[MUSIC] In case you haven't noticed, among the classical composers, my favorite is Mozart. Admittedly, Beethoven powerfully affects me, as he does almost everyone, but to me Mozart is special, as a composer and as a human being. So that's why I've chosen to devote this session to three classical masterpieces, all by Mozart. Why Mozart, what's special about Mozart? What makes his music extraordinary? Well we'll talk about that, we'll even conclude with that by way of a review at the end of today's session. But having decided that Mozart alone is worthy of an entire session in our course, which Mozart to choose? Well of course I said to myself Craig, what are your favorites? So, I mulled that over for a while, and distilled the list to three. The D Minor Piano Concerto, the opera Don Giovanni, although Figaro is oh, oh, oh so good, and finally, the Requiem Mass. And then I realized something, hey, you know what? All three of these works are in a minor key, indeed, they are in the same minor key. Now even in Mozart's day, all keys did not sound exactly the same, ee hadn't quite arrived yet at equal temperament. C minor had a slightly different sound to it than D minor, which had a slightly different feeling to it than E minor, and so on. Again, this had to do with the way instruments were tuned in Mozart's day. So all these pieces do have a particular character to them. They're not only in minor, which has a somber feeling to it already, but in D minor, which was for Mozart, was the demonic key, a key of evil, the key of Hell. So today, we're going to visit through our three masterpieces, the dark side of Mozart. Our first piece is the piano concerto in D minor, K466. Now, remember K with Mozart just stands for Kochel. In 19th century, musicologists who compiled this lists of pieces by Mozart in chronological order, K.466 dates from early 1785. And don't forget that during the classical period, the concerto grosso, a type of concerto featuring a number of soloists, we saw one by Vivaldi and one by Bach. The concerto grosso is generally replaced by the solo concerto, a genre in which a single soloist played harmoniously with, and in competition against, the full orchestra. Mozart composed the D Minor Piano Concerto, one of the 23 that he wrote, for a series of concerts that he was giving at the casino in Vienna. Now you remember the casino, here's Canaletto's painting of it, at the blue arrow there, and here's the inside again. Remember, it was Mozart's job to organize the concert, round up the performers, conduct, sell tickets, service soloists, have the piano forte brought over there to the casino, everything. The audience consisted, really of only about 150 to 200, but they were mostly aristocrats, so Mozart could charge high prices, which he did. At one concert alone earlier on in his career, he made four times his father's annual salary. In other words, he made about $120,000 in money of today, in just one night. Actually, Mozart's father, a stern looking Leopold that we see here. Leopold Mozart happened to be in town that February of 1785, and he came to this concert in the casino, and heard the piece that we're about to hear. And he described it as, quote, a new and very fine concerto. So new in fact, that there wasn't time to rehearse the finale. The last of the three movements the orchestra just had to sight read the finale, just wing it at the performance. Mozart himself conducted the concert, but conducted seated at the pianoforte, which he of course played as soloist in the concerto. We'll listen to a performance of this in a moment, but first, this next slide makes a couple of important points. Notice first, the woman as soloist. There were a number of female keyboard virtuosos in Mozart's day, maybe we should call them, more correctly, virtuosas. Mozart taught one of them, Barbara Ployer, and he knew another one Victoire Jenamy, and he wrote concertos for both of these women. So seeing a female keyboard virtuosa, in this day, wasn't in any way unusual. Notice also that the lid is taken off entirely from the instrument, that's simply for better resonance. Notice also, that people are talking while the performance is going on, and that a dog is walking around the room. Music here again isn't so much art as it is, music as entertainment. Now let's take a look at a slide of Mozart's own piano, and I hope you can appreciate from this photo taken in the Geburtshaus in Salzburg, that this instrument, as with all pianos of this day, was very small. Mozart's piano had only 61 keys on it, not the 88 of today's keyboard. It weighed exactly 187 pounds, not the 1200 pounds of our modern concert grand. This again is not a replica of Mozart's piano, it is in fact Mozart's actual piano. Which brings us to an interesting point, which would you rather hear, Mozart's music played on Mozart's piano, or Mozart's music played on a big, powerful, modern grand piano? We'll give you a chance to choose here in just a minute. To do so, let's turn to a performance by pianist Steven Lubin. [MUSIC] Now he's playing on a replica of Mozart piano, and you can see that his touch is very light and that the keyboard sound is rather smaller, light keyboard action, light sound. [MUSIC] Mozart's music, Mozart's instrument, rewards fast and light playing. [MUSIC] Of course variations of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. [MUSIC] Okay, that's probably enough of that. We're about to hear Mozart on a modern grand piano, but before we do, let's think about the piano concerto as Mozart conceived it. Just as Haydn was more or less the inventor of the modern string quartet, so Mozart was the father of the piano concerto. He set out the structural framework of the piano concerto, one that lasted into the romantic era, here it is. Mozart developed a stereotypical approach to the first movement of the concerto. It goes by several names, concerto form, double exposition form Are the two most common. Double exposition form is a good name for this form because there are as you can see, two expositions. We have one exposition as we had in sonata-allegro form development, recapitulation. But now we have another exposition added at the beginning. The first exposition allows the orchestra to present most of the themes by itself. The pianist will add a couple later on, and do so all in the tonic key. Let's listen now to a performance of this concerto where we played in a large concert grand by Mitsuko Uchida, and I'll talk through this as we go along. You can see here the concert hall the Mozarteum in Salzburg. It seats about 1,000. Here is Mitsuko Uchida. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Notice that she, too, has taken the lid off the instrument. But it is, of course, a modern grand piano. And it amuses me to see, as you'll see a little bit closer here in a moment, it is actually a Steinway grand. So here's the first movement. And as in Mozart's day, she will rise and conduct. [MUSIC] Right off the bat you can notice the dark, somber, almost ominous sound. [MUSIC] That's a D minor featuring the low strings. [MUSIC] Obviously, woodwinds. [MUSIC] She's not so much beating a beat pattern, but simply moding the music to the orchestra. And we're coming to the end, the transition here in just a second. [MUSIC] It's gonna turn dark again. [MUSIC] Timpani. [MUSIC] End of transition. Second theme. Contrasting, lighter, more tender. [MUSIC] It rises up, melodic sequence, step by step. Easy way to remember that particular tune. [MUSIC] Now they're gonna charge to C. [MUSIC] So he's got a motive that's going down. [MUSIC] Comes up the scale. [MUSIC] And watch, he's gonna turn that motive back the other way in just a second. [MUSIC] Watch this. [MUSIC] Small point, but really cool. Okay, and now just the little closing theme at the end of the orchestral exposition. [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE] blissful, nostalgic, reminiscent. [MUSIC] And the D minor. And the pianist comes in at this point. She sits down, no longer the conductor, but pianist. All right, that gets us into the second exposition here. Let's pause for a moment. [MUSIC] So what did you think about those two pianos? Which would you prefer to hear? Mozart's piece on the original Mozart piano or Mozart's piece on a modern grand? Which would Mozart have preferred? Well I'd submit that he'd actually preferred the modern grand because Mozart loved when technology could enhance musical sound. A new and better clarinet for example, which is what he experienced in Monheim in 1777, or the re-orchestrations that he did of the oratorios of Hendel, including Messiah, in order to take advantage of the newest and best in sound capabilities. Adding trumpets and drums and other instruments to Messiah. So I think Mozart would have been very much pleased with the sound of a larger orchestra and the bigger piano. But back now to our D minor piano concerto. We're now going to skip to the end of the recapitulation where we'll hear again Mozart's themes, but as we do so he presents then in a varied fashion. With ornamentation, ornamentation that places more and more technical demand on the pianist. Watch how difficult it gets as we drive toward the cadenza. Now remember, a cadenza, as we saw with Bach, is a showy passage in which the soloist gets to demonstrate his or her technical skills. And reminisce a bit, improvise a bit, riff on a bit, the themes that have occurred previously in a movement. But here, the cadenza that you'll hear is not by Mozart, but by Beethoven. Why? What's a cadenza by Beethoven doing in the middle of a concerto by Mozart? Well, Mozart rarely left us any cadenzas for the concertos that he himself performed in public. Again, why? Well Mozart would need to write down all the orchestral parts. Stuff that others would need to know to be able to play the piece, but Mozart didn't need to write down what he had to play because he already had it in his head. And if he'd wrote it down someone might steal his flashy cadenza. Mozart thought about things like that. So Mozart just sat there at the piano and improvised like a jazz performer might today. Surely he never did it the same way twice. And for this reason, we have no cadenza here by Mozart from Mozart's own concerto. However we do have one from Beethoven for this piece because Beethoven also played this concerto by Mozart and he, Beethoven, has left us a cadenza from the classical period. So let's return to the end of the recapitulation in our concerto and push on to the cadenza. [MUSIC] More arpeggios. [MUSIC] Trill. [MUSIC] Dramatic movement in the bass. [MUSIC] That two note motive he's hammering home. Dramatic rise. Scalar rise from the left hand. [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE]. [MUSIC] Descending, arpeggio, trill indicating [INAUDIBLE] end. This section, there's a hint of that first theme again, and now we're going to end on a chord that suspends the action, and we want to hear more with that suspenseful, in comes the. [MUSIC] Credenza, but again by Mozart, excuse me, but again by Beethoven. [MUSIC] Beethoven. [MUSIC] [INAUDIBLE] understood exactly how Mozart [INAUDIBLE] continued this, but he didn't care. This is Beethoven, Beethoven pounding away. Mozart wouldn't have pounded a reiterated sequence of pitches quite like that. So here's bringing back a new theme that he introduced. [MUSIC] Taking it up to a higher pitch level. [MUSIC] So this is what we mean by simply playing with themes, further developing themes. So you're in the cadenza. Hint of the ominous first theme. Rises up by step. [MUSIC] There's that new theme again. [MUSIC] When you hear a trill in music, about to hear one in a moment. You know that that's like holding up a sign for the rest of the performers. Hey, pick up your instruments, get ready, cuz you've gotta come back in and play. So here's the pick up your instruments signal, and there they go. [MUSIC] They're back in. [MUSIC] Back to all Mozart now. [MUSIC] There's that downward motion. [MUSIC] Tremolo. [MUSIC] Going the other way. [MUSIC] And a little toss off as a closing theme. [MUSIC] The hint of the first theme. [MUSIC] All in dark D minor. [MUSIC] Well I hope you'll share with me my beliefs that this is an extraordinary movement, and how different from the ethos or the feeling of a Baroque concerto of the sort that we experienced with Bach and Vivaldi. Baroque concertos usually just have one mood for a movement. Mozart is full of many different moods. And that helps make these classical movements very exciting, very dramatic. And with its D minor sound, it's almost demonic. You can watch the rest of this by going to YouTube. But before we do so, let's review our Mozart concerto by revisiting these particular points. Kochel number, well we talked about that before, almost ad nauseum here. A catalog of Mozart's works. Solo concerto, obviously we've moved away here in the classical period from the predominant tradition of concerto grosso to the solo concerto. The most commonly experienced solo concerto is the piano concerto. We get our word piano, of course, from the term pianoforte around 1770, particularly with Mozart, the pianoforte began to replace the harpsichord and eventually the second half of that term pianoforte was dropped leaving us with the expression piano. We talked about the double exposition form, it's something particular to concerto. We can also call this concerto form but there are two expositions here. One for the orchestra and then one for the soloist accompanied by the orchestra. And finally the idea of the cadenza, which is simply a fast, flashy passage toward the end of the movement that gives the soloist, whether him or her, the opportunity to showcase his or her technical virtuosity.
