Expert: Marbeth - 9/28/2006

Question
I have been wondering recently if people who attended concerts in Mozart's time had the chance to hear performances of music by composers of an earlier age such as Vivaldi and Bach, and also whether there was a less sophisticated form of music which might appeal to the "peasants" of those days. Do you know of anything I could read on this particular subject, in books or better still on the web.

Answer
Yes, they would have been able to hear composers of eras previous.  It would have been all around them.  In church.  In town band music on the square.  In household music. (Making music at home was an honored pastime of long-standing, witness medieval troubadours, etc. Later, say in the Baroque, it was "Pick up whatever instrument you can play and let's have a go at this sonata by Pepusch. For petessake, Johann, get that viol in tune, will you?!)

Along the same line, it is my opinion that Mozart was greatly influenced by (especially) Bach.  Bach and musicians like him (the Catholic one inparticular since that is whjat Mozart would have heard in church as a small boy) provided the musical milieu in which Mozart grew up and had his childhood music study.  The compositional techniques of masses (imitative music, for example) and other pieces of church music had to have been known intimately by him.

Remember that "modern" composers were considered a little outre (Beethoven was positively roasted), audiences preferring the familiar music instead of "new-fangled" compositional techniques.  Let's have something based on a decent Lutheran hymn, not based on something some composer dreamed up on his own that we don't know.  Even today that is true.  I have to tell you I'm not real fond of Penderecki and Schoenberg and Weber and Foss (tho he purportedly adores the music of JS Bach), tho I can take Glass in decently-sized doses, and I think Part is marvelous.  One must decide which composers and which modern idioms one finds palatable and/or worth learning about.  I hate it when a concert is scheduled with Mozart on one end, Beethoven on the other, and then, in the middle, is something that I wouldn't choose to hear but stuck in there bcs I am not willing to sacrifice Beethoven to escape the modern piece.  I am sure folks in centuries past felt the same way!

I think that ornamentation in Mozart's music is basically Baroque in nature for this reason.

Trills start on the upper note, even if the printed note before the trilled note is the same pitch as the trill's preparatory note.  In Bach's day, there were two types of turns:  one from below and one from above.  Somewhere along the line, the notation for the turn from below was allied with the performance of the turn from above.  If Mozart wanted a turn from below he notated it.

Ditto with grace notes.  If he wanted a short note, he gave it a specific rhythmic value.  Often at the end of the previous measure, just before the barline.  This is often seen in the piano sonatas.

Well, I digress!

Yes, the secular music of the time always influences the "formal" music.  In the middle ages, for example, music in duple meter (4/4, primarily) was considered profane and never to be used in church music.  Of course, that made it all the more attractive.  Sacred music was properly composed in triple time bcs the circle was "perfect" and the number three denoted the Trinity.

And the interval called a "tritone" (3 half-steps) was also forbidden:  the pope called it "the devil in music" (diabolus in musica).  You guessed it.  Composers flocked to use it.  Even today, when composers want to indicate profane and forbidden situations, they'll use the tritone.  (An example of a tritone is the distance btw C upward to F#.)  In Bernstein's WEST SIDE STORY, you'll find a tritone in the song "Maria."  Maria is the sister of a rival gang leader and thus "forbidden" to Tony.  Bernstein uses a tritone in the opening motive:  "Ma-ri[a]!..."  The interval btw Ma- and -ri is the tritone.)

I digress again!

Peasant songs and dances are commonplace in "classical" [formal] music.  Chopin used peasant dances as structural and rhythmic backbones of some of his piano music (the mazurkas, for example).

In the middle ages, phrases from bawdy songs were used as foundations for masses.  For example, "L'Homme arme" [the armed man] describes a gentleman's "attributes" and was used by Guillaume Dufay, as well as others, in a mass setting.  Altho scholars talk about armament and pacifism (based on a literal translation of the text), it seems to me that a more earthy interpretation is warranted.  Which is why using "L'Homme arme" as the basis of a mass is such a seemingly-disrespectful (yet wink-wink) choice.

Peasant music was folk dance music and secular songs (bawdy or love, primarily--cf Purcell's utterly filthy glees--and, yes, this is where "glee club" comes from - - if only high school chorus teachers knew!).  As noted, elements and tunes  often find their ways into the more formal music of the period.  The minuet, for example, was originally danced, albeit by the court and aristocracy.  The minuet eveutally developed into a piece of concert music.  

The idea of a public concert was little known.  There were salon sessions, in which the hostess presented musicians she knew, regardless of the person's skill or other qualifications (or was delighted to present some visiting luminary).  And there was church music every Sunday, of course.   There were "subscription concerts", too.  This was a "season ticket" kind of arrangement and began to flourish during the Baroque, reaching an apex in the middle and late 1800s.

As for a reference, I think any general music history text will give you all the information you want.  Look particularly at the medieval thru Baroque chapters, as well as the eras of Mozart and Chopin.  Grout's "History of Western Music" is the old standby.  Also, Grove's "Dictionary" is an excellent source, particularly scholarly and with many cross references, as is Baker's "Dictionary" (but smaller entries). Look also at Willi Apel's "Harvard Dictionary" for really quick treatments.  For a good overview, tho, I'd stick with Grout or another college-level music history text.  You should be able to pick one up on eBay or at a used-book site.

Thanks for this question!  Enjoyed a trip "down memory lane."  mb