Sentieri musicali (Auf Mozarts Spuren)

On the trail of Mozart. On the trail of Mozart in his later years, when he had discovered Johann Sebastian Bach’s Baroque polyphony and chromaticism and incorporated it into his own musical idiom (e.g. in the final movements of the String Quartets K. 387 and 464, as well as in the Jupiter Symphony).

On the trail of Mozart – in an imperceptible alternation from one trail to another, to new paths, to one’s own path. An homage to Mozart, mainly with the stylistic means of his time and a relatively small orchestra. There is hardly a melodic, harmonic or modulatory turn in this Sinfonietta – save, perhaps, in the first movement – and hardly a sequence of chords that cannot already be found in, or at least derived from, Mozart’s late works, combined with contrapuntal build-ups and pungent chromaticism, at times pushed to the limits of dissonant tonality. The Mozartian musical idiom emerges with increasing clarity from movement to movement.

The winds and percussion dominate the succinct, improvisationally fashioned “Intrada”, with the Papageno theme occasionally surfacing like a torso above the turbulent activity.

The second movement, “Fuga”, harks back more strongly to the tonal language of the past and is divided into several sections, comparable to a ricercar in several parts. The themes, chordal groups, figures and fragmentary passages from Mozart’s chamber music come together in a kaleidoscopic manner and are held together through an archetypal four-tone motif (similar but not identical to the B-A-C-H tonal sequence) which accompanies, opens and closes the piece like a cantus firmus (and also forms part of a twelve-tone melody).

The Giga derives exclusively from the thematic material of the short piano Gigue K. 574, into which Mozart first combined ten, then twelve notes to form a dance-like fughetta theme in the Baroque spirit. The movement scurries along like a perpetuum mobile, circling around the “original theme”, breathlessly, eccentrically, building itself up to a brilliant coda in ever new runs, developments and stretti.

The three-part Aria is stamped by melodies from the B-minor Adagio for piano K. 540 and a rhythmic motif from the Adagio and Fugue K. 546. They control the course of the movement, which is framed by a free episode (for timpani, bassoon and English horn). In the middle section, an intensive “isorhythmic” intensification leads to a polytonal sound climax. The end of the movement is colored by a secret sorrow.

The work comes full circle in the finale, where Figaro and Papageno come together, i.e. where the principal themes of the two respective overtures (combined with analogous motifs from nearly contemporary works such as the Prague Symphony and the String Quartet K. 515) are exposed one after the other in longer sections before being heard simultaneously in “double counterpoint” above an ostinato scale bass, in their original versions, varied, transformed, distorted or parodied... Only once, just before the close, does the movement get sidetracked and shifts for a few seconds onto the path of the G-minor Symphony K. 550, namely to the beginning of the development of the finale (one of the boldest pages in Mozart’s music, which foreshadows developments that reach far into the future), before Figaro gives the signal for a pianissimo or forte conclusion, depending on the conductor’s decision.

In Movement II we hear:
1. a fugue on an original subject (which is later combined with the following themes almost as a “central” subject)
2. a theme from Mozart’s D-minor Piano Fantasy K. 397
3. a theme from Mozart’s F-minor Fantasy for organ
4. the subject of the fugue from Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue for two pianos

Jürg Baur
(Translation: Roger Clement, 2004)