(8/26/10)

"IL CHITARRINO LE SUONERÒ": COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE IN MOZART'S PIANO SONATA K. 332*

Alexander Silbiger - Duke University

[Please refer to the score on your handout] Two passages in the first movement of

Mozart's delightful piano sonata K 332 always used to puzzle me. <1> At the beginning

of what most of us would call the second theme,<A> Mozart notates an arpeggiation as a

series of grace notes, rather than, more economically, as a chord preceded by an arpeggio

sign. The second curious passage follows shortly, immediately after the conclusion of

the second theme:<C> the prevailing swift and graceful melodic texture abruptly stalls

on a G, which is reiterated in a syncopated rhythmic pattern.

I shall propose that these passages represent imitations of guitar playing, a notion that, I

hope, you will not find controversial or implausible, perhaps even obvious. I would like

to address two unrelated issues regarding the reading of these passages as guitar

imitations: firstly, how does such a reading fit with what happens in the rest of the

sonata, and secondly, if it is obvious, why is it--at least as far as I know--never suggested

in the literature on this sonata?

I was led to my interpretation by a reading of Wye Allanbrook's classic monograph

Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, in which she uses this movement to illustrate the topical

1* This paper was originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mozart Society of America, Kansas City, November 5, 1999, and in a slightly revised version at the Southeast Chapter Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Greensboro, NC, March 2000. The numbers and capital letters between < >, not voiced in the presentation, refer to transparencies shown by overhead projector.

2

construction of Mozart's music. (Allanbrook 1983: 6-8) She notes that the entire

movement is marked by a rapid succession of brief, sharply contrasting segments, and

that the styles of these segments represent common topoi or topics of the period

associated with specific gestures. In a sense, my entire paper is little more than a

footnote to her analysis and to its further refinement in an article in the Ratner Festschrift,

"Two Threads through the Labyrinth." (Allanbrook 1992: 125-71) In the latter article she

shows that the radical discontinuities are always bridged by shared elements which

provide a rational transition, and which contribute to the thread that holds the movement

together.

In the earlier of Allanbrook's two discussions, the physicality and theatricality of the

rapidly shifting topics led her to describe the movement as "a miniature theater of human

gestures and actions"; in her subsequent analysis she refers to its beginning as "a

harlequinade--a miniature theater of gestures and styles," and also calls it "street theater"

and a "commedia dell'arte parade," thus introducing some more specific, "carnivalesque"

associations. These observations stimulated the theater of my imagination, and I want to

share with you what I saw there. In the following I shall note Allanbrook's topical

identifications along with my further, carnivalesque embroideries.

<2> The first few measures Allanbrook describes as "in simple style--a 'soprano'

accompanied by an Alberti bass." You will note that the beginning of the

accompaniment has the same notes as the beginning of the song. Such clever motivic

connections are plentiful in this sonata--as they are in most of the musical classics--but I

3

shall not be concerned with them here (as you may be relieved, or perhaps disappointed,

to hear). The identification of the persona presenting the tune as a soprano, and thus,

presumably, female, seems quite natural at this point, although perhaps not necessary; I

shall return to the gender question when I get to the second theme. Similarly, one would

probably hear the accompaniment as played on a piano, although, anticipating my topical

analysis of the second theme, I propose we hear it played on a guitar; our imagination

might find this even easier to accept if the sonata were performed on a fortepiano or

harpsichord.

Everything is going fine until the end of the third measure, where our soprano, instead of,

say, proceeding smoothly down a third to G in a sequential movement, unexpectedly

makes an extravagant gesture to a G an octave higher. At the top of her range, she almost

chokes, and is forced to quit, "stranded," in the words of Allanbrook, "on an expressive

precipice," that is, an unresolved leading tone stridently dissonant with the drone bass.

What comes next is one of those startling Mozartian inventions that continues to surprise,

no matter how often it is heard.<A> Our singer is brought down to earth by, again,

according to Allanbrook's narrative, " a robust and authoritarian gesture--a four-measure

parody of learned counterpoint." Indeed, one can well imagine this put-down sung by a

self-righteous oratorio choir,<play Alleluia>2 which, however suddenly shape-shifts

into a courtly minuet.<B> Its polite conclusion gives us a quick breather before the next

event in this chain of surprises impinges on our ear.

2 Play attached example "Alleluia"

4

Two horns call to the hunt (quote Allanbrook: "the out-of doors answers the salon"),<C>

but a high-pitched fife mocks this noble gesture:<D> our Arlecchino caricatures noble

manners and then segues into a little bowing, "after you!," "no, after you!" act. The horn

calls bring to mind those in the accompaniment of Figaro's aria "Se vuol balare, signor

Contino" from Le nozze di Figaro, which elsewhere Allanbrook has read as "a musical

and verbal pun…a leer at the hopeful cuckolder," Count Almaviva.

With some thunder claps the high-jinks mood changes <E> as an ominous character

with a big stick rushes on stage, starts chasing Arlecchino and begins to beat him up.

Who is it? A jealous husband or rival? Columbina's father or guardian?3 Allanbrook

refers to the passage as "Sturm und Drang music…imitating the self-conscious dramatic

style"; indeed, Mozart seems to be poking fun at much dramatic music still to be

written…like <F> the last movement of the Moonlight, and, of course, the ill-fated

skirmish in Don Giovanni. There is much madly rushing about, <back to 1> ending

with several more blows (m. 37), the last of which leaves our hero on the floor, no longer

able to pick himself up.

Whatever the outcome, the scene once again shifts abruptly as we hear Arlecchino

serenading his beloved with a little minuet, while strumming an occasional chord on his

little guitar. The notation, with the arpeggiation written out as grace-notes and the

3 I could make a reference here to Pantalone or other comedia character, but some in the audience may not respond to their names.

5

staccatos of the repeated notes reinforced by intervening rests, seems unusually fussy.

<4>Ordinarily Mozart notates an arpeggiation as grace notes when it introduces a

sustained pitch, often a high pitch arriving unexpectedly--a kind of sforzando effect, see

Exs. [4] B and F. When the highest note is not sustained, he generally employs the

simpler conventional arpeggio sign, Exs. A, C, D, and E. The "Alla Turca," Ex. H,

provides one exception, with grace-note arpeggiations that are not sustained: clearly a

special effect imitating drum rolls. <5>I suggest another kind of special effect in our

serenade,<A> in which the top note is to be played both short and soft: the simulation of

a light strumming guitar accompaniment. This takes us back to "Se vuol balare, signor

Contino," the next line of which is "il chitarino le suonerò,"--if you want to dance, my

dear Count, I'll play for you on my little guitar. The resemblances between the opening

phrases <A and B> are suggestive.

(As long as I am pointing to what one might call preminiscences, I cannot resist alluding

to the one that struck me the very first time I heard this sonata, as it might have some

among you: the scandalous "La donna è mobile" from the Third Act of Rigoletto. There

the minuet has been transformed to a waltz, but the simulated guitar accompaniment and

tone of irony remain.)

<back to 1> Returning to K 332, which character is singing the second theme? Unlike

the singer of the opening theme, this one at first seems to have no problem negotiating

the high G, and thus it is tempting to attribute it to a female counterpart of Arlecchino,

say, Columbina. On the other hand, to turn the two themes, over 30 measures apart, into

6

a kind of dialogue between two personae of opposite gender on the basis of contrasting

tessitura--not to mention, of an anachronistic, gendered first/second theme opposition--

may read more continuity of narrative into the movement than we ought to be looking

for. (This is not to deny other kinds of possible relationships between the two themes,

including a kind of upside-down one: in character the first theme would form a perfect

trio to the minuet of the second theme, not unlike the trio to the Minuet in the E-flat

Symphony K. 549.)

Whoever is singing this time is able to complete the entire, classically structured minuet-

aria, although, the second time around <B> our singer does seem to have trouble hitting

the repeated notes on pitch, or perhaps is pretending to have trouble. Nevertheless, the

minuet is bought to a satisfying close, and is followed by some vamping on the guitar.

<C> But, rather than leading to a second strophe, the vamp almost immediately turns to

the minor and drops down an octave: as if a mask is removed, perhaps even revealing a

gender switch.<D> The vamping becomes increasingly wild and rambunctious,<6>

eventually melting into yet another sweet minuet.<A> This one is rather pious

sounding; perhaps the pedantic dottore, who earlier tried to put our hero in his place with

learned counterpoint, now returns with this little hymn, to which, needless to say,

Arlecchino responds immediately with a mocking parody.<B> Some further vamping

<C> leads to a conclusion with high jumps, summersaults, and more exaggerated

bowing gestures.<D>

7

The second part of the sonata--development hardly seems the appropriate term--brings a

calmer pastoral interlude: Arlecchino and Columbina visit the country?<E> The

immediate response at a lower register <F> does make a interpretation as dialogue seem

justified. <7>The vamping resumes,<A> followed by a bit more banter between the

two<B>--perhaps not without sexual innuendo--and Arlecchino introduces the recap.

<C>At this point we run into what, I'm told, became the classic dilemma for later

Romantic composers: the symmetries of traditional sonata form are not compatible with

progressive narrative. Thus I must cease my tale, at least as far as the first movement is

concerned.

What about the other two movements? <8>By itself, the lovely second movement seems

conventional enough; to start a slow movement with a melody accompanied by an Alberti

bass is hardly noteworthy, except perhaps that this melody, after beginning with an ascent

full of lyrical promise, gets stuck on a sour dissonance.<A> This process, is repeated

again and again, <9>eventually in a particularly dramatic manner, when the dissonance

becomes the end goal of a one-and-a-half octave chromatic glissando.<A> Is this

recurring dissonant appoggiatura a comic effect? I certainly had never thought of it that

way, but in the context of what happened in the first movement I now might be inclined

to play those notes with a special emphasis.

<10>The breath-taking last movement does seem to be full of the festive flurry and

excitement of carnival time, although here my ears may be have been influenced by

8

nineteenth-century depictions such as Berlioz's and Schumann's evocations of carnivals

in Rome and Vienna respectively (with Schumann I'm thinking of the last movement of

his Faschingsschwank aus Wien). Mozart's unusual beginning sounds like it should be

the Eingang to some exuberant rondo theme, but instead it fizzles out.<A> After a

second try it give way to a rather curious melody starting with a minor seventh.<B>

Soon this melody, like the repeat of the second theme in the first movement and the

opening theme of the second movement, lands on a dissonant appoggiatura<C>,

followed shortly by rude cross accents.<D> <11> Other topics pass by rapidly,

including a fleeting pastoral scene <A> and another violent Sturm und Drang

episode,<B> and a mock-melancholic serenade with yet another dissonant

appoggiatura,<C> carrying memories of themes from earlier movements.<12> [aside: I

apologize for breaking my promise and drawing attention to further motivic connections,

but these are irresistibly interesting, with the chromatic appoggiatura turning to a mode

switch.] But these darker moments are soon left behind and we are swept up once more

into the festive carnival mood.<back to 11.D>

* * *

Is there justification for associating this sonata with such commedia dell'arte and carnival

scenarios? Allanbrook appears to have taken her cues from what she heard in the music

itself, but her interpretation may not have been all that far-fetched. As pointed out by

Maynard Solomon, and more recently by David Schroeder, Mozart had a long-standing

fascination with carnival and masquerading, dating back at least to his days in Italy.

(Solomon 1995; Schroeder 1999) Both Solomon and Schroeder see his enthusiastic

9

participation as a socially acceptable means of channeling his rebellious impulses against

both his father and repressive society in general. Solomon's analysis of what he calls

Mozart's "carnivalesque dimension" draws upon Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His

World, which presents a utopian vision of carnival as giving birth to a new world by

embracing death and the grotesque bodily functions and turning the social hierarchy on

its head. Schroeder stresses Mozart's identification with Harlequin, underneath whose

playful and mischievous foolery hid a complex character full of contradictions.

Mozart is believed to have written K. 332 in 1783, either between July and October

during his visit to Salzburg or perhaps somewhat earlier. (Tyson 1987) Thus it might be

worth taking note here of Mozart's active participation in the 1783 Viennese carnival

festivities. In January he wrote his father asking to borrow his Harlequin costume so he

could wear it at the balls. Subsequently he put together a little pantomime in the

commedia dell'arte vein, performed on "Carnival Monday," March 3rd. For himself he

chose the role of Arlecchino, assigning his sister-in-law, Aloysia, to Columbina, and his

brother-in-law, Josef Lange to Pierrot. A fragment of this Faschingspantomime survives

in the form of a first violin part accompanied by brief annotations on the characters and

their actions [K. 446]; the music does not resemble K. 332 in any literal sense, but does

consist of a succession of short sections with diverse gestures and moods, often flowing

into each other without a break. According to another letter to his father, Mozart during

this time was planning to write an opera on a German translation of Goldoni's Il servitore

di due padroni, a play with a typical commedia dell'arte scenario; this project was never

realized.

10

Thus Mozart seems to have been drawn to carnival antics during this period as much as

during any period of his life, a passion which, some of you may recall, was spectacularly

recreated in a scene in the movie Amadeus. Although I certainly would not want to

propose that any of the of the specific scenes I painted for you earlier were in Mozart's

mind, I am suggesting that he let the carnival spirit suffuse this sonata in a way that was

not the case, say, in the companion sonatas K. 329 or 330, or in K. 333 written later in the

year. However, you are very welcome to prefer the recently published interpretation by

Robert Gutman quoted in the handout, with its more ominous sexual subtext. (Gutman

1999)

Before closing I must fulfill my promise to return to the question of why the guitar

allusions don't appear to have been recognized in earlier discussions of the sonata. The

difference between guitar plucking and strumming and commonly accepted topics in

classical repertory such as horn calls or trumpet fanfares and drum rolls no doubt has

much to do with classism. The guitar was a street instrument played by common folk,

especially common folk in remote countries, and, despite its wide popularity it remained

nearly invisible to the literate music culture except perhaps in romantic pastoral tales.

That situation persisted well into the twentieth century, until electronic amplification

propelled it to center stage. It is acceptable to hear imitations of guitar playing in vocal

and dramatic music, which tends to deal with the vulgar particular, especially when that

particular involves exotic settings. Allanbrook, in her book on rhythmic gesture, points

to several other guitar references in orchestral aria accompaniments in Figaro and in Don

11

Giovanni—the latter of course also contains a serenade with a real live mandolin--but

both operas are set in Seville. Even in some instrumental music, say, Scarlatti's keyboard

sonatas, it is OK to recognize guitar allusions, but in the noble instrumental works of a

Bach, a Mozart, or a Beethoven, it is almost blasphemous. It was not without hesitation

that in a recent paper I proposed a few guitar allusions in Bach's chaconne for

unaccompanied violin.4 But all this belongs to the larger, and largely unstudied, social

history of the guitar in Western culture, to which the long ignored guitar topics in

Mozart's K. 332 form but a small footnote.

I would like to end with a free paraphrase of Domenico Scarlatti's preface to his

Essercizi:

Do not look, dear music-lover or professor, whichever you may be, for profound

scholarship in this paper of mine, but rather for a clever fooling with our art.5

4 "Bach and the Chaconne", Journal of Musicology 17 (1999): 358-85. As to Beethoven, there is the blue-grass stuff in the development of the alla tedesca, Op. 79, not to mention the Moonlight serenade in Op. 21. 5 Lettore

Non aspetti, o Dilettante o Professor che tu sia, in questi Componimenti il profondo Intendimento, ma bensì lo Scherzo ingegnoso dell' Arte…

12

BIBLIOGRAPHY Wye J. Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 6-8 Wye J. Allanbrook, "Two Threads through the Labyrinth: Topic and Process in the First Movements of K. 332 and K. 333," Convention in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Allanbrook et al. (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992), 125-71 Wye J. Allanbrook, “Theorizing the Comic Surfaces,” Music in the Mirror: Reflections on the History Of Music Theory and Literature for the 21st Century, ed. Andreas Giger and Thomas J. Mathiesen (Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press, 2002); see p. 196, n. 2 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, transl. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), especially pp. 30-36 and 217-57 Robert W. Gutman, Mozart: A Cultural Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), p. 603 Lynne Lawner, Harlequin on the Moon: Commedia and the Visual Arts (New York: Harry N. Abrahams, 1998) David Schroeder, Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief and Deception (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), especially Ch. 8, "Mozart as Harlequin." Alexander Silbiger, "Bach and the Chaconne," Journal of Musicology 17 (1999): 358-85 Maynard Solomon, Mozart: a Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), especially Chapter 22, "The Zoroastran Riddles," pp. 337-52, and Chapter 23, "The Carnivalesque Dimension, pp. 353-61. Alan Tyson, Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 29-31 and 231-32

ANOTHER VIEW OF K. 332

"With its opening Allegro's spacious lyricism broken by explosive turbulence and modulation of

threatening power, its Adagio's grave and expressive detail, and its closing Allegro Assai's impetuous drive,

this hypnotic work of mysterious tensions rejoined the aesthetic mainstream flowing toward the late

masterpieces."

Robert W. Gutman, Mozart: A Cultural Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), p. 603

Domenico Scarlatti, Essercizi per gravicembali (London?, 1738/39?)