Mozart's Piano Sonatas: Contexts, Sources, Style

by John Irving

• ISBN13: 9780521496315
• ISBN10: 0521496314
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-04-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Mozart's piano sonatas form a richly diverse and significant part of his instrumental output, and span much of his mature composing career, thereby representing a microcosm of the composer's changing style. Part I examines the contexts in which the sonatas were composed and performed, and reviews likely sources of influence. Part II concentrates on the genesis of the sonatas and the surviving autographs, which reveal important information about Mozart's compositional process. In Part III the music is studied from the standpoint of rhetoric - a discipline featured in numerous contemporary aesthetic and theoretical textbooks on music - and proceeds through an investigation of the nature of the musical ideas, followed by a discussion of formal design and finally a consideration of the style. The resulting picture affords a cross-section of Mozart's compositional strategies.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix	(11)
Acknowledgements	xx	(1)
Abbreviations	xxi
PART I: CONTEXTS	3	(48)
1 The solo sonata in context	3	(13)
2 Stylistic models for Mozart's sonatas	16	(35)
PART II: SOURCES	51	(48)
3 Six sonatas, K.279-84	51	(11)
4 Three sonatas, K.309-11	62	(4)
5 Four sonatas, K.330-2; K.333	66	(7)
6 Fantasia and Sonata in C minor, K.475 and 457	73	(10)
7 Later Viennese sonatas, K.533 and 494; K.545; K.570; K.576	83	(6)
8 Fragments	89	(10)
PART III: STYLE	99	(63)
9 Eighteenth-century views of sonata form	99	(12)
10 Pre-compositional choices - the rhetorical inventio	111	(5)
11 Dispositio: rhetoric and design	116	(35)
12 The rhetorical elocutio	151	(11)
Notes	162	(39)
Select bibliography	201	(11)
Index	212