Piano Concerto No 17 in G Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Essay Example

Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, KV. 453, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 'The Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, KV. 453, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart waswritten in 1784.The work is orchestrated for solo piano, flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings (violins divided into two, violas, cellos and double basses). As is typical with concertos, it is in three movements: 1. Allegro 2. Andante in C major 3. Allegretto -- Presto According to the date that the composer himself noted on the score, the concerto was completed on April 12, 1784. It was premiered by Mozart's student, Barbara von Ployer, on June 13, 1784 at a concert to which Mozart had invited Giovanni Paisiello to hear both her and his new compositions, including also his recently-written Quintet in E flat for Piano and Winds. Afterwards, von Ployer was joined by Mozart in a performance of the Sonata for Two Pianos, K. 448.The finale is a set of variations on what Alfred Einstein has described as a birdlike theme and there is indeed a tale that Mozart's own starling whistled the tune.In his early Vienna years, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from 1782-85, and are often judged to be his response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. In a letter to Haydn, Mozart wrote: A father who had decided to send his sons out into the great world thought it his duty to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a man who was very celebrated at the time, and who happened moreover to be his best friend. In the same way I send my six sons to you... Please then, receive them kindly and be to them a father, guide, and friend!... I entreat you, however, to be indulgent to those faults which may have escaped a father's partial eye, and in spite of them, to continue your generous friendship towards one who so highly appreciates it."[4] Haydn was soon in awe of Mozart, and when he first heard the last three of Mozart's series he told Leopold, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name: He has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition." Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetypal example of the Classical style. His works spanned the period during which that style transformed from one exemplified by the style galant to one that began to incorporate some of the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque, complexities against which the galant style had been a reaction. Mozart's own stylistic development closely paralleled the development of the classical style as a whole. In addition, he was a versatile composer and wrote in almost every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. While none of these genres were new, the piano concerto was almost single-handedly developed and popularized by Mozart. He also wrote a great deal of religious music, including masses; and he composed many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment. The central traits of the classical style can all be identified in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are hallmarks, though a simplistic notion of the delicacy of his music obscures for us the exceptional and even demonic power of some of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, and the opera Don Giovanni. The famed writer on music Charles Rosen has written (in The Classical Style): "It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous." Especially during his last decade, Mozart explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time. The slow introduction to the "Dissonant" Quartet, K. 465, a work that Haydn greatly admired, rapidly explodes a shallow understanding of Mozart's style as light and pleasant. From his earliest years Mozart had a gift for imitating the music he heard; since he travelled widely, he acquired a rare collection of experiences from which to create his unique compositional language. When he went to London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music; when he went to Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna, he heard the work of composers active there, as well as the spectacular Mannheim orchestra; when he went to Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which were to be hugely influential on his development. Both in London and Italy, the galant style was all the rage: simple, light music, with a mania for cadencing, an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other chords, symmetrical phrases, and clearly articulated structures. This style, out of which the classical style evolved, was a reaction against the complexity of late Baroque music. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are "homotonal" (each movement in the same key, with the slow movement in the parallel minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms commonly being written by composers in Vienna. One of the most recognizable features of Mozart's works is a sequence of harmonies or modes that usually leads to a cadence in the dominant or tonic key. This sequence is essentially borrowed from baroque music, especially Bach. But Mozart shifted the sequence so that the cadence ended on the stronger half, i.e., the first beat of the bar. Mozart's understanding of modes such as Phrygian is evident in such passages. As Mozart matured, he began to incorporate some more features of Baroque styles into his music. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201 uses a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had just published his Opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in German literature, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era to come, is evident in some of the music of both composers at that time. Over the course of his working life, Mozart switched his focus from instrumental music to operas, and back again. He wrote operas in each of the styles current in Europe: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, or Cos fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflte is probably the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he developed the use of subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestration, and tone colour to express or highlight psychological or emotional states and dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted. His increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concerti served as a resource in his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was reflected in his later non-operatic compositions. During the years 1782-1785, Mozart put on a series of concerts in which he appeared as soloist in his piano concertos, widely considered among his greatest works. These concerts were financially successful. After 1785 Mozart performed far less and wrote only a few concertos. Maynard Solomon conjectures that he may have suffered from hand injuries; another possibility is that the fickle public ceased to attend the concerts in the same numbers. Mozart was influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment as an adult, and became a Freemason in 1785. His lodge was specifically Catholic, rather than deistic, and he worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before the latter's death in 1787. Die Zauberflte, his second last opera, includes Masonic themes and allegory. He was in the same Masonic Lodge as Haydn. Mozart's life was occasionally fraught with financial difficulty. Though the extent of this difficulty has often been romanticized and exaggerated, he nonetheless did resort to borrowing money from close friends, some debts remaining unpaid even to his death. During the years 1784-1787 he lived in a lavish, seven-room apartment, which may be visited today at Domgasse 5, behind St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna; it was here, in 1786, that Mozart composed the opera Le nozze di Figaro.' (1,2,3,4,5) The piece of music expresses joyfulness and happiness in including living life and the way it is to be lived and in a sense how a cheerful person lives it. This expression of dancing violins and an oboe working together to give a pulse of happiness in the work makes it expressed as such: The violins,piano and the flutes In the lingering ripples of each played note Aggregating,echoing with a last presence and existence Remains and surpasses my want to define beauty for once: Violins,a piano and the flutes played and together spoke. That music is notes for words and how they are said Never mattered what they cipher But what I cipher - or decipher -For what is existence without musical words said The piano was rippling echoes in each note played Like no existence for the notes is there without their accompanying, Clustering sisters,and truly it was so to my hearing. The solely playing violin was pressed on to last its short notes played; Happy,even in its happy notes,on that night And the flutes stole away the violin's notes and the piano's And ,dreamy as I attended, explained the flutes' soft notes To be explaining the violin's sadness,the piano's delight. And with each's distinct voice, soul-less as they seem, They were felt to have souls singing and sharing feelings Like and alongside with the living, Brightening souls and making come true magical dreams. The following is the sense that the piece of music replays in its notes,within the cheerfulness of the notes and the playfulness of the piano and the oboes and violins singing along together to get the sadness of life out of the unhappy mind,as if the piece of music wants us to believe that there is no loss of hope with a living soul in life: The story has begun When night falls and angels call On peace to join them and come With silence in silence And not to ask what my burdened memory recalls And shows in my eyes,the home To all my feelings unmasked. Words in eyes mean nothing more Than words are what they could afford Unless in observing eyes the affection The words the carrier eyes implore To be understood and have lifted the bored Wanting mercy from who's in sight -in heart,eyes and complexion. And when you read,two types of readings occur: One with which you read back The feelings you once lived,or still do, The other the words in you stir And leads back to you to look back And a new phase is gone through -The way you write;the way the blankness Reveals words which were not there before Or words which reveal themselves to sight As if sight wore a veil and read emptiness Then emptiness filled itself with a store Bringing the hidden pulse of a living being to sight. Thus the inside appeared on the outside And I read my book to myself Before it's read to anyone else. Some pages escaped my eyes and self's boundaries That none should read other than myself, The act hated,yet relieved me into a bliss. My heart was a fireplace for suppressed love to feed in And burn me warmer As I begged my eyes to shed tears But still they hold on to the ethics I firmly held onto until I could no longer And into me I slipped discouragement through rolling in fears. It's the same story of last night I never asked my eyes to happily tear And when I do,they do not: It's the stubbornness of an ethic They hold onto: to shed no tear When their owner has give up or forgotten. What's in me I refuse to grip Since what -in my mind- I pictured Is calling on me not to stop -The message - I know for a fact- is sustained. But,because I wish to remain much longer The theme was blinded from its fact, The emotion I had is,what those who came before me, Described as with time passage grows sweeter And gently and warmly feeds hatred towards coming back To real life,since what you imagined is your sweetened reality. Too soft to leave your imagined world Too warm to be able to move Is it a fool's paradise you live You speak of yourself to yourself in second person singular Apparently denying -infernally knowing- that The maladie's cure is in your hands It is hard to return -or recall back- the last image you lived in. And slowly the images stop And the screen turns black The pages blank. No more reading The story has come to its full stop. Behind the full stop there lives A continuation of the memory That refuses to have an end to this Its refusal is mine's,and mine's is its Until in life there is a salvation that could be seen Out of this. When night falls and angels come With Silence in silence,they're asked Not to ask if the recurring story is done Is yet to begin,or has begun: For the story they will find unmasked. Turn off the lights,the story has again begun. the piece oif music is a dreamy one,one that holds magical themes of life and loving the world with all that is sacred and beautiful in it to be able to concern oneself with what heaven on earth,a little miniature of what paradise in the hereafter,could be like. mozart was a genius in the sense that he expressed himself in music,a chakllenging career for any musician or composer to be trapped in notes and to express himself with what has to be deciphered by the emotions and understanding of the other side,the listener. The piano is a romantic instrument which,unlike all other instruments,could be played to show grandeur(Beethoven's moonlight sonata) in love or peacefulness and playfulness of the spring(Vivaldi's four seasons),or the romance in love of Bach for his wife magdalena.the flutes have the beauty of the notes which are like those of the egyptian goddess of music which created a flute out of a reed for a poor romantic lover of a beautiful princess to express his own feelings of love and sadness through blowing into it and playing on its holes.the oboe is deep and conventional as in the sense of being regarded as the master of the deep words and the cluster of defining masterpieces inside a work of art which is musical such as the pieces of the contrabass when expressing a level of understanding which explains to the listener the idea of deep thought in a sense of emotion which is conveyed through deep notes which are masculine. The beauty in a piece of art is the fluttering of the butterflies it has in the emotions it brings over the mind to conduct the human factor (humane love) inside the body of ideas which are inserted into the heart through feelings. There is a significance in the piece of music which it discusses:is there a superiority in love which is unbelievably unreachablethere is playfulness in the piece of music and a flirtation with a lover's mind by the beloved but it is the kind of flirtation which is beautifully emancipated by the gallentry of the lover and the soft sweetness of ethics of the beloved.this is,i presume,the answer is. The intellectual property which the piece of music presents is the beauty for the soul imprisoned in prose like words in poetic musical note forms. This emotion of the words makes it gallant for the self to use to move and immensely fight for for the freedom of its designs of loving to get through the barrier of reality torturing it to get it through to the love of others and to understand what it means to get to love and be loved by the same person who they are in all cases of loving,emotional and physical. Bibliography: Mozart, Wikipedia, 2007, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart Piano Concerto no.17, Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._17_%28Mozart%29 Mozart Homepage,http://www.mhric.org/mozart/index2.html Classical Music Pages, http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/mozart.html Mozart Project, http://www.mozartproject.org/compositions/index.html Read More