Mozart Choice of Keys

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Mozart's Choice of Keys

Author(s): Alfred Einstein and Arthur Mendel


Source: The Musical Quarterly , Oct., 1941, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Oct., 1941), pp. 415-421
Published by: Oxford University Press

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The Musical Quarterly

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VUL. XXVII, No. 4 1 UCIUl)EK, 1941

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

Copyright, 1941, by G. SCHIRMER, INC.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Unfinished Oil Painting of Disputed Date (1782-91)
by Joseph Lange
'l Mozartcum, Salzburg'

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416 The Musical Quarterly
a narrow choice of tonalities suffices for an opera which explores
the extreme limits of emotion and the deepest recesses of the soul.
On the flat side, Don Giovanni does not go beyond E-flat, in the
numbers in "closed" forms; on the brighter side, A major is
touched only twice, and E major only once, in the graveyard
scene. We may really take D major or D minor as the main key
of Don Giovanni, surrounded only by its most closely related
keys. But what an A major is this! Consider the seduction duet,
La ci darem la mano, and the trio of temptation, Ah taci, ingiusto
core! This music is full to the brim with sensuousness; another
drop and it would overflow. And what an E major, in the grave-
yard scene! It is the very embodiment of the cold, clear-uncan-
nily clear-moonlight. And the eerie shift to C major is already
an unmistakable warning of the downfall of our cavaliere estre-
mamente licenzioso. Greater expression could not be attained, or
with smaller means. A message of revolutionary import is made
explicit without overstepping the boundaries of the inconspicuous.
Let it not be objected that Mozart was confined to such mod-
est limits by the limitations of his orchestra, especially of his horns
and trumpets. Elvira's aria "in Handelian style" (Ah, fuggi il
traditor) is accompanied only by strings. Mozart was not com-
pelled by any external circumstance to reconcile the intensity of
the emotions in the work with his key scheme. Yet he stays in
D. That key suffices; nay, it is the only possible medium to match
the force and impressiveness of this warning with adequate sta-
bility. No; Mozart's apparent sobriety has deeper roots.
It informs all his works. There are Masses, litanies, and other
church works by him which remain within C, D, F, or E-flat, and
even in his symphonies and concertos he never goes outside the
domain bounded by A and E-flat. Here, too, it might be main-
tained that these limits were set for him by the use of natural
horns and trumpets. But he practises the same moderation, with
few exceptions, even in those groups of works in which it would
not have been in any way obligatory: in the quartets, quintets,
trios, and sonatas for piano or for violin. It is as if the Well-
Tempered Clavier had not existed for him, although he had in
fact known it since 1782, and had transcribed a series of fugues
from it for string trio and string quartet, though not without
transposing those which were originally in the more distant,
"more difficult" keys into "simpler" ones.

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Mozart's Choice of Keys 417

It would not be accurate to say that in this limitation Mozart


was no different from his contemporaries. It was not only the so-
called Mannheim School that went somewhat further than he did;
not only the Vienna symphonists, of whose works we need but
remember the Symphony for strings in B major by M. G. Monn
(I717-1750), or an E major Symphony by Michael Haydn; even
Johann Christian Bach, Mozart's beloved model, wrote a Sym-
phony in E major. The most progressive of all was Joseph Haydn,
and not in his later years, either. Haydn had written before 1773
symphonies in E major and E minor, B major, F minor, and
F-sharp minor (the "Farewell" Symphony), and quartets in E
major and F minor; while in 1781 he had used B minor, a key
that Mozart approached only with the greatest caution. The con-
trast is even more striking if one compares the internal key-rela-
tions of the works of the two men, and their differing conceptions
of modulation within a movement. To speak first of the relations
between the keys of different movements, consider Haydn's
clavier trios. In Mozart the slow movement is always in a key
closely related to that of the opening and closing movements: the
dominant, the sub-dominant, the mediant, or there is an inter-
change between a related major and minor. In Haydn's Trio with
the Rondo all'ongarese (G major), the middle movement is in E;
in the Trio with the Finale alla tedesca (E-flat) it is in B; in No.
24 (B. & H.), which is in A-flat, the middle movement is, simi-
larly, in E; the E-flat Trio (Peters) has a middle movement in G.
A trio in F-sharp minor has its middle movement in F-sharp
major (this is the same movement that recurs, in another key, in
one of the London Symphonies). Haydn's last Trio, dating from
1795, is in E-flat minor. Not much is gained by speaking of "sub-
jectivity" or even of "Romanticism" in this connection, for these
are concepts which one cannot be too careful in applying to
Haydn and Mozart. Nor would it be correct to attribute this sup-
posed subjectivity or Romanticism to Haydn's clavier music par-
ticularly. (The Trios are hardly more than clavier sonatas with
more or less obbligato accompaniment.) For although Haydn's
real clavier sonatas are somewhat more varied in their choice of
key than Mozart's, they are-those of them that have more than
two movements-quite normal in the relations of the middle
movements to the opening and closing movements. In the string
quartets, too, Haydn is freer than Mozart. In Op. 17, No. 4

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418 The Musical Quarterly
(1771), in C minor, the Minuet is in C major and the slow move-
ment in E-flat. And, to consider a later period, we need only think
of the so-called "Rider" Quartet, Op. 74, No. 3, in G minor, with
an Adagio in E, or of Op. 76, No. 5, in D, with the glorious Largo
in F-sharp. What is the explanation for this idiosyncrasy of
Haydn's? The most obvious thing to do would be to explain it on
grounds of "originality", for which, in turn, there is no explana-
tion. There is an impulse of the spirit to rise suddenly into a richer
and more colorful emotional sphere, a flight that the often earthy
Haydn needed, far from the domain of humor, of play, of a too
robust health.
For the aristocrat Mozart, this is unthinkable. He does not imi-
tate it, although he must have noticed it. But he tacitly rejects it,
as he does the Scherzo which Haydn employs in place of the
Minuet or the Scherzando with which he transforms it. Haydn
does this most strikingly in the Russian quartets, before 178I-
works which in so many other characteristics served Mozart as
models. But Mozart holds fast to the Minuet. Indeed one might
say that his Minuets now become more definitely Minuets than
ever. Young Mozart, with his respect for inherited forms and a
deep feeling for their inner laws, sticks closer to tradition than
old Haydn.
But this is only apparently true. One may preserve all the
forms and yet in essentials be much more independent than any
revolutionary. Mozart drinks deep of Tradition, and chooses the
simplest and least pretentious points of departure, only to arrive at
the furthest and most undreamed-of destinations. The concept
key had for him a significance quite different from what it had for
Bach, Beethoven, and many other masters, including Haydn.
Every sensitive musician has no doubt observed that in the works
of these men particular types of melody and figuration are asso-
ciated with particular keys. In Bach, for example, G major is often
a key of 6 chain rhythms, and D minor of a sensitive type of fig-
uration, combined with chromaticism. In Beethoven, C major has
a specific brilliance, combined with a chordal type of figuration.
No one can mistake, for example, in the Allegro of the C minor
Sonata, Op. i I, the involuntary reminiscences of the "Wald-
stein" Sonata-a sort of return, in spirit, to a period of more youth-
ful and more carefree expression-or listen to these echoes with-
out being deeply moved by them. These are examples of a kind of

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Mozart's Choice of Keys 419

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.

In Mozart the keys are more neutral in character, carefully as


he chose them for each work. His C major, D major, and E-flat
major are richer, broader domains than those keys are to his con-
temporaries-more fertile soil, in which not only roses may grow,
but cypresses. Only very rarely does he use a key for the sake of
its special character. Thus A minor, the strange, and A major, the
noisy, characterize the Alla Turca, while B minor is to him exotic,
as is shown by Pedrillo's Romance in Die Entfiihrung-a piece
that is not exactly in B minor, but shimmers between F-sharp ma-
jor and D major. The neutrality, or rather the many-sided, irides-
cent quality of the keys for Mozart is to be seen not so much in
his development sections-where he is often more conservative
than Haydn, but when the occasion requires goes far beyond him,
as for example in the opening and closing movements of the G
minor Symphony, in which he penetrates to the farthest regions-
as in his expositions. He cannot do enough to confirm the tonality
of an exposition, and the more mature he grows the truer this be-
comes (consider the "Jupiter" Symphony!). That he considered
the failure to do so a capital one may be seen at the beginning of
his Musicalischer Spass, where the leading tone of the dominant is
heard far too soon. But at the same time his suggestion of darker
regions is one of his most characteristic traits, and the passing
modulations which he makes in those directions serve to confirm
the key. Consider the C major String Quintet, with its turn to-
wards A-flat (measure 47), and the tensions which this creates
towards the resolution on the six-four chord of C. Thus C major,
the plainest of all the keys, becomes a shining goal, a glorious reve-
lation. Nor is this effect something which Mozart mastered only
in maturity. We see it fully developed in K. 338, the last of the
symphonies written in Salzburg. There Mozart, in the exposition,
tints the light of C major and G major with prismatic flashes of F

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420 The Musical Quarterly
major, F minor, G minor, D major, and E minor. The road from
the tonic to the dominant is not straight; it is full of incidents, and
the key of C major is not an "easy" key like that of the Sonata
facile. The most beautiful balance is achieved by the establishing
of the key and then by its confirmation through the richness of its
relations, in the Clavier Concerto K. 467. Here Mozart cannot do
enough to show how beautiful C major and G major are; he is
forever departing from them and returning to them.
What is true of C major is true also of D major and E-flat ma-
jor, Mozart's most "neutral" keys; less so of F major, A major, or
G major, which have for him a more specific coloring. B-flat
stands in the middle. To cite but one example: how brief, concen-
trated, and of almost Schubertian abundance of melodic invention
is the tutti ritornello in the Clavier Concerto in G major, K. 453!
It springs from depths of agitation; the invention of the motives
and the choice of key are two aspects of the same creative act. F
major, on the other hand, is for Mozart a quieter key than C ma-
jor; more naive, and not without a certain pastoral character. In
his later symphonies, Mozart no longer made use of either G major
or F major. He chose only C, D, E-flat, and, for an exceptional
work, G minor. The "neutrality" of the key gave him greater
freedom-a longer radius.
Thanks to this neutrality, modulations in Mozart are closer in
their relation to the main key, and every deviation is consequently
more telling than in Haydn. Haydn does not hesitate, especially
in his clavier sonatas and clavier trios, to use long passages with a
key-signature different from the main one of the movement. He
does not care if the feeling of tonality is weakened by this proce-
dure. But this sort of thing is never found in Mozart, who believes
that modulatory freedom and the expansion of the tonal domain
must be treated with discretion. When Donna Elvira sings the aria
"in Handelian style" mentioned above, it must be in the "stablest"
key, D major, and never leave it for a measure; that is, it must
move within the narrowest circle. When, in Le Nozze di Figaro,
Barbarina is looking for the lost pin, it is the choice of key that
gives the tiny cavatina its humor: F minor, the key of darkest
tragedy, employed for a trifle-the concern of a naive (though
no longer wholly naive) girl.
* *

*^

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Mozart's Choice of Keys 421
Mozart belongs, like Bach, to the rare species of the conserva
tive revolutionaries, or the revolutionary conservatives. In t
days when oblique parallels between music history and the h
tory of the pictorial arts were favored, Mozart was compar
with Raphael. But this is one of the most oblique of all parallels
For what Michelangelo said of Raphael is true: one sees in th
young man what study can accomplish. Raphael's is an ideal, call
graphic, soaring perfection in which the soul is not involve
Mozart, too, was a great learner, but his soul was never uni
volved. He took over a complete language, and used it in ne
combinations, giving its words new meanings, to say things tha
were at once old and new, unknown and thrice known. Thus
great poet uses but the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, a
without devising a single new word gives voice to though
unheard-of.

(Translated by Arthur Mendel)

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