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KMBB Lecture 9 Terror and Melancholy Mixed feelings in Mozart’s slow movements Maynard Solomon, Mozart: A Life (Harper Collins, 1994): ‘In several of Mozart’s most characteristic adagios and andantes a calm, contemplative, or ecstatic condition gives way to a troubled state—is penetrated by hints of storm, dissonance, anguish, anxiety, danger— and this in turn is succeeded by a restoration of the status quo ante, now suffused and transformed by the memory of the turbulent interlude’ (p. 187). Mozart, Sonata in A minor (K. 310, 1778), ii (Andante cantabile) ‘The slow movement is marked andante cantabile con espressione, a designation intended to describe the singing, expressive opening section. We have entered a selfcontained, windowless, protected space within which, moving at a quiet tempo, we quietly experience sensations of surpassing intensity—oceanic, comforting, and rapturous’ (ibid) PLAY EXPOSITION Cont. ‘But now, without raising his voice or quickening his pace, Mozart opens a trapdoor through which flood disturbing and destabilizing powers, threatening to annihilate what has gone before’ (Ibid) PLAY DEVELOPMENT SECTION ‘Mozart has no intention of giving way to chaos and disruption, however. Instead, after the outburst has spent its force, he moves to reinstate the original Edenic condition’ (190) PLAY RECAP Solomon’s Conclusions In K. 310/ii Mozart invented the Romantic character piece (ABA) ‘capable of symbolizing vast realms of experience and feeling’ (194); expressive contrasts of this intensity resonate with the most profound patterns of our lives. For Solomon, those patterns are described best by Freudian psychoanalysis . He ‘discovers’ here the (as he has it) blissful experience of being at one-with the mother, and the terror of individuation (of the permanent separation involved in becoming oneself). Solomon implies the movement reflects Mozart’s own (autobiographical) experience: the death of his mother, and more broadly his attempts to break away from his parents and Salzburg.* Viennese Classical Style vs Musical Autobiography There is a tension in the reception of Mozart’s music between the notion of the composer’s self-expression (the music conveys his feelings and reacts to his life) and of universality (his music is beyond personal and worldly matters – beautiful, abstract, universal, purely musical). Solomon’s argument is notable in finding a middle path. When VCS was the main way of understanding Mozart, Solomon’s argument would have seemed absurd. But based on our studies, there is some historical basis for self-expression – and thoughts of death – in freer keyboard music (cf the fantasia lecture). But Solomon’s psychoanalytic framework seems anachronistic. Using Topical Analysis and Galeazzi on Sonata Form It’s useful to explore other approaches to understanding the expressive content of this piece. How about topical analysis – what might that add? And, given that Solomon appears unaware that this is a sonata form, what about Galeazzi’s ideas of form (the ‘parts’ of a sonata form) – which he frames as parts of an oration or discourse -- are any parts particularly extended or intensified? Class exercises Label topics, and potential associations, at bb. 14; 8-14; 15-18. Consider key, harmony, meter as well as melodic style. Has Solomon fully captured the expressive character of the opening of the piece? In Galeazzi’s terms, what ‘parts’ of the sonata form exposition are bb. 15-22[beat 1], and bb. 22-29 [beat 1], and bb. 29-31? Are the lengths of these parts notable? The development section, or, in Galeazzi’s terms, the ‘second part’ and ‘modulation’ Solomon speaks of Mozart ‘opening a trap door’ but how, more precisely, does the change of character/expression take place in bb. 32-37? Is anything programmatic or ‘representational’ suggested? What topic or topics are employed in bb. 43-51?* Overall, what does a topical analysis suggest this piece is ‘about’ – and, specifically, what is the causes and referent of ‘terror’. Summary So in terms of essay writing techniques we’ve made the following moves: 1. Introduced the issue– terror– with a music example 2. Summarised one key piece of secondary literature that provides an existing interpretation of the topic of ‘terror’ 3. Looked more closely at the piece, applying things we’ve learned to arrive at a different understanding of ‘terror’ What next (in an essay) More abstractly, we have captured ‘what is already known’ (Solomon) and provided something like an antithetical reading of the same composition, so that the essay has gone A/B, or thesis and antithesis. So what next? Some essays would now expand on B to consolidate that different understanding. What would that involve? Some essays would attempt to integrate or reconcile A and B. What would that involve? 5 Minute Break! Melancholy Of all ‘emotions’ melancholy has attracted the most academic interest – not least among music historians. One of the reasons is that melancholy – as that rather up-market term suggests – is an ‘elevated’ sadness associated with high(er) social status (and so with identity); with ‘depth’, inwardness and self-awareness; with complexity – pain mingling with some element of pleasure; with creativity and intellectual achievement, and – notably -- as something that music can both rouse and banish. Music’s Affinity With Melancholy From the lute songs of John Dowland, through Johann Jakob Froberger’s ‘Plainte faite a Londres pour passer la Melancolie’ (Suite XXX), C. P. E. Bach’s Trio Sonata ‘Sanguineus und Melancholicus’ (1749), to ‘Porgi Amor’ for the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, to Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18/6/iv ‘La melanconica’, to Robert Schumann, ‚Melancholie‘ in Spanisches Liederspiel 6, to Grieg, ‚Melancholie‘ in Lyric Pieces Op. 47/5– to, well ... Francis Poulenc, ‚Melancholie‘ for solo piano, music seems to enjoy a special intimacy with the bitter sweet! A few highlights of the secondary literature on melancholy Guenter Bandmann, ed., Melancholie und Musik: Ikonographische Studien. Verlag fur Sozialwissenschaften, 1960; repr. 2013. Shows the Classical and Biblical pedigree of music and melancholy with specific reference, for example, to King Saul, possessed of an evil spirit, calmed by David’s harp (Book of Samuel). Melanie Wald-Furmann, ‘Ein Mittel wider sich selbst‘. Melancholie in der Instrumentalmusik um 1800. Bärenreiter 2010. Despite – or as part of – the general trend towards music as pure and otherworldly around 1800, there was also an interest in the representation of melancholy in abstract instrumental music, for example, in Beethoven‘s String Quartet Op. 18/6/iv. Cont. Annette Richards, ‘Solitude and the Clavichord Cult’ in The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque (Cambridge UP, 2000). Though not about melancholy specifically, traces the ideal of solitude surrounding performance on the clavichord in later 18th-century Germany, solitude connected variously with genius, madness, and, more prosaically, the clavichord as the heart’s sounding board. Sets CPEB’s ‘Farewell to my Silbermann Clavichord’ in this context. Cont. Wolf Lepenies, Melancholy and Society [1967], trans. Gaines and Jones (Harvard UP, 1992). A sociological analysis of what social classes have claimed to be affected by melancholy (which he tropes as boredom and ennui). Emphasises the political impotence of the middle class of the German 18th-century, and the corresponding flight into the imagination. Lepenies, Melancholy and Society, p. 73 Louise Ziegler had a grave dug in her garden so she could savour the feelings of someone dying or deceased – and weep; in his ‘Ode to Ebert’, Klopstock imagines his (still living) friend deceased; Matthias Claudius requested Gerstenberg to write a tragedy in which ‘one really must weep’; in Johann Martin Miller’s novel Siegwart: A Monastic Story (1796) there are 555 instances of characters weeping.* Nancy November, ‘Haydn’s Melancholy Voice’, Eighteenth-Century Music 4/1 (2007): 71-106 Melancholy was discussed in the later 18th century as ‘dialectical, involving the interplay of such elements as pleasure and pain, freedom and fettering, and self-reflection and absorption. ... Musical melancholy arises, I argue, when ... the vocal character in a song or the “composer’s voice” in an instrumental work exhibits an ironic distance from his or her own pain’ (Author’s abstract, p. 71). Cont. For Edmund Burke* (pp. 72-3) musical beauty relaxed the body, and the melody or harmonic progression lead the listener through a maze: the overall effect was of ‘melting’ and ‘langour’ in which the listener’s body resembled the body of the melancholic. At the same time, music insulated the listener from melancholy symptoms such as ‘eating cares’ and brooding. A case of melancholy? Mozart’s Adagio in B minor (K. 540, 1788) Class to complete this slide by relating the piece to the discourse of melancholy: