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2006 Conference | Meetings | Other Mozart societies | Calendar of events
Contents: Vol. VI, No. 2, August 2002
Home | About the MSA | Bylaws | Officers | Membership | Newsletter
2006 Conference | Meetings | Other Mozart societies | Calendar of events
Contents: Vol. VI, No. 2, August 2002
With this issue we bid farewell to Kay Lipton who has served so enthusiastically and efficiently as editor of the Society’s Newsletter. My deep thanks to Kay for her hard work and resource-fulness in securing guest columns, essays, reviews, and for devoting so much time to maintaining the quality of the Newsletter.
I am very grateful also to John Rice, who has agreed to serve as guest editor for the January issue. His help however only postpones solution of this problem, and I solicit the aid of the membership: please send me nominations or applications for the (unpaid) position of Newsletter editor.
On a more cheerful note, it is a pleasure to welcome new board members Bruce Alan Brown (University of Southern California) and Marita McClymonds (University of Virginia) who began their terms on 1 July 2002. The Society board meeting as well as the annual membership meeting will take place during the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, this year in Columbus, Ohio, at the beginning of November.
Undoubtedly the most exciting event of the Society’s year will be the second biennial conference, “Mozart and the Keyboard Culture of His Time,” at Cornell University at the end of March. Kathryn Shanks Libin, chair of the program committee, has worked long and hard with the members of her committee, and the results are impressive. Cornell’s outstanding instrument collection will be augmented by instruments from other collections; invited speakers include performers and musicologists from England and Austria as well as the United States. Papers covering a variety of aspects related to the central theme are complemented by a number of concerts. In addition the committee has scheduled several social events on the Cornell campus, with the America: Object and Goals Object The object of the Society shall be the encouragement and advancement of studies and research about the life, works, historical context, and reception of Wolfgang Amadè Mozart, as well as the dissemination of information about study and performance of related music. Goals 1. Provide a forum for communication among scholars (mostly but not exclusively American); encourage new ideas about research concerning Mozart and the late eighteenth century. 2. Offer assistance for graduate student research, performance projects, etc. 3. Present reviews of new publications, recordings, and unusual performances, and information about dissertations. 4. Support educational projects dealing with Mozart and the eighteenth-century context. 5. Announce activities—symposia, festivals, concerts—local, regional, and national. 6. Report on work and activities in other parts of the world. 7. Encourage interdisciplinary scholarship by establishing connections with such organizations as the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies aim of nourishing our development of identity as a Society. Those of you who attended the first conference, in Las Vegas, will remember the sense of community that was born in this setting. I hope to see all of you and many more members at Cornell. Although most of the Society’s members are musicologists, I believe that the Cornell conference, like the one at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will, as Mozart claimed of his piano concertos, please both “the connoisseurs” and the “less learned.” (Please see the enclosed announcement, and the announcement on page 15 for more details, and please do register early so that you can stay in the hotel on the campus.)
As an affiliate member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the MSA enjoys the privilege of holding a ninety-minute meeting/paper session during their annual meeting. This meeting, which usually occurs in the spring, will be in early August 2003 in Los Angeles, as part of a joint meeting of the American and the International Societies for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The MSA session, “Mozart and the Hapsburgs,” will be chaired by Bruce Alan Brown, and I am chairing a session, “Mozart in North America.” (Please see the announcements of these sessions on page 13.) And finally, the Society’s Study Session at our annual fall meeting (in Columbus) will include presentation of one rather controversial (we hope) paper, followed by small-group discussions centered around abstracts of five other papers. The Society continues to flourish, thanks to the support of you, its members. I look forward to hearing from you and to seeing you during the course of this year. —Isabelle Emerson
The Mozart Society of America will again hold its annual meeting at the fall meeting of the American Musicological Society, this year in Columbus, Ohio. The meeting, scheduled for Friday, 1 November, from 12:00 to 2:00 P.M., will consist of a brief business meeting followed by a study session. The meeting is open to non-members as well as members of the Society.
The agenda for the business meeting is as follows:
Announcements
President’s Report
Treasurer’s Report
Committee Reports
New Business
Other
Study Session
A leading aim of our Society is to promote scholarly exchange and discussion among its members, many of whom are not yet familiar with one another’s work. In accordance with this goal, we will follow the format we adopted for the 2001 session in Atlanta. From the abstracts submitted we have selected one for formal presentation, partly on the basis of its potential to stimulate discussion. In addition we are printing below and will distribute in Columbus all submitted abstracts. The study session itself will break into two parts, the first for presentation and extended discussion of the presented paper, and the second for individual discussions among authors of distributed abstracts and others interested in their work.
Benjamin Perl: Is Mozart’s First Horn Concerto Really His Last One?
Mozart’s horn concerto in D major (K. 412), which until 1987 had been considered to be the first of his four concertos for this instrument, has been ascribed by Alan Tyson to 1791, the last year of Mozart’s life, as a result of his research of paper-types (the watermark theory). This attribution seems improbable considering the style of the concerto, which points to early Mozart, and raises even some doubts as to the authenticity of this concerto. Similar doubts arise about Tyson’s dating of the horn concerto K. 447 to 1787, much later than Köchel (1783). The analyses of these cases lead me to challenge the validity of Tyson’s watermark theory as a basis for dating Mozart’s compositions. Tyson (together with Wolfgang Plath) has been the principal authority for dating Mozart’s compositions in the last decades, and the NMA and the New Grove Dictionary rely on his findings.
This paper advocates the development of sound criteria for dating Mozart’s (and other composer’s) works by their stylistic traits, rather than relying so heavily on the material qualities of the text, such as paper type and handwriting. Finally the paper offers a conjecture as to the creation of K. 412, suggesting that Leutgeb, the virtuoso horn player to whom most compositions of Mozart for the horn were dedicated, may have been the original author of this concerto, which was later improved by Mozart, and after his death completed by Süssmayr.
Phillipa Burgess: Web-Based Module on Le nozze di Figaro
For the Humanities core for Ohio Dominican University, I proposed the inclusion of a significant work of music. The work selected was Le nozze di Figaro, a work that fits into the thematic structure of the course and was applicable to the section of study which focused on the Enlightenment. I realized that, though the members of the faculty are well-rounded scholars and have more than a passing familiarity with music, they would not necessarily feel comfortable facilitating study of a work of music. With this in mind, I teamed up with Dr. Mary Lee Peck, a web designer on the faculty, and constructed a web-based module on the historical and musical context of Le nozze di Figaro. The module will be included in the course for the first time in the fall semester of 2002, and the members of faculty are very excited at the prospect.
I propose this module to serve as the basis for discussion for the Mozart Society of America Study Session as well as provide a working model of this kind of technology-based presentation which can incorporate musically and pedagogically sound musical experiences within the mainstream of University courses.
Following are the rationale and objectives for this project:
Rationale
Music expresses as much of a culture as does literature and the visual arts.
Opera is in the unique position of being able to provide the observer with a combination of music, drama, and dance. In this way a more encompassing overview of the human issues of a time period can be presented.
Course Objectives
• Present the opera Le nozze di Figaro in its context as a great work of human endeavor.
• Explore the issues relevant in Le nozze di Figaro to the Ohio Domincan University Humanities course outline.
• Present Le nozze di Figaro to the musical lay person in a comprehensible manner with emphasis on listening to the music and how the music can be understood.
• Provide a tutorial-like package for the students to enable them, through guided questions, to understand the opera as both a great work of art and as a work of human endeavor within its own composition time-frame.
• Provide back-up material for faculty to facilitate instruction of Le Nozze di Figaro, with the understanding that the instructors are also most likely to be musical lay people.
• Provide instructors with an “issues to be considered” section, and other support material to facilitate class-room discussions of the issues raised by the opera.
• Encourage the students to go and see a performance.
Possible Issues for Study
• Present on overview of the original Beaumarchais drama.
• Explore the Da Ponte adaptation and modifications to the text.
• Explore the cultural aspects exposed by the libretto; e.g. the role of men and women in an Enlightenment society, class stratification, aspirations for nobility, the interweaving of personal and private lives.
• Explore the opera buffa model in existence, and how modified by Mozart in this opera.
• Examine the structure of the opera in terms of Enlightenment balance.
• Explain the various forms, e.g., the opening overture, the ensemble finales, recitative/aria, two-part aria, duets, trios, da capo aria.
• Explain how Mozart develops the audience’s understanding of the characters through the type of music they sing and how he sets the text.
• Include a synopsis of the opera.
Paul Corneilson: Why Mozart Could Not Complete His Mass in C Minor, K. 427
Mozart’s “Great” Mass in C Minor is exceptional in every sense of the word. A torso of magnificent beauty, it is on a scale comparable to J. S. Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor. Yet questions about the work’s origins and its unfinished state have puzzled commentators for more than two hundred years. Did Mozart intend this work to fulfill a vow he made to his father or was it written to be a votive offering for the safe delivery of his first child? What portion of the work was performed in Salzburg in October 1783? Why did Mozart abruptly abandon the work in the middle of the Credo? Where is the rest of the Sanctus and Benedictus autograph? Why did Mozart re-use Kyrie and Gloria in his cantata Davide penitente in March 1785?
These questions have never been satisfactorily answered, and indeed, the evidence is too sketchy or contradictory to answer them definitively. Two plausible explanations have not been fully considered. The first is a compositional crisis brought on by Mozart’s struggle to assimilate the contrapuntal complexity of the sacred music of Bach and Handel. The second is more personal in nature. On 17 June 1783 the Mozarts’ first child, Raimund Leopold, was born and baptized in Vienna. At the end of July Constanze and Wolfgang left their son with a nurse and traveled to Salzburg to visit Leopold and Nannerl. However, three weeks later, on 19 August, the Mozarts’ joy turned to grief with the unexpected death of their infant son. How could Mozart have written a “Crucifixus” or a “Resurrexit” after learning that his child had died? If the Mass were intended as a votive offering, there would have been no point in completing the work.
Seen in this light, Mozart’s choice of the Penitent David takes on greater significance. Reworking the Kyrie and Gloria as penitential psalms in Davide penitente would have enabled him not only to salvage the completed portions of the Mass but also to bring him some relief from losing his first-born son. Though we cannot fill in all the gaps where historical evidence is sparse, we should treat Wolfgang and Constanze as human beings with normal emotional reactions.
Pierpaolo Polzonetti: Mesmerizing Adultery: Guillelm(o) Kornman, His Unfaithful Wife, and Così fan tutte
The references to mesmerism in Così fan tutte may well be linked to a notorious Parisian adultery scandal involving Guillaume Kornman (a co-founder and sponsor of the French mesmeric society) and Beaumarchais, who defended Kornman’s unfaithful wife after discovering that Kornman instigated the love affair between his wife and her lover. A pamphlet war between Beaumarchais and Kornman regarding this burning issue broke out in 1787, when Salieri was living with Beaumarchais in Paris, working on Tarare. Significantly, the earliest sources of Così fan tutte— Salieri’s first unfinished setting of La scola degli amanti, Da Ponte’s original libretto, and Mozart’s autograph—all spell the name of Guglielmo as “Guilelmo.” Besides this possible reference to Guillaume Kornman, several elements of the opera’s plot emerge from a superimposition of the different accounts of the affair given in the many pamphlets circulating in the French capital and partly abroad. Interestingly, the use of mesmeric references in Così fan tutte is more pervasive than previously recognized and includes “seductive” mesmeric practices performed by “Guilelmo” and Ferrando. Under this new light, the opera can be interpreted as a political response to the radical ideas of the so-called Kornman group, whose leader Nicolas Bergasse used mesmeric theories and the public’s interest in the Kornman scandal for political propaganda by presenting Mme Kornman’s “perverse” behavior as a symbol of the present moral disease dissolving the natural mesmeric “rapports” within society.
George Torres: Terms of Endearment: Duettini, Terzettini, and Ariette in Mozart’s Operatic Designations
Starting with Le nozze di Figaro and continuing through La clemenza di Tito, Mozart supplied diminutive titles to over a dozen pieces in his last four operas. Duettino, the diminutive of duetto, appears six times in Figaro. As well as the use of duettini in the remaining operas, other diminutives used by Mozart include a terzettino in Così fan tutte, two ariettas in Figaro, and a canzonetta in Don Giovanni. Duettino and Terzettino are rarely encountered in operatic literature before 1800, whereas arietta and canzonetta appear more frequently. For this reason, only definitions of the Arietta and canzonetta and not those of duettino and terzettino are to be found in period sources. Period citations reveal that the distinction between a regular form such as aria and its diminutive, arietta, is based on a difference in size.
The size-based distinction between regular and diminutive forms does not apply to the majority of Mozart’s works bearing these titles. For example, the two Cherubino arias in Figaro are about the same length, but “Non so più” from Act I is labeled aria while “Voi che sapete” from Act II is labeled arietta. The opening number in Figaro, “Cinque . . . dieci” is labeled duettino while the opening number in Così “La mia Dorabella” is titled terzetto. The Figaro number is thirty measures longer than the Così opener but, nevertheless, is distinguished by the composer with the diminutive.
Because Mozart gave so much attention to the affect that elements such as key signatures and rhythms had on the music, his application of the diminutive terms might be based on something other than just size. The purpose of this paper is to examine the numbers that use diminutive terminology to discover by what criteria, if any, Mozart considered them “smaller.”
Laurel E. Zeiss: Ferrando’s Fascinations: Wind Serenades and the Minor Mode in Così fan tutte
In the third trio of Così fan tutte, the character Ferrando declares that when he wins the wager he will arrange for a serenade for his beloved. Indeed, Harmonie-like writing follows Ferrando throughout the score in numbers as diverse as “Un’ aura amorosa,” “Ah lo veggio,” and “Tradito, schernito.” During the first act, close part-writing for the winds represents idealism on the part of the lovers. During the Act 2 ensemble “Secondate, aurette amiche,” however, the topos of the serenade becomes subverted when the men use it to deceive.
Ferrando has another musical fascination whose meaning is similarly double-edged: the minor mode. Minor forms part of Ferrando’s exotic “Albanian” disguise; he, Guglielmo, and Don Alfonso all turn to it as they trick the women. Yet with Ferrando minor also at times portrays sincere responses, and its use during his arias and duets serves to give him more emotional depth than his counterpart.
This paper will explore the role Ferrando’s musical fascinations play in Così, including how these strands come together and are restored to their proper functions during Ferrando’s aria “Tradito, schernito.” Their final appearances during the opera’s Act 2 Finale will be discussed as well.
“Mozart and the Habsburgs”
Mozart Society of America Session at Joint Meeting of International and American Societies
for Eighteenth-Century Studies,
University of California, Los Angeles, 3–10 August 2003.
As an affiliate member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Mozart Society is entitled to hold one session at the annual meeting. The 2003 meeting will be held concurrently with the Eleventh International Congress on the Enlightenment, sponsored by the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS), in Los Angeles, 3-10 August 2003. For this session, papers are solicited on any aspect of Mozart’s relations with members of the Habsburg dynasty, his dealings with its institutions (whether in Austria or in other lands of the monarchy), and his engagement in the intellectual, political, and cultural life of the Habsburg realm. Please send abstracts of proposed papers by 15 October 2002 to the Chair of the session, Bruce Alan Brown, Department of Music History, Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089–0851, e-mail brucebro@usc.edu. Abstracts of papers to be presented will be published in the January 2003 issue of the MSA Newsletter.
“Mozart in North America: The Eighteenth Century”
Joint Meeting of International and American Societies
for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of
California, Los Angeles, 3–10 August 2003.
Papers should explore various aspects of Mozart’s presence on this continent: personal links with the composer (e.g., Lorenzo da Ponte, librettist of three Mozart operas, who ended his life in New York City); biographical and fictional literature; critical reception of his music; manuscript collections; manner of performance (original, arrangements for band, for four-hand piano) and types of instruments (fortepiano,glass harmonica), places of performance (concert halls, private recitals, in the home, etc.) and performance and influence of his music. Please send proposals for papers by 1 October 2002 to Isabelle Emerson, Department of Music, University of Nevada, NV 89154–5025; fax: (702) 895–4239; e-mail: emerson@ccmail.nevada.edu.
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Last modified on 25 September 2002.
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