Page 166 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

FiguRe 9.8
One of the few surviving tickets to a concert given by Mozart in Vienna. These were sold in ad- vance, not from a ticket agency, but from Mozart’s own apart- ment. Haydn did the same for his London concerts.
went well, Mozart could make a killing, as a music journal of March 22, 1783, reported:
Today the celebrated Chevalier Mozart gave a musical concert for his own benefit at the Burgtheater in which pieces of his own music, which was already very popular, were performed. The concert was honored by the presence of an extraordinarily large audience and the two new concertos and other fantasies which Mr. Mozart played on the Forte Piano were received with the loudest approval. Our Monarch [Emperor Joseph II], who contrary to his custom honored the entire concert with his presence, joined in the applause of the public so heartily that one can think of no similar example. The proceeds of the concert are estimated at sixteen hundred gulden.
Sixteen hundred gulden was the equivalent of about $150,000 today, and more than four times the annual salary of Mozart’s father. With a take such as this, young Mozart could, at least for a time, indulge his expensive tastes.
Mozart: Piano Concerto In C Major (1785), K. 467, Second Movement (Andante)
In the winter of 1785 Mozart was at the top of his game and near the top of his fame. His father, who thought young Mozart would fall flat when he set off for Vienna in 1781, came to town to see what the lad had accomplished. And Mo- zart senior was astonished by what he saw: lavish living in a fancy apartment, Haydn wandering through praising his son, and money rolling in from endless concertizing. Another profitable concert occurred on March 10, 1785, at the court theater (see Figure 7.4), where Mozart premiered his Piano Concerto in C major.
The slow, second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C major (see Listening Cue)—along with the opening of his Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Download 23)—is Mozart’s most familiar music. (The concerto is popularly known as the “Elvira Madigan” Concerto owing to the prominent use of the music in a 1967 film of that name.) In the second movement—the expressive core of this concerto—we can again listen both emotionally and structurally; we experience beautiful melody and relaxing harmony as we track the unfolding of ternary (ABA) form. A dream-like mood envelops the beginning as the orchestra quietly lays out a duple-meter pulse (like a comforting heartbeat) subdivided into gently pulsing triplets (groups of three) that continue unabated from beginning to end. Against this restful backdrop Mozart overlays a haunting melody, first presented in the strings and then elaborated upon by the piano (see Example 7.1). As the music proceeds, a rising sequence builds tension, but a falling one releases it; a deceptive cadence frustrates, but a full one satisfies. So beautifully do all the parts (and emotions) fit in this serene movement that we forget this is a competitive concerto. Here Mozart seems to have called time out on fractious competition, instead urging all to work together in creating harmonious music worthy of paradise.
144 chapter nine classical genres
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