{"id":3724,"date":"2014-03-17T07:22:26","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T11:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/?p=3724"},"modified":"2017-11-19T22:04:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T03:04:53","slug":"4-trombones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2014\/03\/4-trombones.html","title":{"rendered":"4 Trombones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paris, 2014<\/p>\n

Arnold Schoenberg gave Rudolf Serkin<\/a> an assignment. (This story is hearsay<\/a>; worthy of attention, in my opinion.) Consider the opening of Mozart’s A-Minor piano sonata, Schoenberg asked Serkin. What is the right instrumentation for this music, if it were to be scored for orchestral instruments?
\n\"MKV310\"<\/a>
\nMozart: Sonata in A Minor, KV 310 (300d)<\/p>\n

Serkin’s answer included an oboe playing the upper melody line, and strings taking the repeated chords below. Reportedly,\u00a0Schoenberg became irritated. “It’s four trombones!” he shouted.<\/p>\n

It might seem an extreme solution. Schoenberg must have viewed this music as extreme… Was he aware of the genre of Viennese piece that’s always played by four trombones, the eguale<\/a>? An eguale is funeral music. (And we’ll need 5 trombones for measure 2.) \u00a0Did Schoenberg know that Mozart’s sonata was written just following the death of Mozart’s mother<\/a>? Does the music itself reveal such vociferousness?<\/p>\n

The finding of simple causalities — apparent this-led-to-that correspondences in an artist’s life and work — is a too-common practice in classical music. “Brahms had a nice summer vacation, then he wrote a happy cello sonata…”<\/p>\n

It is true that in 1777 and 1778, Mozart made a long trip with his mother. In Paris, she died.\u00a0In his letters written to his family back home, he stage-managed the details, at one point writing that she was very ill when she was already dead. Soon, he did compose the A-Minor piano sonata.<\/p>\n

The sonata’s repeated block-chords remind some of piano music by Johann Schobert<\/a>:
\n\"Schobert\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Schobert: Sonata in D Major, opus 3, number 1<\/p>\n

Mozart encountered this music certainly. Schobert became Parisian; Mozart’s text associates these sounds with Paris. On the first page of Mozart’s manuscript of the A-Minor Sonata, under his name, we read “Paris 1778.”<\/p>\n

The A-Minor Sonata’s first movement is not entirely earnest. Not to be overlooked are the spun-out soprano meanderings of the C-Major second-theme group:
\n\"MKV310b2\"<\/a>Mozart: Sonata in A Minor, KV 310 (300d)<\/p>\n

She won’t let a word in! This is a run-on parody of the melody line of an elaborately chattering soprano in Italian comic opera. (The repeated left-hand chords are transformed, but still present.) This prattle is a balance to the seriousness of the beginning? Another way of remembering\/portraying mother?<\/p>\n

Mozart’s music consistently attracts and amazes with fluidity of access to, and rapid transition between many and various states of human feeling and experience. Never more than here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arnold Schoenberg gave Rudolf Serkin an assignment. Consider the opening of Mozart’s A-Minor piano sonata, Schoenberg asked Serkin. What is the right instrumentation for this music, if it were to be scored for orchestral instruments?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1246,652,47,171,1248,1250,685,1245,1252,1251,1244,39,1247,1253,422,112,377,111,1249,129,378,299],"class_list":{"0":"post-3724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-a-minor","9":"tag-arnold","10":"tag-beethoven","11":"tag-death","12":"tag-eguale","13":"tag-equale","14":"tag-italian-opera","15":"tag-k-310","16":"tag-k-300d","17":"tag-kv-300d","18":"tag-kv-310","19":"tag-mozart","20":"tag-mozarts-mother","21":"tag-opera-buffa","22":"tag-paris","23":"tag-richard-goode","24":"tag-rudolf","25":"tag-rudolf-serkin","26":"tag-schobert","27":"tag-schoenberg","28":"tag-serkin","29":"tag-sonata","30":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3724"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4578,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724\/revisions\/4578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}