Mozart Choice of Keys
Mozart Choice of Keys
Mozart Choice of Keys
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The Musical Quarterly
THE MUSICAL
QUA RT E RLY
MOZART'S CHOICE OF KEYS
By ALFRED EINSTEIN
A GERMAN SCHOLAR named Gustav Enge
same time a singer and a philologist, once un
occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Moza
a harmonico-mathematical analysis of that oper
onstrated that the whole work not only set o
turned to D, but that when all its intervals wer
ing to just rather than tempered tuning, it was
exactly the same pitch from which it started. F
this calculation, the recitatives were left out of
their inclusion would have meant that the oper
perfect pitch accuracy, would end about a fou
began. And even so, the neatness of the result o
sible only by considering the great recitativo
Donna Anna in the first act to be in A-sharp m
B-flat major.
There have been and still are people who cons
of Engel's as one of the most foolish aberrati
(Brahms so considered it.) But it is possible also
painstaking proof that even on the acoustical si
is in perfect order. I myself, being alas a perfec
not understand these things. For me it is enoug
415
idiosyncrasy that brings about with the choice of certain keys the
exclusion of certain types of melody and the preference for others.
In this connection we leave out of consideration the question of
the character of keys, for this is a question that has no generic
answer. With each composer one must consider the character of
his keys, and for this consideration not only psychology but his-
tory is necessary.
*^