Mozart was working at a time when the musical market place was opening up new possibilities that made it possible for a composer to turn to a broader general public for
support rather than rely on aristocratic patronage.46 His opera buffa were not written for
an elite audience. Rather, like the opera I have written, they were intended for a general theatre public. Mozart was intimately involved with Viennese theatre culture of the
late-eighteenth century.47 His use of the Singspiel genre in The Abduction from the Seraglio
and The Magic Flute demonstrated that, like many intellectuals, he believed in the popular theatre as a vehicle for both entertainment and conveying ideas.
43 Rosen, Charles. 1971. The Classical Style. London: Faber p. 289.
44 Taruskin, Richard. 2010 Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. p. 434.
45 Ibid. p. 400.
46 Tarasti, Eero. 2012. Semiotics of Classical Music: How Mozart, Brahms and Wagner Talk to Us. Berlin and
Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. p. 36.
47 Till, Nicholas. 1992. Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, virtue and beauty in Mozart’s operas. London:
Faber. p.134. See also Lindenberger, Herbert. 2010. Situating Opera: Period, genre, reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 45.
Mozart freely interacted with many of the leading intellectuals of Vienna in the
Viennese Masonic movement. Claiming to include “all representatives of the Austrian Enlightenment” it was, according to Till, a “chief vehicle for the propagation and
dissemination of the ideals of the Enlightenment in Austria”.48 The Magic Flute includes
a Masonic cabal and portrays Masonic ceremonies reflecting contemporary concerns of the Masonic movement locating it, like other opera buffa of the time, within
contemporary discourses.49 Robinson has argued that by playing his part in the “larger
cultural fabric” of his time Mozart comes as close as any single figure to representing “the full spectrum of eighteenth-century sensibilities”.50
Despite appealing to a broad audience, Mozart was reluctant to relax any of his musical standards. According to Till, he was critical of what he perceived to be the
“amateurish”51 efforts of some German Singspiel composers.52 However, his father
repeatedly urged him to ensure his music was broadly accessible. Leopold was
influenced by the philosopher Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, who had emphasised that to achieve moral value, a writer should ensure accessibility for all and a
“predominantly natural tone”.53 Leopold had frequently urged his son not to forget the
“popular style, which tickles long ears”.54 However, Mozart did not believe that all
complexity should necessarily be eschewed in the quest for “deliberate primitivism”55
and struggled to find the right balance between the two. His initial effort at German Singspiel in 1782, The Abduction of the Seraglio, was greatly admired by Goethe, who
48 Primary sources cited in Till, Nicholas. 1992. Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, virtue and beauty in Mozart’s operas. London: Faber. p117.
49 This includes Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, The Abduction of the Seraglio and
possibly The Magic Flute if interpreted allegorically as a representation of contemporary Masonic ideals.
50 Robinson, Paul A. 1985. Opera and Ideas: From Mozart to Strauss. New York: Harper & Row. p. 47. 51 Till, Nicholas. 1992. Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, virtue and beauty in Mozart’s operas. London:
Faber. p. 136.
52 Ibid.
53 Shroeder, David. 2003. “Mozart and Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, edited by Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 55.
54 Cited in Shroeder, David. 2003. “Mozart and Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, edited by Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 55.
55 Till, Nicholas. 1992. Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, virtue and beauty in Mozart’s operas. London:
praised its “simple and economical style”. However, it was derided by Emperor Joseph
as having “too many notes”. 56 Nevertheless, according to Till, he aspired to write a
German opera rooted in his own community and tradition,57 telling his father in 1783:
I prefer German opera, even though it means more trouble for me. Every nation has its own opera, and why not Germany … Very well
then! I am now writing a German opera for myself.58
The opera to which he referred here was based on a comedy by Goldini, Il Servitore di due Padroni, which he unfortunately did not complete. However, his discussion of the project shows the difficulties he faced, rejecting the expectations of the court without succumbing to the commercial pressures of the theatre.
One of Mozart’s key strategies to meet his compositional objectives was, as his father had advised him, to incorporate a range of popular styles in his operas. As Warrack has
suggested, Mozart had an “astonishing capacity”59 to assimilate musical influences and
assume various manners, letting them stimulate his imagination rather than perceive
them as a constraint.60 His choices were often “wilfully eclectic”, including Italian
bravura arias, sentimental arias, and simple strophic songs for the popular audience,61
as well as dances, minuets and gavottes,62 and even Turkish music.63 Mozart’s parodic
purpose in quoting different stylistic elements is apparent in the letter to his father about Osmin’s rage aria in Act 2 of The Abduction from the Seraglio, where he states “the
56 Cited in Shroeder, David. 2003. “Mozart and Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, edited by Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 135–136.
57 Shroeder, David. 2003. “Mozart and Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, edited by Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 272.
58 Cited in Shroeder, David. 2003. “Mozart and Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, edited by Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 136.
59 Warrack, John. 2001. German Opera: From the beginnings to Wagner. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. p. 144.
60 Ibid. p. 154. 61 Ibid. p. 102.
62 Allanbrook, Wye J. 1992. “Dance Rhythms in Mozart’s Arias: The minuet in Mozart’s arias.” Early Music
20 (1): 142–149.
63 Taruskin, Richard. 2010 Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University
rage of Osmin is made ridiculous by the use of Turkish music.64 He clearly assumed his audience would share a cultural understanding about Turkish music that would enable them to interpret his meaning.
Mozart’s letters to his father about his operas also show his desire to communicate emotions through his music. In a second reference to Osmin’s rage aria, he writes of choosing a key somewhat different (but not too different) to express the way Osmin’s “violent rage oversteps all order”:
Inasmuch as the passions, whether violent or not, must never be carried in their expression to the verge of disgust, and music, even in the most awful situations must not offend the ear but always please, consequently always remain music, I have not chosen a key foreign to F (i.e. the key of the aria), but a related one, — not the nearest, D
minor, but the more distant, A minor.65
In regard to Belmonte’s aria O wie ängstlich, o wie feurig, (oh how fearful, oh how ardently) from The Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart wrote:
Would you like to know how I expressed it — and even indicated his throbbing heart? By the two violins playing octaves … You feel the trembling— the faltering — you see how his throbbing breast begins to swell; this I have expressed by a crescendo. You hear the whispering and the sighing — which I have indicated by the first violins with
mutes and a flute playing in unison.66
These quotes suggest that by incorporating different musical styles, through a strategic repetition of particular musical motifs, and choices regarding tonality, dynamics and timbre, Mozart hoped to communicate his interpretation of the text to the audience. It is interesting to note that, although Mozart wrote to his father about what he hoped to communicate through his musical setting of the libretto, this is rarely the way his
64 W.A. Mozart to Leopold Mozart, 13 October 1781. Cited in Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. 1906. Mozart: The man and the artist, as revealed in his own words. Compiled and annotated by F. Kerst, translated and edited by H.E. Krehbiel. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4042. Accessed 1 August 2015. p. 21.
65 W.A. Mozart to Leopold Mozart, 13 October, 1781. Quoted in Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. 1906. Mozart: The man and the artist, as revealed in his own words. Compiled and annotated by F. Kerst, translated and edited by H.E. Krehbiel. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4042. Accessed 1 August 2015. p. 63.
66 Cited in Taruskin, Richard. 2010 Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford
music is analysed. It would be almost impossible to recreate Mozart’s inner musical vocabulary at this stage and, of course, given the changes in contemporary audiences’ aural experiences, it is unlikely that we would hear the same musical effects in quite the same way as Mozart did. It is therefore very difficult to objectively assess what
Mozart’s intention and the audience experience might have been. Nevertheless, as Webster suggests, we must accept that many works of this period had implicit or explicit dramatic or philosophical meanings that composers such as Mozart were
endeavouring to communicate musically.67 It should therefore be a field that deserves
more investigation than it has had to date. Instead, there is a long tradition of analysing Mozart operas on the basis of post-hoc standards established in accord with nineteenth century aesthetic ideals about the importance of musical unity which were, as is argued
later in this chapter, incorporated into Wagnerian opera.68 This had the effect of
elevating the status of Mozart operas. Whereas in the early part of the twentieth century, they were only performed sporadically, following their introduction at the
prestigious Glyndebourne festivals in England in 193469 they gradually entered the
repertory of most modern opera companies and are now some of the most frequently
performed of all operas.70 Yet, if considered from the perspective of a composer trying
to create a polystylistic work that would appeal to a broad-based audience, a different interpretation of the compositional techniques used by Mozart in his operas is possible. In a study of two dozen opera buffa finales by Mozart and his peers, Platoff has
concluded that the composers were not seeking the tonal cohesion of instrumental music but made compositional decisions to meet dramatic requirements. Although some of Mozart’s operas, particularly The Marriage of Figaro, have a coherent tonal
67 Webster, James. 1987. “To Understand Verdi and Wagner We Must Understand Mozart.” 19th-Century Music 11 (2): 192.
68 For a good discussion of this musicological tradition see Abbate, Carolyn, and Roger Parker. 1990.
“Dismembering Mozart.” Cambridge Opera Journal 2 (2): 187–195.
69 Smaczny, Jan. 2003. “Mozart and the Twentieth Century.” In The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, edited
by Simon P. Keefe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 192.
70 According to the statistics detailed at a world-wide opera data base, between October 2009 and April
2013, Mozart was the third most popular opera composer (in terms of performances) after Verdi and Puccini, ahead of Wagner and Rossini. See http://operabase.com/top.cgi?lang=en. Accessed 1 August 2015.
structure, Platoff suggests this is the exception rather than the rule and that more distant key transitions are more usual. Indeed, Mozart often emphasised a “pronounced change in colour” as “near-key moves” did not necessarily provide
sufficient dramatic significance for him.71 Similarly, Rosen claims that Mozart was
“deeply aware” of the “expressive character” of distant tonal relations and might
juxtapose unrelated tonalities for expressive effect.72 Such examples add weight to
arguments proffered by scholars such as Warrack and Webster, who support the view that Mozart was more concerned with meeting dramatic needs than achieving a musically unified work.73