Mozart: The 'Jupiter' Symphony

by Elaine R. Sisman , General editor Julian Rushton

• ISBN13: 9780521400695
• ISBN10: 0521400694
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-10-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This guide to Mozart's last and most celebrated symphony explores the historical background and aesthetic context of the work as well as the music itself. The early chapters examine the expectations of the symphony in Mozart's Vienna, Mozart's career in 1788 - the year of the three last symphonies - and the changing reception of the 'Jupiter' over the subsequent two hundred years. A separate chapter is then devoted to each movement of the symphony with musical discussion illuminated by a broad array of topics. Finally, a lucid exposition of rhetoric reveals the connections between elevated and learned styles and the sublime, enabling the reader to grasp the effect Mozart's music had upon his contemporaries.

Table of Contents

List of tables	ix
Preface	xi
The symphony in Mozart's Vienna	1	(8)
Symphonies for patrons and the public	3	(2)
Symphonies on concert programs	5	(2)
Public expectations of the symphony	7	(2)
Grand style and sublime in eighteenth-century aesthetics	9	(12)
Symphony and elevated style	9	(2)
Rhetoric in the late eighteenth century	11	(2)
Beyond elevated style: the sublime	13	(2)
The ``sublime style'' and Mozart	15	(1)
The sublime of terror	16	(2)
Kant's sublime	18	(3)
The composition and reception of the ``Jupiter'' symphony	21	(16)
The state of Mozart's career in 1788	21	(2)
The summer of 1788 and composition of the ``trilogy''	23	(5)
Reception and interpretation of the ``Jupiter''	28	(9)
Design: four movement-plans	37	(9)
Gesture and expectation: Allegro vivace	46	(9)
Topics and styles	47	(3)
``False recapitulations,'' ``false retransitions,'' and the ``reprise-interlude''	50	(3)
The role of dynamics in articulating sonata form	53	(2)
Structure and expression: Andante cantabile	55	(8)
``Expressive episodes''	55	(4)
Genre, topic, and ``secondary development''	59	(4)
Phrase rhythm: Menuetto, Allegretto	63	(5)
The rhetoric of the learned style: Finale, Molto allegro	68	(12)
Learned style as topic	69	(2)
Learned and galant	71	(3)
The oration as peroration: learned, galant, and sublime	74	(6)
Appendix: A. Oulibicheff, ``The `Jupiter' Symphony of Mozart'' (1843)	80	(6)
Notes	86	(16)
Select bibliography	102	(4)
Index	106