Mozart Sonata 8 Analysis

[Alma Wass]

Thispaper offers various analytical perspectives that bear on performance issues in Mozart as I have applied them when teaching and coaching violin-sonata classes at Mannes College. In these courses, three or four student duos simultaneously prepared different sonatas by a single composer. This pedagogical organization allows the teacher/coach to address issues that usually do not arise during typical one-group/one-teacher chamber-music coaching.

First, because the class immerses itself in the performance issues of several works by a single composer, students can compare the composer's approaches to similar issues in different works. Second, having several duos in the class allows me to explain an issue only once instead of for each group separately. That efficiency allows time for consideration of larger stylistic issues, such as comparing the sonatas to the given composer's works in other genres. As a result, this pedagogical setting allows the sorts of comparisons that are only rarely a part of performance pedagogy, but are common in theoretical and historical courses. For example, I think of the brilliant insights that illuminate Charles Rosen's The Classical Style, especially when he draws upon Mozart's practices in one genre to make points about his works in a different genre.

My purpose in this paper is two-fold. First, I hope to show how knowledge of many analytical points (harmony, counterpoint, phrasing, form, motivic structures, instrumentation, and so forth) bears on performance issues. Second, I suggest how performance issues might be incorporated into courses on these topics.

Before I begin the analyses, a point about the musical examples is pertinent. When I teach courses to performers, I try to illustrate points whenever possible by pointing to features in the score, not by writing out analytic diagrams such as reductive voice-leading graphs, blocked-out chords, underlying species counterpoint, and the like. It is important that performers get in the habit of perceiving structures in the musical scores they play. All too often, I have found that performers, students as well as professionals, regard analytical diagrams as something other than "the music itself." I have no disagreement with using analytic examples to complement the score when those examples demonstrate something that's not obvious in the score itself. But when I work with performers on performance issues, I try to reduce to a minimum the use of any notated symbolism between them and the music. Therefore, when I read this paper, the examples were taken from Mozart's scores, with a few hand-written annotations on the scores. Because presenting full scores is impractical in a published paper, some of the examples here are more analytic than what I would use if I were talking directly to performers. Where possible, I have used abbreviated scores, including the sorts of things to which I would draw attention within a full score.

When a violin-sonata class turns to Mozart, the first work studied is often the opening movement of the E-minor Violin Sonata, K. 304. For players at any level, this movement is a good introduction to performance issues in Mozart: it is full of attractive and passionate music; it contains no technically difficult passages; there are few balance issues, since the violin and piano generally have clearly defined textural roles; and it is a compact movement built from a small number of themes.

By that last point, I mean that the same thematic material serves multiple formal and rhetorical purposes at different points in the movement. For instance, the music in mm. 9-12 (labeled "X" in Example 1a) at first separates two statements of the complete opening phrase. The phrase returns literally in mm. 108-112 to serve as the retransition to the recapitulation (see Example 1b). And X-related material appears after the first period in the second key area (mm. 59-66, partly shown in Example 1c, and the corresponding location in the recapitulation). Likewise, a two-measure motive that begins the transition in m. 28 (not shown here) also begins the first melody in the second key area (mm. 37 ff.), and recurs to bring the second key area to its concluding cadence in mm. 67-73.

Example 1a. Mozart, Sonata for Violin and Piano in E minor, K. 304, first movement: mm. 1-12, violin part. Both hands of the piano part double this melody at the unison or in octaves.

After the X motive in mm. 9-12, also in octaves, Mozart introduces the movement's first homophonic texture by harmonizing a recurrence of the opening melody in mm. 13-20 (Example 1d), confirming the hypothetical harmonic parsing shown below Example 1a. Both the harmonic changes (two measures of tonic, four measures of root-position dominant, and two measures of cadence) and the contour of the piano part's right hand confirm the phrase parsing of 2+4+2. That is, as indicated by descending and rising arrows added to the score, the right-hand contour pattern during two measures of tonic (a descending line, then an ascending line) is broadened to cover four measures during the dominant (descending-descending-descending-ascending). In each case, the ascending motion marks the end of the harmony. If the pianist applies to the right hand in mm. 13-18 the common mannerism of a slight diminuendo during a descending line and a slight crescendo during an ascending line, the changes of harmony will be marked and the harmonies will be connected to one another (via the mini-crescendo leading from one harmony to the next).

Another aspect of the harmonization in mm. 13-20 suggests options for differentiating the violinist's bow-strokes. During the prolonged harmonies in the first six measures of the phrase, the violinist might play the quarter notes relatively legato, finding a style that matches the legato notated by Mozart in the accompaniment. But the quarter-note harmonic rhythm in m. 19 suggests using a more marcato stroke for the quarter notes here (and perhaps also in m. 7).

During the theme in mm. 113-120, the unexpected chromatic harmonies, the forte-pianos every other measure, and the delay of the arrival on a strong dominant until the sixth (!) measure of the phrase should surely inspire performers to parse the phrase differently than they did in the exposition. Furthermore, with the augmented-sixth as the first harmony in the recapitulation, and with the circle-of-fifths harmonization ending on the subdominant in m. 117 that returns to the dominant in the next measure, the first five measures of the recapitulation constitute a neighboring motion from the dominant that ended the retransition (Example 1f). This might suggest underplaying the usual sense of arrival that we commonly associate with thematic returns at the beginning of recapitulations. The violinist might even consider avoiding playing the pairs of measures in the theme as strong-weak (which was implicit in both statements of the theme in the exposition because of the harmonic rhythm). The violinist could shape each of the two-measure units so that they begin with an upbeat lasting five quarter-notes, expressing the forte-pianos as arrivals on a hypermetric downbeat, not as syncopations at that metric level. Of course, the violinist could also insist on beginning the two-measure groups as before, thus making those forte-pianos syncopations. Once again, it is not so much a matter of making one specific decision as it is of reacting in some appropriate way to the musical structure. All sorts of timbral nuances by the violinist (bow speed and vibrato, for instance) should inspire the pianist to consider various ways of shaping the forte-pianos and the repeated eighth-notes.

These four different harmonizations of the theme create a musical narrative over the course of the movement. The first appearance, in which so much is unstated due to the bare octaves, could range in character from being mysterious or ambiguous (despite the textural clarity) to being assertive (despite the soft dynamic). Whatever is clarified by the theme's second appearance is surely unsettled by the operatic recitativo-accompagnato texture and the rhythmic and harmonic surprises at the beginning of the recapitulation. And the texture in the coda could express a return to the snug comfort of normality after the oddities of the previous statements, or a fatalistic resignation after having struggled to avoid just such normality. I do not care terribly much about which narrative is told. But I am concerned that the performers relate a musical narrative, which, in my view, is frequently the essence of Mozart's music.

Mozart faced a compositional problem here. How should he portray the protagonists ignoring each other, while underneath it all making it clear that both are expressing a range of jitters about the same thing: their imminent wedding? After all, by the end of the duet, Susanna and Figaro will joyously sing the B theme in rhythmic unison largely in parallel tenths (m. 67 ff.). Mozart's solution (of course!) is ingenious, utilizing (1) the underlying harmonic structure, (2) motives, (3) counterpoint, and (4) orchestration.

Yes it does, beginning in m. 45. William Caplin has pointed out that an expansion of this cadential bass supporting I6-IV(or ii6)-V-I is common in the Classical era to create large-scale strong cadences.3 In the first movement of the E-minor Sonata, the motion is especially prominent when it occurs as the bass support for an extended phrase leading to a cadence in the second key area. Example 3a outlines the theme that begins the second key area. From mm. 45 to 59, the bass outlines scale-steps 3-4-5, 3-4-5-1. And Mozart calls attention to this section of the movement by using 3-4-5 in the bass to support the very first piano solo in the movement during which the violin is silent (mm. 45-50). And that piano solo is also the first extended forte melody in the movement as well as the first to remain in the very highest register of the keyboard. (Remember that the highest note on Mozart's piano was F.) Lastly, this motion toward a cadence is subjected to the "one-more-time" cadential reinforcement technique so aptly named by Janet Schmalfeldt.4 Note that during this "one-more-time" second statement in mm. 51-53, the violin and piano play in octaves, connecting the cadence in the second key area to the texture of the opening phrase of the movement. (This is analogous to the role of the parallel tenths in both of the themes of the duet from Figaro in the sense that an interval that played an important role at the beginning of the movement recurs later at a culminating moment bringing together disparate elements from the opening.)

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