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Rondo in A minor (Mozart)

The Rondo in A minor, K. 511, is a work for solo piano by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The piano Mozart owned in 1787 in his birthplace, Salzburg (built by Anton Walter)

Composition, premiere, and publication edit

Mozart recorded the completion of the Rondo in his personal thematic catalog on 11 March 1787;[a] he was age 31 at the time and had only recently returned from a triumphant journey to Prague, where he witnessed great success for a new production of his 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro, for his Symphony No. 38, and for his own solo piano performances.[2][3] notes some other major works of this stage in Mozart's life: the Rondo shortly preceded the beginning of work on Don Giovanni; and instrumental pieces from 1787 include the Third and Fourth String Quintets as well as the string serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

No musical sketches for the Rondo survive. This is not surprising, since as Ulrich Konrad has noted, none of the many surviving Mozart sketches are for solo keyboard works; apparently Mozart felt no need to sketch in his native performing medium.[4] Simon Keefe even suggests that the Rondo was not created through ordinary musical composition but rather was improvised on the spot, perhaps before an audience in Prague during his trip there (January–February 1787), or at a Vienna concert on 11 February 1787.[5]

No record survives of Mozart having premiered the completed Rondo in public. Aside from Keefe's suggestion above, a different guess is entertained by Scheideler: "Since subscription [i.e., benefit] concerts of two of [Mozart's] musician friends took place shortly after he completed the work (that of the oboist Friedrich Ramm on 14 March and of the bass singer Ludwig Karl Fischer on 21 March), and works by Mozart were ascertainably performed there ... it seems plausible to assume that the Rondo in A minor was also given its first performance at one of these concerts."[2]

The Rondo was published (1787) by Franz Anton Hoffmeister in Vienna, and reissued by a variety of publishers in the years after Mozart's death in 1791.[6] The Hoffmeister publication consisted of a volume of works for piano by Mozart and other composers; it was issued as part of a monthly subscription series[b] entitled Prénumération pour le Forte Piano ou Clavecin.[7][incomplete short citation]. The title is in French. For "prénumération" see Praenumeration. "Pour le Forte Piano ou Clavecin" means "for the piano or harpsichord". The specific term fortepiano is widely used in modern times to designate the early version of the piano for which Mozart composed; in Mozart's day it was simply one of several words used to denote the piano. Concerning "or harpsichord", an effective performance of the Rondo on this instrument seems hard to imagine, but well into Beethoven's time music publishers used the phrase "or harpsichord" to encourage sales of music composed for piano, including even the "Moonlight" Sonata.

An alternative to buying printed music in Mozart's day was the purchase of handwritten copies.[8] Later in 1787 (17 October), an advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung announced that manuscript copies of the Rondo (price 1 florin) were available from the copyist Johann Traeg, who had previously issued three of Mozart's piano concertos.[9] Traeg frequently produced unauthorized copies of composers' works; there is no evidence whether or not his version the Rondo was created with Mozart's cooperation.

Several editions of the Rondo are available today. The modern editor will generally rely on surviving copies of the Hoffmeister edition and on facsimile editions of the original autograph (hand-written) manuscript.[c] The two sources differ in dozens of places, though mostly just in details of phrasing or articulation. The edition by Scheideler relies primarily on the autograph, but includes a list of all the divergences.[d][2]

The music edit

The work consists of a single movement; it is in 6/8 time and the tempo marking is Andante.

Form edit

The work follows the common A–B–A–C–A pattern characteristic of the rondo form; "A" is a returning theme and "B" and "C" are episodes. "A" is in A minor (the key of the piece), "B" is in F major, and "C" is in A major. Following the last appearance of "A" there is a coda that draws on the music for A as well as a minor key version of C.

Each of the five major sections is itself structured. "A" is in ternary form, "a b a", opening with a passage "a" in A minor, a middle section "b" that modulates to C major (the relative major), then an ornamented repetition of "a". The middle rendition of "A" is truncated, consisting of just one repetition of "a" rather than the full "a b a".[10]

Concerning the episodes "B" and "C", Forte suggests that each is a brief instantiation of sonata form; it moves to the dominant key in the first part (exposition), and in the second part first explores remote keys (development) then returns to the original material all in the tonic key (recapitulation).[10] Each episode ends in a transitional passage returning to the key of the following "A" section; Forte notes that these transitions are "very long in comparison to the other parts."[10]

Musical texture edit

As Cowdery notes, the three main sections "A", "B", and "C" divide the beat into progressively smaller units: "A" primarily uses eighth notes while "B" uses sixteenths and "C" uses triplet sixteenths.[11]

The work abounds in chromatic passages (i.e., involving closely spaced notes drawn from outside the set of pitches of the keynote scale). For example, in the third and fourth bars, the melody line covers the first eight notes of the ascending chromatic scale going upward from the tonic note (A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E).

 

The "A" section is ornamented with increasing extravagance with each of its returns.

The transitions from "B" and "C" back to "A" are in free form and bear the hallmarks of a fantasia or concerto cadenza, with rapid modulations to new keys, "drifting arpeggios and diminished harmonies".[12]

Performance practice edit

Since the work is so heavily ornamented, performers are obliged to arrive at decisions concerning the meaning of Mozart's musical notation for the ornaments. Konrad Wolff offers a clear criterion, namely an appeal to the influential textbook on violin playing written (and published in Mozart's birth year 1756) by the composer's father Leopold: "As for embellishments, Mozart was very much his father's child, which is to say that one can find most answers by studying Leopold Mozart's Gründliche Violinschule." Based on this criterion, Wolff judges that in general, performers should play embellishments on, rather than before, the beat – though for the main theme of the K. 511 rondo, which features a prominent triple grace note (see quotation above), Wolff allows for the possibility of playing it before the beat as well.[13]

In bars 134–135, the rising sequence of the main theme receives a particularly intense form of ornamentation: every note is trilled.

 
(Due to software limitations, the trills and turns in the scores are not executed in the sound file.)

Wolff also addresses this sort of passage, saying "trill chains must be smoothly connected, with no accent given to the new trill tone at its entrance." The basis for his advice is a piano exercise taught by Mozart to his pupil Johann Nepomuk Hummel and recalled later by Hummel in his own textbook[e]

A number of the ornaments and variations are not notated with signs, but simply written out by Mozart in ordinary music notation. These can be taken more or less at face value, but they are of great importance for performance practice nonetheless, as they bear on issues and controversies in historically informed performance. The reason is that many other works of Mozart are notated quite sparely, with nothing like the layers of ornamentation he added onto the repetitions of the main theme of the Rondo in A Minor. One view is that Mozart himself, who was famed for his ability at musical improvisation, would embellish such passages on the spot. However, when serving others, as in writing cadenzas for his piano concertos (which he improvised in his own performances) or writing for publication, he would fill in the details.

Robert Levin (1990) has argued forcefully that modern performers should ornament the plainer repeated passages of Mozart scores, just as (he believes) Mozart himself did; and he faults modern conservatories sharply for failing to provide young performers with the instruction (particularly in music theory) they would need to do this.

For performers who seek to follow Levin's recommendation,[f] works like the Rondo in A Minor are of great value: the finished work, written out so painstakingly, is a sort of compendium of Mozartean ornamentational technique from which the modern player can learn. To help make this point, Levin juxtaposes all ten appearances of the Rondo's main motif in musical notation, illustrating the striking variety of decoration and restatement that Mozart achieved.[14]

One of the ways in which the main theme is decorated appears at measures 86–87: it is much like the ornamentation of measures 5–6, but the melody notes that would normally appear on the musical beat are delayed slightly, with a sixteenth rest appearing on the beat instead. The left hand plays on the beat as usual.

Measures 5–6:

 

Measures 86-87:

 

This kind of ornamentation has been identified as the 18th-century version of tempo rubato; the left hand accompaniment remains steady, but the right hand imposes a slight delay in the melody notes.[15] Further discussion of this practice, with reference to K. 511 but also citation of 18th-century authorities, was provided by Roland Jackson.[16] The practice was described by Mozart himself in a letter to his father.[g][h]

Critical reception edit

 
Detail of portrait of Mozart by his brother-in-law Joseph Lange

The Mozart scholar Hermann Abert offered a warm appreciation of the work: it "is one of the most important keyboard rondos ever composed. With its exotically tinged theme, it is a typically Mozartian piece in A minor, its first four bars, with their characteristic chromaticisms and dynamics, revealing an impassioned tension that is maintained through the whole movement, without ever achieving any resolution in an optimistic sense". Abert also appreciates the ways in which the two episodes are structurally related to the main theme; for instance the A major episode takes the cadential material of the main theme as its basis.[i]

Robert Levin hears the work as despairing: "More than any other solo work it seems forlorn, dejected; its fundamental bleakness drags against the articulateness of the ornamentation, which struggles with increasing intensity against a manifestly hopeless fate."[18] Richard Wigmore takes the despair theme a step further, following a longstanding tradition in Mozart biography.Keefe (2017), pp. 451–452 "With a Classical composer it is always dangerous to hear music as autobiography. But we do know that Mozart suffered a brief illness in the early spring of 1787, and that his popularity as a composer-virtuoso was on the wane. So perhaps it is not being over-fanciful to link the depressive, almost morbid tone of the Rondo ... to Mozart’s physical and emotional state."[19]

Vladimir Horowitz disagreed with the "despair" interpretation and cautioned in particular against letting it lead to dragging the tempo in performance. His remarks on the work were recorded by David Dubal: "People today think that slow playing means profound ... [Horowitz approached the piano and continued.] ... Here is how they play the Mozart Rondo in A minor. It goes on for eleven minutes with some pianists. They think that because it is in a minor key, that it must be Mozart at his most serious. But listen to how it needs to move. [He illustrates.] There are dance elements, too, in this rondo. It can't be academic. It is not really sad. It is pensive."[20][j]

Influence edit

The moody chromaticism of the work has reminded many listeners of the (decades later) piano music of Frédéric Chopin. Mitchell speculates a possible specific case of influence: "Chopin revered Mozart ...and this reverence influenced his own pianistic textures. (It is unthinkable, for example, that Chopin could have written his A minor mazurka, opus 17, no. 4, had he not known Mozart's rondo, K. 511.)"[21]

Notes edit

  1. ^ The autograph manuscript is also dated 11 March.[1]
  2. ^ Of the series Edge (2001), p. 1006 writes, "In 1785, ... Hoffmeister initiated three separate subscription series of musical publications, one for "chamber music" (including symphonies and concertos, as well as works for smaller ensembles), one for keyboard music (including concertos and chamber music, as well as solo pieces), and a third for flute music (including concertos and chamber music)." Mozart own 22 issues of the series at the time of his death in 1791 (Deutsch 1965:603)[incomplete short citation].
  3. ^ The autograph is currently in private ownership and not available to scholars, but before its disappearance it was photographed and published in facsimile. Scheideler lists the following as a published version of the autograph facsimile: Musikalische Seltenheiten ("Musical Rarities"). Wiener Liebhaberdrucke, Vol. V. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Zwei Rondos D-Dur und A-Moll. Edited after the manuscripts in facsimile reproduction by Hans Gál, Vienna, New York, 1923.[1]
  4. ^ See preface to this edition for Scheideler's editorial practice. The list of differences is on line and may be downloaded from [1]. The same document describes varying opinion concerning which of the two main sources should be considered the more reliable.
  5. ^ "The exercise consists of trilling the same two white keys, changing fingers but without interrupting the flow." See Wolff (1990:108–109).
  6. ^ N.B. The opposite view has also been taken; Charles Rosen felt that ornamentation was anachronistic in Mozart's own time – "a dead weight from an earlier style" – and urged performers to shun it in most contexts. See his The Classical Style (New York: Norton, 1970, 2nd ed. 1997), pp. 100–108; the quotation is from p. 101.
  7. ^ The letter, which he wrote while traveling in Augsburg in 1777, says "... besides, I always keep correct time. They are all wondering about that. They simply can't believe that you can play a Tempo rubato in an Adagio, and the left hand knows nothing about it but goes on playing in strict time. As far as they know, the left hand always follows the right." Translation from Spaethling, Robert (2000) Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life. New York, Norton, p. 81.
  8. ^ A comment by Rowland (1998:28) suggests that the amount of delay and articulation of the notes is only loosely approximated by the musical notation; "even this amount of detail must surely have been inadequate to express the subtlety of Mozart's playing".
  9. ^ Abert's discussion, originally written in the 1920s, appears in his 2007 publication.[17]
  10. ^ The work has been recorded many times by established pianists and multiple recordings can be accessed from Video hosting services. Horowitz is correct in asserting that performance times occasionally exceed 11 minutes. His own recording (made for Deutsche Grammophon in 1988–1989) is on the brisk side among the range of tempos on offer.

References edit

  1. ^ a b Scheideler 2009.
  2. ^ a b c Scheideler 2009, Preface.
  3. ^ Abert 2007.
  4. ^ Konrad, Ulrich (2006) "Compositional method," in Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe, The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 104.
  5. ^ Keefe 2017, pp. 483–484.
  6. ^ Source: Neue Mozart-Ausgabe commentary, linked below.
  7. ^ Source: Deutsch (1965:603)
  8. ^ Edge 2001, p. 4.
  9. ^ Edge 2001, p. 797.
  10. ^ a b c Forte, Allen (1980) "Generative chromaticism in Mozart's music: The Rondo in A minor, K. 511." The Musical Quarterly 66: 459–483.
  11. ^ Zaslaw, Neal, and William Cowdery The Compleat Mozart: a Guide to the Musical Works, p. 325 (New York, 1990) ISBN 0-393-02886-0. The article on the A minor Rondo was written by William Cowdery.
  12. ^ Keefe 2017, p. 484.
  13. ^ Wolff, Konrad (1990) Masters of the Keyboard: Individual Style Elements in the Piano Music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms. Bloomington Indiana University Press, p. 108.
  14. ^ Robert D. Levin (1990) "Improvised embellishments in Mozart's keyboard music." Early Music 20:221–233.
  15. ^ David Rowland (1998) The Cambridge Companion to the Piano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  16. ^ Roland Jackson (2013) Performance Practice: A Dictionary-Guide for Musicians. Routledge, p. 344.
  17. ^ Abert 2007, p. 986.
  18. ^ Robert D. Levin (2004) "Mozart's solo keyboard music," Robert Marshall (ed.) Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music, Routledge, quotation from p. 302.
  19. ^ From his program notes to a recording of the Rondo on Hyperion Records by Gottlieb Wallisch, catalog CKD352.
  20. ^ David Dubal (2004) Evenings with Horowitz: A Personal Portrait. Hal Leonard Corporation. Quotation from p. 68.
  21. ^ Mark Lindsey Mitchell (2000) Virtuosi: A Defense and a (sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great Pianists. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Quotation from p. 171.

Cited sources edit

  • Abert, Hermann (2007) [1921]. W. A. Mozart. Translated by Spencer, Stewart (revised ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. Updated with new footnotes by Cliff Eisen.
  • Edge, Dexter (2001). Mozart's Viennese copyists (Ph.D. dissertation). University of Southern California.
  • Keefe, Simon P. (2017). Mozart in Vienna: The Final Decade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Scheideler, Ullrich [in German] (2009). Mozart: Rondo A-moll KV 511 (With editorial preface and notes on sources.). Munich: G. Henle.

External links edit

rondo, minor, mozart, rondo, minor, work, solo, piano, wolfgang, amadeus, mozart, piano, mozart, owned, 1787, birthplace, salzburg, built, anton, walter, contents, composition, premiere, publication, music, form, musical, texture, performance, practice, critic. The Rondo in A minor K 511 is a work for solo piano by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart The piano Mozart owned in 1787 in his birthplace Salzburg built by Anton Walter Contents 1 Composition premiere and publication 2 The music 2 1 Form 2 2 Musical texture 3 Performance practice 4 Critical reception 5 Influence 6 Notes 7 References 7 1 Cited sources 8 External linksComposition premiere and publication editMozart recorded the completion of the Rondo in his personal thematic catalog on 11 March 1787 a he was age 31 at the time and had only recently returned from a triumphant journey to Prague where he witnessed great success for a new production of his 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro for his Symphony No 38 and for his own solo piano performances 2 3 notes some other major works of this stage in Mozart s life the Rondo shortly preceded the beginning of work on Don Giovanni and instrumental pieces from 1787 include the Third and Fourth String Quintets as well as the string serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik No musical sketches for the Rondo survive This is not surprising since as Ulrich Konrad has noted none of the many surviving Mozart sketches are for solo keyboard works apparently Mozart felt no need to sketch in his native performing medium 4 Simon Keefe even suggests that the Rondo was not created through ordinary musical composition but rather was improvised on the spot perhaps before an audience in Prague during his trip there January February 1787 or at a Vienna concert on 11 February 1787 5 No record survives of Mozart having premiered the completed Rondo in public Aside from Keefe s suggestion above a different guess is entertained by Scheideler Since subscription i e benefit concerts of two of Mozart s musician friends took place shortly after he completed the work that of the oboist Friedrich Ramm on 14 March and of the bass singer Ludwig Karl Fischer on 21 March and works by Mozart were ascertainably performed there it seems plausible to assume that the Rondo in A minor was also given its first performance at one of these concerts 2 The Rondo was published 1787 by Franz Anton Hoffmeister in Vienna and reissued by a variety of publishers in the years after Mozart s death in 1791 6 The Hoffmeister publication consisted of a volume of works for piano by Mozart and other composers it was issued as part of a monthly subscription series b entitled Prenumeration pour le Forte Piano ou Clavecin 7 incomplete short citation The title is in French For prenumeration see Praenumeration Pour le Forte Piano ou Clavecin means for the piano or harpsichord The specific term fortepiano is widely used in modern times to designate the early version of the piano for which Mozart composed in Mozart s day it was simply one of several words used to denote the piano Concerning or harpsichord an effective performance of the Rondo on this instrument seems hard to imagine but well into Beethoven s time music publishers used the phrase or harpsichord to encourage sales of music composed for piano including even the Moonlight Sonata An alternative to buying printed music in Mozart s day was the purchase of handwritten copies 8 Later in 1787 17 October an advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung announced that manuscript copies of the Rondo price 1 florin were available from the copyist Johann Traeg who had previously issued three of Mozart s piano concertos 9 Traeg frequently produced unauthorized copies of composers works there is no evidence whether or not his version the Rondo was created with Mozart s cooperation Several editions of the Rondo are available today The modern editor will generally rely on surviving copies of the Hoffmeister edition and on facsimile editions of the original autograph hand written manuscript c The two sources differ in dozens of places though mostly just in details of phrasing or articulation The edition by Scheideler relies primarily on the autograph but includes a list of all the divergences d 2 The music edit nbsp Rondo No 3 in A minor K 511 source source Performed by David H Porter Problems playing this file See media help The work consists of a single movement it is in 6 8 time and the tempo marking is Andante Form edit The work follows the common A B A C A pattern characteristic of the rondo form A is a returning theme and B and C are episodes A is in A minor the key of the piece B is in F major and C is in A major Following the last appearance of A there is a coda that draws on the music for A as well as a minor key version of C Each of the five major sections is itself structured A is in ternary form a b a opening with a passage a in A minor a middle section b that modulates to C major the relative major then an ornamented repetition of a The middle rendition of A is truncated consisting of just one repetition of a rather than the full a b a 10 Concerning the episodes B and C Forte suggests that each is a brief instantiation of sonata form it moves to the dominant key in the first part exposition and in the second part first explores remote keys development then returns to the original material all in the tonic key recapitulation 10 Each episode ends in a transitional passage returning to the key of the following A section Forte notes that these transitions are very long in comparison to the other parts 10 Musical texture edit As Cowdery notes the three main sections A B and C divide the beat into progressively smaller units A primarily uses eighth notes while B uses sixteenths and C uses triplet sixteenths 11 The work abounds in chromatic passages i e involving closely spaced notes drawn from outside the set of pitches of the keynote scale For example in the third and fourth bars the melody line covers the first eight notes of the ascending chromatic scale going upward from the tonic note A B B C C D D E nbsp source Audio playback is not supported in your browser You can download the audio file The A section is ornamented with increasing extravagance with each of its returns The transitions from B and C back to A are in free form and bear the hallmarks of a fantasia or concerto cadenza with rapid modulations to new keys drifting arpeggios and diminished harmonies 12 Performance practice editSince the work is so heavily ornamented performers are obliged to arrive at decisions concerning the meaning of Mozart s musical notation for the ornaments Konrad Wolff offers a clear criterion namely an appeal to the influential textbook on violin playing written and published in Mozart s birth year 1756 by the composer s father Leopold As for embellishments Mozart was very much his father s child which is to say that one can find most answers by studying Leopold Mozart s Grundliche Violinschule Based on this criterion Wolff judges that in general performers should play embellishments on rather than before the beat though for the main theme of the K 511 rondo which features a prominent triple grace note see quotation above Wolff allows for the possibility of playing it before the beat as well 13 In bars 134 135 the rising sequence of the main theme receives a particularly intense form of ornamentation every note is trilled nbsp source Audio playback is not supported in your browser You can download the audio file Due to software limitations the trills and turns in the scores are not executed in the sound file Wolff also addresses this sort of passage saying trill chains must be smoothly connected with no accent given to the new trill tone at its entrance The basis for his advice is a piano exercise taught by Mozart to his pupil Johann Nepomuk Hummel and recalled later by Hummel in his own textbook e A number of the ornaments and variations are not notated with signs but simply written out by Mozart in ordinary music notation These can be taken more or less at face value but they are of great importance for performance practice nonetheless as they bear on issues and controversies in historically informed performance The reason is that many other works of Mozart are notated quite sparely with nothing like the layers of ornamentation he added onto the repetitions of the main theme of the Rondo in A Minor One view is that Mozart himself who was famed for his ability at musical improvisation would embellish such passages on the spot However when serving others as in writing cadenzas for his piano concertos which he improvised in his own performances or writing for publication he would fill in the details Robert Levin 1990 has argued forcefully that modern performers should ornament the plainer repeated passages of Mozart scores just as he believes Mozart himself did and he faults modern conservatories sharply for failing to provide young performers with the instruction particularly in music theory they would need to do this For performers who seek to follow Levin s recommendation f works like the Rondo in A Minor are of great value the finished work written out so painstakingly is a sort of compendium of Mozartean ornamentational technique from which the modern player can learn To help make this point Levin juxtaposes all ten appearances of the Rondo s main motif in musical notation illustrating the striking variety of decoration and restatement that Mozart achieved 14 One of the ways in which the main theme is decorated appears at measures 86 87 it is much like the ornamentation of measures 5 6 but the melody notes that would normally appear on the musical beat are delayed slightly with a sixteenth rest appearing on the beat instead The left hand plays on the beat as usual Measures 5 6 nbsp source Audio playback is not supported in your browser You can download the audio file Measures 86 87 nbsp source Audio playback is not supported in your browser You can download the audio file This kind of ornamentation has been identified as the 18th century version of tempo rubato the left hand accompaniment remains steady but the right hand imposes a slight delay in the melody notes 15 Further discussion of this practice with reference to K 511 but also citation of 18th century authorities was provided by Roland Jackson 16 The practice was described by Mozart himself in a letter to his father g h Critical reception edit nbsp Detail of portrait of Mozart by his brother in law Joseph Lange The Mozart scholar Hermann Abert offered a warm appreciation of the work it is one of the most important keyboard rondos ever composed With its exotically tinged theme it is a typically Mozartian piece in A minor its first four bars with their characteristic chromaticisms and dynamics revealing an impassioned tension that is maintained through the whole movement without ever achieving any resolution in an optimistic sense Abert also appreciates the ways in which the two episodes are structurally related to the main theme for instance the A major episode takes the cadential material of the main theme as its basis i Robert Levin hears the work as despairing More than any other solo work it seems forlorn dejected its fundamental bleakness drags against the articulateness of the ornamentation which struggles with increasing intensity against a manifestly hopeless fate 18 Richard Wigmore takes the despair theme a step further following a longstanding tradition in Mozart biography Keefe 2017 pp 451 452 With a Classical composer it is always dangerous to hear music as autobiography But we do know that Mozart suffered a brief illness in the early spring of 1787 and that his popularity as a composer virtuoso was on the wane So perhaps it is not being over fanciful to link the depressive almost morbid tone of the Rondo to Mozart s physical and emotional state 19 Vladimir Horowitz disagreed with the despair interpretation and cautioned in particular against letting it lead to dragging the tempo in performance His remarks on the work were recorded by David Dubal People today think that slow playing means profound Horowitz approached the piano and continued Here is how they play the Mozart Rondo in A minor It goes on for eleven minutes with some pianists They think that because it is in a minor key that it must be Mozart at his most serious But listen to how it needs to move He illustrates There are dance elements too in this rondo It can t be academic It is not really sad It is pensive 20 j Influence editThe moody chromaticism of the work has reminded many listeners of the decades later piano music of Frederic Chopin Mitchell speculates a possible specific case of influence Chopin revered Mozart and this reverence influenced his own pianistic textures It is unthinkable for example that Chopin could have written his A minor mazurka opus 17 no 4 had he not known Mozart s rondo K 511 21 Notes edit The autograph manuscript is also dated 11 March 1 Of the series Edge 2001 p 1006 writes In 1785 Hoffmeister initiated three separate subscription series of musical publications one for chamber music including symphonies and concertos as well as works for smaller ensembles one for keyboard music including concertos and chamber music as well as solo pieces and a third for flute music including concertos and chamber music Mozart own 22 issues of the series at the time of his death in 1791 Deutsch 1965 603 incomplete short citation The autograph is currently in private ownership and not available to scholars but before its disappearance it was photographed and published in facsimile Scheideler lists the following as a published version of the autograph facsimile Musikalische Seltenheiten Musical Rarities Wiener Liebhaberdrucke Vol V Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Zwei Rondos D Dur und A Moll Edited after the manuscripts in facsimile reproduction by Hans Gal Vienna New York 1923 1 See preface to this edition for Scheideler s editorial practice The list of differences is on line and may be downloaded from 1 The same document describes varying opinion concerning which of the two main sources should be considered the more reliable The exercise consists of trilling the same two white keys changing fingers but without interrupting the flow See Wolff 1990 108 109 N B The opposite view has also been taken Charles Rosen felt that ornamentation was anachronistic in Mozart s own time a dead weight from an earlier style and urged performers to shun it in most contexts See his The Classical Style New York Norton 1970 2nd ed 1997 pp 100 108 the quotation is from p 101 The letter which he wrote while traveling in Augsburg in 1777 says besides I always keep correct time They are all wondering about that They simply can t believe that you can play a Tempo rubato in an Adagio and the left hand knows nothing about it but goes on playing in strict time As far as they know the left hand always follows the right Translation from Spaethling Robert 2000 Mozart s Letters Mozart s Life New York Norton p 81 A comment by Rowland 1998 28 suggests that the amount of delay and articulation of the notes is only loosely approximated by the musical notation even this amount of detail must surely have been inadequate to express the subtlety of Mozart s playing Abert s discussion originally written in the 1920s appears in his 2007 publication 17 The work has been recorded many times by established pianists and multiple recordings can be accessed from Video hosting services Horowitz is correct in asserting that performance times occasionally exceed 11 minutes His own recording made for Deutsche Grammophon in 1988 1989 is on the brisk side among the range of tempos on offer References edit a b Scheideler 2009 a b c Scheideler 2009 Preface Abert 2007 Konrad Ulrich 2006 Compositional method in Cliff Eisen and Simon P Keefe The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 104 Keefe 2017 pp 483 484 Source Neue Mozart Ausgabe commentary linked below Source Deutsch 1965 603 Edge 2001 p 4 Edge 2001 p 797 a b c Forte Allen 1980 Generative chromaticism in Mozart s music The Rondo in A minor K 511 The Musical Quarterly 66 459 483 Zaslaw Neal and William Cowdery The Compleat Mozart a Guide to the Musical Works p 325 New York 1990 ISBN 0 393 02886 0 The article on the A minor Rondo was written by William Cowdery Keefe 2017 p 484 Wolff Konrad 1990 Masters of the Keyboard Individual Style Elements in the Piano Music of Bach Haydn Mozart Beethoven Schubert Chopin and Brahms Bloomington Indiana University Press p 108 Robert D Levin 1990 Improvised embellishments in Mozart s keyboard music Early Music 20 221 233 David Rowland 1998 The Cambridge Companion to the Piano Cambridge Cambridge University Press Roland Jackson 2013 Performance Practice A Dictionary Guide for Musicians Routledge p 344 Abert 2007 p 986 Robert D Levin 2004 Mozart s solo keyboard music Robert Marshall ed Eighteenth Century Keyboard Music Routledge quotation from p 302 From his program notes to a recording of the Rondo on Hyperion Records by Gottlieb Wallisch catalog CKD352 David Dubal 2004 Evenings with Horowitz A Personal Portrait Hal Leonard Corporation Quotation from p 68 Mark Lindsey Mitchell 2000 Virtuosi A Defense and a sometimes Erotic Celebration of Great Pianists Bloomington Indiana University Press Quotation from p 171 Cited sources edit Abert Hermann 2007 1921 W A Mozart Translated by Spencer Stewart revised ed New Haven Yale University Press Updated with new footnotes by Cliff Eisen Edge Dexter 2001 Mozart s Viennese copyists Ph D dissertation University of Southern California Keefe Simon P 2017 Mozart in Vienna The Final Decade Cambridge Cambridge University Press Scheideler Ullrich in German 2009 Mozart Rondo A moll KV 511 With editorial preface and notes on sources Munich G Henle External links editRondo in a KV 511 Score and critical report in German in the Neue Mozart Ausgabe Rondo in A minor Scores at the International Music Score Library Project Portal nbsp Classical music Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Rondo in A minor Mozart amp oldid 1214983857, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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