S.Q. Daily #15: Mozart No. 19, K.465

S.Q. Daily: A Composer's Listening Journal

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Day #15: W0lfgang Amadeus Mozart
String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465, "Dissonance"

Diving right back into Mozart's Haydn Quartets, we'll look at No. 19/K. 465 ("Dissonance") today, which I'm hearing on Naxos, again courtesy of The Takács Quartet.

I absolutely love the 22-bar introduction from which the quartet gets its nickname. Okay, I really just love the opening 15 bars before the gravity of G Major (the dominant) starts to take over. The harmonic ambiguity and cross-relations in this tonal style are remarkable, even disregarding its early date of composition (1785).

The beginning:
Repeated C's in the cello. Viola Ab, then vn II Eb, completing an Ab first-inversion chord - pretty ambiguous. Then vn I enters on a high A just as the viola moves from Ab to G (the Ab-A cross-relation), forming an A half-diminished 6/5. On the next beat a D 4/2. The next downbeat: B-G-C#-A, a whole-tone cluster? Going to B-G-D-G, a G in first inversion. (The downbeat is really G Major with a suspension and a chromatic lower neighbor tone.)

And that's only the first three measures. Confused? I think that's the point. Just listen to the first 1.5 minutes or so on Youtube.

You can stick around for the rest (four movements total), which seems like pretty typical Mozart... meaning genius, of course. But that first little bit really gets me going.

S.Q. Daily #13: Mozart No. 17, K.458

S.Q. Daily: A Composer's Listening Journal

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Day #13: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
String Quartet No. 17 in Bb Major, K. 458, "Hunt"

Today's composing task: finish the A section (and possibly A') of my Movement II.

Today's S.Q. Daily review: Mozart's "Hunt," K. 458.

It's about time I turn to some of the "Classics" (with a large C). Quartets No. 17/K. 458 ("Hunt") and No. 19/K. 465 ("Dissonance") are probably the most famous of Mozart's twenty-three total quartets, and are part of the six Haydn Quartets, dedicated to Joseph Haydn, father of the genre.

Today, "Hunt." Perhaps "Dissonance" will be tomorrow. The Takács Quartet performs.

I. Allegro vivace assai
Compound meter such as this (here, 6/8), is often reserved for third-movement scherzos, yet the quick pace and absence of "joking" material allows this to function as a first-movement sonata. A "hunting call" is at times passed among all four players, giving the work its nickname.

The memorable tune (A section) that begins the 8.5-minute movement returns literally at 2:06, ornamented at 5:09, and then significantly varied at 7:27. Even in this light-hearted opening, the basic material is only heard once every 2.5 minutes on average. Composers would be wise to take this as a classical model for a minimum proportion of development sections.

The form is extended through multiple layers of repetition: 1-2 bar motives, 4-6 bar phrases, and 8-bar periods. Takács skipped a number of repeats in the work as a whole, yet it was not detrimental to the form.

II. Minuetto
A little less interesting melodically, but it works.

III. Adagio
I think Takács took the tempo down to grave, yet it holds up well enough. Another method for development and the extension of phrases includes passing short melodic fragments among the various voices, particularly featuring an echo of the first violin in the cello.

ABA form is at play in countless works, from simple dance and song forms, to the skeletal structure of the grand sonata-allegro form itself (A - Exposition, B - Development, A - Recapitulation). Don't overlook this trusty form.

IV. Allegro assai
Another interesting yet simple way to vary the music and challenge listener expectations is to repeat previous material with a significantly altered orchestration. Double the melody in octaves or low in the cello. Write a new accompaniment pattern. This happens near the end of Movement I, as well as in Movement IV.

This latest tip, like all those listed above, applies to tonal, quasi-tonal, and non-tonal works alike.

"Hunt" was fun and a good lesson, but I'm more looking forward to "Dissonance" tomorrow. Mmm... delicious.

No Mozart Am I

This thought has been with me for years, but it just tapped me on the shoulder a few days ago, so I thought I'd share it with you.

While there certainly are similarities, the majority of the composing I do is categorically different from the composing of tonal-era Classical composers - Mozart, for example. Nearly all of my creations are tailored to a specific genre of project, be it live theater, film, or music theater.

The nature of the current project deeply influences not only the mood but even the very method of constructing each piece of music. My works, therefore, seem quite varied and eclectic. A good number of tonal-era works, in contrast, seem to be playing the same game and following the same set of rules.

Of course, this is a simplistic observation - not least because I constantly struggle to come out of the shell that is my simplistic, triadic, tonal foundation - but it is an observation that rings true for me nonetheless. I certainly do not mean by this to disparage the work done by earlier composers. I simply feel that what I do in practice rooms in front of a piano is largely a different process from that of many established composers of old.

But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I give my uniqueness too much credit. What do you think? If you are a composer, do you feel like your work is essentially the same work as Bach or Beethoven?