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Aria as drama: A sketch from Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Linda Tyler
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Extract

There are few opportunities to compare differing readings by Mozart of the same text. Except in his sacred music, Mozart rarely had occasion to return to texts that he had already set, and relatively few sketches, drafts or heavily revised autographs offer extended alternative versions of other settings. Although most of the surviving sketches and drafts for operas and other vocal pieces do not diverge significantly from the final versions, some of these preliminary materials reveal Mozart reconsidering a text-setting, and thus offer important glimpses into his dramatic imagination. Such is the case with a draft for ‘Da schlägt die Abschiedsstunde’, the first aria of Der Schauspieldirektor. The draft and final autograph present related yet significantly different conceptions of the same number, enabling us to examine Mozart's revision of one particular aria, and his reconciliation of an individual solo number with the larger dramatic argument of the opera.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , November 1990 , pp. 251 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Austin, October 1989. I am grateful to Thomas Bauman, John Platoff, Reinhard Strohm and James Webster for helpful suggestions.

2 There are a few exceptions among his secular works, for example settings of the concert recitative and aria ‘Alcandro, lo confesso’ – ‘Non so d'onde viene’ for Aloysia Weber in 1779 (KV 294) and Ludwig Fischer in 1787 (KV 512).

3 A few studies have already demonstrated the value of drafts and revised autographs for our appreciation of Mozart's operas. See, for example, Heartz, Daniel, ‘Raaff's Last Aria: A Mozartian Idyll in the Spirit of Hasse’, Musical Quarterly, 60 (1971), 517–43Google Scholar, and the same author's ‘The Great Quartet in Mozart's Idomeneo’, Music Forum, 5 (1980), 233–56.Google Scholar

4 Mozart labelled the piece ‘Eine kömodie mit Musick für Schönbrun’ in his personal index of compositions, while the title-page of the printed libretto bills it as a ‘Gelegenheitsstück in einem Aufzuge’. See Croll, Gerhard, ‘Vorwort’ to Mozart' Der Schauspieldirektor, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke (henceforth NMA), Ser. II, Wkgp. 5, vol. 15 (Kassel, 1958), vii.Google Scholar

5 See the facsimiles of the two leaves in the appendix of the NMA edition.

6 In setting the final version of the aria, Mozart changed line 1 to ‘Da schlägt die Abschiedsstunde’ and line 9 to ‘Vergisst dafür du mich’.

7 See, for example, Deutsch, Otto Erich, ‘Kettenlieder’, Schweizerische Musikzeitung, 97 (1957), 348Google Scholar, and Raeburn, Christopher, ‘Die textlichen Quellen des “Schauspieldirektors”’, Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift, 13 (1958), 7.Google Scholar Eschenburg's poem was in turn based on Metastasio's ‘Ecco quel fiero istante’, from his canzonette of 1749, La partenza. See Friedlaender, Max, ‘Ein ungedrucktes Lied Philipp Emanuel Bachs’, Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters, 6 (1899), 66Google Scholar, and the same author's Das deutsche Lied im 18. Jahrhundert: Quellen und Studien (1902; rpt. Hildesheim, 1970), II, 139.Google Scholar

8 In several of Mozart's major-key, slow-fast arias, the slow section ends in the dominant rather than the tonic, but tonal closure is achieved in the fast section, which is either wholly in the tonic or begins in the dominant and moves to the tonic. Examples include Don Giovanni no. 4, Cosí fan tutte no. 24, La clemenza di Tito nos. 2 and 9, Le nozze di Figaro no. 25 (a three-tempo aria), and the concert aria ‘Io non chiedo, eterni Dei’ (KV 316). In a few other examples the key scheme of the slow section moves from the tonic to the dominant, with the last few measures of the section featuring a modulatory passage back towards the tonic (ending on a dominant chord): Die Entführung aus dem Serail no. 6, Le nozze di Figaro no. 17, Don Giovanni no. 23, and the concert arias ‘Resta, o cara’ (KV 528) and ‘Alma grande e nobil core’ (KV 578). Besides Madame Herz's aria, there are no other two-tempo arias by Mozart in which the slow section is in a minor key. The Queen of the Night's aria ‘O zitt're nicht’ comes the closest, with a Bb major orchestral introduction (11 mm.), a recitative moving from Bb to G minor (11 mm.), a Larghetto section in G minor (‘Zum Leiden bin ich auserkoren’, 40 mm.), and an Allegro moderato section in Bb major (42 mm.).

9 Mozart seems to have used the term ‘Arietta’ in the Italian sense, meaning a shorter and less elaborate solo piece. In France during this period, ‘Ariette’ sometimes designated a lively solo modelled on the style of an Italian da capo aria.

10 While the draft and final version of ‘Da schlägt die Abschiedsstunde’ contain only a one-measure introduction, early copies of the score feature a five-measure introduction (and an introduction to Mademoiselle Silberklang's aria as well). It is possible that Mozart composed these introductions at the last minute before the première. Kunze, Stefan, ‘Mozarts Schauspieldirektor’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1962–1963, 156–67Google Scholar, marshals both philological and analytical evidence for the authenticity of the introductions, which are printed in small notes in the NMA score.

11 Busch, Gudrun, C. Ph. E. Bach und seine Lieder (Regensburg, 1957), 207 and 383Google Scholar, places ‘Die Trennung’ in Bach's Hamburg period (1768–79) on stylistic grounds.

12 The poet, Klamer Eberhard Karl Schmidt, preserved the poetic metre, sentiment and key words of Eschenburg's poem in his eighteen-stanza reworking.

13 In Mozart's other German operas, iambic trimeter texts are found in five solo numbers. Mozart chose duple metre in setting four of them – ‘Ich bin so bös' als gut’ (Zaide no. 11), ‘Durch Zärtlichkeit’ (Entführung no. 8), ‘In diesen heil'gen Hallen’ (Zauberflöte no. 15) and ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’ (Zauberflöte no. 20) – and triple metre in only one, ‘Hier soll ich dich denn sehen’ (Entführung no. 1). In the four instances of iambic trimeter among his Lieder (not counting ‘Das Lied der Trennung’), Mozart chose duple metre in every case: ‘O Gotteslamm’ (KV 343 [336c]), ‘Des kleinen Friedrichs Geburtstag’ (KV 529), ‘Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling’ (KV 596) and ‘Der Frühling’ (KV 597).

14 Bauman's unpublished paper, ‘Mozart's Constanzes and Der Schauspieldirektor’, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, New Orleans, 1987. Christopher Raeburn provides biographical synopses of Cavalieri, Weber and the other performers who took part in the première of Der Schauspieldirektor in ‘An Evening at Schönbrunn’, Music Review, 16 (1955), 96–110.Google Scholar

15 Letter of 26 September 1781; Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus,Briefe and Aufzeichnungen, ed. Bauer, Wilhelm A. and Deutsch, Otto Erich (Kassel, 1962–1975), III, 163.Google Scholar

16 Letter of 7 March 1778; Briefe, II, 318.Google Scholar

17 See Heartz, Daniel, ‘Mozart and his Italian Contemporaries: “La clemenza di Tito”’, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1978–79, 275–93, esp. 281–93.Google Scholar

18 The characteristic rhythm pattern of the traditional sarabande is (in 3/4 time) crotchet–dotted crotchet–quaver. In this discussion I follow the rhythmic terminology of Allanbrook, Wye Jamison, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’ (Chicago, 1983).Google Scholar Allanbrook focuses on Mozart's use of metres and rhythmic patterns of traditional social dances in depictions of characters and in musical commentary on issues of social hierarchy. Although class issues figure very little in Der Schauspieldirektor, traditional rhythmic gestures nonetheless serve purposes of characterisation well.

19 Mozart probably began writing the final autograph of Der Schauspieldirektor with the trio, the first page of which (rather than that of the first number) is signed and dated in the upper right-hand corner (see Croll [n. 4], vii, and the facsimile of the first page of the trio on p. xiv). The compositional chronology of the four numbers from draft to autograph, however, cannot be traced with certainty.

20 Letter of 28 February 1778; Briefe (see n. 15), II, 304Google Scholar.

21 The arias are ‘Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner’ (KV 383), ‘Ah non sai qual pena sia’ (KV 416), ‘Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!’ (KV 418) and ‘No, che non sei capace’ (KV 419).

22 In KV 416 and KV 419 the dotted rhythm pattern is found in the second part.

23 Letter of 8 August 1781; Briefe (see n. 15), III, 145.Google Scholar