Mozart

This article discusses the aetiology and evolution of musical structure, specifically the sonata-form exposition, from a memetic perspective. It regards established musical forms as replicated schemata arising from the conglomeration of foreground-level memes, the resultant archetypes (structural memes or Memesätze) being replicated (reinstantiated) by different collections of functionally analogous (allelic) memes. After a discussion of the theoretical background — including the top-down/bottom-up generative dichotomy as it applies to form, and some attributes of memes affecting conglomeration — three sonata expositions, by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, are discussed as specific evidence in support of the general hypotheses advanced.

Most of us can recall chuckling, or even laughing out loud, at a humorous musical passage and perhaps recalling how much that experience increased our enjoyment of the music. This study focuses on humour in the instrumental works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven: composers who have been singled out by contemporary and modern scholars for their ingenuity and mastery of the Classical style. In the most general sense, musical humour arises when composers play with established conventions of musical discourse by writing something incongruous according to the stylistic context.
Chapter 1 demonstrates how historical critics understood the role of contrast in examples of musical humour and wit. It then surveys many recent music-theoretical discussions of musical humour, before briefly introducing how elements of contrast, “valence shifts,” and “opposition” are involved in musical humour from the Classical period. This study’s analytical and theoretical approach to musical humour draws on recent studies of musical humour, form, and communication in the Classical style, as well as concepts from recent linguistic theories of humour.   
Chapter 2 introduces the two primary strategies Classical instrumental composers employed to create musical humour: “opposition” and “excess.” Chapters 3 and 4 discuss a wide range of musical examples to explore how composers deployed formal functions and musical topics to produce humour. These discussions provide a sense of the wide range of effects that fall under the umbrellas of opposition and excess.
Chapter 5 concludes by briefly examining some performance applications of this study and suggesting some further potential sources of musical humour.

Mozart and his connection with the Freemason have been the subject of a number of studies, most of which aiming at determining if and if so to which extent the Freemasonic milieu influenced Mozart's production. The main aim of this paper is to review critically a recent study on Mozart by two Italian musicologists claiming that Mozart was nothing but a pretty mediocre musician and composer who exploited the Freemasonic net for his own interests. A thesis in no way proved and largely based on very old anti-Masonic prejudicial ideas.

Charged with the task of confirming the new key in the exposition and resolving to the home key in the recapitulation, the second theme group performs perhaps the defining actions of any sonata form. Although Classical works provide many instances of a clear beginning to this crucial part of the form, in a significant proportion of works the beginning of the second theme (ST) cannot be so easily discerned, especially in works from Beethoven’s middle and late periods. Consequently, debate continues to surround the issue, particularly in the work of James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy and that of William E. Caplin. The problem is that no matter how powerful a single rule may be, no rule by itself can identify all those locations which may be considered an ST beginning. For this reason I contend that there are several indications which contribute to its expression. One may therefore understand the initial ST of a movement to be a synthesis of musical signals which, taken together, allow a passage to be perceived as the first syntactically complete set of formal functions (at the very least, a beginning and end) which centres on the secondary key of the movement. Not all signals appear with every initial ST, nor are they necessarily in their clearest state when they do appear: an ST may still be expressed when some of the most familiar signals are considerably weakened or even absent. Consequently, STs have many possible degrees of expression, obviating the need to decide between all-or-nothing levels of expression in cases that seem to hover somewhere between the two. Moreover, this spectrum of possibilities allows us to understand how STs, and sometimes entire ST groups, may be engaged in a dynamic process which seeks to compensate for weaknesses in the ST’s expression, a phenomenon I call an ST process.

Despite the ubiquity of sentence form in the classical repertoire, its great importance remains underappreciated in music scholarship. In this article, I widen the form’s definition by re-examining William E. Caplin’s three components of presentation, continuation, and cadential, and by offering a more flexible definition that minimally consists of a single basic idea and a continuation. This broad outline, which I call the sentential idea, is intended to emphasize the similarity of all such structures and to demonstrate that a sentence need not occur as a Schoenbergian theme, but may assume virtually any formal function within a movement.

Abstract. In 1801 at the cemetery in Vienna, Austria, the skull of W.A. Mozart was exhumed, and now it has been examined for identification. The osteological findings correspond with the available data of W.A. Mozart. Additional individual particularities and a bone lesion are described. This Applied Anthropology Inquest is available at  http://www.pontecorboli.com/scheda.php?codice=puech

This Part 2 describes the various structures of melodies as more complex versions of the metrical structures discussed in Part 1. In this way, the metrical structure and the grouping structure will be integrated into one theoretical entity.

In Chapter 5, the various structure of phrases will be understood as roughly being metrical unit. By returning to the metrical structure for analysis, the various irregular structures are clearly understood as the result of a kind of compositional technique.

In Chapter 6, the details of various phrases will be understood as a combination of metrical structures, as a complication of metrical structures. The way to create such combinations is through syncopation.

In what ways is music implicated in the politics of belonging? How is the proper at stake in listening? What role does the ear play in forming a sense of community? Music and Belonging argues that music, at the level of style and form, produces certain modes of listening that in turn reveal the conditions of belonging. Specifically, listening shows the intimacy between two senses of belonging: belonging to a community is predicated on the possession of a particular property or capacity.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, Waltham-Smith suggests that this relation between belonging-as-membership and belonging-as-ownership manifests itself with particular clarity and rigor at the very heart of the Austro-German canon, in the instrumental music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Music and Belonging provocatively brings recent European philosophy into contact with the renewed music-theoretical interest in Formenlehre, presenting close analyses to show how we might return to this much-discussed repertoire to mine it for fresh insights.

The book's theoretical landscape offers a radical update to Adornian-inspired scholarship, working through debates over relationality, community, and friendship between Derrida, Nancy, Agamben, Badiou, and Malabou. Borrowing the deconstructive strategies of closely reading canonical texts to the point of their unraveling, the book teases out a new politics of listening from processes of repetition and liquidation, from harmonic suppressions and even from trills. What emerges is the enduring political significance of listening to this music in an era of heightened social exclusion under neoliberalism.

“The classics are back. Naomi Waltham-Smith lifts the critical analysis of style to the next level with the freshest and most radical reimagining of the classical masters we have seen in a long time. In prose of fire and fervor, Waltham-Smith puts Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in the ring with Badiou, Agamben, and Nancy and raises the stakes in what it means for music to be human. A performance of dazzling intellectual virtuosity.”—Michael Spitzer, University of Liverpool

“Do not enter these pages expecting to find the Viennese Classical Style of your peers. Brace yourself instead for a complete repurposing of every element of that style and of almost everything that has been said about it.  Nothing is lost on Naomi Waltham-Smith, and it is exhilarating to watch her wrest this music from its perceived foundations and urge it into the teeming vortex of her critical imaginary.”—Scott Burnham, Graduate Center, City University of New York

An introduction to the use of R and the package dplyr for analyzing historical box-office receipts.  This document can stand on its own, but also serves as appendix to the extended commentary for an important new early document on Mozart's opera "Die Zauberflöte." The document and commentary can be seen here: https://sites.google.com/site/mozartdocuments/documents/1791-10-05

Статья посвящена одной из эстетических категорий искусства XVIII века, прежде не привлекавшей внимания исследователей. Автор обозначает ее как легкость и рассматривает на широком культурно-историческом фоне.

Ключевые слова: эстетика, эпоха Просвещения, XVIII век, рококо, галантный стиль, легкость, Д. Дидро, И. Маттесон, Ф. Шиллер, Ф. Куперен, музыка Франции.

The article deals with one of the aesthetic categories of art in the XVIII century which hasn’t drawn attention of researchers before. The author defines it as lightness and examines it in a broad historical and cultural context.

Keywords: aesthetics, Enlightenment, XVIII century, Rococo, lightness, poésie fugitive, P. de Marivaux, F. Schiller, C. Crébillon, P. Metastasio, J. Haydn, W. A. Mozart, C. W. Gluck, F. Couperin, suite, music of France.

The gramophone recording of Mozart's Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453, featuring Ernst von Dohnányi as soloist and conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, made in 1928 for the Columbia Company, is important in many respects. The Hungarian pianist and composer made little more than a handful of gramophone recordings until the late 1940s. This performance is also the first audio recording ever to be published that contained a Mozart piano concerto (some piano rolls with concertos or extracts did exist beforehand). From the beginning of his career, Dohnányi had been one of the keenest promoters of the Austrian composer's piano pieces. In the Co-lumbia recording, the performing style of Dohnányi and his orchestra is characteristic of its time, notably because it chooses to use a flexible tempo. In addition, the soloist makes use of rubato and chord dislocation. Nonetheless, the performers are also playing in an intimate conversational tone and they emphasize Mozart's structural clarity. The execution of themes by the pianist is both poetic and restrained. These traits will define the "mainstream" performing style of Mozart's piano concertos over most of the twentieth century. An implicit aesthetic standard comes into force in the critical reviews of the Columbia records: Mozart's piano concertos require lightness and gentleness from the soloist. The elements given prominence to the recording and in the reviews also appear in contemporary musicological literature and in texts on music. Recordings of two additional Mozart piano concertos (K. 271 and K. 503), played live by Dohnányi in the 1950s, display a broadly similar performing style. Over the ten years that followed the Columbia recording, the majority of Mozart's "great" piano concertos were published on records. This newly found popular interest is connected with a positive re-evaluation of this group of Mozart's works.

Cavour definì la lirica come una vera e grande industria che ha ramificazioni in tutto il mondo. L’affermazione dello statista, valida ancora oggi, non solo dimostra l’importanza economica di questa complessa forma d’arte, ma implica necessariamente il ricorso a un vasto corpus normativo che ne consenta il funzionamento.
Il presente volume intende, pertanto, analizzare le regole di diritto privato che disciplinano l’attività di un teatro lirico, concentrandosi, in particolar modo, sugli aspetti contrattuali. L’opera evidenzia la forte influenza che gli usi originati nella prassi teatrale esplicano ancora oggi e avanza alcune proposte di riforma tese a rendere più efficiente il sistema della lirica in Italia e a riequilibrare la situazione di svantaggio nella quale, di norma, l’artista lirico si trova ad operare.
Una riflessione su questi aspetti appare oggi di particolare interesse, stante l’annunciata adozione, da parte del Ministero dei beni culturali, di un Codice dello Spettacolo che andrà a ridisciplinare anche il funzionamento dei teatri lirici.

Knowing someone personally centrally involves engaging in various patterns of affective response. Inasmuch as humans can know God personally, this basic insight about the relationship between personal knowledge and affective response also applies to God: knowing God involves responding to him, and to the world, in various affectively toned ways. In light of this insight, I explore how one particular practice might contribute to human knowledge of God: namely, engaging with sacred music – in particular, sacred music in the Western, classical tradition. In investigating this topic, I tackle an issue at the interface between the philosophy of religion and aesthetics: sacred music’s capacity to arouse religious emotions. I use as a springboard Peter Kivy’s view that ‘music alone’ can only arouse emotions about itself. This view, I argue, has a counterintuitive consequence: the music in sacred works would play no part in arousing emotions with religious objects. In contrast, I develop an account of how music combines with religious factors to arouse religious emotions. I then draw out two consequences for how music can facilitate understanding between religious and non-religious outlooks. The upshot of all this, I suggest, is that by expanding the listener’s religious-emotional landscape, sacred music can enrich her knowledge of God – and that this is possible whether or not the listener subscribes propositionally to God’s reality or to any other religious doctrines.

I will present on the topic of how W. A. Mozart’s use of recitative in the three opera buffas on which he collaborated with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte – Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte – demonstrates a dramatic sense of how to use music effectively to establish and develop characters.

הירשפלד, אריאל. ״מוצרט, ס. יזהר וקול האינסוף.״. דברים ליזהר. עורכת: ניצה בן-ארי. תל אביב: זמורה-ביתן, 1996. 27-45.

Hirschfeld, A. Mozart, Yzhar and the Voice of Eternity- The Experience of Eternity in Yzhar’s Prose. In: Ben-Ari, Nitza (ed.), Devarim le Yzhar. Tel Aviv, 1996. 27-46 (Hebrew)

This paper compares and contrasts two symphonies from two different periods.
The first symphony I picked is ‘Symphony No. 25 in G minor’ by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and he composed this piece in 1773.
The second symphony I picked is ‘Symphony No. 8 in F major’ by Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed this symphony in 1812.
This paper summarizes some general analysis for two symphonies and provides a detailed analysis on how Mozart and Beethoven apply the sonata-allegro form on their first movements. Besides, this paper will discuss the related social setting of two symphonies, and how those social factors affect their musical technique.

For full details, including multimedia web resources, visit www.mozartsmusicoffriends.com.

In 1829 Goethe famously described the string quartet as “a conversation among four intelligent people.” Inspired by this metaphor, Edward Klorman’s study draws on a wide variety of documentary and iconographic sources to explore Mozart’s chamber works as “the music of friends.” Illuminating the meanings and historical foundations of comparisons between chamber music and social interplay, Klorman infuses the analysis of sonata form and phrase rhythm with a performer’s sensibility. He develops a new analytical method called multiple agency that interprets the various players within an ensemble as participants in stylized social intercourse – characters capable of surprising, seducing, outwitting, and even deceiving one another musically. This book is accompanied by Web Resources that include original recordings performed by the author and other musicians, as well as video analyses that invite the reader to experience the interplay in time, as if from within the ensemble.

In this paper I address questions of continuity and process building in
Mozart’s string quintet K.516. I attempt to show that this work, probably more than any other Mozart composition, exemplifies the concept of an overall structure, crossing the borders between the individual movements. I further argue that, allowing for a metaphorical interpretation, the G minor String Quintet may be viewed as a representation of grief process as described in modern psychology.

The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro are two of the most frequently performed operas in the repertory. Yet some fail to realize that the Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia is the same character as the Countess in Mozart’s equally renowned Le nozze di Figaro. Furthermore, an even smaller percentage of operagoers seem aware that the Countess Almaviva, who is wronged by the Count’s infidelity, eventually becomes an adulterer herself by having a child with Cherubino. This study will explore and contrast different musical realizations of the character of Rosina from Figaro trilogy by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), therefore a brief overview of the plays is provided as a frame of reference and a springboard for character development. More than forty operas have been written which are derived from the Beaumarchais trilogy or its characters, but this study is limited to the consideration of five operas. These works have been selected on the basis of their significance both musical and historically. Most importantly these five operas have been chosen because of their insights into the character of Rosina.

""Counterpoint is a structural form in music which, in the high modernist era was mapped onto literature with differing degrees of success. It has also been the basis for a model of theoretical criticism, as critics such as Bakhtin and Said have sought to read literature and culture in a polyphonic or polyvocal manner. Both attempts to transpose contrapuntalism are problematised by the difficulty of reconstructing the experience of simultaneity in forms that are encountered serially.
James Joyce, who was a talented amateur singer with a significant interest in music, attempted to incorporate contrapuntal methodology in The Sirens episode of Ulysses, and revisited the experiment in Finnegans Wake. Anthony Burgess, a late Modernist and an accomplished composer, was heavily influenced by Joyce in his fiction-writing, and has repeatedly sought to transpose musical forms into his novels.
Burgess's earliest fiction draws extensively from musical form, and in his novels he developed literary structures that seek to emulate the passacaglia, the suite and the symphony. However, the challenge of constructing a literary counterpoint was one that he repeatedly revisited, exploring ways to create the form verbally, linguistically, typographically and even televisually.
In this paper, I intend to examine the extent to which Burgess's contrapuntal experiments in fiction draw upon and extend beyond those of Joyce. I also hope to explore whether the form of counterpoint can be considered beyond the level of mere metaphor in literature or in criticism, and what, if anything contrapuntal criticism and contrapuntal literature have to say to each other.""

Os ateliers, seminários e encontros realizados com Claude Ledoux se inscreveram no âmbito de atividades acadêmicas desenvolvidas na Unicamp e na Usp na área de Análise Musical e compreenderam: Reflexão sobre a Análise Musical relacionada a tradições populares; Impacto do conhecimento de tradições populares no ato da composição musical; Claude Debussy e as tradições do Sudeste Asiático; Ligeti e a influência de músicas subsaarianas; Feldmann, tradições do Oriente-Médio e filosofias orientais; Scelsi, Murail e Harvey: interesse mutuo em músicas tibetanas, mongólicas e outros rituais budistas; Eötvös e Kurtag em relação às tradições da Europa Central; Claude Ledoux: influência das músicas da Índia do Norte e Indonésia; Relações com etnomusicologia e improvisação musical em extensão às reflexões analíticas; Levy Strauss e a Sinfonia de Berio; Relação entre música e texto em Berio e Kurt Schwitters.

When the suicide of Kate Spade was followed by Anthony Bourdain in the same week, a radio show I listened to a while back popped into my head. The discussion surrounded “copycat” suicides and the manner in which the media reports suicide that was statistically shown to be the cause of contagion of suicides. Social learning theory is another paradigm through which suicide contagion may be understood. According to the observational learning theory (Bandura, 1977), an individual who had memorized a celebrity's behaviour and had been sufficiently motivated could harbor suicidal ideation even over a longer period of time. I thought about the chains of events of suicide in celebrities. I theorize that the biggest link to this chain began when Robin Williams died by suicide. According to Kate Spade’s older sister, she was fixated on his death. Robin Williams is a legendary human being to all different types of people of religions, cultures, on a global scale—myself included.

An analysis of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major (K. 543) illuminates the composer’s voice during the peak of Viennese Classicism. Completed in Vienna on the 26th of June 1788, the E-flat major Symphony was one of the great last three symphonies he composed. Despite being one of the least analyzed  symphonies among the last three (nos. 39, 40, and 41), the E-flat Symphony certainly does not lack elements that epitomized Symphonic Classicism and its subsequent effect beyond the classical era. Besides being seemingly written in haste—evident in the autograph’s elementary mistakes —it does not lack Mozart’s ingenuity and intuitive approach to composition. Additionally, the reason for the composition could arguably be for a subscription concert series.  Nevertheless, Mozart’s subtle yet wayward  treatment of dissonance, his unprecedented use of enharmonic orchestration,  as well as his atypical  choice instrumental texture greatly contributed to the redefining of Viennese Classicism—subsequently introducing the latter foundations of Romantic self-expression.

Presenting a fresh approach to Mozart's achievements as a composer for the stage, John A. Rice outlines the composer's place in the operatic culture of his time. The book tells the story of how Mozart's operas came into existence, following the processes that he went through as he brought his operas from commission to performance. Chapters trace the series of interactions between Mozart and librettists, singers, stage designers, orchestras, and audiences. The book demonstrates how Mozart's entire operatic oeuvre is the product of a single extraordinary mind and a single pan-European operatic culture.

Comments by reviewers:

"'Mozart on the Stage' is essential reading for all who care about eighteenth-century musical theater."  Margaret Butler, The Opera Quarterly

"Rice's study must count as the best portrait yet of Mozart as a man of the theatre, sharply and convincingly drawn."  Ian Woodfield, Eighteenth-Century Music

"John A. Rice's book provides a superb, engrossing view of the theatrical business in eighteenth-century Germany and Italy, and the ways in which Mozart shaped and was shaped by it."    Judith Malafronte, Opera News

"Rice's book deserves unending praise; it should be unreservedly extolled for its fresh approach.... Though Rice is a scholar in his prime, in some ways this study seems almost a culminating one, perhaps because he dedicates it to his long-time mentor, colleague, and friend, Daniel Heartz--among the most prominent of Mozart scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Though Heartz's legacy has undeniably gifted Rice, there is a clue to another of the persistent influences in Rice's extraordinary series of books and articles. Not surprisingly, the frontispiece of 'Mozart on the Stage' is the London portrait of the well known soprano 'La Ferrarese' (Adriana Ferrarese del Bene) who, as a member of the opera buffa troupe at the Burgtheater, sang Susanna in the 1789 revival of 'Le nozze di Figaro' and Fiordiligi in the Viennese premiere of 'Così fan tutte.' Ferrarese has been a key figure in Rice's other books, a catalyst in his research from the very beginning, a cog in the wheel of this web of interactions and intrigues in Vienna."    Kay Lipton, Newsletter of the Mozart Society of America

"Affrontare un insieme di tematiche complesse quali quelle legate al rapporto tra Mozart e il teatro in un solo libro – che si ponga come obiettivi sistematici estrema chiarezza, precisione scientifica, uno sguardo complessivo e l’ offerta degli elementi-base necessari per inquadrare l’ opera del salisburghese nel panorama settecentesco a lui contemporaneo – non è certo compito facile, neppure per un decano degli studi specifici quale è John Rice, già docente di storia della musica in quattro differenti università statunitensi e autore di testi considerati fondamentali, a livello internazionale, sull’ argomento.
In ogni caso, la sfida che questo testo si propone, sarà bene dirlo subito, è pienamente vinta (e con merito) dal suo autore, che non solo riesce a fornire i parametri necessari alla comprensione della cultura operistica del tardo XVIII secolo con raro garbo e abilità didattica, ma dà struttura al proprio lavoro in modo sistematico, seppur non pedante, favorendo lo sviluppo nel lettore di una personale valutazione dell’operato di Mozart nel rapporto con le committenze, il pubblico, i collaboratori e le maestranze artistiche durante tutto il percorso di crescita professionale del musicista."   
Stefano Aresi, Drammaturgia musicale  https://www.iris.unina.it/retrieve/handle/11588/570171/15526/Il%20verismo%20musicale%20italiano.pdf

The article reviews the evidence relating to Bellini’s knowledge of Viennese classical music, from
the years of his training to his last stay in Paris. The material examined includes documents that are already
known and others that are little or not known. Among these, the transcription, made in Naples around 1824,
of a piece from Mozart’s cantata Davide pentito, and the fragments of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s sonatas found
in the Bellini’s working papers (‘studi giornalieri’) used in Paris in 1834-35. A further piece sheds possible
new light on the relationship between Bellini and Chopin. In light of the facts examined, the article concludes
that the stay in Paris was an opportunity for Bellini to enrich a path of knowledge characterized by constant
curiosity towards new experiences.