PROGRAM NOTES by Joseph and Elizabeth Kahn
January 16 and 17, 2010 "Breathtaking Mozart"
Roman dictators, palace intrigue, and a wild Turkish finale
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
Overture to Lucio Silla, K.135
Of all musical genres during Mozart’s lifetime, opera was king. The combination of music and spectacle – often with high-tech stage machinery and special effects – was idealized since its “invention” at the turn of the seventeenth century as the vehicle through which to achieve artistic transcendence. By the end of the eighteenth, however, the nature of the plots (generally based on real or imagined events in Ancient Greek or Roman history) and musical structure (the regular alternation of recitative and da capo arias) had become formulaic. But the inherent quality of any given opera was immaterial since performance often served primarily as background music for socializing, eating, card playing and amorous assignations. Audiences did, however, sit up and take notice of their favorite singers, who had the standing of today’s rock stars. The late eighteenth century also saw the transition between castrato and female singers. Any composer with serious ambitions would have to crank out a steady stream of operas, and under the strict tutelage of his stage-door mom of a father, Mozart began composing for the operatic stage at the age of 11.
In December 1769 13-year-old Wolfgang set out with his father on his first Italian trip. Their first stop was Milan, where Wolfgang received a commission for his first opera seria, Mitridate, ré di Ponto, which was premiered with great success a year later. As a result he received a new commission for Lucio Silla, which was to open the city’s 1773 carnival season. In October 1772 he embarked on another trip to Milan to work on the opera. His letters home gripe about the need to endlessly juggle the demands of singers, the librettist (an influential politician) and musicians, none of whom could have been thrilled taking direction from a teenager. Then there were the unrelated ballets inserted between the acts. As became Mozart’s habit, the overture came last – by then he knew the capabilities of the orchestra he had to work with. The plot concerns the Roman dictator Lucio Silla (138 – 78 BC) who lusts after Giunia, the daughter of his enemy Caius Marius, who in turn loves the exiled senator Cecilio. The overture is in the slightly outdated form of the Italian operatic Sinfonia, a miniature symphony with three separate movements. The themes have no relation to the music in the opera.
Mozart's Symphony No.36 in C Major, K.425 "Linz"
In March of 1781, Mozart left forever his native Salzburg where he had squirmed under the watchful eye of his father Leopold and the strict demands of his employer, the archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. Eager to try his hand at an appointment at the Imperial Court in Vienna, he was also making his first stab at independence. In May he took up residence with the widow Maria Cäcilia Weber, mother of three eligible daughters, flirted with them all, moved out again to avoid gossip, and gradually set the stage in a spate of letters to his father for his marriage to Constanze Weber – although he had originally set his cap for her older sister Aloysia, a talented soprano.
Leopold was not amused. While raising the understandable parental objection to the marriage based on his son’s lack of regular gainful employment, it is clear that Leopold had a hidden agenda as well. Marriage and a family would permanently remove his son from his influence. Angry letters, the silent treatment, a fat commission for the “Haffner” Symphony and other forms of manipulation were to no avail. Wolfgang and Constanze were married on August 4, 1782, and for a while father and son maintained a chilly professional civility from a distance.
In July 1783 Wolfgang finally made a return visit to Salzburg to introduce Constanze to his family, leaving their brand-new baby son in Vienna. But the trip was too little too late, and, to add insult to injury, Mozart had christened the child Raimund Leopold with a lame excuse for not having named Leopold the godfather. Although the young couple attempted to make peace, Mozart’s father and sister behaved ungraciously, especially to Constanze, precipitating a major family rift. Tragically – as if Leopold had played the evil fairy Carabosse at the Princess Aurora’s christening – little Raimund died while his parents were away.
At the end of October the Mozarts set out to return to Vienna via Linz, Austria’s third-largest city, where they arrived on the 30th. What followed is best described in Mozart’s own words in a letter to his father: “When we arrived at the gates, we found a servant waiting there to drive us to old Count Thun’s [an old family friend], at whose house we are now staying. I really cannot tell you what kindness the family is showering on us. On Tuesday, the 4th of November I am giving a concert in the theater here, and since I do not have a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at break-neck speed…” Even a Mozart would have been hard pressed to write a 25-minute-long symphony, have the parts copied and rehearse the musicians in four days. He must have had the symphony in his head, or perhaps even some sketches on paper. In spite of the phenomenal speed no trace of hasty writing can be found in the work.
Symphony No. 36 is something of an orphan; there was simply not that much call for the genre in Vienna. A year and a half had passed since the “Haffner,” K. 385 and another three years would pass until Mozart composed No. 38, K. 504 for Prague in 1786. During the intervening years, Mozart concentrated on chamber music, composed primarily for publication rather than performance, and the piano concerto, a genre he virtually invented.
For the first time in his symphonies, Mozart opens the “Linz” Symphony with a slow introduction. The absence of introductions in his symphonies is one of the factors that differentiates them from those of Franz Josef Haydn, who nearly always made use of this device. In No. 36, Mozart follows his older contemporary’s lead in creating considerable suspense before the “surprise” of a festive first theme in the Allegro. On only one subsequent occasion did he employ a slow introduction: Symphony No. 39, composed eight years later.
Other features of this Symphony where Mozart draws on the influence of Haydn is in the Minuet and Trio. Normally, Mozart’s minuets are flowing and elegant while Haydn’s tend to be drawn with heavier strokes, recalling the peasant Ländler. The use of the timpani in all the movements creates a more celebratory air; in the parlance of today’s parents, Mozart definitely uses his “outside voice.”
Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K.210
There is some controversy among scholars as to whether Mozart himself was the soloist in the first performance of his A Major Concerto, but there is no question that he was a master violin player. In fact, his father, Leopold – ever the "backstage mother" – was frequently after him to show off his skills by writing a virtuoso concerto for the instrument. When Wolfgang did finally knuckle down and write concerted pieces for the violin in 1774-75, he wrote a bunch of them; his five concerti are only 12 Koechel numbers apart. At that time, Mozart was in Salzburg in the service of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, for whom he both composed and served as first violinist in the court orchestra. Colloredo was a strict taskmaster and had no truck with his young musician, however talented. Although Mozart was in the archbishop’s employ for more than seven years, he spent nearly three of them on furloughs bordering on AWOL, during which he performed around Europe and none too diplomatically looked for another job. He eventually “escaped” to Vienna where he was lionized for a time but never offered the high position in the imperial court that he felt his abilities merited.
The A Major concerto has a number of unusual features, including a long recitative type section leading into the second movement, almost a melancholy aria for the violin. The Concerto is also known as the "Turkish" concerto because Mozart included a diversion in the final rondo of faux Turkish sounding music similar to, but more gentle than the finale of the much later Piano Sonata, K.331 and the overture to the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio. Although bearing little resemblance to authentic Turkish music, this passage is supposed to reflect the jangling, percussive music of the Janissary soldiers of the Ottoman Turks. Many composers of the period were captivated by this exotic orientalism, especially composers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose eastern borders were continually threatened by their Ottoman neighbors. Among the most famous examples is the second movement of Franz Josef Haydn’s Symphony No. 100, the “Military.”
Despite his proficiency on the violin, Mozart left no written cadenzas, although it is more than likely that he would have improvised them in concert.
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