I've just returned from Charles Rosen's lecture on Convention and
Continuity in Music.  I thought it addressed a whole number of questions
raised in this thread (what makes a work great, is it possible to imitate
a work of art, why does Bob Draper not like Mozart, etc) very directly.  I
haven't nearly enough time to systematically organize or apply the points
he made, but these notes may be of interest, muddled and no doubt
inaccurate as they are:

- We are most likely to see those composers, and artists generally, as
great or significant who work within an accepted tradition and succeed in
transforming and renewing it.  Simple novelty or originality isn't enough;
the artist needs somehow to have addressed what came before him.

- Mozart v Haydn:  M's works are a curious dichotomy of doggedly followed
conventions and great originality and innovation.  From our modern
perspective, we tend to disparage the conventional parts and to isolate the
original parts:  but we may thereby do his works an injustice.  Not only
are the new and the old inextricably moulded together, but his treatment of
the conventions themselves is more graceful and elegant than that of anyone
else (according to Rosen).  Example from concerto KV 595 in b flat:  there
was a convention that the development section of the first movement of a
concerto had to lead into the parallel minor? (ie g minor for b flat in
this case), which Mozart always tended to follow, whatever other surprises
he built in.  So in the case of this concerto's development, he at first
modulates out into the farthest possible regions; but surely enough, at the
end he leads into G minor as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

So Mozart works within the conventions - he gives us hints of the
revolutionary - but he then artfully leads back into the safety of the
comfortably familiar.  Haydn, according to Rosen, tends to get those
conventions quickly out of the way first or flouts them outright.  That
difference may be why Bob instinctively prefers Haydn - he being the more
overtly revolutionary or experimental composer - Mozart's subversiveness is
more subtle and below the surface.

- Mozart v Beethoven:  people think that Beethoven, unlike Mozart, was
a revolutionary composer who broke with tradition.  In fact, B.  uses
conventions just as much, but the appearance is of complete originality
because B.  uses those conventions to create specific effects which we
strongly associate with a particular work.  Rosen compares a Mozart pf.
concerto (G major, I think) with Beethoven's 5th pf.  concerto.  Both
include scale and arpeggio passages in the 1st movement development,
according to the concerto convention.  Mozart, indeed, varies those
conventions more interestingly and artfully than Beethoven, making the
arpeggios irregular and giving them melodic interest, varying the scalic
figuration etc, while Beethoven gives us plain arpeggios and broken chords,
and unadorned octave scales.  *Musically*, Mozart is more imaginative than
Beethoven; but Beethoven uses his arpeggios to create a stormy build-up
leading up to the development's climax (that battle of chords b/w piano and
orch.), and the octave scales are a furious march leading back down from
that confrontation.  It is that emotional effect which is so unforgettable
and individual, even though the means are old news.

Mozart therefore works on a more abstract level than Beethoven - Beethoven
has subjugated the classical conventions to what he wants to say, whereas
in Mozart there is always an uneasy tension between his 'original thoughts'
and their conventional framework.  That may be the reason why Bob has
greater difficulty connecting emotionally with Mozart.  I myself often feel
when I listen to Mozart that I am listening to speech through a mask, so to
speak.  M's music does move me, no doubt about it, but it does so more
indirectly, more suggestively and circumspectly, than Beethoven's.

Getting back to Prof. Rosen:

- Mozart and Haydn worked to a greater or lesser extent within the living
classical system; for Beethoven, that system was already passing or past,
conventions having become cliches.  So when he adopts classical mannerisms,
they sound self-conscious, a calculated ironic effect.  Rosen gives the
example of his pf sonata op.  31 no 3 (with the 'hunting calls' in the
opening):  there are these mysterious and increasingly brooding first few
bars, and then we have a straight-forward classical cadence with a little
turn.  That sounds comically anachronistic in this context.

To extrapolate Rosen's point:  that is why it is far more difficult
than it seems at first to imitate Mozart (or, for that matter, according
to Rosen, to write tonally nowadays):  we can't use those conventions
unselfconsciously.  For Mozart, modulating into G minor must have been
the normal thing to do; to us it seems artificial.  According to Rosen,
Brahms was one composer who could see and deal with this difficulty:  while
an avowed conservative, intending to re-animate the Viennese classical
tradition, he sensed that this could only be done indirectly - by taking
the basic principles of his classical forebears and expressing them in
his modern idiom.  Rosen gave very interesting examples from the various
Beethoven quotes Brahms included in his works:  the quote would often only
consist in a rhythmic pattern, or a harmonic scheme, or a vague parallel in
the instrumentation.  Or he would stick to classical order by taking care
to preserve an evenly divisible number of bars in a section, even though
the rhythmic groupings within that section were in effect irregular.  Rosen
contrasts Brahms with neo-classical Stravinsky in this regard:  Brahms
takes the classical principles and translates them into a modern idiom;
Stravinsky takes the classical idiom but applies it to modern principles
that alienate it from its original meaning.

(Does that mean that Brahms is closer to Mozart and Stravinsky closer to
Beethoven in their treatment of tradition as Rosen sees it? I'm getting
tangled up here - it's too late in the day ...)

Felix Delbruck
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