1999 MSA Study Session Guest Column: Robert L. Marshall The annual meeting of the Mozart Reminiscences de Don Juan Music and Art as a piano major and chose Society of America will once again take and other Mozartiana the hom as my obligatory second instru­ place at the fall American Musicological ment. I soon arranged to take private hom Society meeting, this year in Kansas In Nannerl Mozart's memoirs one of the lessons with a young man named Gunther City. The Program Committee now anecdotes about her brother's early Schuller, who played first hom at the solicits proposals for presentations at the activities as a composer involves his Metropolitan Opera. I was serious enough study session, which will follow the brief relationship to the hom. She writes: "In to want to get my own instrument-rather business meeting. We welcome abstracts London, where our father lay dangerously than have to cope with the battered dealing with any aspect of Mozart's life ill, we were forbidden to touch a piano. government-issue items put at my disposal and work, or with a later-eighteenth­ And so, in order to occupy himself, Mozart by the City of New York-and agreed to century context that can illuminate that composed his first symphony for all the purchase a hom from my teacher. I took work. Presenters need not be members instruments of the orchestra, but especially possession of the instrument on an evening of the Society. for trumpets and kettledrums .... While he in the spring of 1954, backstage at the Met A leading aim of our Society is to composed and I copied, he said to me: just before a performance of Don Giovanni. promote scholarly exchange and 'remind me to give the hom something As I was about to leave, Schuller remarked: discussion among its members, many of worthwhile to do.' " The reference to "Would you like to see some of the opera? whom are not yet familiar with one Leopold's illness in London reveals that If you do, and if you keep your head down, another's work. As a way of addressing the work in question was composed during I'll sneak you into the pit; you can sit this goal, we plan in the 1999 session to the four-week period beginning 8 July behind me in the trombone section. The reduce the number of formal papers in 1764. Whether the remark refers to K. 16, trombones don't show up until the second order to make time for more, and more Mozart's first known symphony (in E-flat), act." Needless to say, I took him up on the informal, discussions about topics of is, however, not clear, as the E-flat offer. interest to our members. From the symphony has no trumpets or drums in its It was, of course, a thrilling moment for abstracts submitted we will select one present form. But the work does have a this fifteen-year old. I'm afraid, though, for formal presentation, partly on the good hom part, especially in the Andante. that I didn't pay very close attention to the basis of its potential to stimulate I've always been fond of this anecdote performance. (In fact, I don't recall any of discussion. In addition we will print and because it reveals Mozart's early enthusi­ the performers. A bit of research indicates distribute all submitted abstracts, asm for the hom and reminds me that one that the conductor was probably Max dependent on the permission of the of my earliest encounters with the music of Rudolf, with George London playing the authors. The study session itself will Mozart involved the hom. The first LP I Don.) In any event, I could see little of the break into two parts, the first for ever bought-in October of 1952 (I stage from my position in the pit and was presentation and extended discussion of remember precisely the month and year more keen to watch the conductor and the presented paper, and the second for because I made the purchase with money I follow the hom part. I remember that individual discussions between authors received that same month for my bar Schuller pointed out to me that the of distributed abstracts and others mitzvah)-was of the Mozart Hom conductor was giving two different beats, interested in their work. Please send Concertos nos. 2 and 4, K. 417 and 495, one with each hand, during the ballroom your one-page abstracts, either by played by Dennis Brain. This was a reissue scene. electronic mail to [email protected], of recordings made in the 1940s and pre­ My own modest career as an instru­ or by regular mail to Jane R. Stevens, dated the best-seller by Dennis Brain of all mentalist reached its apex in the summer 3084 Cranbrook Ct., La Jolla, CA four concertos with Herbert von Karajan of 1958 when, during my second (and last) 92037; deadline 10 June 1999. and the Philharmonia Orchestra. season in the semi-professional New One year later, in the fall of 1953, I Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra, I was enrolled in New York's High School of continued on page 2 -1- Guest Column never had the courage to put it into final form and try to publish it. (Indeed, this is continued from page 1 Newsletter of the the first time I have ever mentioned it in the hom soloist in K. 447 on opening night. public in any forum at all.) At all events, I Mozart Society of America Later that same season I appeared as piano believe it remains one of the great chal­ soloist in the A-major Concerto K. 488. lenges for Mozart analysis, as well as for Volume III, Number 1 27 January 1999 Those auspicious appearances more than music analysis and criticism generally, to forty years ago marked the high point and, account adequately for the compelling The Newsletter is published twice yearly effectively, the conclusion of my public unity that informs the major works of (in January and August) by the Mozart career as a performer. By then I was an Mozart's, which-in marked contrast to the Society of America. The Editor welcomes undergraduate at Columbia, and my musical compositions of Haydn and Beethoven, submission of brief articles, news items, and interests had begun to tum decidedly with their famous economy of thematic reviews. The deadline for submissions is toward the academic. material-display an equally famous (and 15 November for the January issue and During the 1950s William J. Mitchell for the seekers of unity, often baffling) 15 June for the August issue. directed the theory and analysis program at profusion of thematic ideas. Columbia and, like my comrades, I was To demonstrate that Mozart, on at least Editor inducted into the mysteries of Schenkerian one occasion, created a clearly audible, Edmund Goehring thought-more precisely, owing to unifying thematic connection between Program of Liberal Studies Mitchell's more flexible take on the matter, separate movements of a multi-movement University of Notre Dame into what may be described as Schenker work, let me tum once again to the hom Notre Dame, IN 46556 with a human face. At the same time, concertos, specifically, to K. 447. Not E-mail: [email protected] through extracurricular explorations of my enough, perhaps, has been made of the fact Fax: (219) 631-4268 own, I had become infatuated with the that the main theme of the slow movement, theories of the thematic process pro­ the Romance, appears, slightly disguised but pounded by Rudolph Reti-an enthusiasm of unmistakably, as an episode in the conclud­ Board of Directors mine that amused my instructors in ing rondo (cf. mm. 97-101). This surely Mozart Society of America analysis: Mitchell and the newly hired should be recognized as one of the earliest Isabelle Emerson, President theorist/composer Peter Westergaard. examples of deliberate thematic transforma­ Jane Stevens, Vice-President I once tried, in an analysis seminar, to tion in the instrumental repertoire. win Westergaard over to Reti by presenting As a graduate student at Princeton in Daniel Leeson, Treasurer a thematic analysis of the "Prague" Sym­ the early '60s I had little to do with Mozart, Thomas Bauman phony in which I argued that the most other than acquainting myself with the Edmund Goehring important thematic material in the sym­ literature in preparing for the general exam. Gordana Lazarevich phony, especially in the first movement, In my doctoral dissertation, however, on Jane Perry-Camp could be derived from an underlying The Compositional Process of]. S. Bach, my Elaine Sis man contour consisting of a rising (or falling) decision to represent the layers of correc­ Neal Zaslaw leap (usually a fourth) followed by a tions in the autograph scores with different returning second. To this day I remain colors was inspired by the approach adopted Honorary Directors enamored of the insight, although I have by the editors of the Attwood Studies in the continued on page 4 Alessandra Comini Daniel Heartz Mozart Society of America: "Mozart and Eighteenth.. Century Jan LaRue Musical Dialect" Christoph Wolff Isabelle Emerson and Edmund Jessica Waldoff: "La finta giardiniera, Goehring, co-chairs Mozart, and the Sentimental Business Office Session at American Society for Heroine" Eighteenth-Century Studies Laurel Zeiss: "The Noble, the Senti­ Department of Music Annual Meeting, 24-28 March 1999, mental, and the Supernatural: Uses University of Nevada, Las Vegas Milwaukee of Accompagnato in Mozart's Las Vegas, NV 89154-5025 As an affiliate of the American Society Operas" E-mail: [email protected] for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the The next annual meeting of ASECS Fax: (702) 895-4239 Mozart Society is entitled to hold one will take place 12-16 April 2000 in Isabelle Emerson ninety-minute session during the Philadelphia.