Jupiter Symphony finale analyzed

[John F]

Richard Atkinson shows, by highlighting in the score, all the dazzling counterpoint that goes on in this music.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTxYykhQZbI

You have to wonder how Mozart could possibly have topped this, if he had lived to compose another symphony. All the more tragic that he didn't.

[maestrob]

Indeed! For all their interesting content, there's nothing in Haydn's output that can match the complexity of Mozart, methinks.

Thanks for finding this.

[John F]

Why make such comparisons? If it comes to that, Haydn wrote many more great symphonies than Mozart.

Actually, it's Michael Haydn who composed a symphony several years before the Jupiter, also in C major, whose finale... Well, listen for yourself. It begins at 14:45.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8zNG6XKw1A

There's actually a brief passage that sounds like a direct steal from the Jupiter - did you catch it? at 16:44 - but while it's extremely likely that Mozart knew Haydn's symphony, which was composed in 1784 and published in Vienna by Artaria in 1785, Haydn couldn't have known Mozart's which was composed in 1788.

[Belle]

This fellow's analyses are very well done and I've seen quite a few of them. He does a great job on Mozart's Symphony No. 41 - one of my favourites (and I'm not such a Mozart fan these days). In fact, I could use a couple of these analyses at some stage in a power point for our music group because it provides a VISUAL learning tool for people who don't read music and an added bonus for those who do. In the case of the "Jupiter", I think you can hear the complexity yourself, where this is not always necessarily obvious in other works.

The internet is a magnificent resource; you just have to make sure those who post have got it right, and that can be the challenge.

On Friday we went to my sister-in-law's concert band, performing in a local church hall. She plays clarinet. It is comprised mainly of retired people, though I did see about 3 or 4 young people too. The band is drawn from many parts of Australia and they've travelled together to Europe, the USA and New Zealand to play in competitions. I wasn't so impressed with the performance because the size of the band (all winds) has grown at the expense of cohesion and musicality. I wondered how he could get a better sound from the orchestra, but I'm sure it couldn't be done without savage cuts to the personnel.

The conductor had made an arrangement of a Beethoven Octet - which I didn't know and hadn't heard before. At the end of the concert my husband's brother rushed over and said, 'well, how did you go with the Beethoven"? I'm ashamed to declare that I winced! They also played the first movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 33. Not very successfully.

But the conductor - a retired music teacher who plays clarinet, saxophone and piano - was superb. Musical to the boot straps, he provided a virtuosic performance on the clarinet of a solo work Bach wrote for flute and which I'd never heard before. And he made intelligent comments about the work and it's 'even note values' throughout. To top that off he had a superb personality, great humour and passion. Apparently he taught at the Sydney Conservatorium before he was shafted by an 'overseas' teacher who had 'better qualifications'.

[John F]

Counterpoint isn't the only excitement in this movement. There's a brief, electrifying passage in the exposition and, more prominently, in the recapitulation when the strings do their contrapuntal thing while the winds and brass sing out like a choir in close harmony - at 10:20. Not every performance and recording brings this out, but you can hear it in this clip, and it always gives me the chills.

[Allen]

John F,


Thanks so much for posting this wonderful video clip.


How did Mozart write something as complex and beautiful as this? The computer had not been invented. Mozart was simply amazing.


What gives me the chills every time I hear this movement is the rise from C to Db at 11:25. It just makes my heart skip a beat.

[Belle]

Counterpoint isn't the only excitement in this movement. There's a brief, electrifying passage in the exposition and, more prominently, in the recapitulation when the strings do their contrapuntal thing while the winds and brass sing out like a choir in close harmony - at 10:20. Not every performance and recording brings this out, but you can hear it in this clip, and it always gives me the chills.

Agree and that's why I used the word 'complexity' rather than counterpoint. That final movement is just thrilling. Absolutely. I'm listening to it in my head as I write this and when I actually listen to the coda, in particular, I get the chills down my spine and it calls to me 'this is why I live'!!

And this analysis, from the same musician, of a Cantata by Bach demonstrates the influence of Bach on Mozart for Symphony #41, inter alia. This analysis demands more musical knowledge than the previous one on the subject of Mozart: and this work by Bach has an improvised figured bass, adding another layer of complexity 'on the day'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTq3gszPsIQ

[John F]

Atkinson is an outstanding teacher, isn't he? Following up what Belle said, I've found this list of his analyses, most but not all about contrapuntal music.

https://www.youtube.com/user/richardatk ... =0&sort=dd

While many discuss familiar music, Atkinson ranges more widely, for example to the finale of Haydn's string quartet op. 64 no. 1 which is hardly ever performed.

Having stumbled onto Atkinson's discussion of the Jupiter finale, I now have the prospect of hours of his analyses, and I'm sure many of them will also be enlightening.

maestrob said, "For all their interesting content, there's nothing in Haydn's output that can match the complexity of Mozart, methinks." Atkinson shows otherwise in his analysis of the finale of Haydn's string quartet op. 74 no. 1, also in C major. In a way this is even more of a tour de force, because typically Haydn's sonata form is monothematic, but he varies the original theme to create a multiplicity of other themes.

The string quartet, as Haydn essentially created it, is intrinsically contrapuntal, each instrument "conversing" with the others; the players were amateurs (there were no professional string quartets) in their homes or salons. Mozart's originality, with a little prompting from Michael Haydn, was to bring this degree of contrapuntal complexity to the full symphony orchestra. Plus, of course, the extended coda in invertible counterpoint on five different themes, which is unique with Mozart, and with that symphony.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8T4BWVima0

[lennygoran]

>While many discuss familiar music, Atkinson ranges more widely

Yeah he even goes here! Thanks for the link! Regards, Len

[Belle]

I've enjoying watching many of these analyses in the past and have actually forwarded them on to musician friends in our group. Visual learning is a powerfully effective tool! In this case it provides a 'road map' into the minds of some of humanity's greatest thinkers/creators. Wouldn't it be enlightening to see that applied to themes and ideas in literature? I'm unsure how that would actually work.

[John F]

On the subject of this symphony: In May 1788 Mozart composed an aria for bass, "Un bacio di mano" (A kiss of the hand), words purportedly by Lorenzo da Ponte, for insertion in Anfossi's comic opera "Le gelosie fortunate" which was performed in Vienna on June 2. Those who know the Jupiter Symphony will recognize the refrain, "Voi siete un po tondo, mio caro Pompeo, l'usanze del mondo andate a studiar." (You are a little obtuse, my dear Pompeo. Go and study the ways of the world).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIR8BNspx_I

Three months later Mozart used this tune in the first movement of the Jupiter Symphony. It's the closing theme of the exposition; Mozart then devotes most of the development to it, at one point a fragment of it comically chases its tail through a series of key changes. (I use this clip of the movement for obvious reasons. ) See 2:34, or just look at the sign.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COwkhy8BBdk

Now what is this about, the inclusion of an opera buffa tune in an ostensibly serious symphonic movement? Is it a private joke of Mozart's? Should we think of the mocking words of the aria when hearing the symphony? Should we respond to the movement as if it were a scene in one of Mozart's comic operas? Near the beginning, the main theme sprouts a descending countersubject that sounds to me like laughter, and this too gets some play in the development. Or did he simply find the melody suitable for how he wanted the movement and especially its development to go? Possibly both. We'll never know.

[Belle]

John, it doesn't surprise me at all that Mozart included operatic music in his other works. In fact, the (first movement, sonata form) symphony itself arose from the operatic overture so the music for the theatre was already a huge part of its genesis!!

[John F]

it doesn't surprise me at all that Mozart included operatic music in his other works

It should surprise you, because this instance is unique in Mozart. Unlike Richard Strauss and Shostakovich, he never quotes his own music. When they did it, as in "Ein Heldenleben" and the 8th string quartet, it was with autobiographical significance. But there's no such significance in the Jupiter Symphony. I therefore believe, as I've said, that he had some expressive purpose here, a private purpose since his audience wouldn't have known "Un bacio di mano." What that purpose may have been, we can only guess, as I've done.

Actually, there is one other Mozart opera aria that he recycled in other works. It's "Non piu andrai" from "The Marriage of Figaro," dinner music for Don Giovanni in the final scene of that opera, which was premiered in Prague. But this tune was Mozart's greatest hit, when he went to Prague he said it was on every barrel organ in town, and indeed Leporello sings to that tune, "This one you know all too well." In his last year Mozart also arranged it as a ballroom dance (in K. 609), expecting that at least some of the dancers would recognize his signature tune, as "Figaro" had been produced twice in Vienna:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F70dPjxryVg

Mozart didn't need to recycle the notes of "Un bacio di mano," he was one of the most fertile inventors of musical themes ever, so I suspect that the words he had just set to music had to do with his reusing the music in that place in that way.

Conversely, Mozart used one of the forms of instrumental music in the Act 3 sextet in "Figaro," "Riconosci in quest' amplesso." Rosen points out that it's a miniature sonata form complete with modulation to the dominant for the second theme (Susanna's entrance), a development section, and a recapitulation in the tonic:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gg40jvI7LM

As far as I know, neither Mozart nor any other composer ever did such a thing in any other opera. He is reported to have said that this was his favorite number in "Figaro." What a virtuoso composer he was.

[Belle]

I was merely pointing out the irony of what Mozart did and the strong nexus which existed between the operatic overture and first movement sonata form, most notably the symphony.

[John F]

I was merely pointing out the irony of what Mozart did and the strong nexus which existed between the operatic overture and first movement sonata form, most notably the symphony.

It's true that the symphony originated as an opera overture or sinfonia, but sonata form as we know it was a later development of the symphony (and solo and chamber music) as an independent composition, as Haydn's symphonies and other works show. Later, Mozart sometimes composed his opera overtures in sonata form ("Magic Flute"), sometimes not ("Marriage of Figaro") sometimes with a contrasting middle section in place of a development ("Abduction from the Seraglio"). And while some overtures use themes from later in the opera ("Così fan tutte") or even extended passages ("Don Giovanni"), others don't ("Figaro" again). Any generalizations we might make about the relation between the concert symphony and the opera overture become hard to defend by the last decades of the 18th century. And I don't see how they can apply to Mozart's last symphony.

[jbuck919]

A great music theoretician is a rare bird indeed. I can scarcely count the number I know of on the fingers of one hand, if we limit ourselves to the common practice period. One, oddly, was Brahms, whose Oktaven und Fünften has never had an engraved edition. Though he was a great contrapuntist himself, he was never confident in the adequacy of his skills, and considered Mozart, to use his own word, a god.

BTW, I have not gone missing or had one of my hospitalizations. I've been without Internet service for eleven days and just got it back. Some guy actually had to hand deliver a new router/modem.

[Belle]

Brahms's greatest hero was, of course, Beethoven. He had a bust of that composer in his living room in Vienna.

Sorry to learn you have been unwell and have had to go to hospital. Hideous, altogether. Hope things improve for you hereafter. I got some bad medical news myself two days ago and am trying to remain calm! Let there be more music and books!!

[jbuck919]

Brahms's greatest hero was, of course, Beethoven. He had a bust of that composer in his living room in Vienna.

Sorry to learn you have been unwell and have had to go to hospital. Hideous, altogether. Hope things improve for you hereafter. I got some bad medical news myself two days ago and am trying to remain calm! Let there be more music and books!!

No, you misunderstood me. I have not been ill. I lost my Internet for close to two weeks before they could fix it, a third-world level of service that sometimes happens when one lives in the sticks. Brahms kept several busts, including one of Bismarck. As for the composers he called gods, aside from the ones you and I have mentioned, the third is of course Bach, thus completing the trio of those who are widely considered the greatest composers of all time. The original complete edition of Bach was being published in his time, and he subscribed to it. He always looked through each volume immediately. The original edition of Handel was also something he subscribed to, but these he would set aside for a time.

[John F]

Brahms also took part in at least one of these massive and invaluable publications - he edited Schubert's symphonies for the Schubert Gesamtausgabe. And he did it without recomposing them, as other composer/editors might have done.

[Belle]

Brahms's greatest hero was, of course, Beethoven. He had a bust of that composer in his living room in Vienna.

Sorry to learn you have been unwell and have had to go to hospital. Hideous, altogether. Hope things improve for you hereafter. I got some bad medical news myself two days ago and am trying to remain calm! Let there be more music and books!!

No, you misunderstood me. I have not been ill. I lost my Internet for close to two weeks before they could fix it, a third-world level of service that sometimes happens when one lives in the sticks. Brahms kept several busts, including one of Bismarck. As for the composers he called gods, aside from the ones you and I have mentioned, the third is of course Bach, thus completing the trio of those who are widely considered the greatest composers of all time. The original complete edition of Bach was being published in his time, and he subscribed to it. He always looked through each volume immediately. The original edition of Handel was also something he subscribed to, but these he would set aside for a time.

Sorry, I just saw 'one of my hospitalizations' and thought you'd been sick.