-invention in concerto and symphonic genres (K. 491 and 551), and, in more general terms, to those works from Mozart’s final years that incorporate bold and often disorientating harmonic progressions. While K. 452/i does not ultimately match the climactic writing of K. 491/i and K. 551/iv, steering clear of the powerful confrontation of the former and the unrelenting, thoroughgoing teleological drive of the latter, it illustrates that Mozart’s stylistic thinking in an ostensibly hybrid genre can have a profound effect on his thinking in a more established genre. Even if we disagree with Mozart’s own assessment that K. 452 is his best work through spring 1784, it is difficult to deny that K. 452 occupies a special stylistic position in his Viennese instrumental oeuvre.
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The piano quartets Like K. 452, Mozart’s piano quartets K. 478 and 493 offer insight into his processes of stylistic re-invention in the piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies. The general stylistic debt these two works owe to Mozart’s earlier piano concertos and string chamber music – amalgamating techniques from both – has long been acknowledged,10 lending them a hybrid status similar to that of K. 452. However, an appreciation of interactional confrontation and dramatic intensity and contrast, concepts central to the delineation of stylistic re-invention in the piano concertos, symphonies and string quartets, affords a considerably sharper critical perspective than hitherto on the stylistic position of the piano quartets. The first-movement development sections of both K. 478/i and K. 493/i draw on the style of dialogic confrontation exploited in the corresponding section of the piano concertos (from K. 449 onwards), modifying it in the process. In K. 478/i, the violin, viola and cello dialogue a minim – semiquaver ascent (bars 126–32); the piano’s first contribution to this exchange (bar 133) coincides with the establishment of the dominant in preparation for the recapitulation. The ensuing confrontation in overlapping two-bar units (bars 133–38) – setting the piano’s ascents against the strings’ statements of the head motif of the main theme – not only assumes a different position in the development section (namely the re-transition) to that assumed by the solo/orchestra confrontations in the piano concertos (the beginning and middle of the section), but also represents an isolated, self-contained event, unlike the thoroughly integrated events in the concertos. The piano/orchestra confrontation from K. 449/i (bars 188–204, see Chapter 1), for example, resonates beyond its immediate confines, the orchestra cutting off the piano’s chromatic wanderings at the moment of recapitulation (bar 234) and abrasively shunting the music away from the tonic Eb at the piano’s cadential trill in the recapitulation (bars 319–20); the orchestra’s hostile assertions of modulatory superiority over the piano in bars 86–87 of K. 450/i and bars 221–22 of K. 482/i occur in the context of relational unease earlier in their respective movements; and the confrontation from K. 491/i (bars 330–45) responds to the piano and orchestra’s indifference towards collaborative dialogue in the early part of the development, after voluminous instances in the solo exposition, and provides a grand counterbalance to the intimacy of the solo exposition (see Chapter 2).11 In contrast, the piano/strings confrontation in K. 478 follows a protracted, non-confrontational dialogue among all four instruments (bars 104–25) as well as the piano’s compliant imitation of the minim – semiquaver
10
11
See, most recently, Küster, Musical Biography, p. 253. See also Massin and Massin, Mozart, p. 1001, Einstein, Mozart, p. 264 and Hans Keller, ‘The Chamber Music’, in The Mozart Companion, ed. Landon and Mitchell, p. 136, who describes K. 478 in particular as ‘a chamber concerto for piano’. On these and other confrontational moments in Mozart’s piano concertos set in the contexts of their movements, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos.
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figure. Equally, the resolution to the confrontation – whereby the piano takes up the strings’ head motif (bar 139) and the cello the ascending minim – semiquaver figure – is quick and decisive: the piano and strings’ assimilation of each other’s material demonstrates an immediate re-commitment to the co-operative discourse and equality of participation characterizing the conversational ethos of the string quartet. Thus, in reshaping the solo/orchestra confrontations from the development sections of his K. 449–491 piano concertos in regard to location, function and style, and in imbuing one of his chamber works with a sense of drama, Mozart modestly predicts the adjustments to confrontational paradigms in the last piano concertos, K. 537 and 595 – even before writing his most intensely climactic moment of piano/orchestra confrontation (K. 491/i, bars 330–45) – as well as the dramatic, contrast-orientated style of his ‘Prussian’ quartets. The development section of K. 493/i again shows Mozart transforming the technique of confrontation from his piano concertos. In bars 106–17 (Ex. 7.2), two-bar units of transition material heard in unison in the viola and cello contrast forcefully with the two-bar units of flamboyant semiquavers in the piano, evoking in particular the two-bar unison/semiquaver opposition from K. 449/i, and more generally the alternation of contrasting musical segments in K. 466/i and K. 491/i. The sense of confrontation between the piano and the strings is tempered, however, by the first violin’s performance of the transition material simultaneously with the piano semiquavers (i.e. bars 108–09, 112–13, 116–17). In other words, the piano is pit against only part of the string group, not the group in its entirety as in the sharpest confrontations in the piano concertos. That said, bars 106–17 and its surrounding material demonstrate intensity and changeability in relations between the string and piano participants, a dramatic dimension characteristic of Mozart’s piano concertos according to the late eighteenth-century theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch.12 Initially in the development section the piano contradicts the major mode of the strings (see bars 96–99) – an indication of dramatic opposition for Antoine Reicha13 – subsequently proceeding to the partial confrontation of bars 106–17. After concluding its ostentatious semiquaver passagework in bar 123, the piano along with the cello initiate further dialogue with the transition material, beginning, as at the start of the development section, with a modal contradiction (see D-d, bars 124–27); dialogue continues among the strings alongside more submissive semiquaver writing in the piano (bars 128–39) than that witnessed in bars 106–17. A return to demonstrative piano virtuosity at the end of the development section (bars 140–47), as is typical in the first movements of Mozart’s piano concertos, leads directly to the recapitulation (bars 148ff.). The dramatization of interaction between the piano and strings in the development section of K. 493/i sheds light on the position of this work vis-à-vis Mozart’s
12 13
Koch’s commentary is discussed in Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 9–23. Reicha, Traité de mélodie, p. 91.
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Ex. 7.2: Mozart, Piano Quartet in Eb, K. 493, 1st movement, bars 106–17
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re-invention procedures. Following hot on the heels of the climactic confrontation from K. 491, and no less intense dialogic oppositions in Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492 (see Chapter 1), K. 493 is informed by but also informs Mozart’s stylistic techniques in the string quartet and concerto. It is perhaps not surprising that Mozart incorporates confrontation into K. 493, given the intensity of oppositional moments in the immediately preceding works, but downplays it somewhat as well in order not directly to counter the ostensibly co-operative spirit of late eighteenth-century chamber music. There is no doubt that this work demonstrates strong affinities with Mozart’s piano concertos of 1784–86; piano passagework, for example, in addition to featuring in the development’s interactional drama, also appears in the transition, a section in which it is ever present in the 1784–86 concertos (see bars 24–26, 51–53). Indeed, K. 493’s concerto-like intonations might have been what encouraged Mozart’s contemporaries to perform it, according to a writer for the Journal des Luxus und den Moden (1788), ‘at grand and noisy concerts’ rather than in the ideal chamber music setting of ‘a quiet room where the suspension of every note cannot escape the listening ear’.14 From time to time, K. 493/i also adheres closely to stylistic practices from Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets. The transition includes dialogue among participants (albeit not all participants, as is the case in the ‘Haydn’ first movements, as the cello is not involved). Between the completion of the secondary theme and the end of the solo exposition (i.e. the cadential trill) in the piano concertos, Mozart always includes piano passagework; in K. 493 (bars 79–95), though, as in the ‘Haydn’ quartets, virtuosity is avoided. K. 493’s hybrid stylistic status extends to its impact on techniques associated with re-invention in both the piano concertos and the string quartets. The modification to confrontation in the development, whereby Mozart makes reference to his earlier paradigm while altering it at the same time, prefigures a similar re-working in the K. 537/i recapitulation (bars 395–400), one carrying important implications for the systematic and complementary nature of experimentation in the last two piano concertos (see Chapter 3). Equally, the introduction of dramatic interaction in K. 493 (and in K. 478) helps pave the way for the dramatic contrasts of the ‘Prussian’ quartets. Feeding off their status as stylistic hybrids, K. 478 and K. 493 represent meeting places – crossroads perhaps – for re-invention techniques from Mozart’s string quartet and piano concerto repertories.
The piano trios, ‘Kegelstatt’ trio and string trio In similar fashion to the piano quartets that precede them, the piano trios K. 496, 502, 542, 548 and 564, the ‘Kegelstatt’ trio, K. 498, and the string trio, K. 563 provide stylistic precursors to the contrast-orientated re-invention of the ‘Prussian’ quartets as well as the systematic re-appraisal of the final two piano concertos. Just like the development section of K. 493/i, for example, the 14
Deutsch, Documentary Biography, p. 318. Deutsch concedes that the writer might be referring to K. 478, but deems it more likely that K. 493 is the work in question.
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development of K. 496/i brings together techniques associated with re-invention in both genres. The opening unison scale (bars 79–80, see Ex. 7.3) offers an emphatic sectional demarcation contrasting sharply in dynamics, texture and tonality to the end of the exposition (melody and accompaniment, piano, in D major to a forte unison outline of B major unprecedented in the movement thus far); it also foreshadows similarly forceful demarcations in the ‘Prussian’ quartets (K. 575/iii, bar 31, K. 589/iii, bar 60, K. 590/iv, bar 134). Equally, the tonal peculiarity at the beginning of the section prefigures the corresponding passage in the piano concerto K. 595/i. Although the B-major scale in bars 79–80 functions as the dominant of E minor, it could easily have been bypassed in favour of the E minor (vi) of bar 81; in fact, III is an exceptional starting point for a Mozart first-movement development section (especially since Mozart jumps directly to it, rather than arriving at it through a modulatory process), appearing neither in the ‘Haydn’ quartets nor in the Viennese piano concertos.15 In association with the strident unison texture and ff dynamic, this initial gesture comes across less as a harmonic preparation for bar 81 than as a forceful, self-contained delineation of the beginning of the development section; bar 81 might appear to be the ‘proper’ start to the section, closer to the tonal world of the exposition than bars 79–80 and marking a return to the solo piano texture from the beginning of the work. The distant key initiating the section (B major), the impression of a re-start in bar 81 and the assertion of C major in bar 85 without due consideration for measured modulatory process, collectively strike a chord with the opening of the K. 595/i development section, which begins in B minor and ‘re-starts’ in C major after intervening diminished harmony that neither progresses from B minor nor resolves to C in a harmonically coherent fashion. Several other movements from Mozart’s piano trios and string trio (K. 563) either foreshadow or complement characteristics of re-invention from the piano concertos and string quartets. The beginning of the development of K. 548/ii (see Ex. 7.4) features as pronounced a sectional demarcation as the corresponding passage in K. 496/i, again prefiguring the heightened contrast of the ‘Prussian’ quartets. Nothing in the exposition prepares us for the textural, dynamic and tonal shock of the first two bars of the section (33–34); a forte dynamic, unison texture and abrupt harmonic shift all appear for the first time in the movement. The gesture draws further attention to itself, moreover, by concluding on D major harmony, immediately prior to a continuation in Bb (bar 35). Even more than bars 79–80 of K. 496/i, this two-bar gesture is carefully self contained; had Mozart omitted it and begun the development with the bar 35 material in Bb the result would have been a much smoother transition between sections. We can conclude therefore that Mozart’s principal purpose in bars 33–34 is to demarcate the beginning of the new section by forcefully contrasting it with the end of the exposition. 15
The minor mediant (iii) appears at the beginning of three of Mozart’s piano concerto firstmovement development sections (K. 459, 467, 503), but always following a steady modulatory process in the preceding ritornello rather than an abrupt tonal leap.
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Ex. 7.3: Mozart, Piano Trio in G, K. 496, 1st movement, bars 77–88
A related (but expanded) example of this procedure occurs at the beginning of the development section of the string trio K. 563/i. The quick modulation from Bb (end of the exposition, bar 73) to C#7 (bars 78–79) in a dialogic context comes from the same stable as the precipitous modulations in late concerto and symphonic movements (K. 595/i, K. 537/iii and K. 550/i; see Chapter 3).16 Similarly, the prompt re-establishment of the dominant, Bb, following the interrupted cadence in bars 83–84, provides a more tonally ‘logical’ starting point for the development section than the excursion to C#7, thus paralleling ‘re-starts’ to the development sections of K. 496/i, 548/ii and 595/i in E minor, Bb major and C major respectively. Mozart’s departure from Bb at the beginning of the section and his return to the key a few bars later suggests that the intervening harmonic
16
The transition from the development to the recapitulation of K. 563/i is no less striking in its modulatory process. Mozart moves from D major (VII) – the key also implied in bars 80–83 – to Eb in the space of 4 bars (107–11), invoking the move from a unison B (implying V/III) to C in just 6 bars at the corresponding stage of the finale of the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, K. 551 (bars 219–25).
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Ex. 7.4: Mozart, Piano Trio in C, K. 548, 2nd movement, bars 31–37
excursion is a self-consciously emphatic demarcation of the beginning of the new section, similar to the striking sectional delineations witnessed in the contrastorientated ‘Prussian’ quartets in particular. The trio from the second movement of the ‘Kegelstatt’ (K. 498) also foreshadows stylistic practices from the ‘Prussian’ quartets, especially the remarkable B section of the K. 589 trio. (There is a motivic resemblance too – both feature a succession of distinctive, chromaticized neighbour notes.) The trio sections of the two movements couple structural expansion with eclectic combinations of textures and unusual harmonic procedures: K. 589’s trio is almost twice the length of the minuet (65 bars as opposed to 37) and features radical harmonic and textural disjunction in the middle section (see Chapter 5); K. 498’s trio is also significantly longer than its minuet (61 bars against 41) and sets bare presentations of the principal motif (clarinet, bar 42) against concertante triplet figurations to produce discontinuous rather than smooth musical succession. In addition, the audacious harmonic manipulations in the K. 589 trio find a parallel in the unusual manipulations in the K. 498 trio reprise (see bars 77–81, Ex. 7.5), where one-bar imitations prolong the dominant harmony of bar 76 but also obscure it through false relations and chromatic neighbour notes. By taking a straightforward, formulaic procedure – one-bar imitation in all four voices (clarinet, viola, piano right hand and piano left hand) in the context of prolonged dominant
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Ex. 7.5: Mozart, ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio in Eb, K. 498, 2nd movement, bars 77–82
harmony – and wilfully obfuscating it, Mozart also foreshadows the selfconscious complication of straightforward stylistic procedures in the ‘Prussian’ Quartets (such as the circle of fifths in the K. 590/iv development; see Chapter 5). Mozart’s adaptation of outright confrontation from the 1784–86 piano concertos in the piano quartets K. 478 and 493 and, later, in K. 537 is also explored in the piano trios. The raw material for confrontation is in place in the development sections of K. 542/i and K. 564/i, but not ultimately exploited for confrontational purposes. The former, with its spiralling sequence in four-bar units (A–g#–f#, bars 124–35, Example 7.6) and its semiquaver arpeggiated passagework, invokes the confrontation-related material from K. 449/i and 491/i – bars 126–27 and 130–31 are especially similar to 190–91, 194–95 and 198–99 of K. 449/i – but purges it of confrontational associations by highlighting only piano virtuosity rather than piano virtuosity set in opposition with the rest of the ensemble. Moreover, the abruptness with which this passage is initiated in bar 124 and with which it ends in bar 135 (providing only minimal harmonic preparation for the recapitulation in bar 136 and eliciting textural disjunction) sets another precedent for the ‘Prussian’ quartets’ style of heightened harmonic and textural contrast. In the development section of K. 564/i, too, the combination of arpeggiated semiquavers and on-going sequences (d–a–G, bars 49–53, see Example 7.7; C–a–G–D, bars 68–74) provides material for a fully fledged confrontation. Again, Mozart sidesteps it, choosing to alternate piano and strings as in his piano concerto confrontations, but to give them the same, not contrasting, material. The development section of K. 564/i features co-operative dialogue throughout (bars 42–49, 57–60, 61–68), so it is no surprise that Mozart downplays confrontation in bars 49–54 and 68–74. His adaptation of his dramatic confrontational style to a non-confrontational end, however, does point to the kind of dramatization of chamber music that is especially prominent in the ‘Prussian’ quartets.
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Ex. 7.6: Mozart, Piano Trio in E, K. 542, 1st movement, bars 124–37
The piano sonatas and violin sonatas Mozart’s Viennese piano sonatas and violin sonatas offer insight into his techniques of re-invention in the piano concertos above all. Late eighteenth-century writers on the sonata and concerto genres have similar aesthetic expectations and concerns, most notably that composers steer clear of excessive solo virtuosity and demonstrate genuine expressive substance. The analogies between dialogue and interaction among instruments (or among individual voices of a single instrument) are essential, since dialogue provides both coherent expression and meaningful engagement (in which one instrument or voice does not simply dominate proceedings). Inevitably, the aesthetic success of both sonatas and concertos depends upon a composer maintaining a balance of virtuosity and substantive expression (described for the concerto in Chapter 2).17 17
On correspondences between the aesthetics of the late eighteenth-century sonata and the late eighteenth-century concerto, see Simon P. Keefe, ‘Mozart’s Late Piano Sonatas (K. 457, 533, 545,
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Ex. 7.7: Mozart, Piano Trio in G, K. 564, 1st movement, bars 49–53
In terms of stylistic re-invention in Mozart’s Viennese piano sonata repertory, K. 457 in C minor fulfils a role similar to that of the piano concerto in Eb, K. 449, while K. 533 in F, K. 545 in C, K. 570 in Bb and K. 576 in D function in an analogous way to K. 537 and 595.18 Just as K. 449/i introduces piano/orchestra confrontation into Mozart’s concertos, stimulating stylistic change in the subsequent ‘grand’ concertos, so K. 457 embraces a conflict – albeit a conflict of styles rather than of interlocutors – that has important stylistic resonance in his subsequent piano sonatas. For the styles of monologue and dialogue that co-exist comfortably in Mozart’s earlier piano sonatas K. 279–284, 309–311 and 330–333, rest uneasily in K. 457/i; every time dialogue is heard before the coda, it is either shortened abruptly or rendered oblique by immediate re-assertions of monologue (see the beginnings of dialogue in bars 19–22, 70–72, 83–86, 118–20 promptly succumbing to monologue in 23, 73, 87, and 121 respectively). The eventual extended dialogic exchange witnessed in the Coda (bars 168–73, Ex. 7.8) growls its assertion of tonic and diminished 7th harmonies, encapsulating the uncomfortable cohabitation of monologue and dialogue in the movement as a whole. Mozart’s re-appraisal of his piano concerto style in K. 537 and 595 finds a
18
570, 576): Aesthetic and Stylistic Parallels with his Piano Concertos’, in Words About Mozart: Essays in Honour of Stanley Sadie, ed. Dorothea Link and Judith Nagley (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 59–75, especially 61–65. This paragraph and the next summarize discussion in Keefe, ‘Mozart’s Late Piano Sonatas’.
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Ex. 7.8: Mozart, Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457, 1st movement, bars 168–76
parallel in his final piano sonatas, K. 533, 545, 570 and 576. Just as the climactic ‘grand’ concerto from 1784–86, K. 491, leads to a re-configuration of his concerto style, after taking grandeur and intimacy to extremes, so the precarious balance of monologue and dialogue in K. 457/i leads to a re-thinking of the distribution of these textures in his last sonatas. Much as the stylistic experimentation of the solo exposition and recapitulation of K. 537/i is complemented by the experimentation of the development of K. 595/i, so the increase in dialogue in the exposition and recapitulation sections of K. 533/i and 576/i (in comparison to his earlier piano sonatas) as well as the increase in virtuosic writing for the piano, is complemented by the stylistic experimentation of the development section of K. 570/i, which features an eclectic combination of almost no figuration, extensive dialogue in the second half, and a two-part texture with an unusual harmonic twist. Similarities between striking experimental passages in Mozart’s last piano concertos and last piano sonatas further reinforce the stylistic bond between these groups of works: the lush sequential excursion following the secondary theme of K. 537/i finds a close parallel in the corresponding passage of the recapitulation of K. 533/i (bars 211–18), both passages holding at bay the piano passagework expected at this juncture; and the disjunctive harmonic progression in a dialogic context at the beginning of the K. 595/i development section meets its match in correspondingly disjunctive progressions (again incorporating dialogue) from the development sections of K. 570/i (bars 101–08), K. 533/ii (bars 60–70) and K. 576/iii (bars 95–108).19 In short, the specific stylistic connections between the late
19
The Rondo for solo piano in A minor K. 511 (11 March 1787) foreshadows the technique in these piano sonatas of linking harmonic audacity with extended sequence. The establishment of V/a prior to the rondo returns in bars 81 and 129 is preceded by colourful harmonic progressions that derive from sequential extension of chromatically descending lines (see bars 71–73 and 116–21). The second passage is also initiated by one of the bold tonal jumps (D–C#, bars 115–16) characteristic of Mozart’s late instrumental works.
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piano concertos and late piano sonatas underscore Mozart’s similar motivations towards stylistic re-invention in these two genres. But one independent piece for solo piano, the Adagio in B minor, K. 540 (19 March 1788), demonstrates a stronger affinity with the contrast-orientated ‘Prussian’ quartets than with the late piano concertos. Contrast occurs right at the outset, in alternating sf – p and f – p material (bars 1–4), and is taken further in the ensuing full-fledged sonata movement. This is especially true of the three heavy forte chords that serve on five occasions as ostentatious delimiters of key formal junctures (echoing and foreshadowing similarly potent gestures at the beginning of the development sections of the piano trios K. 496/i and K. 548/ii). The chords are self-contained musical gestures, separated from the preceding and succeeding material by quaver rests. Irrespective of whether they effect a structurally significant modulation (the lead back to the beginning of the exposition for the repeat of the section, the lead-in to the development, the lead-back to the start of the development for the repeat of the development-recapitulation) or affirm an already established key (immediately prior to the secondary theme in the exposition and recapitulation) the chords stand apart from the surrounding musical action. They make no attempt at integration; indeed, as in the ‘Prussian’ quartets and piano trios, their raison d’être is to create contrast. What is more, firm structural articulation (from the three chords) at the outset of the development section combines with audacious harmonic progressions and fluent sectional continuation at the end to create the same kind of marked procedural contrast as is evident in K. 590/iv. The initial G-major statement, slipping from D7 to B7 and C#7 in bars 25–26 subsequently reappears in F# minor, now altered to conclude on D7, the exact harmonic point at which the development section began. The ensuing two-bar sequence from G minor (bars 31–32) to A minor (33–34), simply moves up to B minor to initiate the recapitulation; whereas Mozart signals the onset of other formal sections with his demonstrative forte chords, the recapitulation emerges unnoticed.20 Although Mozart’s Viennese violin sonatas do not underscore as marked a process of stylistic re-invention as his Viennese piano sonatas, they manifest stylistic change in ways that complement the piano sonatas and piano concertos. On the whole, the first movements of the violin sonatas K. 454 in Bb and K. 526 in A, for example, contain more dialogue – and dialogue of greater intricacy – than the corresponding movements of K. 296 and 376–80, published collectively as Mozart’s Opus 2 in Vienna in 1781; the earlier set are praised in 1783, in any case, for possessing a ‘violin . . . so ingeniously combined with the clavier part that both instruments are constantly kept in equal prominence’.21 Again, the work from 1784, K. 454, is particularly significant in this respect, coming as close as it does to 20
21
W. Dean Sutcliffe hears the beginning of the recapitulation as a ‘disorientating effect, since it both continues the pattern and represents a fresh start’. See Sutcliffe, ‘The Keyboard Music’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, ed. Keefe, p. 73. Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, p. 214.
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points of stylistic re-invention in the piano concerto and piano sonata repertories (K. 449 and K. 457). In the Largo slow introduction to the first movement Mozart reveals a close level of dialogic collaboration between the piano and the violin to rival that between the piano and the orchestra in his 1784–86 piano concertos: part of the initial antecedent in the piano is dialogued by the violin (bars 1–2, 3–4); the passing of melodic material from violin (bars 5–7) to piano (7–9) is matched by the exchange of accompanimental semiquavers in the same bars; and the one-bar, violin-piano exchange (bars 9–11), featuring an elaborated response in the piano, complements both the preceding elaboration in the piano (bars 7–9) and the elaboration to the violin’s half-bar figure from bar 11 in both the piano and the violin (bars 11–12). This collaboration sets the stage for the remainder of the movement, especially the exposition and recapitulation, where similar dialogue continues carefully to equalize the roles of the piano and the violin. In the exposition, the piano-violin imitation in bars 18–20 is complemented by the violin-piano imitation on the same figure in bars 26–28, the continuation of the secondary theme in the violin (bars 33–37) by the restatement’s continuation in the piano (bars 41ff.) and the violin’s elaboration of the piano in bars 62–63 by the piano’s subsequent elaboration of the violin (bars 63–64), skilfully integrating the semiquaver thirds from the beginning of this exchange (see bar 64, beats 1–2 in comparison to bars 58 and 60). In the recapitulation, several new dialogues serve to emphasize the equal roles of the violin and piano interlocutors: the violin moves freely from doubling the piano left hand and entering into dialogue with the right to doubling the right and entering into dialogue with the left in the secondary development (see bars 98–109); the secondary theme is dialogued in its entirety from the piano to the violin (bars 115–22; 123ff.); and the violin follows the piano at a distance of a quaver in the coda (bars 151–53). With intricate, assiduously selected dialogue illustrating the piano’s and violin’s sensitivity to each other’s material and dialogic interpolations in the recapitulation adding to the collaborative spirit of the exposition, K. 454/i is more refined than its immediate predecessors (the violin sonatas K. 296, 376–380) in terms of violin–piano interaction, and parallels stylistic developments in the piano concertos K. 449, 450, 451 and 453 as well.22 To be sure, the recapitulation sections of K. 377/i, K. 378/i and K. 380/i from Mozart’s previous set of sonatas add to dialogue from the exposition23 but not in as pronounced a fashion as K. 454/i. Nor do the first movements of these six works come close to K. 454/i in using dialogue to illustrate an important feature of the relationship between the 22 23
The general concerto-like qualities of K. 454 have been remarked upon in the secondary literature. See, for example, Abert, W.A. Mozart, vol. 2, p. 161. See the extension to the dialogue from bars 54–56 of K. 380/i in bars 158–63; the imitation of the piano right hand and left hand in the presentation of the main theme at the beginning of the K. 377/i recapitulation (see bars 83–87) replacing the full-theme piano-violin exchange from the exposition (bars 1–16); and the split-theme piano-violin dialogue at the beginning of the K. 378/i recapitulation (see bars 114–21) replacing the full-theme exchange from the exposition (bars 1–16).
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violin and the piano (namely, in K. 454/i, the equal role played by the two participants). In both of these respects, K. 454/i draws on nascent stylistic techniques from the piano concertos. Interpolations to solo exposition dialogue in the recapitulation are standard fare in the first movements of Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos from K. 449 onwards (and even surface in rudimentary fashion in K. 413/i and 414/i), most commonly as the means by which intimate pianoorchestra relations established in the solo exposition are rendered more intimate still in the recapitulation, but also as the means for underscoring resolution to confrontation from earlier in the movement.24 As a result of both the close chronological proximity of the violin sonata to K. 449, 450, 451, 453 and, perhaps, of Mozart’s explicit intention to perform it in a public concert alongside K. 453 rather than in a chamber music forum, the close relationship between the two instrumental protagonists in K. 454 manifests the type of elaborate, carefully designed dialogue that characterizes the contemporary piano concertos.25 The first movement of Mozart’s next violin sonata, K. 481 in Eb (1785), aligns itself stylistically with K. 454/i, strengthening further the bond between Mozart’s sonatas and piano concertos of the mid 1780s. Like K. 454/i and the contemporary piano concertos, K. 481/i elaborates exposition dialogue in the recapitulation in a way that complements and develops interaction from earlier in the movement. Whereas in the exposition, the secondary theme and the codetta material both witness dialogue in the form of thematic exchange (bars 37–52 and 69–84) and the main theme contains only brief imitations (bars 6–8), in the recapitulation all three presentations contain thematic exchange with a four-bar extension to the main theme added in the violin (bars 156–59). To be sure, this extension fulfils a harmonic and formal role,26 but it also has an important bearing on violin-piano relations, stressing the equal role of the protagonists in presenting the main theme as well as later thematic material. The violin’s new statements of the ascending semiquaver figures at the end of the recapitulation (bars 245–48), echoing the piano writing from a few bars earlier (219–24), also reinforce the sense of participatory equality across the movement as a whole. In contrast to K. 481/i, which supports the stylistic development witnessed in K. 454/i, the first movement of K. 526 in A (1787) occupies similar ground to the piano sonata K. 533 and the piano concerto K. 537, with Mozart modifying his
24 25
26
See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, Chapters 3 and 4, pp. 45–100. K. 454 (dated 21 April 1784 in the Verzeichnüss) was first performed by Mozart and the work’s dedicatee, the virtuoso violinist Regina Strinasacchi, at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna on 29 April 1784. One important characteristic of the first-movement dialogue between violin and piano outlined above – the elaboration of material in the context of a dialogic response – also features prominently in K. 453/i, the piano concerto performed alongside K. 454 at the Kärntnertor-Theater concert. On K. 453, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 80. The accompanying modulation to Ab major and subsequent initiation of the secondary development in F minor parallels the move from Eb major to C minor that starts the transition (bar 25) and allows Mozart to replicate the I–V modulation of the transition in the IV–I modulation of the secondary development.
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standard patterns of interaction. The piano and violin in K. 454/i and K. 481/i avoid dialogue for the most part in their development sections and add to exposition dialogue in their recapitulations sections – as do the piano and orchestra in most 1784–86 concertos in both respects – but they engage in profuse dialogue in the development section of K. 526/i (bars 101–39) and make no adjustments to exposition dialogue in the recapitulation. The exposition itself resonates with both of the piano sonatas K. 533/i and 576/i, especially the passage after the secondary theme, in which extended dialogue on virtuosic semiquaver scalar writing (bars 75–89) – a more protracted combination of dialogue and virtuosity than at the corresponding juncture of any of Mozart’s previous violin sonata first movements – complements extended passagework in the final stages of the exposition of K. 533/i and the repeated integration of dialogue and passagework in the K. 576 exposition.27 As in the piano concertos K. 537 and 595 and the piano sonatas K. 533 and 576, Mozart experiments with his stylistic modus operandi in K. 526 in pursuit of new stylistic horizons.
Conclusion: the process of re-invention A study of how stylistic characteristics of Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, piano quartets and trios, and piano sonatas and violin sonatas intersect with re-invention techniques and procedures in his piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies has ramifications far beyond contextualization of the techniques and procedures themselves. For the appearance of specific stylistic attributes (such as modifications to confrontational paradigms and dramatizations of chamber music) at specific times across a broad spectrum of Mozart’s instrumental works ultimately encourages us to re-appraise how we conceptualize style in Mozart’s Viennese instrumental oeuvre as a whole. It has emerged over the course of this study that clusters of works from two of Mozart’s Viennese years – 1784 and 1786 – have particularly pronounced implications for understanding stylistic re-invention. The Piano Concerto K. 449, with its climactic confrontations and liberated orchestra, the first ‘grand’ concertos K. 450, 451 and 453, establishing a new paradigm of stylistic balance, the Quintet for Piano and Winds K. 452, foreshadowing the intricate dialogic practices of K. 491 and K. 551, and the violin sonata K. 454, moving beyond its predecessors in dialogic sophistication and aligning itself with the instrumental interaction of the nascent ‘grand’ concertos, all date from spring 1784; in addition, the Piano Sonata K. 457, mirroring the stylistic significance of K. 449 in terms of confrontation, was completed just a few months later (October 1784). Similarly, the climactic interaction of the piano concerto K. 491 and first signs of stylistic experimentation in K. 503, the foreshadowing of heightened contrast in the ‘Hoffmeister’ string quartet K. 499, the systematic symmetrical arrangement of dialogue in the
27
On the expositions of K. 533/i and K. 576/i see Keefe, ‘Mozart’s Late Piano Sonatas’.
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‘Prague’ symphony K. 504, and the appearance of re-invention procedures in the piano trio K. 496 and the ‘Kegelstatt’ trio K. 498 later aired more fully in the final string quartets and concertos, all occur in 1786. Circumstantial evidence suggests that 1784 and 1786 were pivotal years for Mozart’s instrumental music. He held his first series of subscription concerts in spring 1784, at the private hall of the Trattnerhof, thus beginning a new, high profile phase of his career as a performer-composer, one that ended (to all intents and purposes) in 1786. The completion of Figaro in 1786 also represents a watershed; thereafter, Mozart devotes more of his time – relatively speaking – to operatic endeavours (Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte and La clemenza di Tito) and less to instrumental ventures. If we regard 1784 and 1786 as important years for re-invention in Mozart’s instrumental music we must guard against assigning Mozart’s works from 1784 to 1786 the status of a stylistic ‘period’ in its own right. For stylistic re-invention points, above all, to a dynamic process of change – through Mozart’s manipulation of pre-existent procedures to climactic and innovative effect and subsequent stylistic re-appraisals in light of these climactic and innovative events – one that counteracts the division of his oeuvre into neatly defined periods. The common nineteenth-century predilection for dividing Mozart’s oeuvre into two stylistic phases, pre 1784 and 1784 onwards, operating in tandem with twentieth-century theories about ‘classical style’ in Mozart’s music,28 is misleading for the same reason. To be sure, there will always be stylistic characteristics in Mozart’s works more prevalent at one time than another; and it is essential to be able to determine, as we have in the present study, which characteristics are most prominent at which stage. But if we divide Mozart’s Viennese oeuvre into periods we ultimately downplay the vital and vigorous nature of stylistic change in his music. Ultimately, the product of these changes must not deflect attention from the process that makes them happen. Mozart’s approach to stylistic re-invention is consistent throughout his Viennese years, along the manipulation – apotheosis – modification line; as a result, those symphonies, piano concertos and string quartets most intimately connected to the re-invention process are fundamentally similar, in spite of the widely contrasting stylistic characteristics they manifest. The co-existence of product and process in explanations of stylistic re-invention in Mozart’s instrumental music has particularly important ramifications for understanding the significance of his late works. As we have seen in Chapters 3 and 5, the final piano concertos, K. 537 and K. 595, and ‘Prussian’
28
Cliff Eisen and Stanley Sadie, ‘(Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Revised Edition, ed. Sadie (London: Macmillian, 2001), vol. 17, p. 301. The most protracted critique of the concept of ‘classical style’ set in historiographical context is Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, pp. 335–73. For a recent attempt to re-centre classicism in London with Clementi’s music at its core, see Anselm Gerhard, London und der Klassizismus in der Musik. Die Idee der ‘absoluten Musik’ und Clementis Klavierwerk (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2002).
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string quartets, K. 575, K. 589 and K. 590, have long been misrepresented in the critical literature: K. 537 is supposedly of poor quality; K. 595 is a nostalgic, resigned, reticent and introspective work; and the ‘Prussian’ quartets are stylistically inconsistent and not up to the high standard of their ‘Haydn’ predecessors. Collectively, the late chamber works discussed in this chapter have also received a rocky ride on grounds of quality; and those that are admired are often said to possess similar late-style characteristics to those espoused by, for example, K. 595. On the one hand, the piano trios K. 548 and K. 564 are disparaged: Jahn and Abert consider them inferior to K. 496, K. 502, K. 542 and K. 563; Hocquard finds K. 548 lacking the freshness of the piano sonata K. 545 and the violin sonata K. 547; Massin and Massin see K. 564 falling well short of the inspiration of K. 563; Einstein regards K. 548 and 564 as ‘unfortunately not on [the] level’ of K. 502 and K. 542; and Rosen deems them (and K. 496) ‘thinner in style and less interesting than the best dozen or sixteen of Haydn’s’.29 On the other hand, K. 542 in particular – pace Girdlestone30 – has all the hallmarks of Mozart’s revered late style. For Massin and Massin it is like ‘being present at a dream, with that impression of strangeness that the tonality gives it . . . the iridescent and unhindered flexibility, its cool fervour and its surprises; passing from energy to tenderness, then effusion to élan in the two subjects of the first movement; endeavouring to retain an idyllic dream in the Andante’.31 Similarly, Hocquard sees its nervousness quickly submerged by a calm, lilting energy; it is like the Symphony in Eb, K. 543 in the way that it caresses the energy out of the work and like the other ‘little works’ of this time in its transparency and lack of nervousness.32 And more recently, Derek Carew locates K. 542 (and K. 502) ‘at the apex of the piano trios’, finding it ‘curiously restrained’ with a ‘seamless first subject . . . more clothed harmony than Mozartian melody’.33 The piano quartets, too, are assigned qualities characteristic of a putative late style: Hildesheimer sees both K. 478 and K. 493 as ‘the outcome of his newly won, almost serene introversion’; and Girdlestone identifies the second movement of K. 478 as ‘elegiac melancholy’.34 Like the final piano concertos and string quartets, the late piano chamber music is better understood in relation to Mozart’s stylistic re-invention procedures than with recourse either to qualitative comparisons with supposedly ‘superior’ works or to purportedly ethereal, melancholic and reticent character29
30 31
32 33 34
See Jahn, Life of Mozart, vol. 2, p. 464; Abert, W.A. Mozart, vol. 2, p. 503; Hocquard, Pensée de Mozart, p. 172; Massin and Massin, Mozart, p. 1088; Einstein, Mozart, p. 263; Rosen, Classical Style, p. 351. Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 352. Massin and Massin, Mozart, p. 1075. ‘On croirait un peu assister à un réveil, avec cette impression d’étrangeté que donne la tonalité . . ., sa souplesse chatoyante et délié, son ardeur fraîche et ses étonnements; passant de l’energie à la tendresse, puis de l’effusion à l’élan, dans les deux sujets du premier morceau; s’efforçant de retenir un rêve idyllique, dans l’andante.’ Hocquard, Pensée de Mozart, p. 171. Carew, ‘Piano and Strings’, in The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart’s Life and Music, ed. H.C. Robbins Landon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p. 291. Hildesheimer, Mozart, p. 190; Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 417.
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istics. Critics find diverse reasons to account for Mozart’s ‘lapses’ in quality: Massin and Massin claim that Mozart’s only intention in K. 548 was ‘to give a half-hour of pleasure to Michael Puchberg for his chamber music sessions’ and that Mozart wrote K. 564 without enthusiasm, as Puchberg had been less than generous towards him; and Girdlestone explains away ‘trifles’ such as K. 542, K. 548 and K. 564 in terms of Mozart’s ‘need . . . for recapturing his public’.35 Unfavourable comparisons with the contemporary symphonies K. 543, K. 550 and K. 551 lie behind most expressions of bafflement about, and justifications for the deficiencies of K. 548 and K. 564. Girdlestone finds Mozart’s composition of the final piano trios concurrently with his final symphonies ‘hard to understand’ given the gulf in quality; Einstein ‘has almost the impression that Mozart was saving all his powers in the key of C for the “Jupiter” Symphony’ in the ‘pretentious’ K. 548; Hocquard considers the lightness of K. 548 puzzling given that it is contemporary with K. 550 and K. 551; and Massin and Massin imagine that the best of Mozart’s creative faculties were preoccupied with the three last symphonies in the summer of 1788, rather than with K. 548.36 The overt stylistic contrasts between the final three piano trios and final three symphonies must be explained not by comparisons of quality but by the different positions these works occupy in Mozart’s re-invention processes. While the finale of the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony exploits the technique of dramatic dialogue witnessed in Mozart’s preceding Viennese symphonies to climactic effect, K. 542, 548 and 564 collectively contribute to the modifications to confrontation and the establishment of heightened contrast that are characteristic of stylistic re-invention in Mozart’s late piano concertos and late string quartets. In short, Mozart juxtaposes different stylistic re-invention procedures in 1788, which is understandable when we consider that he writes climactic works in his piano concerto, string quartet and symphony sequences at different times (K. 449 in 1784; K. 465 in 1785; K. 491 in 1786; K. 551 in 1788). Re-invention procedures either overlap (final piano trios and final symphonies), or intersect (piano chamber music), or operate in tandem with each other (piano concertos and piano sonatas); while Mozart’s approach to stylistic re-invention is consistent throughout his decade in Vienna, re-invention across his Viennese oeuvre as a whole does not adhere to a neat, clearly delineated timeframe. Ultimately, the overlaps, confluences and parallels in stylistic re-invention procedures force a reappraisal of Mozart’s ‘late style’ as often applied to his instrumental music. His late style cannot simply comprise a collection of prevalent stylistic qualities in isolation, since such a definition would not account for the process by which Mozart arrives at these qualities as important features of his music. Nor is it appropriate to pinpoint works in a single genre as decisive 35 36
Massin and Massin, Mozart, p. 1088 (‘fournir une demi-heure de plaisir à Michaël Puchberg pour ses séances de musique de chambre’); Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 352. Girdlestone, Mozart and his Piano Concertos, p. 352; Einstein, Mozart, p. 263; Hocquard, Pensée de Mozart, p. 172; Massin and Massin, Mozart, p. 1077.
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harbingers of a Mozart late style,37 since distinctive (and equally important) processes of stylistic change are at play across the generic spectrum. A late style cannot be said reliably to comprise a series of related affective qualities (some or all extrapolated from stylistic qualities) that collectively suggest a presentiment of death on Mozart’s part. As William Stafford explains, standard biographical tropes on Mozart’s late style usually feed into unconvincing ‘theodicies’ or ‘quasi-theodicies’ whereby consoling stories of Mozart’s premature demise are linked to the putatively spare, simple, pure, transfigurative, radiant, and autumnal qualities of his final works.38 Equally, a putative instrumental late style could not be categorized only as a search for new stylistic directions, certainly not if it is to incorporate the symphonies of 1788 and the ‘Prussian’ quartets of 1789–90: the ‘Jupiter’ finale is a climactic moment in Mozart’s Viennese symphonic oeuvre; and the ‘Prussian’ quartets do not simply blaze a trail of heightened contrast but also exploit stylistic qualities introduced in chamber works from the previous years (the string quartet K. 499, the string quintets K. 515 and K. 516, the piano trios K. 542, 548 and 564 and the piano quartets K. 478 and 493). As explained in Chapter 3, there is little evidence of a change in Mozart’s ‘worldview’ in his final years that could support the onset of a late style. In addition, the apparent aesthetic shift in the ‘Prussian’ quartets away from an ethos of the string quartet as conversation towards a more dramatic conception of the genre is not matched by an aesthetic shift in the final symphonies and concertos. There seems little reason to doubt, for example, that Mozart’s famous statement about his piano concertos K. 413–415 comprising ‘a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult . . . very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid’39 – a statement at the heart of the stylistic balance of his concertos – is any less applicable to his final Viennese concertos than to his first. Indeed, a writer for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1802 finds qualities in the Clarinet Concerto, K. 622 that are very similar to those Mozart himself locates in K. 413–415: just as the Clarinet Concerto is ‘difficult, and even very difficult’, but will ‘secure the finest reward for an artist as artist, namely, to delight and enrapture . . . [the performer] and all around him by the omnipotence of true art’, so the ‘happy medium’ and brilliance of K. 413–415 eschew vapidity and embrace substantive musical content; and just as the ‘emotional man’ will acknowledge the ‘deepest feeling’ of the Clarinet Concerto Adagio and the less knowledgeable listener ‘the wit and humour’ of the rondo, so both Kenner and Liebhaber will ‘derive satisfaction’ from certain passages of K. 413–415.40
37 38 39 40
This is the approach favoured by Isabelle Emerson in ‘Of Microcosms and Macrocosms: The String Quartet as Crucible for Mozart’s Late Style’, in Mozart-Jahrbuch 1991, pp. 664–70. See Stafford, The Mozart Myths: A Critical Re-Assessment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 207–20. Anderson, ed. and trans., Letters, p. 833. For the quoted material on the Clarinet Concerto, see William McColl’s translation in Colin Lawson, Mozart: Clarinet Concerto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 79–80.
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Thus, the concept of a late style is inherently problematic in the context of Mozart’s late instrumental music.41 Since the consistency of Mozart’s approach to stylistic change is as apparent in his late Viennese instrumental music as it is in his earlier Viennese music, it is difficult to describe certain works as representative of a late style and others not. If K. 551/iv is a manifestation of Mozart’s late style, then why not also K. 491/i (1786) or K. 452/i (1784), works that prefigure its sophisticated dialogic organization? If the final piano concertos begin to shift the stylistic goalposts established by the 1784–86 concertos just as the first ‘grand’ concertos do the same for the preceding a quatro works, can K. 450, 451 and 453 form part of Mozart’s late style, like K. 537 and 595? Perhaps the only reasonable conclusion – to paraphrase James Webster on the maturity of Haydn’s instrumental works42 – is that, in principle, all of Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies are late-style works. The difficulties of assigning certain Mozart instrumental works to an end-orientated late style and the problems inherent in dividing his Viennese instrumental output into separate periods should not obscure one important trend in the late works, especially the string quartets and symphonies – namely the increase in dramatic concentration. The ‘Jupiter’ finale takes the structuring and execution of dramatic dialogue from Mozart’s earlier Viennese symphonies to an unparalleled level (Chapter 6); equally, the ‘Prussian’ quartets depart conclusively from the conversational ethos of the late eighteenth-century quartet in favour of the dramatic interaction of musical sections and blocks (Chapter 5). Dramatic qualities pervade Mozart’s Viennese piano concerto repertory in its entirety. As I have shown elsewhere, Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos from 1782–86 engage in their own productive ‘dialogue’ with his operas from 1781–87: informed by techniques and patterns of dialogue from Idomeneo and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the piano concertos K. 413–491, in turn, establish dialogic practices exploited in Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni.43 While the final three piano concertos eschew the type of powerful dramatic confrontation that reaches its zenith in K. 491/i, they do re-work confrontational characteristics in the context of stylistic re-invention and place as much emphasis on consistency of dialogic process – a crucial ingredient of drama, according to late eighteenth-century theorists – as their predecessors.44 Thus, the final concertos cannot be explained as quantitatively more or less dramatic than K. 413–491. 41
42 43 44
Needless to say, the situation is different (albeit no less straightforward) for other composers, especially Beethoven; Carl Dahlhaus reminds us that the ‘concept of composers’ “late works” derived essentially from the oeuvres of Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt’ (Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Music, trans. Mary Whittall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 219). For a recent, virtuosic exploration of issues pertaining to Beethoven’s late style, see Michael Spitzer, Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven’s Late Style (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006). Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, p. 366. See Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 101–46. On process-orientated late eighteenth-century dramatic theory as applicable to Mozart’s piano concertos see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, pp. 72–74, 178–85.
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The creative interplay between Mozart’s operatic and instrumental styles in the piano concertos of 1782–86 and operas of 1781–87 also emerges in comparing re-invention characteristics from the ‘Prussian’ quartets with passages from Così fan tutte (K. 588, 1790) the opera to which the ‘Prussian’ quartets are chronologically closest.45 The heightened, self-conscious contrasts and audacious harmonic moves from K. 575, 589 and 590 find parallels in Così, adding weight to the dramatic pretensions of Mozart’s final string quartets. To be sure, musical contrasts of all shapes and sizes and at local and structural levels are the lifeblood of Mozart’s operas – and much other opera besides – in support of plot-related intrigues. But several such contrasts in Così align closely with procedures from the contemporary string quartets. Reflecting on Dorabella’s ‘betrayal’ in his aria ‘Tradito, schernito’ from Act 2, Ferrando expresses divergent feelings of anger towards, and persistent love for Dorabella in clearly delineated, alternating segments. Mozart maximizes the contrast between the initial statements – setting a C-minor, stop-start passage with agitated semiquavers, a combination of piano and forte dynamics and a crescendo climaxing on an Augmented 6th – V/C progression (‘Tradito’, bars 1–7) against a fluent, calm and diatonic Eb major passage with unbroken dialogue among the voice, strings and winds (‘io sento’, bars 8–28) – in a manner akin to the blocked contrasts of K. 589/i, 590/i, 589/iii and 590/iii. He also combines apparently contradictory procedures in the second ‘Tradito’ segment (bars 29–37, see Ex. 7.9) that invoke seemingly contradictory procedures in one of the ‘Prussian’ quartets. Just as K. 590/i brings together sharp formal delineation and smooth sectional segue, so the second ‘Tradito’ segment of Ferrando’s aria combines greater contrast and greater integration with the ‘io sento’ segments. The additional forte/piano alternations and interpolated chromatic harmonies at the beginning (see the Db and diminished triads in bars 29, 30, 32) offer sharper contrast with the ‘io sento’ passages, whereas the C major rather than C minor harmonies (bars 29–30), the resolution of the concluding V/C to C major (bars 37–38) rather than the side-step to Eb, and the embryonic dialogue between the violins and the voice (bars 29–32) point to greater musical integration. Other passages from Così also reveal parallels with re-invention procedures from the ‘Prussian’ quartets. Così does not feature distant modulations that are as abrasive as those in K. 589/iii, 595/i, 550/i and 550/iv, but does combine sudden alterations in harmonic direction with textural disjunction. The passage following 45
K. 589 and K. 590 were the first works to be completed after Così (first performed at the Burgtheater on 26 January 1790), in May and June of 1790. The stylistic relationship between Così and Mozart’s earlier operas does not fall within the remit of this study. It should be noted, however, that, unlike the late instrumental music, Così does not eschew the kind of climactic dialogic confrontation witnessed in Figaro, Don Giovanni and several of the piano concertos from 1784 to 1786. In the final section of the Act 1 Finale, for example, at the moment at which Ferrando’s plea for a kiss elicits an angry response from Dorabella and Fiordiligi, Mozart writes contrasting, two-bar, equal-length segments (bars 558–66) that denote interactional confrontation in the musical domain.
STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
Ex. 7.9: Mozart, ‘Tradito, schernito’ from Così fan tutte, K. 588, bars 29–43
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the ‘Bella vita militar’ music in the Act 2 Finale, whereupon Fiordiligi and Dorabella are thrown into a tail spin upon realizing that Ferrando and Guglielmo are returning from war, is a good case in point; the music shunts up a semitone from D to Eb via a sf Bb7 harmony – a type of ‘distant-key’ move not uncommon from one movement of a late eighteenth-century operatic finale to the next46 – to coincide with Don Alfonso’s revelation that Ferrando and Guglielmo are returning (bars 308–10), moves straight from V/d to F as the couples express uncertainty as to their next course of action (bars 333–34), and progresses quickly from F minor to V/g as the ladies express their torment (bars 355–60). In each case, tonal shifts are accentuated by marked changes in texture (bars 310, 334), by dynamic adjustments (bars 310, 334) or by general pauses (bars 333, 355, 357). Thus, the resulting block opposition equates with the opposition in the B section of the K. 589/iii trio, both sets of blocks underscoring pronounced harmonic contrast and textural disjunction. In addition, the air of stylistic selfconsciousness pervading the abrupt modulations, blocked contrasts and masking of straightforward procedures in the late piano concertos and string quartets also surfaces in Così. In the third segment of the Act 1 Finale a sequence from V/c to V/g (bars 219–30) appears to have ended on G minor (bars 232–36), only to re-start in the first violin (bars 236ff.). The subsequent passage, moving from V/f to V/Ab to V/Bb (bars 238–48) is self-consciously stilted (perhaps supporting Dorabella and Fiordiligi’s uncertainty about what to do with the poisoned Albanians); the modulations are initiated by uncertain quaver figures in the 2nd violin, bassoon/viola and cello/bassoon (bars 241, 245, 249 respectively) that either obscure the prevailing harmonic progression (the first two quavers in bar 241 obfuscate the V–vi motion in F minor) or feature awkward chromatic writing (bars 245, 249). The fruitful relationship between Mozart’s dramatic music and characteristics of stylistic re-invention in his late instrumental music is further demonstrated by the concert aria ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’, K. 505 (1786), uniquely (for Mozart) scored for solo piano, solo soprano and orchestra.47 Like the piano trios and piano quartets before and after it, K. 505 integrates stylistic features of Mozart’s earlier piano concertos and also introduces stylistic features that are used in re-invention contexts in the concertos ahead. At the beginnings of the Andante and Allegretto of this Rondò (a form comprising a slower followed by faster section with thematic returns in both), Mozart extends to the piano, voice and orchestra his procedure from the first movements of his piano concertos of immediately integrating the soloist into the orchestral fabric through dialogue.48 In addition, the 46 47
48
See John Platoff, ‘Tonal Organization in “Buffo” Finales and the Act II Finale of “Le nozze di Figaro” ’, Music & Letters, 72 (1991), pp. 387–403. Mozart originally set this text earlier in 1786 as an aria inserted into Idomeneo (‘Non più, tutto ascoltai . . . Non temer, amato bene’, K. 490), scoring it for solo soprano, solo violin and orchestra. K. 505 was written for the singer Nancy Storace and probably performed (with Mozart on the piano) at a farewell concert for her on 23 February 1787 at the Kärntnertor Theater. See the full- and split-theme exchange in the piano and voice and dialogic segues in the strings and
STYLISTIC RE-INVENTION
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thematic dialogue and imitative voice exchange between the solo singer and the piano in the run-up to the reprise of the main theme from the Andante (see bars 50–55) is reminiscent of piano/orchestra dialogue at the corresponding development-to-recapitulation juncture of the first movements of piano concertos such as K. 450 and K. 456. In certain stylistic respects, though, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’ points forwards, rather than reflecting Mozart’s pre-existent concerto procedures. After the reprise of the Andante theme in bars 56–65, for example, Mozart includes confrontationally orientated dialogue between the voice and the piano (bars 65–70, Ex. 7.10). Its sharply contrasting, equal-length (1-bar) units and sequential extensions invoke the great dialogic confrontations from preceding piano concerto movements such as K. 449/i and K. 491/i, but the location of the confrontation in a reprise section rather than a middle/development section brings to mind the re-positioning of adapted confrontation in the recapitulation of K. 537/i (bars 395–400). Thus, this passage stands midway between the direct confrontation of K. 491/i and the adapted confrontation of K. 537/i, more similar in style to K. 491/i than to K. 537/i, but placed in a location analogous to the K. 537/i passage rather than the K. 491/i passage. In the Allegretto, too, a segment of material intersects with Mozart’s earlier and later types of concerto confrontation. Following the first reprise of the Allegretto’s main theme (bars 103–10), the orchestra shunts the music to the relative minor (bars 110–11). The orchestra’s gesture, forcing an abrupt shift to vi via a one-bar forte exclamation, parallels the orchestra’s ‘angry’ response to the solipsistic piano after the presentation of the main theme of K. 450/i in the solo exposition (bars 86–87); the subsequent arpeggiated semiquaver patterns in the piano (bars 111ff.), allied with contrasting ideas in the orchestra and voice, also provides raw material for a K. 491-type confrontation. But, by presenting the contrasting piano and voice/orchestra material simultaneously rather than successively, Mozart eschews outright confrontation in a manner akin to bars 395–400 of K. 537/i.49 * Writing of Mozart’s death as ‘a real loss to music’ in July 1792, Johann Friedrich Schink’s Hamburgische Zeitung summarizes the composer’s achievement and potential:
49
piano in bars 1–21 of the Andante of ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’, and full-theme piano/voice exchange and accompanimental material passed between piano and strings in bars 74–89 of the Allegretto. For details on Mozart’s procedure of integrating the piano into his piano concertos through dialogue at the beginning of the first-movement solo expositions, see Keefe, Mozart’s Piano Concertos, p. 77. Another of Mozart’s late concert arias, ‘Ah se in ciel, benigne Stelle’ K. 538 (4 March 1788), exhibits a harmonic feature characteristic of re-invention in the last piano concertos and ‘Prussian’ quartets. In the introduction, Mozart incorporates wilfully disruptive writing with no warning: between confirmations of the tonic F (bars 15 and 22), unison Gs and Bns (bars 17, 19) draw attention above all to their own harmonic obstinacy and thus parallel moments in Mozart’s late instrumental works.
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Ex. 7.10: Mozart, Concert Aria for Soprano, Piano and Orchestra, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’, K. 505, bars 65–70
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How much was he already, and what more might he yet have become, because he was beginning to compose not merely at the dictate of his genius, but also at that of his mind; – that is, he was beginning to subject his imagination to his intellect.50
Just a few months earlier, in January 1792, the obituary from the Musikalische Korrespondenz der teutschen Filarmonischen Gesellschaft (possibly by Heinrich Philipp Bossler) remarks in similar fashion: ‘He furnished Germany, France and England with numerous instrumental works which audibly testify to his solid understanding, the fire of his imagination, and the fecundity and inventiveness of his great genius.’51 Even though it is now almost universally agreed in scholarly circles that imagination and intellect co-exist as dynamic forces in Mozart’s compositional creativity – the myth of the un-thoughtful, unknowing genius has long since been debunked – it is more difficult to show how exactly this is the case. Stylistic re-invention puts the interaction of these elements of Mozart’s musical personality centre stage, accounting for both intellectual processes of reflection and re-appraisal and imaginative conceptual leaps whereby pre-existent stylistic techniques are taken to new, climactic points and, in turn, stimulate reconfigurations of stylistic paradigms. Indeed, Mozart’s works at the heart of his re-invention practices represent the most intense and complex manifestations of the imagination-intellect dynamic. 1784, 1786 and 1788 may not delineate the starts and ends of stylistic periods in Mozart’s oeuvre, but instrumental works written in these years do contain especially significant illustrations of Mozart’s simultaneously cerebral and creative stylistic mindset. As one critic reports in November 1791, two works from 1786 (K. 493 and 499) are excellent illustrations of ‘that fire of the imagination and that correctness, which long since won for Herr M. the reputation of one of the best composers in Germany’.52 For some, Mozart’s motivation for initiating stylistic changes at specific points in his Viennese instrumental oeuvre will remain a mystery on account of the lack of hard evidence emanating from Mozart’s pen on each and every point. But to paraphrase an old adage, an absence of documentary evidence of such motivation – where it is lacking – is not evidence of its absence. Ultimately, Mozart’s Viennese piano concertos, string quartets and symphonies, informing and being informed by contemporary aesthetic and theoretical trends as well as influencing and being influenced by preceding and succeeding works, appear to manifest stylistic re-invention for a combination of practical and aesthetic reasons. It is surely not coincidental that K. 449 represents an ‘entirely new and special manner’ and has an interrupted genesis at the precise intersection of the a quattro and ‘grand’
50
51 52
Deutsch, Mozart: Documentary Biography, p. 464. This is not the first occasion that a Schink publication praises Mozart in these terms. In the Dramatische Monate (Hamburg, 1789), Mozart is lauded for ‘the richest and yet the most restrained imagination. He is the true virtuoso who never lets his imagination run away with intelligence. Reason guides his enthusiasm and calm judgment his presentation’ (Deutsch, Mozart: Documentary Biography, p. 355). Eisen, New Mozart Documents, p. 74. Deutsch, Mozart: Documentary Biography, p. 414.
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concerto styles, or that the last two piano concertos depart stylistically from the 1782–86 sequence of works when chronologically removed from them. From an aesthetic perspective, too, it is understandable that the new ‘grand’ concertos from K. 450 onwards exhibit the theoretically prevalent qualities of balance when Mozart reveals support for this balance, and that Mozart dramatizes his string quartet style in the ‘Prussian’ quartets on the back of increased dramatic intensity in the ‘Jupiter’ finale. The relationships among Mozart’s Viennese instrumental works – demonstrated by techniques associated with re-invention appearing outside his symphonic, piano concerto and string quartet genres – further attest to the practical and aesthetic orientations of stylistic re-invention. The appearance of re-invention characteristics in the piano trios and the piano quartets, for example, reflects their broad, generic connections to Mozart’s piano concertos and string quartets, but also contributes to aesthetic and stylistic re-appraisals such as the dramatization of Mozart’s string quartet style and the reconfiguration of interactional confrontation in the piano concertos. Above all, by demonstrating a fundamentally coherent attitude towards stylistic change – at both inter and intra-generic levels – Mozart emphasizes in the strongest terms the rational, inspirational, systematic and imaginative integrity of his Viennese instrumental music.
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Index of Mozart’s Works by Köchel Number
K. 183 Symphony No. 25 in G minor, 138 K. 246 Piano Concerto in C, 75 K. 271 Piano Concerto in Eb (‘Jenamy’), 75 K. 296 Sonata for violin and piano in C, 97, 185, 186 K. 297 Symphony No. 31 in D (‘Paris’), 6–7 K. 320 Serenade in D (‘Posthorn’), 138 K. 366 Idomeneo, 37, 38, 150, 193 K. 376 Sonata for violin and piano in F, 97, 185, 186 K. 377 Sonata for violin and piano in F, 97, 185, 186 K. 378 Sonata for violin and piano in Bb, 97, 185, 186 K. 379 Sonata for violin and piano in G, 97, 185, 186 K. 380 Sonata for violin and piano in Eb, 97, 185, 186 K. 384 Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 5, 37–8, 64, 96, 193 K. 385 Symphony No. 35 in D (‘Haffner’), 160 K. 387 String Quartet in G, 40–2, 64, 89, 95–6, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 113, 118, 167 K. 413 Piano Concerto in F, 7, 10, 11, 20, 24, 25–34, 37, 39, 43, 47, 54, 67–8n, 72, 74, 96, 167, 187, 192 K. 414 Piano Concerto in A, 7, 10, 11, 20, 24, 25–34, 37, 39, 43, 47, 54, 69, 72, 96, 167, 187, 192 K. 415 Piano Concerto in C, 7, 10, 11, 20, 24, 25–34, 37, 39, 43, 47, 54, 67–8n, 72, 96, 167, 192 K. 421 String Quartet in D minor, 64, 89, 93, 95–6, 97, 98, 99–100, 101, 102, 103, 113, 117, 118, 150 K. 425 Symphony No. 36 in C (‘Linz’), 160, 161, 162, 163 K. 428 String Quartet in Eb, 64, 89, 95–6, 97–8, 99, 100, 102, 103, 113, 118 K. 449 Piano Concerto in Eb, 7, 10, 11–12, 13, 14, 19–42, 43–4, 47, 49, 53–5, 62, 65, 70, 72, 76, 104, 122, 132, 138, 164, 167, 169, 174, 175, 181, 183, 186, 187, 188, 191, 197, 199–200
K. 450 Piano Concerto in Bb, 7, 10, 11, 12, 19–34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 49–55, 59n, 61, 68, 69, 72, 74, 122, 169, 174, 186, 187, 188, 193, 197, 200 K. 451 Piano Concerto in D, 10, 11, 19–34, 35, 39, 43, 49–55, 58, 59n, 61, 72, 74, 132, 186, 187, 188, 193 K. 452 Quintet for Piano and Winds in Eb, 14, 19, 24n, 169–73, 174, 188, 193 K. 453 Piano Concerto in G, 10, 11, 19–34, 39, 43, 49–55, 61, 72, 186, 187, 188, 193 K. 454 Sonata for violin and piano in Bb, 185–87, 188 K. 456 Piano Concerto in Bb, 24n, 30, 49–55, 61, 69n, 72, 74, 197 K. 457 Piano Sonata in C minor, 183, 184, 186, 188 K. 458 String Quartet in Bb (‘Hunt’), 37, 64, 89, 95–6, 98–9, 100, 102, 103, 113, 118 K. 459 Piano Concerto in F, 49–55, 61, 69, 72, 74 K. 464 String Quartet in A, 89, 95–6, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 113, 116–17, 118 K. 465 String Quartet in C (‘Dissonance’), 10, 12–13, 14, 64, 89–104, 107, 111, 116, 118, 121–22, 127, 138, 164, 167, 168, 191 K. 466 Piano Concerto in D minor, 29, 35–6, 49–55, 61, 66, 72, 76, 132, 141, 175 K. 467 Piano Concerto in C, 49–55, 59n, 61, 69, 72, 74 K. 478 Piano Quartet in G minor, 7, 168n, 169, 174–75, 177, 181, 190, 192 K. 481 Sonata for violin and piano in Eb, 187–88 K. 482 Piano Concerto in Eb, 49–55, 58, 59n, 61, 69, 72, 74, 174 K. 488 Piano Concerto in A, 25, 49–55, 58, 61, 72, 74 K. 491 Piano Concerto in C minor, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 23, 36, 42, 49–58, 61, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 81–3, 84, 104, 122, 132, 138, 163–64, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174, 175, 181, 184, 188, 191, 193, 197 K. 492 Le nozze di Figaro, 35, 36–7, 64, 132, 151, 164, 177, 189, 193
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INDEX OF MOZART’S WORKS BY KÖCHEL NUMBER
K. 493 Piano Quartet in Eb, 7, 168n, 174, 175–77, 181, 190, 192, 199 K. 496 Piano Trio in G, 168n, 169, 177, 178, 179, 185, 188, 190 K. 498 Trio for piano, clarinet and viola in Eb (‘Kegelstatt’), 177, 180–81, 188 K. 499 String Quartet in D (‘Hoffmeister’), 106, 118, 123–25, 126, 127, 188, 192, 199 K. 502 Piano Trio in Bb, 168n, 169, 177, 190 K. 503 Piano Concerto in C, 12, 14, 25, 49–55, 58–63, 64, 68, 69, 72, 74, 81–2, 104, 122, 163, 167, 188 K. 504 Symphony No. 38 in D (‘Prague’), 13, 103, 137, 160, 161–62, 163, 189 K. 505 ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’ (soprano, piano, orchestra), 196–98 K. 515 String Quintet in C, 107, 123, 125–27, 131, 133, 192 K. 516 String Quintet in G minor, 107, 123, 125–27, 133, 192 K. 526 Sonata for violin and piano in A, 185, 187–88 K. 527 Don Giovanni, 36–7, 132, 151, 164, 189, 193 K. 533 Piano Sonata in F, 183, 184, 187, 188 K. 537 Piano Concerto in D (‘Coronation’), 10–11, 12, 14, 43, 62, 63, 64–85, 104, 107, 118, 122, 129, 130, 163, 167, 172, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189–90, 193, 197, 200 K. 538, ‘Ah se in ciel’ (soprano, orchestra), 197n K. 540 Adagio for piano in B minor, 185 K. 542 Piano Trio in E, 168n, 169, 177, 181, 182, 190, 191, 192 K. 543 Symphony No. 39 in Eb, 77, 81, 107, 160, 162, 163, 190, 191 K. 545 Piano Sonata in C, 183, 184, 190
K. 547 Sonata for violin and piano in F, 190 K. 548 Piano Trio in C, 168n, 169, 177, 178, 179, 180, 185, 190, 191, 192 K. 550 Symphony No. 40 in G minor, 13, 77–9, 81, 107, 130, 137, 160, 162, 163, 172, 179, 191, 194 K. 551 Symphony No. 41 in C (‘Jupiter’), 10, 13, 14, 58, 77, 81, 106, 107, 137–64, 167, 168, 170, 173, 188, 191, 192, 193, 200 K. 563 Divertimento for string trio in Eb, 177, 178, 179–80, 190 K. 564 Piano Trio in G, 168n, 169, 177, 181, 190, 191, 192 K. 570 Piano Sonata in Bb, 183, 184 K. 575 String Quartet in D (‘Prussian’), 10, 13, 14, 64, 104, 105–107, 113–15, 116–17, 118, 121, 122, 127, 128–30, 131, 132, 168, 178, 190, 194 K. 576 Piano Sonata in D, 183, 184, 188 K. 588 Così fan tutte, 189, 194–96 K. 589 String Quartet in Bb (‘Prussian’), 10, 13, 14, 64, 104, 105–107, 110, 113–14, 116–17, 118, 121, 122, 127, 128–30, 131, 132, 168, 172, 178, 180, 190, 194, 196 K. 590 String Quartet in F (‘Prussian’), 10, 13, 14, 104, 105–107, 109, 110–12, 113–18, 119–20, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128–30, 131, 132, 164, 168, 178, 181, 190, 194 K. 593 String Quintet in D, 107, 130–32 K. 595 Piano Concerto in Bb, 10–11, 12, 14, 25, 62, 63, 64–85, 104, 107, 113, 118, 122, 129, 130, 131, 163, 164, 167, 172, 175, 178, 179, 183, 184, 188, 189–90, 193, 194, 200 K. 614 String Quintet in Eb, 107, 131, 132 K. 620 Die Zauberflöte, 189 K. 621 La clemenza di Tito, 189 K. 622 Clarinet Concerto in A, 49, 192 K. 626 Requiem in D minor, 67
Index of Mozart’s Works by Genre
Masses K. 626 Requiem in D minor, 67 Operas K. 366 Idomeneo, 37, 38, 150, 193 K. 384 Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 5, 37–8, 64, 96, 193 K. 492 Le nozze di Figaro, 35, 36–7, 64, 132, 151, 164, 177, 189, 193 K. 527 Don Giovanni, 36–7, 132, 151, 164, 189, 193 K. 588 Così fan tutte, 189, 194–96 K. 620 Die Zauberflöte, 189 K. 621 La clemenza di Tito, 189 Arias K. 505 ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’ (soprano, piano, orchestra), 196–98 K. 538, ‘Ah se in ciel’ (soprano, orchestra), 197n Symphonies K. 183 Symphony No. 25 in G minor, 138 K. 297 Symphony No. 31 in D (‘Paris’), 6–7 K. 385 Symphony No. 35 in D (‘Haffner’), 160 K. 425 Symphony No. 36 in C (‘Linz’), 160, 161, 162, 163 K. 504 Symphony No. 38 in D (‘Prague’), 13, 103, 137, 160, 161–62, 163, 189 K. 543 Symphony No. 39 in Eb, 77, 81, 107, 160, 162, 163, 190, 191 K. 550 Symphony No. 40 in G minor, 13, 77–9, 81, 107, 130, 137, 160, 162, 163, 172, 179, 191, 194 K. 551 Symphony No. 41 in C (‘Jupiter’), 10, 13, 14, 58, 77, 81, 106, 107, 137–64, 167, 168, 170, 173, 188, 191, 192, 193, 200 Serenades K. 320 Serenade in D (‘Posthorn’), 138 Concertos K. 246 Piano Concerto in C, 75 K. 271 Piano Concerto in Eb (‘Jenamy’), 75 K. 413 Piano Concerto in F, 7, 10, 11, 20, 24,
25–34, 37, 39, 43, 47, 54, 67–8n, 72, 74, 96, 167, 187, 192 K. 414 Piano Concerto in A, 7, 10, 11, 20, 24, 25–34, 37, 39, 43, 47, 54, 69, 72, 96, 167, 187, 192 K. 415 Piano Concerto in C, 7, 10, 11, 20, 24, 25–34, 37, 39, 43, 47, 54, 67–8n, 72, 96, 167, 192 K. 449 Piano Concerto in Eb, 7, 10, 11–12, 13, 14, 19–42, 43–4, 47, 49, 53–5, 62, 65, 70, 72, 76, 104, 122, 132, 138, 164, 167, 169, 174, 175, 181, 183, 186, 187, 188, 191, 197, 199–200 K. 450 Piano Concerto in Bb, 7, 10, 11, 12, 19–34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 49–55, 59n, 61, 68, 69, 72, 74, 122, 169, 174, 186, 187, 188, 193, 197, 200 K. 451 Piano Concerto in D, 10, 11, 19–34, 35, 39, 43, 49–55, 58, 59n, 61, 72, 74, 132, 186, 187, 188, 193 K. 453 Piano Concerto in G, 10, 11, 19–34, 39, 43, 49–55, 61, 72, 186, 187, 188, 193 K. 456 Piano Concerto in Bb, 24n, 30, 49–55, 61, 69n, 72, 74, 197 K. 459 Piano Concerto in F, 49–55, 61, 69, 72, 74 K. 466 Piano Concerto in D minor, 29, 35–6, 49–55, 61, 66, 72, 76, 132, 141, 175 K. 467 Piano Concerto in C, 49–55, 59n, 61, 69, 72, 74 K. 482 Piano Concerto in Eb, 49–55, 58, 59n, 61, 69, 72, 74, 174 K. 488 Piano Concerto in A, 25, 49–55, 58, 61, 72, 74 K. 491 Piano Concerto in C minor, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 23, 36, 42, 49–58, 61, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 81–3, 84, 104, 122, 132, 138, 163–64, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174, 175, 181, 184, 188, 191, 193, 197 K. 503 Piano Concerto in C, 12, 14, 25, 49–55, 58–63, 64, 68, 69, 72, 74, 81–2, 104, 122, 163, 167, 188 K. 537 Piano Concerto in D (‘Coronation’), 10–11, 12, 14, 43, 62, 63, 64–85, 104, 107, 118, 122, 129, 130, 163, 167, 172, 175, 177,
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INDEX OF MOZART’S WORKS BY GENRE
K. 537 (cont.) 179, 181, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189–90, 193, 197, 200 K. 595 Piano Concerto in Bb, 10–11, 12, 14, 25, 62, 63, 64–85, 104, 107, 113, 118, 122, 129, 130, 131, 163, 164, 167, 172, 175, 178, 179, 183, 184, 188, 189–90, 193, 194, 200 K. 622 Clarinet Concerto in A, 49, 192 Quintets, quartets and trios with piano K. 452 Quintet for Piano and Winds in Eb, 14, 19, 24n, 169–73, 174, 188, 193 K. 478 Piano Quartet in G minor, 7, 168n, 169, 174–75, 177, 181, 190, 192 K. 493 Piano Quartet in Eb, 7, 168n, 174, 175–77, 181, 190, 192, 199 K. 496 Piano Trio in G, 168n, 169, 177, 178, 179, 185, 188, 190 K. 498 Trio for piano, clarinet and viola in Eb (‘Kegelstatt’), 177, 180–81, 188 K. 502 Piano Trio in Bb, 168n, 169, 177, 190 K. 542 Piano Trio in E, 168n, 169, 177, 181, 182, 190, 191, 192 K. 548 Piano Trio in C, 168n, 169, 177, 178, 179, 180, 185, 190, 191, 192 K. 564 Piano Trio in G, 168n, 169, 177, 181, 190, 191, 192 String quintets K. 515 String Quintet in C, 107, 123, 125–27, 131, 133, 192 K. 516 String Quintet in G minor, 107, 123, 125–27, 133, 192 K. 593 String Quintet in D, 107, 130–32 K. 614 String Quintet in Eb, 107, 131, 132 String quartets K. 387 String Quartet in G, 40–2, 64, 89, 95–6, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 113, 118, 167 K. 421 String Quartet in D minor, 64, 89, 93, 95–6, 97, 98, 99–100, 101, 102, 103, 113, 117, 118, 150 K. 428 String Quartet in Eb, 64, 89, 95–6, 97–8, 99, 100, 102, 103, 113, 118 K. 458 String Quartet in Bb (‘Hunt’), 37, 64, 89, 95–6, 98–9, 100, 102, 103, 113, 118 K. 464 String Quartet in A, 89, 95–6, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 113, 116–17, 118 K. 465 String Quartet in C (‘Dissonance’), 10, 12–13, 14, 64, 89–104, 107, 111, 116, 118, 121–22, 127, 138, 164, 167, 168, 191
K. 499 String Quartet in D (‘Hoffmeister’), 106, 118, 123–25, 126, 127, 188, 192, 199 K. 575 String Quartet in D (‘Prussian’), 10, 13, 14, 64, 104, 105–107, 113–15, 116–17, 118, 121, 122, 127, 128–30, 131, 132, 168, 178, 190, 194 K. 589 String Quartet in Bb (‘Prussian’), 10, 13, 14, 64, 104, 105–107, 110, 113–14, 116–17, 118, 121, 122, 127, 128–30, 131, 132, 168, 172, 178, 180, 190, 194, 196 K. 590 String Quartet in F (‘Prussian’), 10, 13, 14, 104, 105–107, 109, 110–12, 113–18, 119–20, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128–30, 131, 132, 164, 168, 178, 181, 190, 194 String trio K. 563 Divertimento for string trio in Eb, 177, 178, 179–80, 190 Sonatas for violin and piano K. 296 Sonata for violin and piano in C, 97, 185, 186 K. 376 Sonata for violin and piano in F, 97, 185, 186 K. 377 Sonata for violin and piano in F, 97, 185, 186 K. 378 Sonata for violin and piano in Bb, 97, 185, 186 K. 379 Sonata for violin and piano in G, 97, 185, 186 K. 380 Sonata for violin and piano in Eb, 97, 185, 186 K. 454 Sonata for violin and piano in Bb, 185–87, 188 K. 481 Sonata for violin and piano in Eb, 187–88 K. 526 Sonata for violin and piano in A, 185, 187–88 K. 547 Sonata for violin and piano in F, 190 Sonatas and other solo works for piano K. 457 Piano Sonata in C minor, 183, 184, 186, 188 K. 533 Piano Sonata in F, 183, 184, 187, 188 K. 540 Adagio in B minor, 185 K. 545 Piano Sonata in C, 183, 184, 190 K. 570 Piano Sonata in Bb, 183, 184 K. 576 Piano Sonata in D, 183, 184, 188
General Index
Abert, Hermann, 3, 66, 84, 91, 170, 171, 190 Agawu, V. Kofi, 125 d’Alembert, Jean, 128 Allanbrook, Wye Jamison, 35, 97n, 103, 128 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 20, 21, 47, 48, 49, 90, 146, 192 Aristotle, 8, 103 Artaria, 89, 105, 106 Attwood, Thomas, 90 Avison, Charles, 48 Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, 4, 44, 109 Bach, Johann Christian, 65 Baumgarten, Alexander, 122 Beck, Franz Ignaz, 144 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 81–2 Berger, Karol, 34n, 72n Blom, Eric, 23, 65, 85, 91, 106, 140 Bonds, Mark Evan, 93 Bossler, Heinrich Philipp, 199 Boswell, James, 127 brilliance, 11–12, 42, 43–63 Brown, A. Peter, 160n Brown, Marshall, 91–2 Busby, Thomas, 108, 109 Cailhava, Jean-François, 148, 149 Carew, Derek, 190 Chastellux, Jean François de, 145 Chua, Daniel, 164 Cicero, 102 confrontation, 11, 13, 181, 191, 197: in Mozart’s operas, 37–8 in Mozart’s piano concertos, 28–40, 50–1, 53–7, 193 in Mozart’s piano quartets and piano concertos, 174–77 in Mozart’s piano trios and piano concertos, 181 in Mozart’s string quintet K. 614 and piano concertos, 132 in Mozart’s symphonies, 150, 156 contrast, 107–33, 191, 192, 193: explanations of c. 1800, 13, 108–109 in Mozart’s Adagio for piano K. 540, 185
in Mozart’s ‘Hoffmeister’ quartet, 123–25 in Mozart’s piano trios and string trio, 177–81 in Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ quartets, 104, 109–22 in Mozart’s string quintets, 125–27, 131–32 Cooper, Anthony Ashley (3rd Earl of Shaftesbury), 128, 130 Corelli, Arcangelo, 45 Corneille, Pierre, 149 Cramer, Carl Friedrich, 5n, 89, 108–109 Cramer, Johann Baptist, 82 Dahlhaus, Carl, 193n Dearling, Robert, 140–41 Derr, Ellwood, 96 dialogue: and the quartet as conversation analogy, 127–29 as intimate grandeur in Mozart’s piano concertos, 46–7, 48, 49–53, 55–63 in Mozart’s aria ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te’, 196–97 in Mozart’s piano concertos, 74–5 in Mozart’s piano concertos and operas, 193 in Mozart’s piano quartets and piano trios, 168–69 in Mozart’s piano sonatas and violin sonatas, 183–88 in Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds K. 452, 170–72 in Mozart’s symphonies, 13, 138–39, 144–64, 191 Diderot, Denis, 129, 149, 155–56n, 158 Ditters von Dittersdorf, Carl, 5n, 30, 89 Einstein, Alfred, 3, 23, 39, 42, 67, 82n, 84–5, 170, 190, 191 Eisen, Cliff, xi, 90n Eisley, Irving R., 21–2, 58n Encyclopédie méthodique: musique, 2, 45 Ferrari, Giacomo Gotifredo, 90 Fétis, François-Joseph, 90 Fischer, Johann Ignaz Ludwig, 19 Forkel, Johann Nikolaus, 147–48
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GENERAL INDEX
Forman, Denis, 23, 65, 66, 85
Küster, Konrad, 3–4, 69n, 74n, 84n
Galeazzi, Francesco, 93n, 146 Gerard, Alexander, 5, 9 Gerber, Ernst Ludwig, 48 Ginguené, Pierre-Louis, 45–6, 48 Girdlestone, Cuthbert, 22–3, 33, 39, 42, 65, 66, 82n, 84, 170, 190, 191 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 30 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 155–56n, 157, 158 Goertzen, Chris, 65 Gossec, François-Joseph, 145 grandeur, 11–12, 42, 43–63 Grayson, David, 29–30n Gregory, John, 163 Griesinger, Georg August, 9, 12 Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, Baron von, 149–50 Gruber, Gernot, 4 Gutman, Robert, 141
Lacépède, Bernard Germain, Comte de, 144–45, 146, 147 Landon, H. C. Robbins, 66, 85 Laporte, Joseph de, 129, 148–49, 150, 151, 157 Leeson, Daniel N., 24n Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 155–56n Locatelli, Pietro, 45
Hamann, Johann Georg, 4 Haydn, Franz Joseph, 4, 9, 12, 40–1, 59, 64, 89, 93, 103, 104, 106, 108, 122, 143, 146, 193 string quartets Op. 20, 40 string quartets Op. 33, 40, 93 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 147, 151 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 4, 9 Hertz, Neal, 142 Hildesheimer, Wolfgang, 67, 85, 170, 190 Hocquard, Jean-Victor, 65, 66, 84, 141, 190, 191 Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus, 144 Hoffmeister, Franz Anton, 7 Hoyle, John, 2, 46 Hutchings, Arthur, 22, 23, 33, 34–5, 65, 84 intimacy, 11–12, 42, 43–63 Jackson, William, 108 Jacob, Heinrich Eduard, 141 Jahn, Otto, 3, 105–106, 170, 190 Johnson, Samuel, 127 Junker, Karl Ludwig, 113 Kant, Immanuel, 5, 9, 142 Keefe, Madeleine, xi Keller, Hans, 97n, 106 Kirkendale, Warren, 102 Kittel, Johannes Christian, 138 Knepler, Georg, 96 Koch, Heinrich Christoph, 2–3, 7, 21n, 46–7, 48, 53, 89, 90, 103, 108n, 142–43, 175 Kollmann, August Frederick Christopher, 21n, 44, 46, 56 Knigge, Baron von, 127–28
Marmontel, Jean, 129 Marsh, John, 90 Massin, Jean and Brigitte, 65, 66, 170, 190, 191 Mercier, Louis Sébastien, 129, 149 Meude-Monpas, J. J. O. de, 2, 145–46 Meyer, Leonard B., 10 Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), 149, 157 Momigny, Jérôme-Joseph de, 2, 150 Mozart, Constanze, 90 Mozart, Leopold, 7, 19, 40n, 89, 164 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, see Index of Mozart’s Works by Köchel Number, Index of Mozart’s Works by Genre Niemetschek, Franz Xaver, 89, 146 Ottoway, Hugh, 141 Oulibicheff, Alexandre, 90 Quintilian, 8, 102 Paul, Jean, 144 Platoff, John, 36–7n Puchberg, Michael, 191 Racine, Jean, 149 Radcliffe, Philip, 23, 65 Ratner, Leonard G., 21, 131 Reicha, Antoine, 30, 37, 148, 152, 156, 175 Traité de mélodie, 30, 37 Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, 108 Reynolds, R.G., 66 rhetoric: elocutio, 8 invention (inventio, Erfindung), 8–9 peroration, 12, 13, 102–103 Richter, Georg Friedrich, 19 Rochlitz, Friedrich, 82, 143 Rosen, Charles, 21, 23, 32–3, 35, 65–6, 71, 85, 107, 141, 143n, 190 Rosen, David, 75n Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 108n Ruile-Dronke, Jutta, 66n Sadie, Stanley, 58n, 141
GENERAL INDEX Saint-Foix, Georges de, 3, 4, 65, 67, 84, 106, 109, 140, 170 Sarti, Giuseppe, 90 Schachter, Carl, 34n Schenker, Heinrich, 90–1 Schink, Johann Friedrich, 197, 199n Schönberg, Arnold, 90–1 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 48 Schulz, Johann Abraham Peter, 141–42 Sechter, Simon, 164 Shaftesbury, Earl of, see Cooper, Anthony Ashley Sieber, Jean-Georges, 94–5n Sisman, Elaine R., 7n, 64n, 142–43, 158–59 Smith, Adam, 160 Solomon, Maynard, 92 Sonnenfels, Joseph von, 149 Spohr, Wilhelm, 141 Staël-Holstein, Anne Louise Germain (Mme de Staël), 128 Stafford, William, 192 Stamitz, Carl, 45 Steibelt, Daniel, 49 Sterkel, Johann Franz Xavier, 144 Storace, Nancy, 196n Strinasachi, Regina, 187n style: and originality in eighteenth-century context, 4–5, 9 eighteenth-century discussion of, 2–3, 7, 48, 89–90 Mozart’s self-awareness in matters of, 6–7, 20, 47–8
217
Mozart’s late, 191–93 twentieth-century discussions of in Mozart, 3–4, 21–4, 65–7, 84–5, 90–2, 140–42, 169–70, 190–91 See also brilliance, confrontation, contrast, dialogue, grandeur, intimacy, rhetoric Subotnik, Rose Rosengard, 80–1 Sulzer, Johann Georg, 5, 6n, 9, 46, 141–42, 145 Tartini, Giuseppe, 45 Tieck, Ludwig, 144 Torelli, Giuseppe, 45 Tovey, Donald Francis, 82n Triest, Johann Karl Friedrich, 44, 77n, 129, 146 Türk, Daniel Gottlieb, 2 Tyson, Alan, 25, 67, 76, 77 Vivaldi, Antonio, 45 Vogler, Georg Joseph, 148 Waldoff, Jessica, 38n Weber, Berhard Anselm, 5 Weber, Carl Maria von, 143 Weber, Gottfried, 90 Webster, James, 12n, 34n, 38n, 143, 193 Whitwell, David, 24n Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 5 Wyzewa, Théodore de, 3, 4 Young, Edward, 4, 9 Zaslaw, Neal, 20n
Also by Simon Keefe Mozart’s Piano Concertos: Dramatic Dialogue in the Age of Enlightenment T masterly study will expand every reader’s appreciation of Mozart’s most original This genre. Andrew Willis, NOTES This closely written and thoroughly researched study adds much to our appreciation of the concept of dramatic dialogue in Mozart’s mature piano concertos... What Keefe offer[s] us is fascinating... his book is of value in that the higher meaning of these subtle works is often obscure... he does much to make it clearer. INTERNATIONAL PIANO The interactive relationship between the piano and the orchestra in Mozart’s concertos is an issue central to the appreciation of these great works, explored in this study in the context of the historical implications and hermeneutic potential of dramatic dialogue. Simon Keefe shows that invocations of dramatic dialogue are deeply ingrained in late-eighteenth-century writings on instrumental music, and he develops this theme into an original and highly positive view of solo/ orchestra relations in Mozart’s concertos. He analyses behavioural patterns in the concertos and links them to theoretical discussion of late-eighteenth-century drama and to analogous relational development in Mozart’s operas Idomeneo, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. Mozart’s piano concertos emerge afresh from this new approach as an extraordinary medium of Enlightenment, as significant in their way as the greatest late-eighteenthcentury operatic and theatrical works. 9780851158341
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