Merry Mozart
September 30, 2007 — 3 pm, Sanders Theatre
Gunther Schuller, Principal Guest Conductor
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart,
Symphony No. 30 in D Major, K. 202
1. Molto allegro
2. Andantino con moto
3. Menuetto: Trio
4. Presto
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart,
Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major, K. 314
1. Allegro aperto
2. Andante ma non troppo
3. Allegro
Fenwick Smith, flutist
Intermission
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart,
Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543
1. Adagio—Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Menuetto (Allegro) and Trio
4. Finale (Allegro)
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Symphony No. 30 in D Major, K. 202
Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began to call himself Wolfgang Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777, was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. He composed this D major symphony in Salzburg in 1774; the manuscript is dated May 5 of that year. It was certainly performed in Salzburg at that time, though no date of performance is known. The symphony calls for oboes, horns, and trumpets in pairs, plus strings.
We think of a symphony as a particularly demanding, large scale orchestral work that serves as the high point of an orchestral program. That view developed during the nineteenth century, largely owing to the work of Beethoven, abetted by such later masters as Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler. But in the eighteenth century — and especially before the last quarter of that century — the notion of "symphony" was less pretentious. It was often merely preparation for a main event, as the definition by Johann Philipp Kirnberger, written for Sulzer's General Theory of the Fine Arts (1772), indicates:
"The symphony is particularly suited to the expression of greatness, solemnity, and stateliness. Its purpose is to prepare the listener for the important [!] music that follows, or, in a concert in a hall, to exhibit all the pomp of instrumental music... The concert symphony, which constitutes an independent entity with no notion of its serving to introduce other music, achieves its purpose solely through a sonorous, brilliant, and fiery manner of writing."
The symphony as introduction was generally less highly regarded than the opera or oratorio that followed. It was often merely a curtain raiser. It was also common to play all of the movements except the finale at the beginning (where they would function as an overture) and then save the last movement to end the evening's music-making, most of which would be vocal rather than instrumental.
But Haydn and Mozart wrote symphonies that were clearly independent entities demanding the attention of listeners in a way that many earlier symphonies did not. The instrumental writing grew more complex and virtuosic, the ideas became bolder and more dramatic; sudden shifts of key, rhythm, dynamics, and mood made the symphony more dramatic. Yet this development of greater "seriousness" took place over a period of decades.
When Mozart composed this particularly cheery D-major symphony, he was eighteen years old and recently produced two symphonies regarded as milestones in his development: the "little G minor" symphony, K.183, and the A major symphony, K.201. Indeed, these were the two symphonies that immediately preceded composition of "No. 30" (the numbering is purely conventional), K.183 in late 1773, and K.201 in early April 1774, just a month before the completion of K.202.
The old romantic theories of a great composer's stylistic growth, of the increasing "depth" and "expressiveness" of his music, are shattered on the rocks of this jovial symphony. Certainly K.202 did not speak to the romanticism of the nineteenth century. But we have no reason for thinking that it failed to speak to the audience for which Mozart wrote it, which might no doubt have applauded its wit, grace, and charm.
The symphony begins with a fanfare-like figure that ends with a discreet trill, heard just once. Another, slightly different version of the fanfare material turns into a light but vigorous dialogue between the cellos and basses on the one hand and first violins on the other. This passage ends with another, more emphatic statement of the trill figure. First violins sing the contrasting secondary theme, which comes to a closing with yet another trill — this time echoed immediately and emphatically by the oboes. The subtle, understated figure has grown more prominent; in the remainder of the exposition it fills the texture (in Neal Zaslaw's colorful image) "like a hive of musical bumblebees trying to sing polyphony" against single sustained notes in the horns and trumpets.
Mozart reduces the orchestra to strings alone for the slow movement, Andantino con moto, cast in a very compact sonata form. It sounds simple on the surface, but the eighteen-year-old composer has created a very polished texture in which each line has its own character and role to play.
The Menuetto is very much like a real dance in tempo though richer in orchestration and texture than the dances that were composed purely for the ballroom. Mozart recalls the first movement's trills in the second phrase. A sudden change to the minor comes as a surprise, but it does not last long before the opening material returns. The Trio (for strings only) features a bit of syncopation between the first violin and the rest of the ensemble and briefly confirms the surprising change to the minor that characterizes the Menuetto.
The finale begins with another fanfare that is a version of the symphony's opening gesture now changed from 3/4 to 2/4 time. It alternates with a quiet staccato figure in the violins to lay out the movement's basic dynamic contrast. There are references to the trill that so dominated the first movement, too. This unusual combination of serious and witty characters ends with a teenage prank: the coda sounds a last repetition of the fanfare, which might be the very end of the movement or might perhaps be followed by a few more sturdy chords to close. Instead a quiet phrase, rhythmically derived from the violins' quiet staccato figure, evaporates — and the piece is suddenly over.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major, K. 314
Mozart composed his two flute concertos in Mannheim in early 1778 on commission from a Dutch merchant who played the flute; the dates of first performances are not known. Actually Concerto No. 2 was a transposed and adapted version of an oboe concerto that Mozart had already composed in Salzburg in the summer of 1777. In addition to the solo flute, the score calls for two oboes, two horns, and strings.
Mozart spent the entire winter of 1777-1778 in the musical city of Mannheim, renowned for its orchestra comprising many of the best players in all of Europe ("an orchestra of generals," it was called). Mozart was traveling with his mother. The end goal of the journey was Paris, where Wolfgang hoped to find wealthy patrons eager to pay him for compositions and audiences just as eager to hear him play as they had earlier when he had visited as a genuine prodigy. But Wolfgang dawdled in Mannheim, enjoying himself in more ways than just musical. He fell in love with an opera singer named Aloysia Weber and went so far as to write his father with the suggestion that they should marry and go to Italy, where Wolfgang would manage her career as a singer. This, of course, was not at all what Leopold had in mind for his son. He urged him to get on to Paris.
The context is important for understanding Wolfgang's letters to his father at this time. He was doing his best to defy paternal authority, though he was not to prepared break off with his father entirely. Still, his every letter was carefully slanted to explain his staying in Mannheim.
One of Mozart's new acquaintances there was a wealthy Dutch merchant who played the flute. Mozart called him "DeJean" in his letters; the spelling is almost certainly his phonetic transcription of DeJong. In December 1777, Mozart wrote to his father, DeJong would pay him 200 florins for composing "three little, easy short concertos." A composer of Mozart's extraordinary facility should have been able to dash off a commission like that in a matter of a few weeks at most. But three months later he continued to make excuses for not having finished the commission (despite the fact that the 200 florins would have been a most welcome addition to his exchequer).
"Here I do not have one hour of peace. I can only compose at night, and so cannot get up early. Besides, one is not disposed to work at all times. I could certainly scribble the whole day, but a piece of music goes out into the world, and, after all, I don't want to feel ashamed for my name to be on it. And, as you know, I am quite inhibited when I have to compose for an instrument which I cannot endure."
This letter has caused some writers to assert that Mozart really disliked the flute — this despite the evidence of brilliantly conceived parts for that instrument in many of his scores — not to mention the beauty of the concerto that he actually composed at this time! It appears far more likely that the letter is a carefu excuse to explain to Papa why on earth he had not finished the commission and left for Paris. Mozart was not about to confess that he was spending precious time courting Aloysia Weber!
In the end, he composed one concerto (K.313) and adopted the subterfuge of rewriting and earlier work — an oboe concerto — as a second score for flute (K.314), but he never did complete the full commission — and DeJong paid him a lower fee accordingly.
But if DeJong felt he was cheated by Mozart's device of rewriting a work that already existed, he could not have looked closely at the two versions of his concerto. It is true that the solo part was conceived first for oboe — the relatively low range of the instrument throughout the concerto indicates as much, and Mozart didn't bother to change that. But he did more than simply copy the concerto over in a new key. He made many changes in phrase endings and dynamics, as well as some revision of the melody and enrichment of the harmony.
He didn't have to change much, because the concerto was already — deservedly — a favorite. It is rather French in style, with cheerful outer movements that allow the soloist center stage, very much like an operatic singer during the big aria. The witty repartee of the opening movement includes gestures that could come straight out of a comic opera. The slow movement provides a serene contrast to the high spirits of the beginning and end, but the finale soon arrives with sparkling dance rhythms to close the concerto with a cheerful rondo.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543
Mozart's last three symphonies, K. 543, 550, and 551, were all composed during the summer of 1788, probably for a series of subscription concerts that seem not to have taken place. The dates of the first performances are unknown. Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K.543, was completed on June 26, 1788. The score calls for flute, two each of clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, plus timpani and strings.
Few examples of high-voltage composition are as impressive as Mozart's feat in the summer of 1788, composing his last three symphonies along with a number of smaller pieces in something under two months. Our awe stems not so much from the sheer speed with which the notes were put down on paper or even from the evident mastery displayed in the finished works, but rather from the extraordinary range of mood and character represented in these three symphonies. We'd be hard put to find three more strikingly varied works from the pen of a single composer; how much more miraculous it is, then, that the three symphonies were written almost at one sitting.
It was a difficult summer. During the month of June 1788 Mozart wrote a series of letters to his friend Michael Puchberg pleading for repeated loans of money to help him out. Yet at this very time he composed the E-flat symphony, the most lyrical of the final three, which gives no hint of his distraught condition.
Clarinets were relatively new in the symphony orchestra, and it was by no means a foregone conclusion that they would be included. Mozart's choice of clarinets instead of oboes produces a gentler woodwind sonority especially appropriate to the autumnal lyricism of Symphony No. 39.
The first movement opens with a stately slow introduction. Dotted rhythms provide a nervous background for scale figures (which will recur in the body of the movement), culminating in a grindingly dissonant appoggiatura. Just as we seem about to pause, ready to begin the Allegro, the activity decelerates and we hear a stark, hushed chromatic figure recalling some of the "uncanny" moments in Don Giovanni. The melodic line of the introduction comes to a close only at the opening phrase of the smiling allegro theme, a calm pastoral scene following the tension of the preceding passage. The development section is one of the shortest in any Mozart symphony, never moving far afield harmonically. Following a passage on the nearby key of A flat, a vigorous modulation seems to be leading to a passage in the minor, but at the last moment a wonderful woodwind extension brings it around to the home key and ushers in the recapitulation.
The slow movement opens with deceptive simplicity. Among the most delicious moments are the woodwind additions to the main theme in the strings at the recapitulation. The main theme ends with a momentary turn to the minor just before the cadence; at the corresponding point in the recapitulation, this generates a surprising but completely logical passage that seems very dark indeed before the imitative woodwind theme returns in the tonic.
The hearty Menuetto provides a strong contrast to the delicacies of the Andante; its Trio features a clarinet solo with little echoes from the flute.
The Finale is often called the most Haydnesque movement Mozart ever wrote, largely because it is nearly monothematic. The principal theme, beginning with a group of scurrying sixteenth notes followed by a hiccup, produces a series of motives that carry the bulk of the discourse. The scurrying turn appears alone or in combinations, turning to unexpected keys after a sudden silence; the "hiccup" often comes as a separate response from the woodwinds to the rushing figure in the strings. Mozart has fully absorbed Haydn's wit and showers it forth in this delightful close.
© Copyright 2007. Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)