Getting reacquainted with Mozart

A cadence is a three-chord sequence wrapping up a section in a musical work — usually a 6-4 chord, followed by a dominant seventh, and ending with a return to the tonic, which gives it the sense of closure. The cadenza in a concerto is an often (but not always) improvised passage or detour inserted by the performer between the six-four and the dominant seventh chords of a cadence, based on themes from the movement. I have written cadenzas for all the Mozart concertos that I played, unless Mozart himself provided one. In this entry, I describe some of the many things I discovered about the music I was playing by writing these cadenzas.

The necessity of embellishment in Mozart

When and how to embellish Mozart’s at times elliptical writing has been an art of long standing, and more recently, also a science. There is some documentary evidence showing how Mozart himself ornamented sections of his work that in other manuscripts, presumably intended to be performed by himself, appear without ornamentation. But such instances are few, and the texts that call for embellishment many. In this entry I show how the musical text itself holds the best clue as to whether a given section requires embellishing.

The condensed brilliance of Mozart’s D major rondo

The late rondo in D major, a short and seemingly light piece, is a contemporary of such monumental works as the C minor piano concerto and The Marriage of Figaro. But it would be a serious mistake to think of it as trivial small fry. The way in which the various styles of music we are familiar to hear in Mozart’s works — operatic, symphonic, concertante, chamber — are combined in the rondo is reminiscent of Mozart’s substantial masterpieces, like the slow movement of the C minor concerto. Their presence within the narrow confines of the brief rondo makes K. 485 all the more remarkable.

At the crossroads of two finales

What does one of the most slapsticky finales of a Mozart piano concerto have in common with his most anguished ones? For one, both take the form of a theme and variations, an unusual choice for the final movement of a piano concerto. In this blog, I explore some of the other formal similarities between the structures of the two movements, alongside the stark contrast between them.

A most unusual slow movement by Mozart

We are accustomed to highly lyrical and singable slow movements of Mozart piano concertos, like the popularly known Elvira Madigan andante from the C major concerto, K. 467. But every now and then Mozart throws a curve ball at us, as in the andante movement of the G major concerto, K. 453, the subject of this blog, an introspective second movement that separates two fiery ones.

Making the most out of obscurity

The glass harmonica is the type of instrument you’d expect a maverick non-musician to come up with: brilliant in conception, but musically unviable. Indeed, it was invented by a polymath, Benjamin Franklin, when Mozart was a small child. The instrument was immensely popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, and many composers included it in their works. Today it is associated mostly with Mozart, much like the arpeggione is associated with Schubert. Although unlike Schubert, Mozart didn’t write any iconic work for the glass harmonica, he did write this wonderful Adagio, which I discuss here, and which I hugely enjoyed playing on a slightly more popular instrument. Franklin’s glass harmonica has a range of 37 notes (some three octaves) in the upper range of the piano, and articulation is rather difficult when the sounds are produced by pressing wet fingers against rotating glass bowls. So what can Mozart make out of all these limitations? As it turns out, quite a bit. And rendering the work on the piano raises several intriguing questions.

The Adagio in B minor: A different sort of Mozart

How is this Mozart different from all the other Mozarts? Specifically, why is the Adagio in B minor, K 540, so different from hundreds of others Mozart has written? It was written in 1788, a tough year for Mozart, when he was beset by financial problems and struggling to get commissions. But we don’t need to know any of this to be struck by the un-operatic character of this sombre, ambiguous piece, built around diminished chords, in an almost Beethovian manner, and broken octaves.

The subtle drama of emotion and intellect in Mozart’s G major sonata, K. 283

Is music an emotional or an intellectual experience? (This is the million-dollar musical equivalent of the mind-body problem.) There is no good answer to it, or maybe there are too many good answers. One of them concerns Mozart’s lovely K 283 sonata, where the intellectual and the emotional aspects of music are but two different ways of approaching the same issue.