Output details

Interpreting articulation marks in Mozart’s Viennese Harmoniemusik

The essay, which began life as an invited paper delivered at the 2008 annual International Aufführungspraxis Conference in Michaelstein, Germany, challenges the widely held and largely uncontested assumption made by Mozart scholars and performers that the composer’s markings of articulation (and more broadly of performance nuance and dynamics) were conceived without reference to the idiomatic qualities of the instrumental groupings for which they were written. Mozart’s Viennese Harmoniemusik is used as the test case for this study. Close textual examination of Mozart’s autographs and fragments of these works (in London, Washington, Berlin, Vienna), has revealed a wealth of information concerning Mozart’s assiduous, ab initio notation of articulation markings. The composer’s revisions and re-scorings also attest to the particularity of his instructions, as they apply to different instrumental media. The findings have the utmost import for the performance of this repertory of wind music, and for the performance practices of classical music more generally, opening up the possibility for more detailed analytical investigations into the meanings of Mozart’s articulatory practice.