smn-2006-1.

book Page 23 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

W. A. Mozart and the Rise of the Clas-

sical Piano Concerto: Piano concerto
No 9 in E flat major (K271)

H ÅVARD S KAADEL

olfgang Amadé Mozart’s Piano concerto No 9 in Eb major, K2711 was written

W in Salzburg by a gifted pianist who was merely twenty-one years old. This key-
board concerto participates decidedly in the rising ‘Classical’ standard of in-
strumental music. In South and Middle Europe around 1770–1780, the opera was still the
measure of musical invention. Nevertheless, this bright piano concerto from 1777 might be
a sign of the rising significance of instrumental music in Western Europe after the Buffonist
quarrels: it shares the modern way of writing piano concerts, the new way of orchestrating,
the new artistic attitude in the bourgeois society. These values culminate some ten years later
in a creative Vienna atmosphere which is later to be baptised ‘the Vienna Classicism’. The re-
ception of Mozart’s pure instrumental music gradually changed our way of musical reflec-
tion. The early 19th century reading of it, even more than the musical material itself, intro-
duced the shift from the intellectual, detached musical aesthetic of the 18th century Illumi-
nists to the half sensual, half spiritualized musical aesthetic of the German Romantic Era.
Let us begin with one essential fact, according to the ancient New Grove comments
that Mozart’s treatment of the piano concerto underwent a certain development in
1776.2 Earlier, some musicologists connected the rapid development of this genre with
the stimulating contact with a French Miss Jeunehomme: the biographical fallacy is ev-
ident. She was later falsely identified with a French female pianist of the 1780s.3 Only
in 2005, Michael Lorenz published new evidence that the true intended recipient of
the first really great piano concerto of Mozart, the E flat major KV 271, was Louise

ST U D I A M U S I CO L O G I C A N O R VE G I C A © U NI VERSI TETSF ORL AGE T

VOL 32 2006 S 23–35 ISBN 82-15- 0705-8
smn-2006-1.book Page 24 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

[ 24 ] R ISE OF C LASSICAL P IANO C ONCERTO

Victoire Jenamy.4 Be these conditions as they may, Mozart had until then written no
concerto of great maturity. Born in January 1756, he had by his twenty-first anniversa-
ry already composed five concertos, an adagio and a rondo for the violin with orchestra,
one concertone for two violins, one lost concerto for the trumpet, one concerto for the
bassoon and four concertos for the piano. Alongside this quite respectable large-scale
instrumental production, Mozart had also composed nine Italian operas by the New
Year 1777. This considerable output was, however, conceived in the galant manner, and
Wolfgang’s father Leopold had indeed counseled his son to imitate the style of the great
London composer Johann Christian Bach. In other words, the best of Mozart’s concerts
were to come in the following fourteen years: the “Jeunehomme” or rather Jenamy con-
certo is a key work of the period when Mozart’s personal language turned from Johann
Christian Bach over to the modern Classical virtuoso piano concerto. This elegant E
flat concerto of a half-an-hour duration testifies to the common tendency of gradual in-
strumental liberation from the galant spirit, leading eventually to piano concertos of a
much greater dimension such as Beethoven’s great ‘Emperor’ concerto in Eb major
from 1811. Graf Waldstein honoured Beethoven already in 1792 with some strange
words staking out the construction of the epoch of Vienna Classicism: ‘Through unbro-
ken industry, you receive Mozart’s spirit from the hands of Haydn,’ Waldstein wrote to
Beethoven in the Stammbuch.5 I do not believe that Mozart himself could preview this
important paradigm shift in music for the orchestra in Western Europe, but I accept
the presumption that he initiates a new golden epoch of instrumental autonomy in Eu-
ropean music aesthetic. To Eric Blom, ‘It is in 1777, with a work in E flat major
(K271), that the period of truly original concertos began.’6 After Alfred Einstein’s no
less positive evaluation, Charles Rosen claimed that Mozart’s piano concerto no 9 was
the first incontestable masterpiece of the classical style, without any trace of manner-
ism.7 And in his impressioning Mozart biography published this year (2006), the late
Stanley Sadie still maintains that, ‘this concerto, beyond dispute his greatest work to
date, establishes the style and manner of the piano concerto to come.’8

I. A NEW WAY OF WRITING

The piano concerto was not Mozart’s invention. Musicologists currently locate the ori-
gins of the history of the clavier concerto with Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons.
Nevertheless, before Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his last Salzburg concerto, it
seems that very few had written pianoforte concertos of the same depth. Carl Philipp
Emmanuel Bach is rightly considered as the more outstanding composer in this genre
before him; but it is not very probable that Mozart had heard his concertos. On the
contrary, the young Mozart modelled his works on those by Johann Christian Bach,
and Haydn. That is, Mozart began with the galant manner where the harmony was ex-
tremely simple and where the main qualities were a light and transparent facture. He
smn-2006-1.book Page 25 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

H ÅVARD SKAADEL [ 25 ]

generally opens his concertos with a movement in the sonata form: this reminds us of
the tonal structure in the stylised baroque dances. Effectively, there is a connection back
to the Baroque concerto grosso, according to the ancient New Grove.9 Heinrich Chris-
toph Koch made a theoretical description of the solo concerto form twenty-five years
later, in his Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition (Leipzig 1793).10 Koch talks about
a three-part first movement in a way rather close to the stucture of the modern galant
concerto, but there are some important conflicts with the scheme of Classicism. I re-
peat the essential differences between the still late Baroque terminology and the hard
facts of the stereotypical tonal scheme of the new sonata form.

1st period Koch J.C. Bach

(“exordium”) A. 1st ritornello: orchestra/soloist 1st exposition: orchestra
first motive: I motives in T
(“narratio”) 2nd exposition: soloist/orchestra
second motive I > V motives modulating T > D (Tp)
2nd period
[“reprehensio”?] A’. 2nd ritornello: V > vi / i / ii development
V > vi / i / ii D (Tp) > varied modulation > T
3rd period
(“confirmatio”) A’’. 3rd ritornello: I recapitulation / reprise: T
(“peroratio”) free fantasy or capriccio solo cadenza + epilogue

I am tempted to add some terms from Ancient rhetoric to clarify what is going on: We
have indeed a prologue with the orchestra, a more elaborated narration when the solo
instrument presents the essential motives, a confirmation of these motives with the reca-
pitulation, and finally a vigorous and convincing conclusion with the solo cadenza and
the epilogue at the end of the movement. I am not certain if the term “reprehensio” or
rebuttal is a very fortuitous metaphor for the development section. But I would like to
think of the modulation period as a problematising of the primary tonality, and I might
then interpret its return to the tonic as a refutation of any other possible tonalities in
this movement. So the whole structure is decided by the presentation of a tonality, the
deepening of it through modulation and the final confirmation of it.11 The piano con-
certos of Johann Christian Bach confirm the validity of a rudimentary sonata form long
before Mozart had written his piano concerto number nine. What is interesting, is not
so much Mozart’s elaboration of this tonal scheme as his strategic moves of surprise and
astonishment. The element of sudden unpredictable moves is crucial to an understand-
ing of Mozart’s personal style; however, Mozart’s mature piano concerto is only in em-
bryo in No 9. We will first look closer at the 1st movement of Johann Christian Bach’s
piano concerto in Eb major and compare it to the “Jenamy” concerto. My rapid presen-
smn-2006-1.book Page 26 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

[ 26 ] R ISE OF C LASSICAL P IANO C ONCERTO

tation of Mozart’s concerto is a brief sketch without any ambitions of replacing Charles
Rosen’s meticulous analysis of KV 271 in The Classical Style.12 I also recommend
Stanley Sadie’s brief but very useful description.13 My modest contribution is simply a
comparison with the galant concerto form as given by J. C. Bach, where I consider the
motive groups as greater tonal unities or tonal planes as did Donald F. Tovey. Rosen’s
chain of nine small motives in the exposition14 can be simplified into a primary group
(on the tonic) and a secondary group (on the dominant), where the secondary group
then can be divised into two significant undergroups:

Mozart (measure) Rosen’s analysis My simplification

1 motive 1 Motive I = Head motive group I (Tonic)
7 motive 2
14 motive 3
22 motives 3A and 3B
26 motive 4 Motive II = Head motive group II (Dominant)
34 motive 5 Motive III = Second motive group II
41 motive 6
46 motive 7 Epilogue
50 motive 8
54 motive 9

If the reader accepts this simplified presentation, I propose the following presentation
of the 1st movement:

Composer J. C. Bach W. A. Mozart

Concerto Op. 7 no. 5 (publ. 1770) No. 9 KV 271 (1777)
Tonality Eb major Eb major

Structure: 1st movement 1st movement

exposition motive I: Eb motive I: Eb
. motive II: Eb
. motive III: Eb motive II: Eb
. motive IV: Eb motive III: Eb
epilogue: Bb
2nd exposition motives I–II: Eb motive I: Eb
. motives III–IV: Bb motives II–III: Bb
epilogue: Bb
transformation Bb > Eb > Bb min > c min Bb > f min
reprise motives I–II: Eb motives I–III: Eb
smn-2006-1.book Page 27 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

H ÅVARD SKAADEL [ 27 ]

small bridge, minor chords

motives III–IV
cadenza + motive IV cadenza + epilogue

The schemes of the two concertos follow each other closely, but Mozart’s concerto fore-
shadows the late Classical sonata form. Mozart simplifies the formal structure so that we
can more easily distinguish the limit of the different tonal sections: the head motive is the
only developed theme on the tonic, instead of the double-headed tonic section of Johann
Christian Bach. In the 19th century, the tonal dualism emerges into a melodic dualism.
There is no longer a clear consent on the dualism of themes in the sonata form of the 18th
century,15 but the other two Mozart piano concertos in Eb major confirm the sonata
principle of the “Jenamy” concerto. J.C. Bach’s prolixity of nice, short motives which are
well adapted to the idiom of the human voice is a consequence of the common principle
in the elder ‘galant’ manner: He is the more moderate speaker where Mozart bursts out
with an enthusiastic fanfare – as an image of the different temperaments, I propose the
beautiful and self-restricted Attic rhetoric against the more vehement Ciceronian style.
(In Mozart’s Turkish opera scenes, we could even talk about Asianism in his musical rhet-
oric!) It is true that there is a martellato motive in the epilogue reminiscent of Bach’s piano
style, and there is no reason to deny the young Austrian’s debt to the great London Bach.
We should not judge Johann Christian Bach on the commercial editions only, since the
better pianists would no doubt add fresh improvised passages to the printed music. Still
Mozart’s last Salzburg pianoforte concerto seems to be one of the first in Middle Europe
where an intended virtuoso solo part is completely written in the score: its technical level
and intensity distinguishes itself from the mild and polished surface of Bach’s Eb major
concerto. However, the tonal structure is very simple compared to Mozart’s piano concer-
tos nos 14 and 22 written seven and eight years later, both in Eb major:

Concerto No 14, KV 449 (1784) No 22, KV 482 (1785)

Tonality Eb major Eb major
Structure:
exposition motive I: Eb motive I: Eb major bridge
motives II–III: Eb motive II: Eb
epilogue: Eb epilogue: Eb
2nd exposition motive I: Eb motive I: Eb
bridge bridge > Bb minor!
motive II-epilogue: Bb motive II-epilogue: Bb
transformation Bb min > f min > c min > Bb min > Db > f min > Ab > c min >
circle of fifths Ab > Bb
reprise motives I–III + epilogue: Eb motives I–II + epilogue: Eb
smn-2006-1.book Page 28 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

[ 28 ] R ISE OF C LASSICAL P IANO C ONCERTO

The transformation of both these two first movements starts with a sudden shift to the
tonic variant, Bb minor. In the latter of those, number 22, the minor gender is intro-
duced most unexpectedly in the exposition already before the piano enters on the dom-
inant section. Such brutal musical humour was indeed foreshadowed by Vivaldi in his
introduction to “Beatus vir” (R 597), shifting between major and minor all the time.
Musical unpredictability, amplified and modernised by Mozart, was to be imitated ea-
gerly by Beethoven, the self-elected descendent of Mozart and Haydn.
In the “Jenamy” concerto, it is rather the composer’s ambition which makes the work a
key work to the Classical era. The light head motif of the first movement is conceived in
the spirit of a serenade or divertimento, but the dimensions of this and the other two move-
ments fairly leave behind the nice and quasi dilettantic entertainment concertos of Johann
Christian Bach. Bach ordinarily writes two movements-concertos, all in the major key. He
has composed some beautiful slow movements with pizzicato accompaniment close to the
idiom of Pergolesi’s violin music. Even when Mozart still draws on late Baroque features,
he writes from now on in a broader and more serious style. The third movement of Mo-
zart’s No. 9, an energetic and surprising rondo, leaves no doubt about the new level ac-
quired when compared to the pretty little rondo of Bach’s Eb concerto op. 7 no. 5:

J.C. Bach: Op. 7 no. 5 W.A.Mozart: No. 9 KV 27

Eb: motive a strings Eb: motive I piano
“ piano solo “ orchestra
bridge piano + orchestra
motive b piano + soft strings Bb: motive II piano + soft strings
“ strings
motive a1 piano solo motive III strings + piano
“ piano + pizzicato strings
motive b1 “
great bridge of virtuoso solo passages
c min > Eb: motive c piano + soft strings Ab: menuetto (IVa) piano solo
“ “ “ piano + pizzicato strings
“ (IVb) piano solo
“ piano + pizzicato/soft
str./oboe answers
Eb > Bb motive V strings/piano echo
small bridge of virtuoso passages
Eb: motive a strings Eb: motive Ia piano
> c min bridge piano + orchestra
motive a2 piano solo Eb: motive II piano solo
motive b2 “ motive III piano + orchestra
coda: bridge
motive b strings motive I oboe + orchestra
epilogue d piano solo/piano + strings virtuoso termination
smn-2006-1.book Page 29 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

H ÅVARD SKAADEL [ 29 ]

Mozart opens with the pianoforte from the first note, giving a more active role to the
soloist than what was customary. And we have to look to the Hamburg Concertos by
Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach to find such radical breaks of tempo and tonality as Mo-
zart does in this rondo. After a great bridge of virtuoso piano solo passages worthy of
Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Mozart suddenly goes to a French-inspired menuetto on
the IV step. The gorgeous pizzicato texture continues the best of Johann Christian
Bach, who is partly continuing the pizzicato idiom present at Italians like Pergolesi and
Vivaldi. But Mozart’s strategy of rupture of the 1777 concerto foreshadows indeed
Beethoven: Mozart has now consciously broken the wall of structure. Henceforth, the
performer-composer dictates the rules of composition more than the restricted conven-
tions of the noblemen’s entertainment music. We enter into the age of large-scale public
concerts, where the virtuoso solo concerto constitutes the primary element. To retain
the ever-growing attention of the concert public, there had to be a development from
the small-scale commercial amateur concertos by Bach – written for music score cus-
tomers – to the new impressive and enthusiastic piano style of Mozart, written for the
upcoming generation of virtuoso pianists.

II. A NEW WAY OF ORCHESTRATING

The three Eb major concertos of Mozart demonstrate a gradual development of raffine-
ment in Mozart’s production. One of the more crucial points of his concerto form is his
treatment of the orchestra. We will see soon that Mozart’s way of adding the colours of
the different orchestra groups is constitutive of the very concerto form, like the more
experimental group concertos by Vivaldi and Bach. In a Baroque concerto, the instru-
mentation is distributed between a solo group and a tutti group. When there are several
solo instruments, like in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no.1, or in Vivaldi’s fanciful
work for two violins tuned as trombe marine, two chalumeaux and two mandolins etc.
we can experience a pointillist method of varying the texture: the stratification of so-
norities which is more common in high Baroque motets than in late Baroque concer-
tos. Johann Christian Bach does not employ much instrumental variation in his small-
scale piano concertos, opening always the movements with the string orchestra and
making the piano enter afterwards. In No. 9, Mozart makes the piano enter immediate-
ly in a lively dialogue with the orchestra: orchestra / piano answer. In the recapitulation,
Mozart does the inverse with his head motive: piano / orchestra answer. The second
movement of Mozart’s No. 9 piano concerto opens with a sad motif of repeated and
quiet string chords – with a canon between violin I and II – not very unlike the model
of Vivaldi’s largo e spiccato movements. It consists of only a few notes, but the rhythm is
speaking: we experience the real galant Seufzer figure in the melody, and an expressive
Napoletan chord in the harmony (m. 11). A stepwise descending motif ends in fact
with a little phrase which could have been borrowed from every normal cantata recita-
smn-2006-1.book Page 30 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

[ 30 ] R ISE OF C LASSICAL P IANO C ONCERTO

tive of the late Baroque (mm. 14ff ), even when the whole minor theme is clearly
shaped in a profound but galant spirit. The listener might discern the ambiance of
flowing tears, not that far from some slow and sad cantata introductions of Johann Se-
bastian Bach and other Italianate composers. Rosen pretends that there is almost no
equivalent of painful and desperate expression in Mozart’s concertos.16 Of course, Mo-
zart went to Italy himself three times between 1769 and 1773. But after the late Ba-
roque setting he turns to the Tonic parallel in an abrupt and more modern manner, and
we enter into a lighter and less depressive atmosphere. After the second theme, Mozart
introduces a third theme, borrowed from the menuetto of his own Piano Sonata in Eb
major (KV 282). A brief analysis demonstrates Mozart’s typical sense of increasing the
tension at the end of a minor movement: the third theme comes back in minor, like
Mozart does much later in the famous second theme of the 1st movement of his Sym-
phony No. 39. ‘...the music first stated in E flat major is reheard in C minor, so aquir-
ing an increasingly tragic slant’, Stanley Sadie writes.17 The effect is one of double de-
pression, and the entrance of the oboe in the epilogue increases the impression of late
Baroque tragedy. For German composers of the mid-eighteenth century, the oboe was
often used in expressive settings. The difference with Mozart is his pointillistic use of
this instrument: a little oboe solo entrance after the sad minor recapitulation of the
third theme, and the whole situation has changed. This is analogous to Beethoven’s ex-
pressive solo oboe entrance in the 1st movement of his Symphony No. 5, only some
bars before the recapitulation.18

c min A strings, with oboe

c min > Eb A’ piano + strings
Eb B piano + varied orchestra
C (motive from the Menuetto KV 282)
Eb > c min A’’ piano cites from the beginning
c min > Eb A’ piano solo, the strings follow
Eb > c min B piano solo
c min! C piano solo/ piano + orchestra/ piano + string echo
c min A’’’ epilogue + oboe!

And the oboe also plays an active role at some selected places in the third movement.
When we go further to the Eb concertos nos. 14 and 22, we have to state that the wind
instruments play an ever more important role in the very musical structure. As state in
the ancient New Grove, ‘the wind colouring, a feature of the concertos since K 450, al-
most dominates K482 in Eb through its influence on the shape of the thematic materi-
al.’19 The first movement of No 22 opens with a sensual and pointillist stratification of
sonorities, with selected solo groups like horns and bassoons, or oboes and clarinets,
smn-2006-1.book Page 31 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

H ÅVARD SKAADEL [ 31 ]

contrasting the whole orchestra. We experience the same motive coloured by flutes on-
ly, clarinets only, and horns only, and we state that this is no more the common stand-
ard of galant music. The ideas of Vivaldi have been transformed into a project of elo-
quent autonomous music for the orchestra. With Mozart’s and later classicists’ new in-
terest in colouring, there is only some steps to the new bright hedonistic principles of
orchestration in the early 19th century. Mozart is a proto-Romantic not so much by his
own intention as by of his impact on the subsequent instrumental composers. Without
the differentiated and careful orchestra colouring we would have no mature Vienna
Classicism, no real autonomy of the orchestra, no real point of writing exactly sympho-
nies without a soloist. We can compare with the important role of the winds in Mo-
zart’s Symphony no. 39. And the communicative pointillist use of the oboe is present in
embryo already in the piano concerto no. 9.

III A NEW WAY OF ARTISTIC BEHAVIOR

The “Jenamy” concerto dates from January 1777. Mozart’s break with the semi-ecclesi-
astical employment at the archbishop’s in Salzburg only seven months later, in August
1777, initiated the myth of the independent composer. And with him, the piano con-
certo became one of the corner-stones of the public concert or ‘Abonnementskonzert’
in Western Europe. During the following centuries, the best pianists of Europe have
shown their skills not only through solo pieces paid by the nobility, but also through
the concerto genre in a public or semi-public bourgeois setting. Mozart believed in his
own skills and broke up from the yoke of feudality, and he profited from the institu-
tions of season ticket concerts in Vienna. Dahlhaus tries to moderate the wide-spread
myth of the ‘free’ artist at the end of the 18th century, underscoring the complementary
functions of noble mecenes and bourgeois music institutions in the life of Beethoven.20
Nonetheless, Beethoven rather wanted to present himself as the spiritual descendent of
Mozart and Haydn, thus connecting the bourgeois myth of liberation through industry
to the name of Mozart. The ‘genius’ of the artist (and not only his skills), proved par ex-
cellence by the virtuoso piano concerto and the symphony, gave henceforth unto the
composer a much more sophisticated role than being a servant on the salary list. But it
was the count Waldstein who helped Beethoven in formulating these new and proto-
Romantic ideas. Besides the gradual construction of a new artistic self-consciousness
and preparing the way for it, there was a shift of aesthetic from the rational, clear and
‘touching’ to the irrational, obscure and ‘sublime’. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
claimed in 1735 that, ‘Stronger feelings are clearer, and thus more poetical, than those
less clear and forceless.’21 Now the question was what space was left for the obscure and
imprecise instrumental music. The more radical ‘galant’ spirit was expressed by the
French philosopher Fontenelle in his notorious question, ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu?’
(‘Sonata, what do you want to tell me?’)22 The French rationalists thought that words
smn-2006-1.book Page 32 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

[ 32 ] R ISE OF C LASSICAL P IANO C ONCERTO

could express meaning better than melody, like most of the Italian theorists of the time
by the way.23 You remember that Voltaire was the great French playwright of the epoch,
and you understand the eventual sterility of the Enlightenment aesthetic: his moving
tragedies have by no means the powerful severeness of Corneille, nor the profound hu-
manity of the much later Georg Büchner. The action is all to rational: we understand
immediately that the tyrant, for instance Mahomet, is bad and that he wants to marry
an innocent girl who is in love with a nice young guy. Perhaps the sultan will change his
mind and let the young couple marry, like in Die Entführung der Seraille, and that’s all
the ‘touching’ action of the theatre. At the end, the aestheticians wanted something
more than clarity, evidence and humanity out of the arts, and by the middle of the 18th
century there was a change in this sceptical attitude. The author Denis Diderot, who
himself had presented a new model of ‘touching’ bourgeois theatre aesthetic, opened
his mind to the immediate strength of music on our affections.24 In 1757, the English-
man Edmund Burke actualised the ancient treatise ‘On the sublime’ by Longinus in his
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful:

It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting to

the imagination. ...and so far is a clearness of imagery from being abso-
lutely necessary to an influence upon the passions, that they may be con-
siderably operated upon without presenting any image at all, by certain
sounds adapted to that purpose; of which we have a sufficient proof in
the acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental music. In reality a
great clearness helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in
some sort an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever.25

It is true that already the young Baumgarten had considered obscure representations
more poetic than the distinct, complete and adequate representations.26 At the end of
the century, North German writers like E.T.A Hoffmann and Ludwig Tieck praised the
aesthetic of the sublime and spun a mythological web around the new German sym-
phony genre. They used great instrumental music like Mozart’s piano concertos and
late symphonies to construct a new metaphysic of art. The dialectical triad of Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven was conceived of, and was to dominate Western music history
for a long time. According to Dahlhaus, this speculative activity was a Northern phe-
nomenon, very distant from the musical thought and the practical goals of composers
in South Germany, Austria and Italy.27 I want to interpret Mozart’s “Jenamy” concerto
as an illustration of sound hedonism, and I believe that its first goal is to move us and
surprise us. There is no necessary conflict between the sublime art and the more mod-
est art which is simply ‘touching’. Tieck’s friend Wackenroder did not agree completely
‘that the sublime should move you to tears more than the emotional’.28 If any of the
earlier galant pianoforte concertos should really merit the name of ‘sublime’, it must in-
smn-2006-1.book Page 33 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM

H ÅVARD SKAADEL [ 33 ]

deed be Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s No. 9. It turns from the exterior aspect of formal
shape in music to the interior voluptuousness of sensual sonorities, the hedonistic ele-
ment in Mozart’s output which Charles Rosen called ‘subversive’. Revealing the depth
of passion through instrumental music, Mozart prepares the feelings of the early Ger-
man Romantics: even when the concerto has absolutely no ambition in itself of any
‘genius aesthetic’ or ‘sublime style’, it is an early key work to the kind of concertos who
inspired the founders of this obscure but significant art philosophy. Only those who
feel the emotional strength in instrumental music and the speaking character of its dif-
ferent sonorities can understand the emotional chaos that it potentially releases, such as
expressed by Friedrich Hölderlin in his poem to the goddess of Harmony – a poem
written in the last year of Mozart’s life:

Thronend auf des alten Chaos Wogen,

Majestätisch lächelnd winktest du,
Und die wilden Elemente flogen
Liebend sich auf deine Winke zu.29

No tes
1 This article is based on the author’s doctoral lec-
ture at the University of Oslo, 16 December
2005.
2 ‘Mozart, (3) Wolfgang Amadeus’, in New Grove
(1980), p. 693.
3 ‘By the beginning of 1777, stimulated by the visit
of a French keyboard virtuoso, Mlle Jeunehom-
me, Mozart was ready to write a concerto on a far
larger scale.’ New Grove (1980), ibid. – Accord-
ing to Cliff Eisen, this mysterious French woman
might be the same pianist as the Miss ‘Wil-
liaume’ or ‘Villieaume’ who performed piano
concertos by ‘Mozard’ at the Concert spirituel in
Paris the 26th december 1785 and the 10th April
1786, her name being transformed by the Mo-
zart family in their customary humoristic letter
style. EISEN, Cliff: ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K271. Pi-
ano Concerto No. 12 in A major, K414. Text-
book to the CD Mozart: Piano Concertos K271
& K414, CD, Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre/Decca,
Robert Levin and The Academy of Ancient Mu-
sic/dir. Christopher Hogwood, London 1994.
4 ‘The pianist for whom the concerto was written
was correctly identified only in 2005, as Louise
Victoire Jenamy (daughter of the distinguished
French choreographer and dancer Jean-Georges
Noverre), who in 1774 had married Joseph
Jenamy, a member of an old mercantile family
from Savoy. The Mozarts had become acquaint-
ed with Noverre in Vienna in 1773 and may have
met her then.’ SADIE, Stanley: Mozart. The Ear-
ly Years 1756–1781, W.W. Norton & Company,
New York and London 2006, p. 410.
5 Dahlhaus, Carl: ‘Europäische Musikgeschichte
im Zeitalter der Wiener Klassik’, §IV in: Dahl-
haus, Carl: Gesammelte Schriften 3. Alte Musik.
Musiktheorie des 17. Jahrhunderts – 18. Jahr-
hundert, Laaber 2001, p. 654.
6 Blom, Eric: Mozart, London 1952, p. 219.
7 ‘He has never exceeded this concerto in E flat
major,’ Alfred Einstein tells us in his Mozart.
Sein Charakter, sein Werk. Cp the Swedish edi-
tion, Mozart. Människan och verket, Stockholm
1956, P.A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag, p. 242. I
have conferred the French edition of Charles
Rosen’s The Classical Style (1971), translated by
Marc Vignal: ‘[le] concerto pour piano et orches-
tre en mi bémol majeur K. 271 de Mozart, sans
doute le premier chef-d’oeuvre incontestable de
style classique sans aucune trace de maniérisme’,
in: Rosen, Charles: Le style classique. Haydn,
smn-2006-1.book Page 34 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM
[ 34 ]W. A. M OZART AND THE RISE OF THE CLASSICAL P IANO CONCERTO: P IANO CON-
Mozart, Beethoven, Paris 1978, Gallimard, p.
71. Rosen is quoted in German by Konrad
Küster in: Mozart. Eine musikalische Biographie,
Stuttgart 1990, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, p. 83:
‘Von den 23 Klavierkonzerten waren fünf [bis
1777] komponiert, also gut ein Fünftel; eines
davon fiel Alfred Einsteins Verdikt anheim, nicht
ganz vollfertig zu sein (das Konzert für drei Kla-
viere KV 242), und erst das letztere von ihnen
bezeichnete Charles Rosen >>als sein erstes gross
angelegtes Meistererwerk in irgendeiner Gat-
tung<<: das Es-Dur-Konzert KV 271, das Mo-
zart Anfang 1777 wohl für die Klaviervirtuosin
Jeunehomme geschrieben hatte.’
8 Sadie 2006, p. 410.
9 New Grove: ‘Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus’, p.
706: ‘The origins of the structural patterns of
Mozart’s piano concerto opening movements lie
in the ritornello form of the aria or concerto first
movement in the late Baroque, expanded in the
light of the sonata principle. (...) The commonest
schemes in his concerto first movements of th[e]
period [1781–4] usually follow some such lines
as these: an opening ritornello in the tonic, com-
prising a primary and (after a tutti) a secondary
one, with a cadential group; then, in effect, a so-
nata-form exposition for soloist and orchestra,
beginning with the former primary theme
(sometimes with prefatory solo material), includ-
ing the former secondary theme and often a new
solo one, both in the dominant, and cadential
material; a central ritornello; a widely modulat-
ing development or “free fantasia”, with sequen-
tial writing and solo bravura and little thematic
working; a recapitulation, including material
from both the opening ritornello and the exposi-
tion, now in the tonic; and a cadenza and closing
ritornello.’
10 Op. cit. Part III, §§ 120–5, pp. 333–9. Facsimi-
le-edition Hildesheim 1969. Commented on re-
cently in the Music Journal by the scholar Chris-
ta Lamberts-Piel (working at the Dietrich Bon-
hoeffer-Gymnasium in Bergen Gladbach).
11 Conley, Thomas M.: Rhetoric in the European
tradition, Chicago and London 1994, The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, p. 30.
12 Rosen 1978 (French edition), pp. 256–276.
13 Sadie 2006, pp. 410–412.
14 Rosen 1978, p. 270.
15 ‘ “Dritte Themen” in Clementis Sonaten?’ in:
Dahlhaus 2001, p. 628ff.
16 Rosen 1978, p. 273.
17 Sadie 2006, p. 412.
18 ‘And this changes the whole story.’ Lecture by
Ståle Wikshåland on Beethoven at the University
of Oslo, spring 1995.
19 New Grove (1980): ‘Mozart, Wolfgang Ama-
deus’, p. 712.
20 Dahlhaus, Carl: ‘Europäische Musikgeschichte
im Zeitalter der Wiener Klassik’ in: Dahlhaus
2001, p. 656.
21 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb: Meditationes
philosophicae (Halle 1735), modern edition by
Heinz Paetzold, Hamburg 1983, Felix Meiner
Verlag, § 27, pp. 26 (Lat.) – 27 (Germ.).
22 Fubini, Enrico: L’estetica musicale dal settecento
a oggi (1964), Torino 2001, Einaudi, p. 102.
23 On Italian music aesthetic of the 18th century, see
Fubini 2001, pp. 68–74.
24 Fubini 2001, pp. 61–66.
25 Burke, Edmund: A Philosophical Enquiry into
the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beau-
tiful (1759, 2nd edition), modern edition by
James T. Boulton, Notre Dame (Ind.) and Lon-
don 1968, University of Notre Dame Press, II,iv,
p. 60.
26 Baumgarten op. cit., §§ 12–16, pp. 12–17.
27 ‘Die klassische Musik gehörte der katholischen,
die romantische Musikästhetik, die gleichzeitig
entstand, der protestantischen Region an.’ Dahl-
haus, Carl: ‘Europäische Musikgeschichte im
Zeitalter der Wiener Klassik’ in: Dahlhaus 2001,
p. 652.
28 ‘Ich weiss nicht recht, warum das Erhabene Dich
eher zu Tränen rühren sollte als das Empfind-
same.’ Dahlhaus, Carl: Die Idee der absoluten
Musik, Kassel and Basel 1987, Bärenreiter, p. 62.
29 ‘Hymne an der Göttin der Harmonie’ (1790/91)
in: Hölderlin, Friedrich: Die Gedichte, edited by
Jochen Schmidt, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig
2001, Insel Verlag, p. 111.
smn-2006-1.book Page 35 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:25 AM
H ÅVARD SKAADEL
Summar y
Mozart’s ninth piano concerto K271 is a key work
to the Classical way of writing piano concertos. It
leans on Johann Christian Bach but the dimensions
are greater, permitting several surprising moves and
formal experiments. Mozart breaks with the re-
strained entertainment character of the serenade
style and gives a new dignity to instrumental music.
Musical impredictability is an active element in
Mozart’s harmony and in his orchestration. Pointil-
listic use of the instrument groups distinguishes his
Key words
W. A. Mozart, Vienna Classicism, Piano concerto, Music aesthetic
Biography
Håvard Skaadel holds a doctoral degree in musico-
logy from the University of Oslo. He has taught
music and French at a secondary school in Bodø,
[ 35 ]
mature music from any late Baroque or galant
model, even though parts of the second movement
of no. 9 are still close to the idiom of Pergolesi. The
hedonistic goals of Mozart’s instrumental music,
combined with its depth and its virtuosity, partici-
pate in the late 18th century tendency to consider
instrumental music as more expressive than vocal
music. This development meant a break with the
Enlightenment and the rise of the German Roman-
tic era.
and is currently organist in Vik and Sogn. He has
published articles on music aesthetics and is music
critic for the newspaper, Avisa Nordland.