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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
The recent publication of Heinrich Schenker's Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (1925-30) in a translation by Ian Bent, William Drabkin and others reminds us that in the highest modern traditions textual criticism and exegesis — editing and analysis — are inseparable. Much of Schenker's commentary on Mozart's Symphony in G minor, K.550, is devoted to isolating discrepancies between manuscript and edition, and some of his most fascinating analytical suggestions grow out of just this. Conversely, analytical strategies may have editorial consequences, and decisions taken by editors of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe have been challenged justly on stylistic grounds. If a passage occurs twice in a composition, for instance, does it have to be articulated in the same way on both occasions? And if there are differences in the articulations, what exactly do they tell us? Given the intricacy of the modern analytical debate over Mozart, such questions may not be answered by editors alone. Nor can editions be undertaken without reference to changing social circumstances: for composers in general have shown themselves more than ready to provide their own variants for different performing situations (again, Mozart's re-orchestration of the Symphony in G minor is a case in point). Indeed, in another field, scholars have asked that cultural issues should also influence editorial practice; these issues similarly require learning and sensitivity, and again deserve attention.
1 Schenker, Heinrich, The Masterwork in Music, ed. William Drabkin, trans. Ian Bent, William Drabkin et al., 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1994-7). The essay on Mozart's G minor Symphony, K.550, is in vol. ii, 59-96. See also Cliff Eisen, ‘Another Look at the “Corrupt Passage” in Mozart's G minor Symphony K.550: Its Sources, “Solution” and Implications for the Composition of the Final Trilogy’, Early Music, 25 (1997), 373–81.Google Scholar
2 See Wintle, Christopher, ‘Generic Interaction in the Andante from Mozart's G minor Symphony, K.550: A Commentary on Schenker's Analysis’, A Composition as a Problem, ii, ed. Mart Humal (Tallinn, forthcoming).Google Scholar
3 See Deathridge, John, ‘Vollzugsbeamte oder Interpreten? Zur Kritik der Quellenforschung bei Byron und Wagner’, Der Text im musikalischen Werk: Editionsprobleme aus musikwissenschaftlicher und literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht, ed. Walter Dürr, Helga Lühning, Norbert Oellers and Hartmut Steinecke, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 8 (Berlin, 1998), 263–74. Deathridge supports the view of Hans Zeller and Jerome J. McGabb, who ask that ‘in the context of editions of works written since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the relation between the productive work of an author and the institutions dedicated to its reproduction be taken into account.’Google Scholar
4 Ratner, Leonard G., Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (London, 1980), 60, 312-13, 326.Google Scholar
5 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, ix/25/2, ed. Wolfgang Plath and Wolfgang Rehm (Kassel and Basle, 1986), 70–9. The work is described as ‘Fantasie in c KV 475'. The texts of the examples in this article are based on readings common to the autograph and first edition, many of which differ from previous editions. In the case of dynamics and portato markings, however, many of which are lacking in the autograph, we have generally followed the readings of the corrected state of the Artaria edition, without additional comment; there is good reason to believe that these represent additions by Mozart – or authorized by him – to a source intended for broad, public circulation, unlike the autograph. In a few instances, two readings are given, reflecting significant differences between the sources. See also the facsimile edition of the autograph, with a foreword by Wolfgang Plath and Wolfgang Rehm (Salzburg, 1991); the facsimile of the first edition, ed. Norbert Kaltz (Courlay, 1991); and the sole modern edition based on both the autograph and first edition, ed. Yoshio Watanabe (Tokyo, 1995).Google Scholar
6 The textual history of the Fantasy and Sonata is described in ibid., xiii-xv; both versions of the cross-hand passage are reproduced in the score.Google Scholar
7 The history of the autograph's discovery and sale, as well as numerous details concerning its physical make-up and readings, is given in Eugene K. Wolf, ‘The Rediscovered Autograph of Mozart's Fantasy and Sonata in C minor, K.475/457’, Journal of Musicology, 10 (1992), 3–47. See also the facsimile edition of the autograph referred to in note 5 above.Google Scholar
8 Wolf, , ‘The Rediscovered Autograph’, 32-3.Google Scholar
9 Wolf, , ibid., 35, incorrectly asserts that the e♭/c to d/B♭ thirds are transmitted by the first edition.Google Scholar
10 The various states of the editions are described in Gertraut Haberkamp, Die Erstdrucke der Werke von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tutzing, 1986).Google Scholar
11 The facsimile of the first edition referred to in note 5 above reproduces an example of the sixth issue, now in the librar) of the University of Basle; this source was compared with a copy of the first state, now at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan.Google Scholar
12 Wolf, ‘The Rediscovered Autograph’, 34-5.Google Scholar
13 The same reading is given in Steiner's Viennese edition of the late 1810s, Saemmtliche Werke für das Clavier, Heft 6, and most editions thereafter. Eighteenth-century editions, on the other hand, consistently give the minim reading, including not only that of Artaria but also those of Götz (c. 1786), Longman & Broderip (c. 1790), the Magazin de Musique in Brunswick (1798) and Breitkopf & Härtel as part of the Oeuvres complettes, cahier VI (1799).Google Scholar
14 One possible inconsistency occurs between the nearly identical bars 106 and 114, but even here the contexts are different: 114 represents a tonal ‘return’ to B♭ after an extended pedal, eventually introducing the rising sequence with which the section ends. Bar 106, in any case, represented a moment of indecision for Mozart, as a now indecipherable correction in the autograph shows.Google Scholar
15 For an original interpretation of the extent to which Mozart is in essence both technically and aesthetically disjunctive, see Chua, Daniel, ‘Haydn as Romantic: A Chemical Experiment with Instrumental Music’, Haydn Studies, ed. W. Dean Sutcliffe (Cambridge, 1998), 120–51.Google Scholar
16 See in particular Cliff Eisen, ‘The Old and New Mozart Editions’, Early Music, 19 (1991), 513–32.Google Scholar
17 The two sides of the expression in the Andantino recall the antithetical nature of the opening of Mozart's String Quartet in D minor, K.421, as emphasized in the celebrated texted analysis by Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny, in his Cours complet d'harmonie et de composition (1803-6), iii, 109ff. This is quoted in Ian Bent, ‘Analysis’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), i, 340–88 (p. 349). In both cases, the duality forms the source of the thematic working of the entire section or movement.Google Scholar
18 In the bass in bar 97, there is a beautiful splitting of the two notes F, with the second sounding an octave lower than expected. This is to prepare for the downward octave transposition of the entire consequent starting in the following bar. There is a reciprocal, though unexpected, reinforcement of this very low F’ in bar 100. The only other point in the Fantasy at which this note appears (it is the lowest in the piece) is in the cadenza immediately preceding the Andantino.Google Scholar
19 Le nozze di Figaro, K.492 (1786), Act 4.Google Scholar
20 In Sonata Forms (New York, 1980), 214, Charles Rosen makes a similar point about the lead-in to the subsidiary (A major) theme of the first movement of the ‘Prague’ Symphony in D major, K.504: ‘The second theme begins three notes before the cadence is actually accomplished, and it opens and continues with the simple formula used for the cadence. The break in texture is both clearly set in relief and overridden by the entrance of the new theme: in fact we do not even know that the theme has started until it is well into the next bar. Thematic and harmonic structure are, therefore, very slightly out of phase, a sophisticated technique that achieves the continuity that the eighteenth-century theorist (like Koch) thought necessary for the symphony, in contrast to the solo sonata.’Google Scholar
21 Donald Francis Tovey, ‘Mozart, Symphony No. 40’ (1935-9), Essays in Musical Analysis: Symphonies and Other Orchestral Works (London, 1981), 439–43. Tovey wrote: ‘Comedy uses the language of real life; and people in real life often find the language of comedy the only dignified expression for their deepest feelings.’Google Scholar
22 Keller, Hans, ‘Mozart and Boccherini’, Music Review, 8 (1947), 214–47; idem, ‘Key Characteristics’, Tempo, 40 (1956), 5-16 (repr. in Keller, Essays on Music, ed. Christopher Wintle, Cambridge, 1994, 158-68).Google Scholar
23 Keller, Hans, ‘The Musical Character’, Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on his Works from a Group of Specialists, ed. Donald Mitchell and Hans Keller (London, 1952), 319–51 (see esp. pt I, ‘The Extra-Historical Aspect: Britten and Mozart: A Challenge in the Form of Variations on an Unfamiliar Theme’, 319-34, originally written in 1946).Google Scholar
24 Brophy, Brigid, Mozart the Dramatist: The Value of his Operas to Him, to his Age, and to Us (1964; rev. edn, London, 1988), 274.Google Scholar
25 Solomon, Maynard, Mozart (London, 1995), 507.Google Scholar
26 Keller, , ‘The Musical Character’, 350.Google Scholar
27 Solomon, , Mozart, 519.Google Scholar
28 The Schoenbergian musical terminology throughout this essay is drawn from Arnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique and Art of its Presentation, ed., trans, and with a commentary by Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (New York, 1995).Google Scholar
29 Ratner, , Classic Music, ch. 18, ‘Fantasia; Introduction; Recitative’, 308-10.Google Scholar
30 Unlike the celebrated introduction to the C major String Quartet, K.465, however, this minor-mode Fantasy does not introduce a major-mode sonata movement. Mozart knew, and may even have had in mind, the Fantasie et sonata pour le clavecin ou piano-forte by Johann Wilhelm Hässler, oeuvre I, published by the author in Moscow (n.d.), in which the Fantasy is in C minor and the Sonata in C major. The Fantasy is for the most part Allegro and Presto wifi a closing cadential Andante; the Sonata has two movements, a Vivace and an Allegro ma non presto, connected by an Adagio. There is no composed connection between the Fantasy and the Sonata.Google Scholar
31 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (1753), trans. and ed. William J. Mitchell (London, 1974), 430–45.Google Scholar
32 Composition theory might also pause over the variety of ways in which Mozart handles high-points in the Andantino, and the deployment of all three diminished sevenths at the end of the Più allegro as part of the lead-back to the Adagio. The encircling of tonic and dominant notes by upper and lower chromatic neighbours also pervades the Fantasy. Here, obviously, the A♭-G of the lead-back adumbrates the return of these notes in the melodic idea of the Adagio. But, less obviously, the connection of the D major interlude to the Sturm und Drang section charts the movement in the bass from D to D♯ and then on to E and F, thus encircling the dominant of A minor.Google Scholar
33 Elaine Sisman cites Johann Mattheson and Dene Bamett to support her view that the gestures of actors and orators form an integral part of the musical oration and should be recognized as ‘an essential conveyor of meaning': see her ‘Genre, Gesture, and Meaning in Mozart's Prague Symphony’, Mozart Studies 2, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford, 1997), 27–84 (pp. 64-5).Google Scholar
34 See Janet M. Levy, ‘Texture as a Sign in Classic and Early Romantic Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 35 (1982), 482–531, for a stimulating discussion of the textural function of unisons. There are two other beautiful foreshadowings in the first five bars. In bar 3 the embellishment qualifies the austerity of the unisons by adumbrating the singing style of bar 6; and on the last quaver of bar 5, the unisons are abandoned in favour of a single quaver in the right hand, which prefigures the single melodic line introduced in the next bar.Google Scholar
35 Steblin, Rita, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (1981; rev. edn, New York, 1996), 227–31.Google Scholar
36 Moyer, Birgitte, ‘Ombra and Fantasia in Late Eighteenth-Century Practice’, Convention in Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth-Century Music: Essays in Honor of Leonard G. Ratner, ed. Wye J. Allan-brook, Janet M. Levy and William P. Mahrt (New York, 1992), 283–306. Moyer refers to descriptions of ombra scenes in the operas of Jomelli, Gluck (Orfeo and Alceste) and Mozart (Mitridate, Lucio Siila and Idomeneo).Google Scholar
37 Steblin, , A History of Key Characteristics, 296-300.Google Scholar
38 Levy, Janet M., ‘“Something Mechanical Encrusted on the Living”: A Source of Musical Wit and Humor’, Convention in Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth-Century Music, 225-56.Google Scholar
39 Mozart entered this opening differently in his thematic catalogue. The discrepancy, however, might indicate two different performances of the overture without demanding resolution in favour of one reading or the other. See Eisen, Cliff, ‘Text in Action’ (forthcoming).Google Scholar
40 Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford, 1982), 187. Fowler is presenting a view of Cyrus Hoy's.Google Scholar
