2006 MSA Study Session
The Mozart Society of America will again hold its annual meeting at the fall meeting of the American Musicological Society, this year in Los Angeles. The MSA will convene on Friday, 3 November 2006, from 2:00 to 2:00 P.M. for a brief business meeting followed by a study session.
The meeting is open to nonmembers as well as members of the Society. The agenda for the business portion is as follows:
Announcements
President’s Report
Treasurer’s Report
Committee Reports
New Business
Other

Study Session
The Program Committee has selected one paper and two abstracts for presentation at the study session. Since a leading aim of our Society is to promote scholarly exchange and discussion among its members, we will again follow the format we have used for the last several years. The study session will be divided into two parts, the first for the presentation and discussion of the paper by Edmund Goehring, which was selected partly on the basis of its potential to stimulate discussion, and the second for individual discussions with authors of the two distributed abstracts and those interested in their work.

Edmund J. Goehring (University of Western Ontario):
Much Ado about Something; or, Così fan tutte in the Romantic Imagination

Johann Friedrich Reichardt’s Berlinische musikalische Zeitung had a short life but a long reach into art. Among its gems is a “Musikalischer Briefwechsel” that appeared over three issues in September 1805. The text, cast as an epistolary exchange between the fictional characters Arithmos and Phantasus, argues the merits of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which had recently returned to the Berlin stage. The exchange has drawn little scholarly attention, and yet it not only gives a glimpse into Berlin’s musical politics but also mounts an extraordinary critical defense of Mozart’s opera. Elucidating the Briefwechsel’s remarkable aesthetic claims will be this paper’s main task.

The authorship of the Briefwechsel, which appeared pseudonymously, has been attributed to Georg Christian Schlimbach, a frequent contributor to the journal. I will argue, however, that Reichardt himself makes the more likely author: the correspondence more closely reflects, among other things, his deep investment in early Romantic theories of art. Indeed, the apologia for Mozart’s opera makes the rare argument that the work exemplifies Romantic irony. E. T. A. Hoffmann is famous for his terse praise of the opera’s “ergötzlichste Ironie.” Reichardt, however, goes further by showing how the opera amalgamates opposing forces, especially the comic and serious. Employing a Shakespearean conceit, he argues that Mozart’s music amounts to more than “much ado about nothing.”

Così fan tutte has generally been viewed as a work that runs counter to Romantic tastes. Reichardt’s epistolary exchange might provide the basis for a reëvaluation of Così’s place in nineteenthcentury thought. This paper will conclude by pointing to a previously unknown review of an 1819 Viennese production of the opera, a review that extols not only the opera’s subtlety and precision but also its generic decorum.

Floyd K. Grave (Rutgers University):
Explaining “Nonthematic Passagework” in Mozart

Critics often speak of “substantive theme” and “passagework” as opposites, to be best identified with other polarities (textural, tonal, etc.) that typically inform the first movement of a later-eighteenth-century concerto. It is also common to regard brilliant passagework as a concession, an unavoidable indulgence in a work that must showcase virtuosity.

If we are not to conclude that concertos of Mozart’s day are all aesthetically compromised by their commitment to mindless figuration, we need to scrutinize these works for redeeming signs of individuality, thematic integration, and functional coherence wherever brilliant style comes to the fore. That soloistic passagework repays close study was amply demonstrated by Jane Stevens’s foundational “Piano Climax” essay, where functional distinctions are revealingly drawn involving harmonic rhythm, surface activity, and melodic profile. Her analyses furnish a model for further inquiry into the ways in which seemingly nonthematic figuration may play an integral role in a movement’s unfolding design.

Signs that Mozart, for one, could both embrace and surmount any theme/passagework duality become apparent through analysis of his special approaches to passagework at critical junctures in a first-movement form. A promising place to start is with the soloist’s appropriation— and characteristic, gradual liquidation—of primary-theme material early in the solo exposition. It is here that we first cross a certain uncanny threshold as the theme dissolves into a kind of figural display that will often link itself to the melodic idea from which it sprang while at the same time explicitly foreshadowing particular soloistic gestures and other elements of brilliant-style engagement in the events that follow.

Thomas Irvine (University of Southampton):
Leopold Mozart between Affect and Cognition

Leopold Mozart’s Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756) is more than a mirror of eighteenth-century violin playing. In this paper I will argue that Mozart’s Versuch documents a struggle between two competing models of musical communication, one based on a general semiotics of affect and another based on specific individual responses to music. The conflict between the two is the conflict between rationalist, systematic thinking and what Panajotis Kondylis has called the eighteenth century’s “rehabilitation of the sensual.” I will explore this conflict here, which Kondylis and others have made out to be one of the Enlightenment’s most fundamental defining qualities, in two steps.

First, I will trace the Violinschule’s roots in contemporary theories of musical meaning. As Carl Dahlhaus has argued, the arrival of functional harmony in the 1720s appeared to render the Figurenlehre, based on antique rhetoric, redundant: expressive dissonances, for instance, were no longer an exception to, but part of, the rules. Johann Mattheson’s Vollkommener Capellmeister (1739) re(in)stated the rhetorical model as an Affektenlehre, claiming for it epistemological prestige as imitation of nature. Thus his Figurenlehre is no longer an implicit theory of the past, but an explicit theory of the present; no longer a set of rhetorical rules, but a semiotic system. The weak link in such a system, however, is the contingency of individual performance. Following Mattheson’s lead, the discussions of expression in the treatises of J. J. Quantz (1752), C. P. E. Bach (1753), and Mozart (1756) stress the musician’s obligation to serve as a conduit of musical meaning; expression is in the music and not in its performance.

Second, I will suggest that Leopold Mozart’s approach to the doctrine of the affections was a symptom of its demise. He argues strenuously that it is the performer’s duty to leave the affective content of a piece of music intact, yet his frequent appeals to individual experience, ironically, destabilize the semiotic system he takes for granted; empirical models of performance and reception, which focus on individual musical responses, are poison for coherent systems of meaning. I will illuminate this process of dissolution by comparing it to the contemporaneous splintering of the discourses of Seelenlehre into the new “sciences” of psychology and anthropology. The former assumes the human subject to be governed by a “soul” universal to all; the latter propose theories of human action based on the behavior of individuals or specific groups. Finally, I will show how Leopold tried to hold back the process of dissolution by attempting to assert control over eversmaller details of performance. Ironically, in the Violinschule’s final chapter, he was nonetheless forced to surrender to the imperatives of empiricism, admitting that experience is the musician’s most reliable teacher.

The question of what effect Leopold’s struggle to find an adequate theory of performance might have had on the education of his son remains open. In a final section of this paper, however, I will sketch what some of these effects might be.

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From the President

Welcome to the tenth year of the Mozart Society’s existence! It was in November 1996 at the American Musicological Society annual meeting in Baltimore that thirty-four musicologists enthusiastically and hopefully endorsed the establishment of the Mozart Society of America.

And I believe that the Society has come far toward fulfilling the intentions of those founding members in its achievements during these ten years.

Newsletter: Ed Goehring took on the formidable task of creating the Society’s Newsletter, setting in place the basic format and policies for its production. His work was continued by the equally inspired editors who succeeded him: Kay Lipton and then John Rice. The Newsletter has done much to satisfy a primary goal of the Society: to provide an English-language forum for communication about Mozart studies, works, performances. A sign of its success, perhaps, is the possibility of buying issues at Amazon.com—at greater expense than purchasing a membership.

Study Sessions: Designed and presided over by Jane Stevens, the Study Sessions during the Society’s annual meetings have provided welcome opportunities for young as well as older scholars to present ideas both in finished paper form and in abstracts for discussion. The sessions during meetings of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (see the announcement on page 7) are more inter-disciplinary in nature and provide opportunities to expand the Society’s audience into other academic areas.

Conferences: University of Nevada 2001, Cornell University 2003, Indiana University 2006. These meetings, roughly every two years, have featured unusual, exciting presentations and have all included performances of Mozart’s music. The Society has been fortunate in finding generous and welcoming hosts. Committee chairs have given unstintingly of time and effort: special recognition is due to Mary Sue Morrow, Kathryn Libin, Bruce Brown, program chairs, and to Neal Zaslaw and Dan Melamed in charge of local arrangements at Cornell and at Indiana University. Attendees have invariably remarked on the pleasant atmosphere and generous sharing of ideas at these conferences. The symposium this summer jointly sponsored by the MSA and the Santa Fe Opera was an initial step toward involving a more general audience with the world of Mozart scholarship.

Information Center: Questions on all matter of Mozart-related topics come in daily and range from requests for grade-school-level biographies to questions about existence and locations of autograph scores, publication of Mozart works in the United States, eighteenth-century instruments. My thanks to Dan Leeson for his invaluable and just about unfailing help in responding to many of these questions.

So, what now? The Newsletter will continue to be the Society’s primary mode of communication, but it is time to consider the possibility of additional publications. The Publications Committee will be actively exploring this.

The web site must be expanded and improved. To this end a Web Site Committee, chaired by Marita McClymonds, has been established.

Membership is not growing but has shrunk to around 175 from a peak of slightly over 200. The Membership Committee, chaired by Laurel Zeiss, is initiating a campaign to increase our membership and to expand it beyond the world of musicology!

Conferences will continue to provide a forum of communication among Mozart scholars and aficionados and to be an important force in expanding the membership. The Vienna-Prague conference planned for 2009 should be a significant event for the MSA. Although the joint Mozart Society-Santa Fe Opera symposium was not well-attended, we gained a number of new members and made contact with a new and different audience. We plan to explore the possibilities of similar joint efforts with other opera companies.

If you would be interested in working in any of these areas please contact me or the chair of the appropriate committee (see list and descriptions of committees on page 13).

Welcome to new Board Members Ed Goehring, Jane Hettrick, Larry Wolff. President-elect Kathryn Libin will take office as President on 1 July 2007. Joe Orchard is now beginning his first full term as Treasurer having just completed the remainder of Dan Leeson’s term, and Eftychia (Effie) Papanikolaou is starting her term as Secretary.

It is my sad task to announce the retirement of John Rice as editor of this Newsletter. John has served as editor since January 2003, and he saw the circulation of the Newsletter grow to include many libraries in this country and abroad. He persuaded a number of new authors to contribute to the Newsletter, and worked energetically with the Business Office to produce each issue in a timely manner. He will be sorely missed.

A personal note: I spent several weeks in Australia and in Sydney had the great pleasure of meeting with the president, Martin Cooper, of the Sydney Mozart Society. They are extremely active in putting on concerts and are in contact with other similar societies throughout Australia. Mozart 2006 was being celebrated enthusiastically by a number of Australian organizations.

I hope to see many of you at the Study Session in Los Angeles. In the meantime my thanks for your support of the MSA and best wishes for the remainder of Mozart 2006!
—Isabelle Emerson

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Call for Papers

Mozart Society of America Session during the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Atlanta, 22–25 March 2007

Mozart after 250

Celebrations during 2006 of Mozart’s 250th birthday have taken many forms—some humble, some grandiose—and have involved a number of non-musical as well as musical disciplines. Have these various events influenced Mozart studies, performance, reception of the music, the image of the composer? What lies ahead? Papers may address any aspect of this question. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words by 25 September to Isabelle Emerson, Department of Music, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89 54-5025; fax 702 895 4239; e-mail isabelle.emerson@unlv.edu Please note that ASECS cannot provide computers or computer-projection equipment. Also remember that the Society’s rules permit members to present only one paper at the meeting; if you submit a paper proposal to more than one session, please be sure that you so notify all the chairs to whom you have made a submission. For more complete information on the Atlanta meeting, see the ASECS web page at http://asecs.press.jhu.edu.

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Reminiscences of the Society’s Third Biennial Conference Mozart’s Choral Music: Composition, Contexts, Performance Indiana University,
10–12 February 2006

As I write these lines, warm spring breezes make it difficult to recall the frigid winds that swept the Indiana plains as members of the Mozart Society met in Bloomington on February 10– 12 to participate in the organization’s third biennial conference, devoted to “Mozart’s Choral Music: Composition, Contexts, Performance.” The interesting program of papers and performances assembled by the program committee—chaired by Bruce Brown and including Kathryn L. Libin, Mary Sue Morrow, and John A. Rice—and by Daniel R. Melamed, local-arrangements coordinator, made attendance at the conference well worth the effort of braving the inconveniences of winter weather. Sessions and performances were held at various buildings on the impressive campus of Indiana University that house the Jacobs School of Music. Many of the speakers had prepared handouts and/or computer projections that increased the effectiveness of their presentations. The papers all generated questions, comments, and discussions, often resulting in lively exchanges of ideas. Full abstracts of all the papers presented may be found on pages 15– 19 in this issue of the Newsletter, and therefore their contents will be only briefly summarized here.

Conference attendees listen with rapt, and smiling, attention to the opening paper

The conference got under way on Friday afternoon with the first session, which began with expressions of welcome by Isabelle Emerson, President of the Society, Massimo Ossi, Chairman of the Musicology Department of the Jacobs School, and Jan Harrington, Chairman of the Choral Conducting Department. Three papers were presented that addressed the session’s announced theme, “Analytical Approaches: Text and Music,” beginning with “Judith, Mary, and Mozart: Chant melody in the finale of La Betulia liberata,” by Judith L Schwarz and Theodore C. Karp (the former reading the paper). This paper centered on Mozart’s use of the plainsong psalm tone tonus peregrinus (also known for its association with the German Magnificat) and its significance in the context of the identified oratorio (K. 118). Next, in his paper “’Lodi al gran Dio’: The Final Chorus of Metastasio’s La Betulia liberata as set by Gassmann and Mozart,” John A. Rice compared the two musical settings, pointing out, among other things, that Gassmann’s contains a motive that Mozart used later for the well-known signature motto in his opera Così fan tutte. The third paper, “The Saturation of Chromatic Space as a Structural Principle in Mozart’s Late Choral Music,” by Edward Green, analyzed Mozart’s use of chromaticism in these works and offered evidence that he may have employed a scheme governing the presentation of all twelve tones. Admitting the controversial nature of the theory of chromatic saturation, Green acknowledged that much more investigation would be necessary to determine its validity.

In the late afternoon we enjoyed a reception that included more hospitable words of welcome, these from Eugene O’Brien, Executive Associate Dean of the Jacobs School. The event was held in the lobby of the Musical Arts Center, where in the evening we attended a performance of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia by the acclaimed Indiana University Opera Theatre. The splendid production took advantage of an attractive and engaging stage design, and most of the singing was excellent, although in this respect the cast was a bit uneven. Most disappointing to my ears, though, was the inability of the auditorium to project certain sections of the orchestra and many of the singers in upstage locations—probably a result of the odd-looking globules affixed to surfaces that would otherwise have been sound-reflecting.

Saturday’s morning session, entitled “Aus dem Archiv: Sources, Authenticity, Institutions,” began appropriately with a keynote address contributed by Otto Biba, Director of the Archives, Library, and Collections of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. Unfortunately, illness prevented his attendance at this conference, but he had sent his paper, “The Beginnings of Mozart’s Presence in the Viennese Church-Music Repertory: Sources, Performance Practice, and Questions of Authenticity,” to be read by Bruce Brown. (It should be mentioned in this context that two other papers scheduled for the conference and listed in the program were in fact not heard because neither they nor their authors were present.) Among other things, Biba’s paper credited Antonio Salieri with having sparked Mozart’s interest, in the last year of his life, in becoming known in Vienna as a composer of church music. Bruce MacIntyre presented the next paper, “Missa brevis in G, K. 140: Mozart or Kracher?” This is a simple work in the missa pastoralis style, which Ludwig von Ludwig von Köchel accepted as authentic, although its authenticity was subsequently doubted by both Otto Jahn and Alfred Einstein. More recently, MacIntyre’s discovery of a documentary attribution of the work to one Mathias Kracher of Salzburg substantiates that doubt and thus gives every indication of settling the matter for good. The session concluded with Jane Schatkin Hettrick’s paper, “Remade to Order: Antonio Salieri’s Music for the Dankfest of Emperor Franz I,” concerning the plenary Mass with Te Deum that the composer reworked and expanded in 1804 to suit its performance in the vast space of St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna as part of the official celebration of Franz’s assumption of the title of Emperor of Austria. The paper also discussed the many problems with sources that its author had to overcome in order to prepare a critical edition as well as performance materials for the presentation of the complete Mass in concert next November in Vienna.

The afternoon session on Saturday, entitled “The Chorus in and out of the Theater,” began with a paper on “Mozart’s Thamos Motets” by Neal Zaslaw. These three choral works, in their versions with Latin text, were considered by Köchel and others in the nineteenth century to be contrafacta of the originals with German text written by Mozart as incidental music for the drama Thamos, König von Aegypten—a logical supposition based on the large number of musical transformations from theater to church that were made during and slightly after Mozart’s time. In the mid-twentieth century, however, evidence was brought to light that showed that the Latin versions of the three choruses had a closer connection to the composer than had been previously thought. Zaslaw evaluated all of this evidence in his paper and added more to suggest that these versions may even have originated with Mozart. David Buch presented the second paper, “The Choruses of Die Zauberflöte in Context: Choral Music at the Theater auf der Wieden,” which surveyed the use of the chorus in operatic performances at that theater prior to Mozart’s final collaboration with Emanuel Schickaneder. Buch presented evidence of Mozart’s association with the theater’s personnel and examined over twenty choruses from eight operas, finding musical characteristics that provided a context for the composer’s choruses in Die Zauberflöte.

In early evening, a fine performance by the Indiana University Singers, Chorale, and Orchestra presented Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, as reconstructed and completed by Robert Levin. This remarkable version, including adaptations from the composer’s Davide penitente (K. 469), developments of his sketches from 1783, and inventive new material, generated much discussion among members of the audience. The evening concluded with a festive banquet held in the Indiana Memorial Union, which offered further opportunities for conversation.

The events scheduled for Sunday centered on Mozart’s Requiem, beginning with the paper—“Freystädtler’s Supposed Copying in the Autograph of K. 626: A Case of Mistaken Identity”—by Michael Lorenz. Aided by ingenious computer displays, Lorenz convincingly challenged Leopold Nowak’s assertion that Franz Jakob Freystädtler was the anonymous copyist who entered the orchestral parts in the composer’s score of the Kyrie fugue of the Requiem, an attribution based on Nowak’s faulty identification of hooked natural signs as belonging exclusively to Freystädtler’s hand. David Black presented the second paper in the morning session, “The Exequien for Mozart at St. Michael’s,” which examined Mozart’s connections with the musical program of the Michaelerkirche in Vienna and discussed the evidence pointing to the music performed there at the memorial service for the composer, including the possibility that it included parts of the Requiem. Appropriately, the last scheduled event of the conference was a spirited performance of K. 626 by the Indiana University Pro Arte Singers and Classical Orchestra. The clear sonorities of this fine early-music ensemble combined perfectly in Auer Hall (the same auditorium in which the C-minor Mass had been performed the previous day), whose variable acoustics had fortunately been set to their most resonant level.

Winter’s fury had a surprise for conference attendees who had planned to fly back to the Northeast on Sunday or Monday. Although the “Blizzard of ‘06” may not have been as spectacular (at least in New York) as the TV weatherpersons were proclaiming, it did close airports on the east coast, and thus our sojourn in Bloomington was lengthened. Trying to make the best of it, Jane and I had one more dinner at a nice little Thai restaurant off-campus and spent the better part of a day working in the fine IU music library. Not a bad ending to a very satisfying conference!
—William E. Hettrick
Hofstra University

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Abstracts

Otto Biba (Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde): Keynote Address,The Beginnings of Mozart’s Presence in the Viennese Church-Music Repertory: Sources, Performance Practice, and Quesions of Authenticity

As is clear from known biographical facts—in particular his 1791 appointment as adjunct Kapellmeister in St. Stephen’s cathedra—only in the last year of his life did Mozart begin to demonstrate interest in the circumstances of Viennese church music. Before then he had done nothing to make himself known on the Viennese scene as a composer of church music. That he finally did so is essentially due to the initiative of Antonio Salieri. To be sure, there were problems of performance practice with regard to the early reception of Mozart’s church music, as well as problems—even for musicians who were close to him—in identifying Mozart’s authentic works of church music.

In this paper Vienna is understood not as a place, but rather as a homogenous domain of influence. For questions of performance practice, comparisons are made to practices in the performance of oratorios, in order to differentiate between the liturgical tradition of church music and the tradition of concert performances of oratorios. Musical sources as well as documents are brought to bear on these questions.

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David Black (Harvard University): The Exequien for Mozart at St. Michael’s

The rediscovery in 1991 of documentary evidence pertaining to a memorial service for Mozart at the Michaelerkirche has focused attention on the musical life of this institution, a church that boasted one of the largest vocal and instrumental ensembles of its kind in Vienna. According to a previously unreported entry in the St. Michael’s account books, the church paid for the copying of unspecified “motets” by Mozart in May 1791 , suggesting that the composer’s sacred output was already a known quantity at the time of the December exequies. The music archive of the Michaelerkirche, uncatalogued until recently, preserves a set of parts for Mozart’s offertory Misericordias Domini K. 222 that may be connected with this copying activity. Circumstantial evidence suggests that several masses by Mozart were circulating in Vienna on the composer’s initiative, and it is possible that Mozart was personally involved in the Michaelerkirche’s acquisition.

Considerable speculation has surrounded the presence and identity of music performed at the memorial service in December. A number of scholars have suggested that a partial organ score by Süßmayr of the Introit and Kyrie from Mozart’s Requiem, now in Budapest, represents performance material for this occasion. This score, however, likely dates from the late 1790s, and cannot offer confirmation for the newspaper reports that some form of K. 626 was performed at the exequies. A number of musicians active at St. Michael’s can also be ruled out as candidates for the “third hand” in the partially autograph score of the Kyrie.

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David Buch (University of Northern Iowa): The Choruses of Die Zauberflöte in Context: Choral Music at the Theater auf der Wieden.

Today we view Mozart less as an isolated artist on a progressive mission to develop a personal style, and more as a composer working with specific personnel and collaborators on projects that had particular requirements and limitations. This new perspective is most apparent in opera, where the abilities of singers and musicians, as well as the demands of the librettist, can decisively influence compositional choices.

Mozart’s choral writing for the opera Die Zauberflöte (30 September 1791 ) provides a good example of this interactive aspect of musical creation. Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto designated the forces and the basic poetic structure for the choruses, prescribing independent choral numbers and choral segments in the introduction and the two finales. While Mozart mostly followed his librettist’s intentions, he occasionally deviated from them significantly.

This paper will discuss for the first time the use of the chorus at Schikaneder’s Theater auf der Wieden prior to Die Zauberflöte. The recent recovery and identification of manuscript scores of eight operas preceding Die Zauberflöte at the Wiednertheater provide a context for Mozart’s approach to the chorus in this venue. Over twenty independent choruses (for women, men, and mixed voices) survive, along with choral segments in large ensembles such as introductions and finales. Analysis of this music suggests that Mozart was composing for a company he knew well, an assumption supported by Mozart’s correspondence, his intimate connection to the personnel, and his previous collaboration on the Wiednertheater opera Der Stein der Weisen ( 11 September, 1790). Thus the choruses in Die Zauberflöte indicate more about the evolution of the music in this theater than Mozart’s development as an autonomous “artist.” This evolution appears to have continued in the operas that followed Die Zauberflöte at the Wiednertheater, many of which have only recently become available for study. These choruses will also be discussed at the conclusion of this paper.

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David Buch gives his paper, illustrated with performances by an ensemble of Jacobs
School of Music students directed by DM Student Jamie Kirsch, and (on the right) a
scene from a Singspiel acted out by Kathryn Libin and Michael Lorenz

Edward Green (Manhattan School of Music): Mozart’s Late Choral Music, and the Saturation of Chromatic Space

In the final year of Mozart’s life, 1791, a new technique of structural organization begins to show itself in his choral music—a technique which earlier appeared only in his chamber music. It may be called “symmetric design through the saturation of chromatic space.” For example, the “Ave Verum Corpus” (K. 6 8) can be heard as consisting of two balanced motions through chromatic space—the first concluding in measure 23, the second in measure 39. In each arc, all the tones of the chromatic scale appear.

Several movements of the Requiem are organized along similar lines—most notably the “Confutatis” which, short as it is, uses the technique in a furiously concentrated manner, perhaps in order to highlight the text, with its picturing of the soul thrown into confusion. There are nearly five complete saturations of chromatic space in the course of this movement. The last “cycle,” however, lacks a D natural. Yet, this is precisely the pitch which arrives, with such powerful and mournful effect, in the very first measure of the following movement, the “Lacrymosa,” where it functions as the tonic.

Theorists have long valued the concept of “harmonic rhythm” as a means of grappling with deeper levels of structural organization than appear in the surface rhythm of a classical composition. Similarly, Schenkerian analysis has revealed long-range designs of melodic and contrapuntal completion. This paper suggests, as a supplement to these tested concepts, we ought also to investigate the pacing by a composer of the chromatic saturation of musical space, independent of traditional notions of key and harmony. When late Mozart is analyzed along these lines, structural rhythms appear which otherwise may not readily be grasped. For example, the “Ave Verum Corpus” is structured 7 bars + 16 bars, mirrored by 16 + 7. The outer units consist merely of the diatonic set of D major plus the sharpened fourth, G#; the inner units provide the “cycles” which travel through, and eventually “saturate” chromatic space.

The author has just completed a study, to be published later this year in the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, in which he looks at late choral music of Haydn from the same technical perspective—and mention will be made in this paper of the discernable impact of Mozart’s late choral music upon Haydn in this regard.

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Jane Schatkin Hettrick (New York City: Remade to Order): Antonio Salieri’s Music for the Dankfest of Emperor Franz I

On 11 August 1804, Emperor Franz II of the Holy Roman Empire issued a “Patent,” a charter by which he assumed the title and office of a hereditary “Emperor of Austria,” thus becoming Kaiser Franz I of Austria. A public reading of this document, which announced the founding of imperial Austria, followed on 7 December. Of course, such momentous developments called for formal celebration and general festivities, which took place in many churches and other sites around the Habsburg territories. The grandest of the official celebrations was held in Vienna in St. Stephan’s Cathedral on 8 December, the day after the public reading of the Patent. It was called a Dankfest, a festival of thanksgiving, and it served as both religious service and state ceremony.

As imperial Hofkapellmeister, Antonio Salieri had responsibility for the entire musical program of this occasion: preparation, rehearsal, and performance. We do not know how soon after August the plans for the Dankfest began to be formulated. Court records indicate that different dates were under discussion as late as November. At any rate, time to put together the music for an event of this magnitude was short, and the venue, unlike the small imperial chapel for which Salieri composed most of his sacred music, was large.

The music that Salieri provided for the Dankfest fulfilled the requirements of a splendid celebration. Lacking the time to compose new works for the occasion, he nevertheless chose existing music of his own composition. Evidence suggests that he programmed his “Te Deum” in D, his Mass in C, including a gradual and offertory, and a few smaller pieces, all works for double chorus. He revised these works, originally written in 1790 (“Te Deum”) and 1799 (Mass, Gradual, and Offertory) for this event, greatly augmenting the orchestral and vocal forces to fill the vast space of St. Stephan’s. Judging by the appearance of the manuscripts, which lack the clarity and accuracy of most of Salieri’s scores (and also the performance parts produced by professional scribes) of sacred music, the composer and his copyists must have made these revisions in haste.

This paper will describe the Dankfest and discuss Salieri’s music, showing how he changed the earlier versions to make them suitable for the 1804 celebration. It will also illustrate the complexities that the sources of these works pose for the editor.

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Michael Lorenz (University of Vienna): Freystädtler’s Supposed Copying in the Autograph Of K. 626: A Case of Mistaken Identity

It is an accepted fact that only the choral and the basso continuo parts in the Kyrie- Fugue of the Requiem show Mozart’s handwriting. After Carl Bär had attributed the copying of the instrumental parts in the upper seven staves to Süßmayr, Leopold Nowak presented a different hypothesis in his article “Wer hat die Instrumentalstimmen in der Kyrie-Fuge des Requiems von W. A. Mozart geschrieben?” (MJb 1973/74). Having excluded an arbitrary selection of various Viennese church composers, Nowak came up with Mozart’s friend Franz Jakob Freystädtler ( 1761 - 1841 ) as a new candidate for the anonymous copyist of the orchestral parts. This alleged identification, which Nowak based on the examination of the natural signs in only two samples of Freystädtler’s handwriting, has never been questioned and was uncritically accepted by Mozart scholarship. The study of Freystädtler’s other—hitherto neglected—autographs has however cast strong doubts on Nowak’s theory. I want to challenge this identification and intend to prove that Freystädtler came into the “Kyrie” like Pilate into the “Credo.”

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Bruce C. MacIntyre (Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College, CUNY): Missa brevis in G, K. 140: Mozart or Kracher?

The Missa brevis in G major, K. 140, is a simple, attractive eighteen-minute setting in the missa-pastoralis style often used in concerted masses performed at Christmas in eighteenth-century Austro- Hungarian realms. Despite the work’s appearance in the NMA and Walter Senn’s impressive case for its authenticity, doubts still linger about its authorship. In his original catalogue Ludwig von Köchel considered the work authentic because of Johann Anton André’s attestation, its ample dissemination, and contemporary musicians’ esteem for the work. He placed the work between the Missa [longa] in C minor, K. 139 (now K^3a 47a and considered the early Waisenhaus-Messe written for Vienna in December 1768) and the “Te Deum laudamus” in C major, K. 141 (now K^3a 66). However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Otto Jahn and Alfred Einstein, among others, expressed doubts about the mass on the basis of its style and considered it merely an imputed work (“ein unterschobenes Werk”), thus moving it to the appendix of later editions of Köchel’s catalogue.

A few years ago another manuscript for the mass was located by this author under the name “Kracher” in thematic catalogues for the music archive of the Benedictine Abbey at Lambach, Austria. According to Wurzbach’s biographical dictionary, Mathias Kracher ( 1752- 1827/30) served as an organist in Seekirchen and Kuchl, and he was an active musician in and around Salzburg. He apparently possessed a sizable
collection of musical scores and parts, some of which eventually ended up at St. Peter’s in Salzburg. After reviewing the work’s current source situation and its place in the context of Mozart’s output, this paper will discuss the evidence and stylistic attributes (e.g., awkward transitions, melodic infelicities, etc.) that speak against Mozart as the work’s author. An update on the bases for the attribution to Kracher will also be presented.

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John Rice (Rochester Minnesota): “Lodi al gran Dio”: The final chorus of Metastasio’s Betulia liberata as set by Gassmann and Mozart

This paper compares Mozart’s setting of the final chorus of Betulia liberata with the nearly contemporary setting by Florian Gassmann for the Tonkünstler-Sozietät in Vienna. Beyond the overall rondo structure (with solos for Judith) that the choruses share, they are remarkably different. The differences can be attributed, in part, to differences in the musical environments of Salzburg and Vienna. Mozart’s exposure to the music of Michael Haydn and Gassmann’s need to bring contrapuntal grandeur to the final chorus of his oratorio led the two composers in opposite directions. It is thus ironic that when Gassmann set to music Metastasio’s last words, the motto-like five-syllable summation of his heroine’s homicidal act, “a un colpo solo” (in one blow), he chose a completely homophonic musical motto that anticipates both in rhythm and melody Mozart’s setting, almost twenty years later, of another fivesyllable motto, “Così fan tutte.”

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Judith L. Schwartz and Theodore C. Karp (Northwestern University): Judith, Mary, and Mozart: Chant Melody in the Finale of La Betulia Liberata

Mozart’s oratorio La Betulia liberata (K.118), composed to a libretto by Metastasio, was associated with a visit to Padua in 1771. Apparently commissioned by a resident music lover of that city, it was for reasons unknown not performed. The libretto summarizes the apocryphal Book of Judith, leading up to the slaying of the Assyrian general, Holofernes, the triumph of the Israelite populace, and a song of thanksgiving and praise to God.

Though the final section of Metastasio’s text, “Lodi al gran Dio,” departs from the Biblical narrative in wording and structure, it retains the basic theme, and Mozart sets it impressively as a movement for chorus and vocal solo with orchestral accompaniment. The stately nature of the choral segments, as well as the repeated tones in Judith’s soprano part, suggest that Mozart is here employing a cantus firmus, possibly a psalm tone. Scholars have identified the melody as the tonus peregrinus, most frequently associated with the chanting of Psalm 113, “In exitu Israel.” Nevertheless, this psalm has no ascertainable connection to the subject of the oratorio, and the identification, though readily verifiable musically, remains suspect until an explanation can be found for Mozart’spresumed choice.

It is well known that the melodic pattern of the tonus peregrinus appears also as the basis for the German Magnificat, “Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn.” As a chorale melody it was familiar throughout Protestant Germany from the sixteenth century on. Once taken into Lutheran liturgy, both text and plainchant associated with the canticle of Mary underwent change to encourage communal singing. In support of congregational participation, sixteenthcentury records in Wittenberg prescribed that the text of the German Magnificat text be sung “sub tono peregrino,” to the ninth psalm tone, while the Latin text could be sung by the choir in the traditional manner in any of the other eight psalm tones.

Thus associated with the German Magnificat, the melody acquired a prominent liturgical function associated with the veneration of the Virgin Mary. The long history of exegetical relationships drawn between Judith and Mary, together with the prominent role of Judith in religious iconography and the numerous references to Judith within Roman Catholic liturgy, strongly suggest that Mozart created an intentional musical reference by having the Marian Magnificat melody issue from the mouth of Judith. Comparison of relevant biblical canticles from Luke and Judith with Metastasio’s finale text supports this association.

Such is the context for Mozart’s borrowed melody. The informed listener immediately recognizes the musical incipit from the chorale “Meine Seel’ erhebt den Herrn” as a Germanic counterpart to Metastasio’s “Lodi al gran Dio.” An imagination steeped in the rich exegetical and representational traditions linking Judith and Mary quickly decodes the musical message concerning Judith as harbinger of Mary.

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Marita McClymonds and Neal Zaslaw

Neal Zaslaw (Cornell University): Mozart’s Thamos Motets

Since 1862, when Ludwig Köchel catalogued them as Anhang 121- 123 (“Uebertragene gegangene Compositionen”), the sacred versions of three choruses from Mozart’s Thamos, König in Aegypten have been assumed to originate from hands other than Mozart’s. Given a virtual industry in central Europe in the 1790s and early decades of the 1800s devoted to substituting sacred texts to choruses and arias from Mozart’s stage works, this was reasonable. The Thamos contrafacts are:

K. 345/1 , “Schon weichet dir, Sonne!” = “Splendente te, Deus” and “Preiß dir! Gotthei! durch alle Himmel”

K. 345/6, “Gottheit” = “Jesu, Rex tremendae majestatis” and “Gottheit über alle mächtig!” and “Gottheit, dir sey Preiß und Ehre! ”

K. 345/7b, “Ihr Kinder des Stabes” = “Ne pulvis et cinis superbe te geras” and “Ob fürchterlich tobend sich Stürme erheben.”

In the early 1950s the editors of the NMA became aware of a thematic inventory of Mozart’s Nachlaß, made for the estate’s purchaser, Johann André, by his assistant Franz Gleissner. The inventory revealed that manuscripts of these contrafacts were in Mozart’s estate. The NMA reacted by publishing the sacred texts in an appendix without, however, venturing an opinion about their authenticity. Recently Jochen Reutter demonstrated that the Latin texts fit the Thamos choruses better than the German texts; he suggested that the Latin versions may have been created under Mozart’s supervision. Mustering additional evidence, I attempt to make the case that these Latin motets may even be Mozart’s own productions.

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Mozart on the Mesa: The 2006 Joint Conference with the Santa Fe Opera
29 June – 1 July 2006

As is usual for the Southwest, the heat was a dry one, thunderstorms passed by without warning, and the night sky was clear. For the few days between 29 June and 1 July the city of Santa Fe played host to all these things, but with one added bonus. Attendees from around the globe gathered there for a scholarly celebration of no fewer than three very important birthdays. In addition to the obvious, 2006 marked the tenth anniversary of the Mozart Society of America and the fiftieth of the Santa Fe Opera. Therefore, it seemed as natural a progression as V⁷-I that these forces combine to create a weekend filled with lively discussion, exploration, and of course, music of the highest order.

Theatre, Scottish Rite Temple, Santa Fe

After a welcoming reception held on the grounds of the Santa Fe Opera, conference goers were treated to the dress rehearsal for the company’s production of Die Zauberflöte. A more fitting opening to the conference would be difficult to come by, especially considering its focus. Indeed, over the next few days, Mozart’s next-tolast opera would be investigated from every angle and perspective. The opportunity to get the full production in our heads was a valued one and helped to lay the foundation for all the events to come. But besides the “plot thickening” aspects of the rehearsal, this sneak-peak at a most intriguing production almost made it seem as though we all had something to do with it! As it turned out, this sensation rapidly grew to become a familiar one as the events moved on.

Sitting on the northern part of Paseo de Peralta is a large pink building. While it is perhaps not the most unassuming edifice in the city, the Scottish Rite Temple graciously opened its doors to us revealing the most spectacular conference setting many in attendance had ever seen. As part of their degree ceremonies, Scottish Rite Masons put on elaborate theatrical productions that require full costumes (some of which are as old as the building itself), stage sets, and lighting. To accommodate such proceedings, the Temple was constructed with a beautifully designed theater featuring illuminated constellations on the ceiling and dozens of stained glass windows along the walls featuring a myriad of Masonic icons. And naturally, it was in the midst of all this that the first round of talks was presented. Without resorting to hyperbole, it is safe to say that the experience was a touch on the surreal side; being immersed in an environment so rich with the very symbols imbued in Mozart’s work generated a feeling not easily shaken. This sensation, of course, was augmented by the insightful work being presented. New ideas and discoveries regarding all elements of Zauberflöte certainly got everyone thinking. The day’s festivities concluded with a presentation and discussion with the assistant director of the Opera’s production. With this, all that had been seen in the dress rehearsal was fully explained. We became privy to extensive background information on the design philosophy that had been adopted as well as numerous other facets of the production that would have otherwise remained secret.

Harrison Powley, Gabriel Lubell, Michael Ochs, Carol Ochs,
and Laurel Zeiss enjoying a coffee break

Craig Smith and Cathy Protopapas deep in discussion,
flanked by Jane Stevens and Roye Wates on the cantina patio at the Santa Fe Opera

On the final day of the conference,we again gathered on the grounds of the Santa Fe Opera. This time, however, instead of being greeted with cheese, wine, and blueberries, those in attendance were served an extensive tour of the facilities. Needless to say, they were most impressive. The wig shop alone was enough to pique this author’s curiosity, but moving through the enormous set pieces for several upcoming productions certainly had an effect, as well. We also learned a number of interesting tidbits relating to the Opera in general. For example, the whole facility has a completely self-sufficient water system. Every drop of rain that falls on the roofs of the grounds, in addition to drinking water, etc., gets purified and recycled without any assistance from local utilities. Immediately following our expedition, the talks resumed. Again, there was much to absorb, including, but not limited to, some new perspectives on the magical instruments Mozart employed and the true nature of Die Zauberflöte’s female characters. In the end, more than a few of us started to feel sorry for the Queen of the Night.

With what might as well have been obbligato lightning and thunder, the conference culminated in the premier of Santa Fe’s production. After having probed the work so deeply and learning all about the production over the preceding days, seeing it was really a sublime experience. The concepts behind the performance were certainly thought provoking and extremely well done. The piece really felt cohesive and the performance was seamless. Some of the highlights included Papageno’s feast of beer and McDonalds and one of the most elegant renditions of “Ach, ich fühl’s” ever to come forth from a Pamina (sung by Natalie Dessay). Sprinkled liberally throughout the audience were members of local Masonic lodges who were decked out in full regalia, the premier having been declared an official Masonic event. Just as the previous day’s setting had done, this only enhanced the experience; the work seemed to speak just a tad more clearly. But of course, Mozart never really needs any assistance with such matters. He just needs some fans, which he most certainly has, many of whom descended on the dry southwestern scene for a few days in the middle of the summer. A finer birthday celebration would be difficult to find.
—Gabriel Lubell
Indiana University

Presenters Richard Wattenbarger, Laurel Zeiss, Michael Ochs,
Kathryn Libin, Craig Smith, Eftychia Papanikolaou, and Harrison Powley

Jane Stevens, Kathryn Libin, Roye Wates
at the opening reception at the Santa Fe Opera

Roye Wates, Eftychia Papanikolaou, and Craig Smith
in the Scottish Rite Temple Ballroom

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Mozart Society at the Santa Fe Opera: Die Zauberflöte
Abstracts

Ellen J. Burns (University of Albany):
The “Phenomenological Phlute”: An Aesthetic Consideration of Mozart’s Characterizations

A review of the studies stemming from the 2001 anniversary of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte demonstrates that this enigmatic, bewitching work continues to provoke intense ontological discussions. Is it a fairy tale, Machwerk, Masonic testimony…? Within these sometimes cacophonic strains, however, a single unison refrain can be heard: Mozart was a master in achieving fully-dimensional characterizations.

Using methods developed from phenomenological aesthetics, I will show how Mozart “painted” his characters in rich detail. An analysis of the work informs us as to those characters possessing disciplined reticence and those who suffer from self-indulgent logorrhea. A technique that I have developed is the examination of metarhythms, which observe the relationship between enunicated downbeats and the text. Metarhythms illustrate, for example, the divergence in the profiles of the frenetic Queen of the Night, and Sarastro, the model of Enlightenment. Between these extremes can be observed the development of Tamino, Pamina, and (even) Papageno. In addition to tracking individual growth in this musical Bildungsroman, metarhythms illustrate how characters affect each other as seen in Pamina’s suicide scene where the Drei Knaben dissuade her from the most tragic of paths.

This opera—composed in German— was for and about the specialist and general audiences of the Theater auf der Wieden. I hope, in my paper, to return the focus to the people populating the world of Mozart’s work.

Valerie Langfield (Cambridge):
Edward Dent and The Magic Flute at Cambridge

When Edward Dent wrote in 1913, in the Preface to his book on Mozart’s operas, that most of Mozart’s operas were completely unknown in England, he was not exaggerating. Between 1890 and 1913, Wearing’s London Stage lists only two performances of Die Zauberflöte; for example, in 1892 (in Italian, with accompanied recitatives) and 1899 (a student production).

It was a semi-amateur production, at Cambridge in December 1911 (the three performances were sold out) that was seminal in countering the view of the opera as rather absurd, and bringing the work back to the English stage, not least by virtue of its lively translation. Dent, passionate about the importance of clarity in opera, in all its aspects, was at pains to produce a version that sat well in the voice, and that was lucid and true to the spirit of
the work. Beginning with the production at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1914, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, performances became more frequent; they were championed by Beecham, the Carl Rosa Company, and, in the 1920s, by Lilian Baylis at the Old Vic.

With the help of Dent’s diaries of the time, this paper examines the background and history of that production.

Kathryn L. Libin (Vassar College):
Feminine Virtue and Venom in Die Zauberflöte

The women in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte represent both the height of feminine virtue and the venomous outpouring of feminine rage. They embody good and evil, the magical and the mundane, the radiance of Day and the sinister darkness of Night. Yet they are not merely conventional archetypes; Mozart invests them with human emotions and motives that emerge in a dynamic musical language which transcends the words of the libretto. This lecture will explore the musical means by which Mozart brings the female characters of Die Zauberflöte to life, lends them distinct personalities, underscores their relationships with one another, and shapes their destinies.

Michael Ochs (Harvard University):
Il flauto magico in Vienna? Movies Using Music from Die Zauberflöte

Did an audience at the Vienna Opera ever see a performance of Die Zauberflöte in Italian? We find some “evidence” that it did in the film Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), directed by the Germanborn Max Ophuls. In a scene at the opera, we hear Papageno’s aria “Der Vogelfänger” sung in Italian (“Colombo, o tortorella”). We even see, briefly, a poster listing the cast for a performance that supposedly took place around 1915. But as a closer examination of the poster and an inventory of Zauberflöte productions at the Vienna State Opera shows, that performance took splace only in the mind of the director.

There have been dozens of films— nearly a century’s worth—that deal specifically with Mozart, from the 1909
La Mort de Mozart (aka Mozart’s Last Requiem) to the Australian documentary In Search of Mozart, released in January 2006. Movie and TV versions of Die Zauberflöte range from a 1956 “NBC Opera Theater” production (featuring Laurel Hurley, William Lewis, Leontyne Price, and John Reardon) to Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film Trollflöjten to a version updated to World War I, directed by Kenneth Branagh and scheduled for release in 2007.

But what of the many “non-Mozart” movies, like Letter from an Unknown Woman, that employ music from Die Zauberflöte? A survey of twenty-five of these films shows how the directors— sometimes subtly, sometimes not—used music from Die Zauberflöte to advance the movies’ plots.

Eftychia Papanikolaou (Miami University):
Elements of Subversion in the Music of the Two Armored Men

A great deal has been written on the diverse musical styles Mozart employed in Die Zauberflöte. A veritable encyclopedia of musical styles, Die Zauberflöte betrays a musical heterogeneity that parallels that of the libretto, ranging from the popular and mundane to the solemn and transcendental. Occasional regressions into the austere and dated world of the Baroque are not only represented in the quasi-opera seria character of the Queen of the Night but are also found toward the end of the opera in the music of the two Armored Men. The two men warn Tamino of the final reward that awaits him after he has gone through the trials of purification with fire, water, air, and earth. For that particular moment in the opera, Mozart uses the music of a venerable Lutheran chorale, “Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein” (“O God, look down from Heaven”), to a fugal accompaniment in the style of a Bach chorale prelude.

Such a subversion of musical expectations reinforces the need for a symbolic interpretation of the musical style Mozart employs in this scene. This act of cultural hegemony, whereby the form of the chorale acts as both an enlightening and a civilizing force, may at the same time be seen as carrying overt political implications. This paper explores how the music of this scene acts as a perfect prolepsis of the ultimate union of Tamino and Pamina, and also the claims it makes to hierarchies that may transcend the obvious musical one.

Harrison Powley (Brigham Young University):
Die Zauberflöte: Mozart’s Magical Musical Instruments

Scholars have argued over the Zauberflöte for many years. Is it a fairy-tale opera, a metaphorical discussion of Masonic and Rosicrucian beliefs, or a political or philosophical commentary on the 1780s and the Enlightenment? It can be all of these and more, but for many in the audience during the fall of 1791 it was entertainment pure and simple.

In a work so rich with literary, visual, and musical symbols, it is easy to gloss over the most obvious ones: the magical musical instruments. Musical instruments of Mozart’s day were similar in some ways to instruments in common use today yet quite different in construction, sound, and performance techniques. As performers and conductors try to communicate music of past centuries, they have turned in recent years to performing music on instruments for which the composers wrote the music, using either surviving instruments or modern reconstructions in an attempt to recreate the timbres or tone colors, tempi, ornamentation, tunings, and the like of the past.

This paper focuses primarily on Mozart’s use of two instruments: the Zauberflöte and the Zauberglöckchen. We know what a flute is and what bells are, but why and how are they “magical?” In fact, why do Schikaneder and Mozart use these instruments at specific times in the work, what meanings did they convey to Mozart’s audience? We will also discuss several surviving instruments that could have influenced Mozart’s music.

Richard Wattenbarger (La Salle University):
Disenchanting Mozart’s Flute

One of the strangely contradictory facets of Die Zauberflöte lies in the conflict between, on the one hand, the opera’s celebration of Enlightenment ideals and, on the other, the element of magic that is central to the plot. We might be inclined to write off this inconsistency by invoking the fairy-tale character of the story. Doing so, however, runs the risk of neglecting the degree to which Mozart and Schikaneder offer operagoers an account of the role of magic (or the lack of such a role) in Western secular modernity.

I argue that in at least three of the episodes involving ostensibly magical instruments, Mozart and Schikaneder demonstrate uses of music and musical performance as natural, rather than supernatural, means for realizing modern secular conceptions of humanity. These episodes, moreover, are crucial to understanding Die Zauberflöte as a story of the aesthetic formation of humanity in both personal and corporate senses. The climactic performance, occurring during Tamino’s final trial, ushers in not only an eschatological consummation of an ideal society but also the final judgement of evildoers.

Yet the social ideal in Die Zauberflöte is achieved only at a great cost: by embracing the modern opposition of nature and supernature; and by allowing music to usurp the function of the latter, the opera stages what theologians of Radical Orthodoxy have recently described as a “secular parody” of the Augustinian civitas Dei. Might the last laugh, then, belong to the Queen of the Night?

Laurel E. Zeiss (Baylor University):
Birthplace of a New Recitative Style?: The “Great Speaker Scene” in Die Zauberflöte

Tamino’s arrival at the gates of Sarastro’s realm is one of the most praised scenes in Mozart’s operas. This striking passage continually veers between accompagnato and arioso and incorporates numerous remote modulations within a fluid structure. To many critics, the “Great Speaker Scene” heralds the future; they view it as the “birthplace of a new recitative style,” a passage of “astonishing newness” that breaks ground for Wagner’s
music dramas.

Such a view, however, is one-sided. The scene’s tonal maneuvers, mix of genres, and through-composition have numerous precedents within Mozart’s own works, including an early opera, La finta giardiniera. Furthermore, eighteenth-century conventions surrounding accompagnato and the depiction of the supernatural and the fantastic play a role in the scene’s construction. Pragmatic considerations, such as staging needs and the text’s odd structure and irregular versification, also prompt Mozart’s compositional choices. In short, the passage reflects the past and provides a window onto contemporary practice as much as it offers a glimpse of the future.

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Works in English: 2005