FIGURE XXVII.STRUCTURAL PLAN OF MOZART'S RONDO IN B-FLAT MAJOR.
This rondo flows on happily from beginning to end without touching either great heights or depths. It is a good example of a style of piano music intended more forthe domestic circle than for the concert room. It shows that "absence of individualism in conformity to a general type of style and form" referred to by Dickinson,i. e., one does not feel in listening to it the obtrusion of a personal point of view; there are no idiosyncrasies such as are continually appearing in more modern music. There is here also that "purity of sound" that characterizes Mozart's music. There are no elisions, no subtleties of musical language, no suggested meanings such as one finds, for example, in Schumann. There is the same placidity, the same clearness of meaning, the same lucidity of diction that we find in the poetry of Mozart's day. Musical language was not then overlaid with secondary significance as it has since become.
An examination of Figure XXVII will reveal a considerable advance in this rondo over that of Couperin. The last section (A) in particular fulfills its office of providing, as it were, a kind ofdenouementto the whole piece; the interest is skillfully made to center or come to a climax here, and the stiff angularity that characterizes the older rondo is conspicuously absent. And while the scheme of harmonies in this rondo has many elements in common with that of "Les Moissonneurs," there are here excursions, by the way, into other keys giving variety and warmth of color. But, most important of all, the recurrence of the first contrasting theme (at measure 148) in the tonic key after having first appeared in the dominant (measure 24) gives to this piece a real strength, or stoutness of construction. It is as though there were certain strands in thefabric that run entirely through it and make it firm, whereas the Couperin rondo seems to be made by putting together a series of little blocks.
Another important point of contrast between these two rondos is in the matter of themes. Where Couperin has only one, which he presents in a variety of charming forms, but from which little that is new is evolved, Mozart has three distinct contrasting themes, and a little codetta motive; and all these germinate, even if but slightly, into new musical developments. The codetta passage, in particular, sprouts and blossoms (179-196) in a most delightful manner, the little germ having first appeared (36) as an unpromising and monotonous succession of single notes.
We referred at some length, in the chapter on "The Dance and Its Development," to this germination of musical thought as of the greatest importance in composition. The reader will readily understand that the highest form of an art like music, in which the element of time enters as a vital matter—in which the message of the composer comes to us in successive sounds—must depend on something more than the beauty of its several and successive melodies. In the first place, the limit of such a succession would soon be reached; the mind, after having taken in a certain number of melodies, would lose track of the first ones and be left in utter confusion. The obvious device of repeating the first phrase or melody at the point where, otherwise, this confusion would result, has been the determining motive of many of the simple forms we have thus far studied. But this, after all, is a primitive method, and it is obviousthat its possibilities are limited. The rondo is, in effect, the furthest point to which this plan can go.
The fundamental quality in anything living—be it the state, the church, the family or the human body—is organism, the relation of all the parts to the whole. So in the greatest music as in the greatest literature, everything germinates from certain fundamental ideas, and nothing is extraneous. This rondo of Mozart represents a certain tendency of his to string beautiful melodies together—for his fund of melodies was well nigh inexhaustible. But he was too great a master not to see the weakness of such a procedure, and in works like his G-minor symphony he has left nearly perfect examples of this higher form of musical development;—perfect, that is, within his own horizon—a wider view was to unfold itself from that height to which Beethoven finally struggled.
SUGGESTIONS FORCOLLATERALREADING.
Parry: "The Evolution of the Art of Music," pp. 52 and 241. Dickinson: "The Study of the History of Music," Chapter XIV. Goetschius: "The Homophonic Forms of Musical Composition," p. 203. Mason: "Beethoven and His Forerunners," Chapter IV. Hadow: "Sonata Form," Chapter IX.
LIST OF SUPPLEMENTARY PIECES FOR STUDY.
Haydn: Finale of Sonata in D-major, No. 7 (Schirmer Ed.).Finale of Sonata in D-major, No. 9 (Schirmer Ed.).Mozart: Finale of Sonata in F-major, No. 17 (Schirmer Ed.).