6/2 – AMADEUS: W.A. Mozart Serenade No. 10 in B-Flat Major, “Gran Partita”

What better way to open the celebratory 10th season of Rush Hour concerts than with this lyrical, spirited Mozart masterpiece, played by some of Chicago‘s finest musicians?

Mozart wrote thirteen serenades for various groups of instruments, of which this – the 10th – is the most extensive, and – very possibly – the best. Written in the period 1781-4, it calls for pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns, and bassoons, with four horns, and with string bass as part of its anchor scoring. Because it is the most extensive of all the serenades, it has earned the nickname of Gran Partita. (The term partita is really another word for suite – that is, basically a composition of movements of various tempos and moods.)

Philip Huscher, program annotator for the Chicago Symphony, has rightly noted: “In the 18th Century, serenades were background music, scarcely more important than today’s elevator music, so it is hard to know what Mozart had in mind when he supplied this extraordinary score for an evening’s social gathering, accompanied by clinking china and indiscreet conversation. But Peter Schaffer was surely right, in Amadeus, to pick the great, heart-stopping Adagio as the music that would pierce Salieri forever.”

The full work is in seven movements, but the time restrictions of Rush Hour will allow us to hear less than the full work.

It is the second of the four movements we do hear which caused Amadeus’s Salieri to declare: “On the page it looked ——- nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic: just a pulse – bassoon, basset horn, like a rusty squeezebox. And then – suddenly – high above it, an oboe; a single note hanging there, unwavering, until a clarinet took it over, sweetened it into a phrase of such delight. This was a music I’d never heard, filled with longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me I was hearing the voice of God.”

Here are some comments from Mozart himself about music and its effects…

“If only the whole world could feel the power of Harmony.”

“I should say that in an opera the poetry must be the obedient daughter of music…All the more will an opera succeed when the plot is well worked out, the words expressly written for the music and not twisted around for some miserable rhyme…Verse is no doubt indispensable to music, but rhyme, for the sake of rhyme – is a curse.”

“Music must never offend the ear; it must please the hearer, in other words, it must never cease to be music.”

Much, nowadays, is made of what has been called “The Mozart Effect,” and here are some interesting words from interesting people who seem to have pondered it…

“Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure; I am sure however, that en famille they play Mozart.” (Karl Barth, 1886-1968)

“From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.”
(George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950)

“I am in love with Mozart like a young girl. Immortal Mozart! I owe you everything; it is thanks to you that I lost my reason, that my soul was awestruck in the very depths of my being…I have you to thank that I did not die without having lived.” (Sören Kierkegaard, 1813-1855)

“There is no feeling – human or cosmic – no depth, no height the human spirit can reach that is not contained in Mozart’s music.” (Lili Kraus, 1908-1986)

“The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.” (Artur Schnabel, 1882-1951)

“O Mozart, immortal Mozart, what countless images of a brighter and better world thou hast stamped upon our souls!” (Franz Schubert, 1797-1828)

“Play Mozart in memory of me.”
(said to have been the last words of Frédéric Chopin, 1810-1849)

“Bach…Handel…Gluck…Haydn…These four great masters have been surpassed by Mozart. They are rays which are extinguished by Mozart’s sun.”
(Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1840-1893)