Mozart's Piano Sonatas: Contexts, Sources, Style

by John Irving (2), Irving John

Overview

Mozart's piano sonatas form a richly diverse and significant part of his instrumental output and span much of his mature composing career, thereby representing a microcosm of the composer's changing style. Part I examines the contexts in which the sonatas were composed and performed, and reviews likely sources of influence. Part II concentrates on the genesis of the sonatas and the sources, which reveals important information about Mozart's compositional process. In Part III the musical style is studied from the standpoint of rhetoric—a discipline featured in numerous contemporary aesthetic and theoretical textbooks on music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521027410
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/02/2006
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Part I. Contexts: 1. The solo sonata in context; 2. Stylistic models for Mozart's sonatas; Part II. Sources: 3 Six sonatas, K.279–84; 4. Three sonatas, K.309–11; 5. Four sonatas, K.330–2, K.333; 6. Fantasia and Sonata in C minor, K.475 and 457; 7. Later Viennese sonatas: K.533 and 494, K.545, K.570, K.576; 8. Fragments: Part III. Style: 9. Eighteenth-century views of sonata form; 10. Pre-compositional choices - the rhetorical inventio; 11. Dispositio: rhetoric and design; 12. The rhetorical elocutio; Notes, Select bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Performers and scholars who have spent years in the companionship of these sonatas will find Irving's study a useful entry point into their sources and recent critical literature." Michelle Fillion, Notes

From the Publisher