# Is Mozart's musical adventerousness underplayed?



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Usually when I hear or read talk about Mozart's music, especially in contrast to Beethoven's, the narrative ends up being something along the lines of 'Mozart is the perfecter of the Classical style while Beethoven was the revolutionary'. Beethoven was certainly more revolutionary in the sense that he held more influence in general for the Romantic composer's ideals (except for Chopin, he wasn't having none of that Beethoven fanboyism). However, I think many people really, even today, still underplay the adventurous spirit that Mozart had in regards to his music.

A lot of people point to the minor key works to show this experimentation from Mozart (The "tone row" in the g minor symphony, the d minor and c minor piano concertos, the Requiem, the Adagio and Fugue). While these are good examples, experimentation is already more of a given in minor key works (especially in the Classical Era) because of the greater possibility of exploiting diminished chords and so on. On an expressive level too, unsettling harmonic progressions and such make more sense in the context of a minor key work.

However, you don't even have to go to the minor key works to see Mozart's unorthodox writing at work. Take a listen to this passage from his 16th piano concerto.

(from 1:10-1:25)





Here, in the "happy key" of D major you have a relatively long passage of very ambiguous harmony that doesn't have a clear destination, and indeed at the very end it ends up at the same place it started. This passage comes back later on at 3:50 with the bassline reinforced by the piano part. The chromaticism is made even clearer and to my ears that seemingly endless descent of the bass (for that time) sounds like it would have certainly made more than a few of the 18th century audience members feel a little sea sick. Pertaining to this concerto, there is also the passage from 3:38-3:49. We're in a minor for no less than 2 measures, and suddenly out of nowhere there is a startling cadential sequence in C major which turns back around to a minor at the very last minute. Seems very random until you realize that the woodwinds pick up the piano's descending cadential motive at the end of the phrase.

You can also take for example the slow movement of the 17th piano concerto.





After the very first phrase of this movement there is a pregnant pause. The first time it happens, in the orchestral tutti, the music continues on from there in C major. But when the phrase gets passed on to the piano at the first solo entrance (2:20), what comes after that telling pause is not a continuation of C major, but a passionate g minor. This happens again at 7:04, this time E-flat major comes immediately after the pause. It's also worth noting the passage right before the return of the melody at 6:42, where Mozart uses the key of G# major(!) to get back to the home key in no less than 4 bars.

These unprepared chords and keys, which are everywhere in Mozart's music, are fairly anti-thetical to the general classical style, especially since he places them right after only one phrase of the music in the home key. The usual classical procedure would be to establish a key for a while, have a clear transition + cadence in the new key and establish that in the 2nd theme.

It's also worth noting that Mozart was perpetually in need of money. He obviously wrote the piano concertos for himself to perform but who knows how much he toned it down in order to appease his potential financiers. I sometimes wonder if he actually had even more radical ideas in his head but didn't pen them down because of his financial instability (and the fact that he hated writing things down in the first place).

It seems to me, all things considered, that Mozart was nearly just as musically adventurous "in spirit" as Beethoven was, not to diminish the greatness of Beethoven in any way. I mean, it's no accident that the radically unorthodox mind of young Beethoven was so desperate to study with Mozart and was dissapointed to get Haydn instead (not that Haydn wasn't adventurous and influential in his own way, mind you).

So ya, Mozart *could* write music that was quintessentially Classical, but his natural mode of thought, to me, seems far more bold than the constraints of the style allowed.

What do you guys think?

P.S. This thread was inspired by a marathon listen of the piano concertos, in case you couldn't tell


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Nobody did modulation better than Mozart (except maybe Schubert). One example- I'm thinking of the stormy section of the D minor Piano Concerto's second movement and how Mozart breathtakingly goes from this stormy, dramatic section in G minor and modulates back to the solo piano's ethereally calm and beautiful opening theme in B Flat Major. It's absolutely breathtaking.

Mozart was a miracle.

Great post, by the way, violadude. I've also done those Mozart Keyboard Concerto marathon sessions. :tiphat:


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2015)

I don't have the musical vocabulary to expound upon your thoughts in such an articulate manner, but I certainly agree. 

Lame answer, I know.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Presumably this is one of the things that Harnoncourt's interested in in his recordings of the last three symphonies, in last year's releases of the Jupiter and Haffner, or the release of the Prague Symphony on |DVD. In fact Mozart had a severe style, I'm not sure whether it's adventurous and forward looking or adventurous and backward looking. You can hear it in things like the thing for musical clock which is often played on organ, K608 I mean, Chorzempa plays it very well. And even things like the masonic funeral music.

Apart from Harnoncourt and Chorzempa, I think Maria Yudina is very good at bringing out the contrapuntal and rhythmic boldness of some of the piano sonatas. And I was struck recently by how The Chiaroscuro Quartet play K428 for similar reasons.

How well the music is served by bringing out this aspect is an interesting question. Someone like Bruggen may well have thought that it's inappropriate to make voices independent and to use rhythmic rubato, because Mozart's about classical balance, essentially a bourgeois salon composer, not someone who intended to express anything cosmic or complex or disturbing. It's not that it can't be played like that, it's that it shouldn't if you want to be true to the music. 

There's a recent recording of keyboard music by Bezuidenhout called Sturm und Drang, less than 10 years old anyway, which is relevant to this question -- not part of his complete Mozart, his first Mozart CD. I thought it was a bit juvenile but I may be wrong.

By the way, I think we could have a very similar discussion about Haydn.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I've been thinking the same thing for some time now... Hence, my former thread about Mozart being the first "Romantic." That may be pushing it a bit, but not as much as people may surmise.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

In developing and pushing the boundaries of the new forms as well as extending chromaticism and modulation past the boundaries of what his style may have deemed normal, surely Mozart's music is essentially progressive rather than conservative.

Unfortunately, Mozart has become known as a writer of pretty tunes or unalloyed (and perhaps somewhat simple?) happiness, and people seem to overlook the darker and more difficult strains that run underneath his mature works. As a matter of fact, though, these are the very things that make his melodies so beautiful and his joy so uplifting. The less interesting music of the era sounds dull because it doesn't provide nearly so much depth.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Could not agree more. I've played quite a bit of Mozart and found surprising chromatic passages in even the "simplest" major key works. And where Beethoven tends to use heavy chromaticism as a "special effect," Mozart integrates it seamlessly into his tonal writing.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> In developing and pushing the boundaries of the new forms as well as extending chromaticism and modulation past the boundaries of what his style may have deemed normal, surely Mozart's music is essentially progressive rather than conservative.
> 
> Unfortunately, Mozart has become known as a writer of pretty tunes or unalloyed (and perhaps somewhat simple?) happiness, and people seem to overlook the darker and more difficult strains that run underneath his mature works. As a matter of fact, though, these are the very things that make his melodies so beautiful and his joy so uplifting. The less interesting music of the era sounds dull because it doesn't provide nearly so much depth.


To me Mozart's music just sounds 'right'
I haven't got the musical knowledge to phrase it any other way so I can't hope to match the above, but I could not agree more


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

This thread is the best articulation of glimpses of thoughts that have come to mind when re-visiting Mozart. I didn't even realize that he had such passages in his music until I watched a video of Bernstein dissecting Symphony 40. Also, I don't have a background in music theory to notice the passages violadude pointed out from the Piano Concertos. Like Haydn man said, Mozart just sounds "right", and I never gave such unusual passages any thought

So, YES, I think Mozart's adventurous nature is underplayed when talking about his music in favor for talking about the gushy side, the people who call his music "naive" and also "heavenly" and pretty and sweet as sugar and bleh.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Thank you so much for a great post and great thread!

That perception (or more rightly misperception) about Mozart being all prettiness is what you get when you are as supremely deft, agile, subtle and "polite," as was Mozart. (_I.e. if not "underplayed," simply often enough overlooked.)_ Add to that he was perhaps the most brilliant planner (or one of the few) who could, in his head prior writing the music down, construct an entire large structure. Many of these "loopier" areas are thoroughly prepared and 'set-up' by thematic, harmonic and structural elements, and yet they seem -- even after many repeated hearings and acquired familiarity -- like a fresh surprise each and every time.

I think it is in the piano concerti, especially, where you find much of the type of extraordinary and adventurous flights you speak of (after all, as a personal vehicle for the composer, "one has to make one's own kind of fun." 

Piano concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488, the first movement has some of the craziest / zaniest turns of modulation and odd little excursions and 'escapements' done via slight alterations, some sounding briefly quasi-modal, where the harmony is directed in to really odd areas, yet the entire movement is another of outward general good cheer, a kind of prettiness, _always 'classically' polite,_ that especially to a listener today it would not outwardly seem 'adventurous,' yet the movement and what takes place within it is 'out there.'




... as an aside, its second movement Adagio is one of the darkest, pathos-laden and most despairing of Mozart I can think of...





The Piano Concerto No 27 B flat, K 595. is another wherein the first movement is an astonishing modulatory activity which I personally feel equals at least late Schubert, and as far as 'leaning toward the romantic practice,' is far more in depth in that direction than _any_ Beethoven. [Here, I feel as if we are already off the Earth and drifting through space, surveying galaxies, where the best of Beethoven is earthbound, and striving to break through our own stratosphere -- the latter is a thrilling ride, the former, well, if you're traveling through space at thousands of miles an hour, you aren't aware of the speed: the difference between the two is land speed vs. air / space speed.] Again, the nature of the thematic material, the technical preparation, all very quiet, calm, not at all heavily dramatic, and always 'classically polite.' Yet... it is quite outré in its extremes.





...and as a friend of mine said, as far as Mozart's style, the more Italianate / Neopolitan preference for three pitches vs. four in many a harmony, "... and he did it all _while using only three notes!_" :lol:


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## Fagotterdammerung (Jan 15, 2015)

I think there is an element of personality, as well. Musically, Mozart was definitely progressive, and even his contemporaries noticed his love of chromaticism, but his attitude was not of a revolutionary. Beethoven wanted, to a degree, to be hammering out a new road for music, in a way that Mozart didn't ( or at least, that wasn't his _primary_ goal ). To my ear they're almost equally progressive for their respective time periods, but their conceptions of their place in society was radically different.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Sure. Because a style* is defined by overlooking generalist post-phenomenon mediocre analysts.

*Style is a state of mind, not just a set of mannerisms.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Piano concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488, the first movement has some of the craziest / zaniest turns of modulation and odd little excursions and 'escapements' done via slight alterations, some sounding briefly quasi-modal, where the harmony is directed in to really odd areas, yet the entire movement is another of outward general good cheer, a kind of prettiness, _always 'classically' polite,_ that especially to a listener today it would not outwardly seem 'adventurous,' yet the movement and what takes place within it is 'out there.'


A harmony text I looked through quoted this movement something like 6-8 times. It's just full of every single surprise one could imagine within common practice, and none of them made to stick out. I'm in awe every time I hear it.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Mozart was everything that the 18th century was. He wrote music to please his audiences, his patrons, and also music that took you along his own "emotional state", which was something quite different. Between his two G minor symphonies, you can easily listen to his incredible path of musical development.

His piano concertos are among the most original compositions of his own and western classical music in general.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> A harmony text I looked through quoted this movement something like 6-8 times. It's just full of every single surprise one could imagine within common practice, and none of them made to stick out. I'm in awe every time I hear it.


Ditto, dude. It _is_ loopy as all get out (Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, etc. _eat your earthbound hearts out with envy_), and it is _awesome._


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Thank you so much for a great post and great thread!
> 
> That perception (or more rightly misperception) about Mozart being all prettiness is what you get when you are as supremely deft, agile, subtle and "polite," as was Mozart. (_I.e. if not "underplayed," simply often enough overlooked.)_ Add to that he was perhaps the most brilliant planner (or one of the few) who could, in his head prior writing the music down, construct an entire large structure. Many of these "loopier" areas are thoroughly prepared and 'set-up' by thematic, harmonic and structural elements, and yet they seem -- even after many repeated hearings and acquired familiarity -- like a fresh surprise each and every time.
> 
> ...


What he said..
The man was a genius


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

Mozart wrote everything in "heaven" before coming down to Earth. He just "remembered" his music while alive on Earth.

Beethoven wrote everything in "heaven" but listened to the best of the human heart on Earth while doing so. He could not "remember" as well, so he lost his hearing to "remember" better.

They are a "one-two punch" for humanity, brothers in music.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Yeah, he definitely was more adventurous than he's given credit for. I think it's precisely because many people think of the "pretty" tunes and uplifting mood, but like Mahlerian wrote, "people seem to overlook the darker and more difficult strains that run underneath his mature works".



PetrB said:


> [Here, I feel as if we are already off the Earth and drifting through space, surveying galaxies, where the best of Beethoven is earthbound, and striving to break through our own stratosphere -- the latter is a thrilling ride, the former, well, if you're traveling through space at thousands of miles an hour, you aren't aware of the speed: the difference between the two is land speed vs. air / space speed.]


:lol:

I don't know, man. There's nothing earthbound about the _Cavatina_ and _Heiliger Dankgesang_, they left the stratosphere quite a while ago. (quite literally for the _Cavatina_). Although, to be fair, I'm not entirely certain what the criteria is for what's "earthbound" and what's "traveling through space at thousands of miles an hour" ;-)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

If people miss the amazing excursions Mozart is making into unknown regions it's because he does it without ceremony and with the utmost suavity, as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary. His basic framework is Classical symmetry, all the portico columns neatly arrayed and the pediments perfectly balanced atop them, and that is what the style accustoms us to hearing and what we think we're hearing - except that often we aren't. Momentarily a strange vista opens up before us, and that "what was that?" feeling barely has time to sink in before we're back in the sunny landscape of tonic-dominant and repetitive cadential figures. It all happens while the coach rolls onward, and if we're expecting the driver to slow the horses to point out the landmarks we may just miss what's out there and reach home thinking that it was just another Sunday afternoon jaunt through some postcard-pretty countryside.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I wonder how adventurous the 25th piano concerto in c major is. Sounds somewhat "adventurous" for classical-period music to my ears.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Adventurous Mozart's music is, but I almost think of it as a symptom of his absurd level of genius. Granted, he does have his wilder pieces. But its not often like Beethoven where he just 'couldn't be contained' by classical forms, rather, he seems to just contain it all, and he was just too clever not to utilize and perfectly integrate the most rich possibilities of the time, forming yet more.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

clavichorder said:


> Adventurous Mozart's music is, but I almost think of it as a symptom of his absurd level of genius. Granted, he does have his wilder pieces. But its not often like Beethoven where he just 'couldn't be contained' by classical forms, rather, he seems to just contain it all, and he was just too clever not to utilize and perfectly integrate the most rich possibilities of the time, forming yet more.


That's a good way of putting it, Clavi. Thank you!


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> I wonder how adventurous the 25th piano concerto in c major is. Sounds somewhat "adventurous" for classical-period music to my ears.


According to Rosen (and here I'm going to paraphrase a book I read a year ago and probably get it wrong) the adventurousness of that one isn't so much in what Mozart puts in as what he leaves out. There's not much of the harmonic freedom that violadude pointed out in K453: most of the harmonic contrast is major/minor key stuff. The themes are so conventional for the period that they can't even be called clichés: they're just the melodic material that they worked with in the 18th century.

So Mozart tries to make an interesting piece of music out of almost nothing but the form. _ And he nails it!_

(I sure hope Rosen wasn't talking about that other C Major concerto!)


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Hmm... it's still unfortunately hard for me to hear the harmonic adventurousness of the 27th piano concerto, even after lots of multiple listens. The 24th strikes me as far far more interesting. I might be missing something. Do you guys have any advice? What should I be listening for?

To be more precise... just taking the first movement of the 27th the development section clearly goes through a lot of colorful modulation, but there just doesn't seem to much going on in the exposition and recapitulation, at least to my untrained ears. Seems to be mostly tonic, with some chromatic lines, but nothing earth-shattering.... Help would be appreciated!


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

I think the sudden jump from the established dominant key F in the solo exposition to the augmented fourth, in this case, b minor and the fact that there are no other examples of such distant key relationships in the first movement of any other Mozart piano concerto would qualify K.595 as 'harmonically adventurous.'


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Do you mean the transition to the piano's statement of the main theme in B minor at the start of the development? Yeah it's clear that the development section goes everywhere in key... to C major, to E flat minor. But... I don't hear that much in the exposition and recapitulation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that Beethoven did lots of modulation to distant keys as well?


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I once read something along the lines that Mozart was no innovator, but that wasn't the important thing. He just happened to do most things better than anyone else within the accepted parameters of the time - a bit like comparing early Beatles to the rest of the Merseybeat groups. That comes across as something of a bare-bones generalisation but maybe there's some truth in it.


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Do you mean the transition to the piano's statement of the main theme in B minor at the start of the development? Yeah it's clear that the development section goes everywhere in key... to C major, to E flat minor. But... I don't hear that much in the exposition and recapitulation.
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that Beethoven did lots of modulation to distant keys as well?


Yes, that part; but I don't know why the exposition would have to have the same rapid modulations as the development section for the piece to be adventurous. The exposition sets up the harmonic ambiguity of the piece through the b flat major/minor contrasts and the chromaticism instead which is much more pervasive in the concerto than I think you give it credit for. For instance, in a passage from the opening orchestral tutti just before the soloist enters there are violins playing d natural in the descending scale while the cello and bass are playing D-flat underneath. The development is usually the most dramatic section in Mozart's sonata form movements anyway. And yes, Beethoven modulated to distant keys as well; but then, I don't often see people complaining that his pieces are unadventurous--harmonically, at least. Actually, I just found a short article on this piece, you like it: http://www.musicteachers.co.uk/resources/mozartK595.pdf


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Sure. Because a style* is defined by overlooking generalist post-phenomenon mediocre analysts.
> 
> *Style is a state of mind, not just a set of mannerisms.


Care to modulate that?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> Adventurous Mozart's music is, but I almost think of it as a symptom of his absurd level of genius. Granted, he does have his wilder pieces. But its not often like Beethoven where he just 'couldn't be contained' by classical forms, rather, he seems to just contain it all, and he was just too clever not to utilize and perfectly integrate the most rich possibilities of the time, forming yet more.


Beautifully terse and outstandingly well said. Bravo!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Do you mean the transition to the piano's statement of the main theme in B minor at the start of the development? Yeah it's clear that the development section goes everywhere in key... to C major, to E flat minor. But... I don't hear that much in the exposition and recapitulation.
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that Beethoven did lots of modulation to distant keys as well?


Yeah.

Mozart, you're there before you can even know it, realize it after the fact, and then wonder how he got you there. (Your driver turns on a dime at high speed, you don't even feel the slightest G-force, yet you've turned, and fast.)

With Beethoven it is more often either with an audible struggle, or a kind of hitting you over the head with a dramatic hammer, "Ve vill go here... Now!"

Completely different beings, approaches and styles.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

PetrB said:


> With Beethoven it is more often either with an audible struggle, *or a kind of hitting you over the head with a dramatic hammer, "Ve vill go here... Now!*"
> 
> Completely different beings, approaches and styles.


Misguided and false.

What's sadly ironic about it is that it's the exact equivalent of people furthering the false notion that Mozart wrote merely "pretty" music, merry little melodies, but nothing of great depth.

C'est la vie, I guess.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

violadude said:


> (from 1:10-1:25)
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Very good, violadude. I'm glad to see someone analyzing things in terms of what the music is actually doing. The passage above is a departure, which Mozart really sneaked-in on us. Good catch. It reminds me of the sequence of roots in thirds which Beethoven used in the first mvt of the Ninth. Obviously, Mozart had just as much harmonic ability as anyone, but perhaps due to the constraints of his position and the times, he was not able to flaunt this knowledge as blatantly as LBV; still, it is there.

Still, I have reservations. The chord sequence seem to be a device which repeats at minor third intervals, which is why it comes back to itself again. Minor thirds are a recursive interval, meaning that they "cycle" or repeat and meet back at the same note, within the octave, if extended far enough, which means four times (3x4=12). This is basically using a diminished 7th form (based on stacked minor thirds), which is not that far removed from common practice.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

violadude said:


> You can also take for example the slow movement of the 17th piano concerto.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Great thread Violadude! I'm late responding because, as usual, I ended up getting sucked into analyzing a whole movement. Not quite done with it yet, but I have a few observations:

That G# major in the retransition is, arguably, really Ab, the bVI of the home key, which is to say, quite near the destination. But because the G# triad alternates several times with a chord of the augmented 6th, which Mozart gives its proper spelling (A-C#-E-F-double sharp), it sounds like it wants to be a dominant. One reason the G# chord is spelled the way it is might be because if it were spelled as Ab, the German +6 chord would need to be spelled with a B-double flat (Bbb-Db-Fb-G), which is messy. The other reason for the spelling on the sharp side is that the approach was by a circle of fifths (Dm-Am-Em-Bm-F#m), beginning with the D minor solo passage, that moves steadily in a sharpward direction. Anyway, the passage looks much less weird if one hears it as Ab. A later composer, like Schubert, might just have added an F# to the Ab chord and made it the German +6 in C major. The weird thing to me about the passage is not that the G#-Ab is far from the tonic - it is, in fact, right on the doorstep - but that Mozart manages to make it _sound_ distant in the last four measures before the return.

The passionate G minor passage you note builds on a standard classical procedure by which the transition to the key one is approaching (G major in this case) is intensified by coloration from its parallel minor. Haydn does this all the time, using parallel minor coloration over a prolonged dominant before recapitulations. What makes the Mozart so striking, I think, is that he does it whole hog by treating G minor more fully as a tonic chord (by tonicizing it) and by introducing it after a pause.

So, in this example at least, I don't think I would say that Mozart was "far more bold than the constraints of the [Classical] style allowed," but he sure gave those constraints a good workout and stretching.

Anyway, thanks again for a great and substantive thread.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

If you've heard it overplayed, you may appreciate underplaying it. _Something_ should be left to the imagination.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Bach was harmonically adventurous as well; only this is obscured as well by common practice analysis. In lots of Bach, if you examine the vertical "chords" created by voice leading, they are radical, and didn't really "exist" as chords or functions for those times, but are the consequences of voice leading. Still, Bach accents these on strong beats, challenging the CP rules with the wisdom of "the ear." I'm talking about major seventh chords, minor/major sevenths, flatted fifths, minor seven flat fives, etc.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Bach was harmonically adventurous as well.


And while we are on the Bach family, one could note that CPE, in his Prussian Sonata #3, gets from E major to G major in the first statement of the theme, that is, by measure 16. This sonata is remarkably advanced in every way for 1741:


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

violadude said:


> You can also take for example the slow movement of the 17th piano concerto.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks for this piece of writing, Violadude--it's great in itself, and for the discussion that it's inspired. As someone who doesn't know as much about music theory as I'd like, I especially appreciated the inclusion of a video link with timings in your analysis; it makes it possible for the interested amateur to follow along with the discussion in a general way without a score at one's elbow--even when, as is inevitable, details are lost. It takes extra work for the person writing, so I'd understand it being the exception rather than the rule, but it's nice when such things are generally user-friendly or even lurker-friendly in a forum like this. It's something for people to keep in mind, perhaps, if the "Music Theory" section gets off the ground (as I hope it does).


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