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‘La vittima è Idamante’: Did Mozart have a motive?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
Extract
The literature on Mozart's Idomeneo contains many references to short motives, initially presented in the overture and recurring at critical points during the opera itself. While this practice has not been shown to be widespread in eighteenth-century opera seria, earlier instances may be found in operas known to Mozart and from whose example he clearly profited, notably Gluck's Alceste and Iphigénie en Aulide. The tendency to orchestrate most or all of the recitative and to elide aria cadences contributes to increasing continuity of musical thought in all these works; the denouements of both Gluck's Iphigénie operas become nearly symphonic.
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References
1 Floros, Constantin, ‘Das “Programm” in Mozarts Meisterouvertüren’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 26 (1964), 140–86Google Scholar, begins by discussing these overtures of Gluck. The article is reprinted with revisions in Floros, Mozart–Studien I: Zu Mozarts Sinfonik, Opern- und Kirchenmusik (Wiesbaden, 1979).Google Scholar See also Rushton, Julian, ‘Royal Agamemnon: The Two Versions of Iphigénie en Aulide’, in Boyd, Malcolm, ed., Music and the French Revolution (Cambridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar
2 Floros, discusses motive ‘A’ on pp. 150–1.Google Scholar
3 Liebner, Janos, Mozart a szimpadon (Budapest, 1961).Google Scholar Reference is made to the translation, Mozart in the Theatre (London, 1972), 45–63.Google Scholar Liebner identifies motive ‘B’ (calling it ‘C’) on p. 46, and traces a later reference on pp. 51–2. Floros, 151, traces this motive in Act II, but admits the weakness of the connection.
4 Einstein, Alfred, Gluck (London, 1936), 140.Google Scholar
5 On Mozart, besides the authors mentioned elsewhere in this article, see Noske, Frits, The Signifier and the Signified (The Hague, 1977; repr. Oxford, 1990), 3f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (on Figaro), 39f. (on Don Giovanni), 93f. (on Così); Drummond, John, Opera in Perspective (London, 1980), 201f.Google Scholar (on Figaro); Steptoe, Andrew, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas (Oxford, 1988), 195f. and 213f.Google Scholar; and for a wider-ranging discussion, the symposium ‘Tonartplan and Motivstruktur (Leitmotivtechnik?) in Mozarts Musik’, Mozart Jahrbuch (1973–1974), 82–144.Google Scholar
6 See Webster, James, ‘Mozart’s Operas and the Myth of Musical Unity’, this journal, 2 (1990), 197–218.Google Scholar
7 Liebner, (see n. 3), 70Google Scholar, describes his purpose as examining the opera ‘from a single viewpoint: that of dramatic means of expression through the language of music’.
8 For the methodology and an extended example of paradigmatic analysis see Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, ‘Varèse's “Density 21.5”: A Study in Semiological Analysis’, Music Analysis, 1 (1982), 243–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The purpose of the present article has much to do with Nattiez's observation that ‘the record of an analysis enables it to be checked: once it is written down, it is possible to review, criticise, and go beyond an analysis’ (p. 244). And with Nattiez I can say that ‘My critical observations do not seek to discredit the work of anyone’ (p. 336). For a modest adaptation of paradigmatic tables to an operatic context, see Rushton, Julian, ‘Dido's Monologue and Aria’, in Ian Kemp, Hector Berlioz: Les Troyens (Cambridge, 1989), 161–80.Google Scholar
9 The theory of basic shape (or ‘Grundgestalt’) in instrumental music is usually applied to demonstrate intuitively sensed unity. See Epstein, David, Beyond Orpheus (Oxford and New York, 1979), 3f.Google Scholar It may, however, involve quite fluid rearrangement of an ‘envelope’; see for instance Epstein, p. 25. But connections more widely dispersed, as in an opera, must surely be musically closer than those developed in juxtaposition if they are to acquire significance.
10 But see Floros (n. 1), and Heartz, Daniel, ‘Mozart's Overture to Titus as a Dramatic Argument’, Musical Quarterly, 64 (1978), 29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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13 Cairns, David, Responses (London, 1973). All citations are from pp. 62–5.Google Scholar
14 Cairns does not quote the music for all references; it is uncertain, therefore, whether Ex.4/ 17 or 18 is intended.
15 It is noteworthy that Mozart's substitute duet (K. 489, written to accommodate a tenor Idamante for the Vienna performance of 1786) includes an identical form of ‘C’ in bar 8.
16 The terms ‘representative’ and ‘symbolic’ I adapt from Warrack, John, ‘Leitmotif’, in Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), X, 644.Google ScholarCairns, (see n. 13), 64Google Scholar, does not define the function of a motto – indeed, he asserts that the importance of thematic reminiscence should not be exaggerated; but its presence ‘does help to show…the intense seriousness with which Mozart set about his task’. This suggests that Cairns regards the instances he quotes as deliberately included by the composer.
17 , Liebner (see n. 3), 45.Google Scholar
18 Compare Cairns, (see n. 13), 64Google Scholar: ‘in no other opera of Mozart's, not even in Don Giovanni, do thematic reminiscences play so large a part’.
19 See n. 1.
20 Berlioz for one did not accept Gluck's suggestion that the overture could convey the subject of the drama; musical expression cannot go that far ( ‘L'expression musicale ne saurait aller jusque-là’). A travers chants, ed. Guichard, Léon (Paris, 1971), 176.Google Scholar
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22 In the Neue Mozart Ausgabe edition of Idomeneo (Series II, Werkgruppe 5 No. 11, vol. 1 [ Kassel, , 1972], 20Google Scholar ) Heartz as editor does not suggest an appoggiatura in Ex.4/2. ‘Ilia infelice’ arguably generates the descending diminished fourths in the bass of transitional and recitative passages, which lack other defining characteristics of ‘C’. For instance, the end of Ilia's first aria, bar 115; Act I scene 2, bar 13 (‘non temer [diminished fourth]; difesa di Minerva’); scene 4, bar 9, when Arbace is visibly the bearer of bad news; the bars preceding the chorus No. 18 (‘Corriamo, fuggiamo’), at the end of Act II. I have not included these, or the violin figure at the end of Ex. 3 which Floros's criteria might well have allowed him to include, as references to ‘C’.
23 Table 1 shows a striking lack of coincidence between Floros and Heartz, whose article on Titus (see n. 10) mentions Floros's work. However, the absence of specific cross-references between authors writing within the same few years makes uncertain any attempt to treat their work in terms of developing or opposing analyses; see Nattiez, , ‘The Concepts of Plot and Seriation in Music Analysis’, Music Analysis, 4 (1985), 107–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 The old complete edition, W. A. Mozarts Werke, ed. Köchel, L. von and others (Leipzig, 1877–83)Google Scholar, and Köchel's catalogue confine the Gavotte to the appendix of ballet music, K. 367, implying performance after Act III. Heartz's reasons are given in the Foreword to the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (I, xvii).
25 , Mann (see n. 11), 260 and 282.Google Scholar It is my inference that Mann is alluding to ‘C’, the only part of his Ex. 4 – my Ex. 2 – identifiable in the later scene (Ex. 4/23).
26 Dent, Edward J., Mozart's Operas, 2nd ed. (London, 1947), 50.Google Scholar
27 Pertinent examples of the ironic divertissement are Act III of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie and Act I of Iphigénie en Aulide; in both operas a father condemns his child to death.
28 Ex. 4/5 is one of few references I alone have contributed. For what it is worth, I identified most of the instances in Ex. 4 independently of the other authors, but not Ex. 4/9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 or 26.
29 ‘C’ is not an uncommon shape in Mozart, but reference to the first movements of the piano concertos K.459 and K.466 and of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, or the slow movements of K.387 and the Haffner symphony, does not help in determining a meaning. Nor, since the drama is well over by the time they appear, do the two instances in the final ballet (Nos. 29 and 30 in Table 1).
30 Heartz, , ‘Tonality and Motif’ (see n. 21).Google Scholar