Mozart's Music of Friends : Social Interplay in the Chamber Works

In 1829 Goethe famously described the string quartet as 'a conversation among four intelligent people'. Inspired by this metaphor, Edward Klorman's study draws on a wide variety of documentary and iconographic sources to explore Mozart's chamber works as 'the music of friends'. Illuminating the meanings and historical foundations of comparisons between chamber music and social interplay, Klorman infuses the analysis of sonata form and phrase rhythm with a performer's sensibility. He develops a new analytical method called multiple agency that interprets the various players within an ensemble as participants in stylized social intercourse - characters capable of surprising, seducing, outwitting, and even deceiving one another musically. This book is accompanied by online resources that include original recordings performed by the author and other musicians, as well as video analyses that invite the reader to experience the interplay in time, as if from within the ensemble. -- page 4 of cover Title page 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Epigraph 7 Table of Contents 8 List of figures 9 List of music examples 11 Foreword • Patrick McCreless 15 Preface 22 Acknowledgments 28 About the web resources 31 Part I: Historical perspectives 34 1 The music of friends 36 2


Chamber music and the metaphor of conversation 53 3 Private, public, and playing in the present tense 106 Part II: Analytical perspectives 142 4


Analyzing from within the music: toward a theory of multiple agency 144 5 Multiple agency and sonata form 189 6 Multiple agency and meter 231 7


An afternoon at skittles: analysis of the “Kegelstatt” trio, K. 498 300 Epilogue 322 Bibliography 331 Index 351