On 13 Mar 2006 at 13:35, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
> Aha! I found this on the Barenreiter website itself:
>
> In Mozart's day the Italian operatic symphony normally consisted of
> three rather short orchestral pieces in the order fast - slow - fast.
> For Ascanio in Alba, however, he characteristically varied the
> conventional formula. That this was something unusual is made clear by
> the fact that Leopold Mozart took pains to give an exact account of
> this overtura to his wife: "So far Wolfgang has only written the
> overture, that is, a rather long Allegro, followed by an Andante,
> which has to be danced, but only by a few people. Instead of the final
> Allegro he has composed a kind of contredanse and chorus to be sung
> and danced at the same time."
That was actually the standard overture form in some of Haydn's
operas -- 2 instrumental movements with the opening chorus serving as
the finale -- according to Jens Peter Larsen (I don't know Haydn's
operas or their overtures myself).
> I have no idea why Mr. Hogwood doesn't recall this being in the vinyl
> edition of the Symphonies. Neal Zaslaw talked about this in the liner
> note; and it was included in the recordings.
>
> Mystery solved ;)
The confusion is in calling it a "choral symphony," which it
categorically is not. It is an opera overture repurposed as a
symphony, and I don't know that there is any evidence at all that it
was ever performed as a symphony with the opening chorus as a 3rd
movement, especially given that Mozart composed an instrumental
Finale to go with the first two movements (K. 111a; the finale of the
symphony as numbered K120 in the first Köchel catalog, not having
been recognized as comprising a symphony when combined with the first
two instrumental movements from the opera).
Zaslaw in his book on the Mozart symphonies (p. 189) writes:
For a Finale, the overture had an Allegro in 3/4 with choruses of
spirits and graces singing and dancing, thus anticipating (in a
most diminutive way) Beethoven's innovation in his Ninth Symphony.
This is perhaps the source of your memory, but I think the comment is
completely specious. Given that there was an existing Italian opera
practice, at least for Haydn, I don't think it's as unusual as you
seem to think the quotation from Leopold's letter makes it sound,
especially when one looks at a later letter (Sept. 13th, 1771). There
a description of the overture is given in a passage about the
disposition of the ballets and choruses, where Leopold is reporting
about having witnessed a rehearsal of the dances. There is nothing in
that context that makes it sound like Leopold is describing anything
unusual about the overture. To quote from the full context of the
letter (in the Emily Anderson translation):
In twelve days Wolfgang, with God's help, will have completely
finished the serenata, which is really an "azione teatrale" in two
parts. All the recitatives with and without instruments are ready
and so are all the choruses, eight in number, of which five are
danced as well as sung. Today we saw the rehearsal of the dances
and we greatly admired the hard work of the ballet masters, Pick
and Favier. The first scene is Venus coming out of the clouds
accompanied by genii and graces.
The Andante of the symphony is danced by eleven women, that is,
eight genii and three graces, or eight graces and three goddesses.
The last Allegro of the sympohony, which has a chorus of thirty-two
voices, eight sopranos, eight contraltos, eight tenors and eight
basses, is danced by sixteen persons at the same time, eight men
and eight women.
Another chorus is made up of shepherads and shepherdesses, sung by
different performers. Further there are choruses of shepherds
alone, tenors and basses and of shepherdesses alone, sopranos and
contraltos. In the last scene all the singers and dancers appear,
genii, graces, shepherds and shepherdesses, and they dance the last
chorus together. . . .
As for the other quote, from a letter of August 31st, 1771, here is
the relevant context:
. . . The text [of the opera] has arrived at last, but so far
Wolfgang has only written the ouverture, that is, a rather long
Allegro, followed by an Andante, which has to be danced, but only
by a few people. Instead of the last Allegro he has composed a kind
of contredanse and chorus, to be sung and danced at the same time.
He will have a good deal of work during the coming month. Hasse
arrived yesterday. . . .
I don't see anything there that says it's unique, nor even anything
that implies it's unusual. Indeed, the nonstandard part of this
production was having the involvement of an important ballet master,
which seems to have greatly shaped the amount of ballets and choruses
in the work. It also seems to me that the genre is SERENATA, not
OPERA, which surely has its own conventional associations and
practices that are different than the opera buffa/seria that we know
today.
In any event, the fact that Mozart created an instrumental finale for
performing the symphony by itself shows that there is no real
"anticipation" of the Ninth here. That's just so much claptrap, in my
opinion, evidence that Zaslaw didn't know about the form of certain
of Haydn's operas.
I wouldn't know myself had I not been at a paper read at the AMS
convention in Louisville in 1983 which was on the topic of Haydn's
"two-movement opera overtures." At the conclusion, Jans Peter Larsen,
who can quite incontrovertibly be described as the father of modern
Haydn scholarship, stood up and asked the presenter "Don't you think
it's important to consider that in Haydn's multi-movement opera
overtures, the opening chorus constituted an integral part of the
overture, i.e., that these were actually *three-movement* overtures,
not two-?"
You can probably figure out why this moment was memorable enough for
me to be able to recall so clearly more than two decades later, but
the point is that what Mozart did with the overture and opening
chorus of Ascanio is not at all unique, and probably not even
unusual, despite Zaslaw's offhand remark.
--
David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/
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