“How does Scott Burnham do it? He manages the Mozartean feat of effortlessness, clarity, and beauty in luminous prose that makes musical processes give up their secrets and yet retain the sense of their mysterious power. The satisfying shape of this book moves with revelatory imagery from Mozart’s limpid opening phrases through disruptive thresholds toward thematic returns both weightless and profound. A full landscape of emotional states is thrillingly revealed. Burnham paints Mozart’s achievements in strikingly vivid and personal ways even as he places them within the broad conceptual fields of musical beauty and ideas of the self between the Enlightenment and romanticism. A stirring book.”–Elaine Sisman, Columbia University

“No one hears with more joy than Scott Burnham, and we are all the richer for it. Any performer will find here inspiration for focusing awareness on the particulars of Mozart’s language. The elements of his music are poetically teased apart in order that we may be granted space to listen and feel more deeply. Burnham offers us a primer on how to open oneself to music, develop the sensitivity to be vulnerable to its specific intimacies and charms, and, in so doing, experience the profound pleasure of connection with Mozart’s works.”–Mark Steinberg, Brentano String Quartet

“Concentrating on music’s effects, this distinctive and original book focuses on the most important elements of Mozart’s music. Moving beyond conventional analysis and using the figurative powers of language with skill and imagination, Burnham’s personal and carefully conceived book will be read and valued by lovers of Mozart’s art.”–Karol Berger, author of Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity

“This virtuosic and deeply touching book distills a lifetime of listening to Mozart into a powerful work of appreciation. Writing from an unapologetically personal point of view, Burnham examines certain passages in detail to describe how a particularly Mozartean beauty comes about. This book is a real gift.”–Mary Hunter, Bowdoin College

Scott Burnham is the Scheide Professor of Music History at Princeton University. His books include Beethoven Hero (Princeton) and Sounding Values.

Mozart’s Grace

By SCOTT BURNHAM

Princeton University Press

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-00910-0

Contents

Acknowledgments………………………ixInvitation…………………………..1I Beauty and Grace……………………7II Thresholds………………………..37III Grace and Renewal…………………117Knowing Innocence…………………….165Notes……………………………….171Bibliography…………………………183Index……………………………….187

Chapter One

BEAUTY AND GRACE

Anmut ist eine bewegliche Schönheit … [Grace is Beauty astir …] Schiller, Über Anmut und Würde

Die Schönheit bleibt sich selber selig; Die Anmut macht unwiderstehlich … [Beauty’s delighted with itself; Grace makes it irresistible …] Goethe, Faust Part II, lines 7403–41

Sonority

What is so special about the sound of Mozart? Consider the opening of the Adagio from the Clarinet Concerto, much beloved for its pellucid beauty (example 1.1). There is nothing the least bit exotic in the first four-bar phrase. Everything is transparent, straightforward: simple harmonies (tonic and dominant), guileless melody, slow harmonic rhythm. And yet there is a force at work that holds this texture together in beautiful suspension, a focal energy that creates a sense of apartness and integrity. Note first the warmly cohesive, floating quality of the string sonority: the pedal tone in the viola sustains the sound, while the murmuring figures in the violins lend it a gentle animation—the contrary motion of their figuration promotes a sense of balanced individuation. Then consider the bass line, which works in tandem with the harmonic rhythm: its brief nudges on the dominant give the texture just enough push to keep it floating, but not so much as to force anything. That the dominant falls on the downbeat and not on the preceding upbeat subtly undermines the downbeat as an arrival and contributes to the effect of a floating, suspended tonic.

Above this texture, the clarinet melody opens a calm triadic space, reaching from the fifth A through the root D to the third F-sharp. As the radiant “color tone” of the triad, this F-sharp emerges as a small extravagance. Its flight is brief: touched by the fleeting dominant harmony with the barest hint of dissonance, the F-sharp is drawn back down to the root D. Its life-span is as the top of an arc, a passing zenith. The utterance that follows takes a further step upward by riding the triadic arc to its next valence, the fifth, A, which also then recedes over a dominant harmony, settling on the F-sharp. The energy for this incremental expansion is gained by holding the initial, lower-register A for an additional eighth note, a subtle instance of reculer pour mieux sauter. But “leaping” seems too strong, too directed, for the quality of this motion: this is more a graceful play of swelling arcs, the triad stretching pleasantly in its warm surroundings.

In the next four-bar phrase (bars 5–8), the harmonic center of gravity shifts from tonic to dominant, while the clarinet melody first dallies with E and then plunges into a sinuous gesture more varied in shape and intervallic content than anything before. This brief intervallic intensification works in conjunction with the overall harmonic trajectory of the passage, contributing to a gentle surge of energy that brings about a cadence on the dominant. Repeating the entire eight-bar phrase with the addition of wind instruments and with violins on the melody (bars 9–16) infuses it with fresh sonority, amplifying this intimate utterance in the same way that a strong breeze transforms the stillness of a forest.

The energy of this opening passage is largely focused on maintaining its sonorous envelope, on enforcing a special centeredness that—like a spinning top—seems to create its own field of gravity, apart from the pull of functional syntax. In this and other such passages in Mozart, the rhythmic relation between pulsing accompaniment and slower moving melody creates an animated stillness. (To get a precise sense of how the oscillating string figures contribute to this effect, try substituting either an Alberti bass pattern or simple repeated chords underneath the melody.) The entire passage hums with the exquisite tension of keeping things in suspension. This suspension of mundane musical reality—and by means of the most transparent elements of that reality—fosters a special awareness in the listener, creating an expectant yet relaxed state of mind.

And then, as if gathering and channeling the atmospheric energy of this opening, the music moves into a gently charged sequence, with three rising stations and a diversified cast of supporting harmonies (bars 17–24). Each two-bar station is heard as an intensification, as the clarinet launches stepwise descents from F-sharp, then from G, and finally from A. Thus the A touched so easily in the first eight-bar phrase is now the top stair of a more deliberate procession. Stepping back down from this A, the clarinet enters into an elaborate four-bar descent that both recovers the space opened in the slow ascending sequence and answers the move to the dominant at the end of the first long phrase. This eight-bar line completes the broadest arc yet; and like the earlier phrase, it too is ratified by a fuller orchestra.

The entire opening tableau of the Adagio records a transformation from a sense of suspension to one of intensification. The bated breath of the first sixteen bars is answered by the deeply drawn breaths of the sequence and its aftermath. An overall tonal balance has been achieved, for the concluding tonic cadences in bars 24 and 32 settle the medial cadences on the dominant in bars 8 and 16. Meanwhile, the ascending melodic impulse that starts in bar 17 elaborates the cumulative ascent from F-sharp to A in the opening phrases of the first section, now with a sequence that climbs stepwise through the same interval—and both these ascents are answered by concluding descents back to D. A series of ingratiating arcs, undulations at different levels, shapes the melodic flow, while the repetition of each phrase creates another kind of undulation, one that obtains between the intimacy of the solo clarinet and the animating support of the orchestra.

Similar qualities suffuse what may well be the single most beautiful number in all of Mozart’s operas, the farewell trio “Soave sia il vento” from Così fan tutte (example 1.2). Here three Mozartean characters—two “innocent” women and an older, self-professed “man of the world”—find themselves suspended within some suprapersonal emotional dimension, well beyond the puppet-stage confines of their comic misery (the feigned departure of the women’s boyfriends, a ruse devised by the older man in order to test their fidelity). That Mozart’s music takes no notice of the comic feigning and instead registers at the level of a sincere farewell allows its beauty to be rarer still, as when some mundane action suddenly triggers a vastly moving sense of what it means to be human. On the mundane level of this scene, two of the singing characters think they are taking leave of their boyfriends, while we in the audience (along with the worldly manipulator onstage) know better. But Mozart’s music seems to know something else entirely: though the depicted leave taking is not genuine, there is a farewell sounding here that exceeds the emotional depth even of a genuine parting of lovers—the characters seem to be taking leave of Innocence itself.

Like the Adagio from the Clarinet Concerto, “Soave sia il vento” creates its effect of beautiful suspension through simple harmonies, a slow harmonic rhythm, and murmuring string figures; moreover, it manages to maintain this special quality for the entire duration of a self-contained number.

The prevailing texture is much like the Adagio: again the violas sustain while muted violins gently animate slow exchanges of tonic and dominant; cellos and basses mark a slow beat on the roots of those harmonies. The sound of this opening seems to enchant the three singers, who begin as if transfixed. Their voices form a “soave” envelope around the repeated string figures, with a sustained utterance that stretches to the downbeat of bar 4 before pausing. The timeless, otherworldly effect of this trio is due not only to the hushed sonic ambience but also to the different time scales enacted by violins, lower strings, and voices. Underneath the burbling sixteenth notes, pizzicati in the lower strings take on a relaxed temporal mien, marking every half bar. The harmonic rhythm of the opening moves at the even more relaxed pace of one chord per bar. And then the voices ask us to listen to a gesture that lasts for two bars. Thus the trio deepens into its slowness, its otherworldly pace and bearing.

Even the unassuming wave figures of the violins in the first two bars of this evocation of calm seas are progressively embedded temporally, as wavelets within waves. Immediate repetition marks the eighth-note level, pattern change marks the quarter-note level, larger-scale repetition marks the half-note level, and then descending sequence marks the whole-note level. Over and around this stylized wave environment the three voices form another kind of wave, lasting two bars and with an internally fluid shape, as the baritone crests first, followed by the soprano. Another two-bar vocal wave closes the first long tableau of tonic and dominant at bar 6. And again like the Adagio from the Clarinet Concerto, the opening section then gives way to an intensified passage featuring winds, the subdominant harmony, and a newly swelling melodic line.

Here the voices and wind instruments continue building waves, now smoother and more directed. These waves crest first in repeated two-bar arcs, topped by soprano F-sharps, then subside with a two-bar phrase that drops to a half cadence (bars 7–12). But this marked subsidence leads, as at the seashore, to the largest wave yet, four bars (bars 13–16) with an ascending upper voice that crests on a fleeting G-sharp, the zenith ninth of a sonority that tonicizes the dominant in a harmonic surge. Thus the biggest wave marks the most momentous arrival yet. Very different music follows: the strings stop their figurations, and a descending sequence with invertible counterpoint emerges, featuring a bewitching chromatic slide from A-sharp to A-natural. The invertible counterpoint allows the baritone line to descend over the full range of the passage, while the women trade off singing the top-voice arcs. This exchange colors the sequence with two different voice types on these wavelike figures that reach up to F-sharp, then up to E, as though letting us down gradually from the big wave’s G-sharp crest. The next two bars make as though to settle cadentially back onto E.

At the point where this motion would normatively find that cadence on E (bar 22), something wonderful transpires, a magical passage that suspends the action and thus encapsulates the enchanted beauty of the entire trio, with a sound both otherworldly and sensuous. The strings return to the whispering sixteenth notes, while a chromatic sonority (an A-sharp diminished seventh chord over the pedal B, followed by the home dominant seventh on B) interrupts the resolution with a fresh suffusion of sustained sound. If this weren’t enough, the cadence sets up again and is again interrupted by the magical chord (bar 25), with soprano and baritone now switching parts, so that the soprano can start an ascent from the C-sharp that will go all the way up to G-sharp, while the baritone takes the A-sharp–A-natural route that will allow him to descend to E. Thus the repeated magic chord and its deft revoicing enable the climactic crest of the entire trio. The women’s sustained G-sharp and E has a clarifying force: this top swell stays in place. Under the radiance of this sound, the baritone becomes a rhapsode, with a sinuous line that vaults up and drifts down—to which the women answer with a cadenza-like downward rush of thirds. After the baritone completes this cadenza with his own sixteenth-note run, a codetta begins, valediction to this valedictory trio. Here the women wave good-bye with gentle leaps (scale degrees 3–6–2–4–3) over a most benign cadential progression (by thirds: I-vi–ii–V–I), three times repeated. And even now the leave-taking is not complete; the wind instruments wave twice again, as though wafting the departing ship’s horn across the widening distance.

The trio stays in character throughout: the enchantment never wavers, but only deepens. The events we experience can be processed as distinct formal functions: gradual tipping to the dominant, pedal point, return with high point, cadenza, codetta. And yet the sonic envelope, the sense of animated stasis, is never broken. An emotional tableau is held in suspension, its quality of address seeming to emanate from an altered consciousness. The music stays within itself, an effect abetted by the pervasive repetition at different levels of arcs and waves, gentle oscillations. An overarching Gestalt takes shape from these smaller motions: one exquisitely sustained wave that builds to the high G-sharp in the soprano and then recedes. And the chords that both interrupt and enable the resolution onto this crest form the secret inner sound of the trio, the lingering “sweet sorrow” of its parting.

With examples like these in our ears, it is not hard to understand why Mozart’s music is often described as if it exists in a singular state of grace. This condition is usually equated with musical perfection, or near perfection. Thus Maynard Solomon suggests in his biography of Mozart that “what may be most unusual in [some of the superlatively beautiful passages in Mozart] is their wholeness, their encapsulated sense of completion, their inherent resistance to forward motion because they have already approached a state of perfection.” Novelist Hermann Hesse, in the voice of his character Harry Haller, the Steppenwolf, elevates Mozart above all other composers: “[All other] music, no matter how beautiful, has something fragmentary, something dissolute about it; since Don Giovanni, works so perfectly cast have no longer been made by human hands.” And the theologian Karl Barth goes even further, when he wistfully asks: “Could it be that the characteristic basic ‘sound’ of … Mozart—not to be confused with the sound of any other—is in fact the primal sound of music absolutely?” To entertain such a view is perforce to regard all other musics as corrupt, fallen—exiled from Mozart’s timeless grace.

Originary perfection is somehow made incarnate in Mozart’s music. It is difficult to imagine applying such a metaphorical fantasy to any other Western composer. What accounts for this? And can one do more than simply assert this sense of perfection? Solomon begins to go beyond unquestioning assertion when he speaks of an “inherent resistance to forward motion,” and an “encapsulated sense of completion.” These qualities relate to the sense of stasis and apartness experienced in the examples we have encountered so far: something inherent resists moving forward, moving out of the magic circle; the rapt envelope is an encapsulating wrap, the music within needing nothing beyond itself. This harks back to the original definition of perfection as describing the state of being fully made and thus finished—as though Mozart’s music leaves no room for countervailing forces but rather creates and consumes all the available energy at once. But such “zero sum” perfection doesn’t account for what Barth elsewhere calls the “amiability” of Mozart’s music, or what Solomon refers to as “the excruciating surplus quality” of Mozart’s beauty. The stasis is charged, enjoys a special burnish, a glow, a warmth: this music is not untouchably perfect but humanly scaled with ingratiating energy. Perhaps the perception of welcoming goodness, unalloyed benevolence, unstinting generosity lures us into the language of divinity—the divine at its most approachable; not just a forgiving, but a giving, divinity.

So what gives? What constitutes the pleasing emanation of these passages? Here, as in Mozart’s instrumentation generally, every part has a satisfying musical role; every part sounds. It is almost impossible to find any of those awkward “service” parts that fill out the sound but which no one would ever want to hear or play in isolation. This is one of the reasons that Mozart’s music is never labored but always buoyant. Imagine an architecture in which every buttress flies. The ingratiating self-sufficiency of each part is crucial to the overall transparency and glow. And yet this is not a world of independent contrapuntal lines—the aesthetic value here is not one of autonomous individual strands creating a discursive weave, not the enforced polyphonic identity of equalized agents. (Though when this latter sort of polyphony arises in Mozart, it often creates its own specially charged stasis, in which the periodicity of homophonic phrasing recedes and the texture becomes instantly electric.) Rather Mozart’s parts are at once more autonomous and less so: they each have different kinds of roles—the melody, the sustaining tone, the punctuating bass line, the flowing middle voices—that stand out from each other and yet are pleasing in relation to the rest. The result is a sonic community in which every member glows with health. Such music gives energy back to its performers.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from Mozart’s Graceby SCOTT BURNHAM Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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