On 14 Mar 2006 at 15:05, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: > "You're talking about what he might have done vs. what he is known to > have done. Mozart might have arranged the whole symphony for kazoos, > but we have no documentation saying that he did. We do know that he > created a replacement finale. Thus, we have the K111a version as a > real documented symphony, and an imaginary "choral symphony" for which > there is absolutely no documentation." > > No. All I'm suggesting is that your logic in ruling out the > performance of this as a choral symphony is iffy. Using the > documentary evidence rule is shaky, we don't know if Mozart EVER had > his last symphonies performed. . . .
But we do have a fixed instrumentation and configuration for the works as a whole in autograph form. I don't know for certain that K111a was ever performed as a standalone sympohny, either, but we know that Mozart took the time to write a replacement Finale, which shows that *Mozart* conceived the work in that form as a symphony. There is no such evidence of any kind that Mozart would have conceived of or approved of a standalone performance of the overture with choral finale. Keep in mind here that pulling the overture out of its original context and creating a symphony out of it is a transformation of genre and function. Mozart, I don't believe, would have even thought of the first 3 numbers of an opera performance as being in the same genre as an instrumental symphony (which is what Zaslaw's comparison to the Ninth requires for it to have any significance at all as an observation). Mozart also repurposed the non-concertante movements of his Serenades as symphonies, another cross-genre transformation. And he also did the same with some of the other opera overtures (completely instrumental ones). That Mozart did this does not change the original contexts/genres. And in cases were Mozart did *not* do it, or demonstrably did something similar but with a major alteration (a replacement finale), then we really can't use the original context as any kind of support for doing that transformation ourselves, except as something extremely speculative. > . . . There maybe some circumstanial > evidence, but no absolute proof. I think what Neal Zaslaw suggested > that given the history of Mozart subsitution of movements and > instruments based on performers on hand, it's not completely pulling a > rabbit of the hat to perform this Overture in a concert setting with > the choral ending. Modern performers are welcome to do whatever they like, yes. But there is no grounds for imagining, as Zaslaw does, that Mozart himself ever conceived the symphony as a standalone entity that included a chorus. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
