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The Secret Life of Musical Notation: Defying Interpretive Traditions
- Amadeus Press

From Chapter Three - "...of Rinforzandi" (p. 115)

[...]

Mozart did introduce rallentando, and the earliest traceable examples emerge in 1785 in pieces such as the Fantasie in c minor, K. 475 and in the String Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 428, at the onset of the composer’s experimental phase with new notational symbols. Before that time, Mozart had trusted that a performer would have presumed from the context whether a decrease in speed was appropriate, but eventually he became more specific in instances in which his intentions might have been unlikely to be deduced. For example, in the Rondo from the String Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 428 the rallentando that is indicated before the last return of the main theme would probably not be instinctively executed as such. Or in the Fantasie in c minor, K. 475, the transitional material that bridges the Più Allegro and the recapitulation – the Adagio – may not support a reduction in speed without the rallentando that specifies it as an interpretive element.

Occasionally, Mozart wrote a sequence of progressively larger rhythmic values in the context of a patterned melodic figuration – a particular notation that may suggest a rallentando. The end of the cadenza from the Fantasie in d minor, K. 397 is an occurrence familiar to many:



Example 3.7 - W. A. Mozart: Fantasie in d minor, K. 397 - mm. 86-89

All the interpretations that I have heard, from the earliest recordings of the piece to renditions by some of the great pianists of our time, feature a rather strict adherence to the rhythmic groups of thirty-second-, sixteenth- and eighth-notes, with a decrease in speed superimposed on this careful subdivision by the rallentando. Mozart may have desired a literal reading of values, I thought at first, because the rallentando already expresses an agogic coordinate. But similar rhythmic progressions occur, for example, in the cadenza of the Rondo from the Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 333 and in the cadenzas or cadenza-like passages from some of the Concerti for piano and orchestra in which the marking rallentando is not included. This led me to an idea that I can only infer: It is generally believed that the Fantasie in d minor was written in about 1782; we have seen that the first instances of rallentando in Mozart’s hand can be traced to 1785; a cursory view of Mozart’s works showed that a written-out rallentando in which the rhythmic values become progressively larger disappeared as a practice after 1784-1785; the original manuscript of the Fantasie has not been located, and its earliest source available is the first edition of 1804, completed by August Eberhard Müller (1767-1817). Is it possible that the rallentando near the end of measure 86 of the Fantasie is not Mozart’s, but was added posthumously by the well-intentioned Müller, and that the passage’s progressive rhythmic diminution served the purpose of a rallentando before the marking came into use?

 

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