Dance Rhythms in Mozart's Arias Author(s): Wye J. Allanbrook and Wendy Hilton Source: Early Music, Vol.

20, No. 1, Performing Mozart's Music II (Feb., 1992), pp. 142-149 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3127676 . Accessed: 03/02/2011 09:29
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andprestissimo which startsalla breve ends up in 2/4 and assai. only allegro To realizeMozart's as tempo indicationsas accurately in all their therefore both a possible subtlety requires a of conventions and knowledge 18th-centurytempo careful examination of every element of the musical structure. This is one of the performer'smost challenging and stimulatingtasks. Upon his or her success depends the listener's perception of that particular

creaorganizationof time that is at the heartof Mozart's tive act.

Jean-Pierre Marty, composer,conductor and pianist, is the Director of the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. He has been working on the question of Mozart's tempo indications since 1966, and has published The Tempo Indications of Mozart (Yale University Press, 1988).

Wye J. Allanbrookand WendyHilton

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WYE J. ALLANBROOK

performersto use the social dance forms as a textbook for the study of rhythmand characterin music'-these Musicwrittenfor the dance is a familiarpresencein the texts and others like them are partof our standardanamusic of the high Baroque. The rhythmsof social dance lyticalequipment,and seem no more out of the way to saturate Frenchopera,for example,and the dancesuites us than those writers'instructionsin thoroughbassand andpartitas of the late17thandearly18thcenturies.Mat- counterpoint. Hence we scarcely raise an eyebrow at theson'sexhaustivediscussionsof particular dancesand analysesthat seek to set the more 'abstract' music of the their affects,Kirnberger's exhortationto composersand period in a dance framework: to identifya Bach fugue
142 EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY 1992

for example, or a Handel aria as a subjectas a bourr&e, sarabandeseems fully legitimate. But as the 18thcenturymoves towardits end, our perspective suffers an abrupt change: we are reluctant to speak of dance patterns as animating the music of in Baroquemusic Mozart;what seemednobly expressive suddenlyappearsmundane, and a needless contracting of his expressivehorizon. This reluctancedoes entail a certaindisregardfor the evidence.We know from ConstanzeMozart,for example,via the memoirsof the tenor Michael Kelly,that Mozartloved to dance, and that he often said that 'his talent lay in that art ratherthan in music'.' We know that Mozart wrote dance music all throughhis life, most intenselytowardits end, when, in his capacityas Royal ImperialChamberComposer,he composed for the ballroomsof the Viennese many rich sets of minuets, contredansesand Germandances. (The last two types, the dances of the hour, had eclipsed the stern hierarchyof the Frenchcourt couple dances, and wereperformedon social occasionsalong with the more genteel minuet, which remained an important presence.) We know that a movement called 'minuet' conventionally graced most symphonies and chamber works,and that the last movementsof these same works frequentlytook their quick comic grace from the contredansein its 2/4 version (althoughthis has not helped us to recognizethat this habitualemployment in 'serious' music of the popular dances then danced in the dance halls made the symphonyinto a kind of analogue to the Baroquedancesuite). Finally, if we look closelywe see scatteredthroughout Mozart'sworks unmistakable rhythmic references to dances old and dances newly popular,to dances he enjoyed performingin daily life and those old-fashionedones the sense for which he had absorbed from his classical Kapellmeistertraining. So the evidence is that dance had as lively a presence in Classicmusic as it had had in the Baroque; the old ways had just changed with the times, and taken on new manifestations.Nevertheless,something stills our faculty for comparison here: I suspect it is the notion, inherited from our 19th-centurypredecessors, of the limpid purityof Mozart'smusic, the notion of a Mozart who, while childlike, neverthelesskept his eye on the otherwordlyand the absolute. I must immediatelyconfess that in this litany of our failings I am setting up something of a straw man. Things are changingrapidlyin Mozart analysis;writers are coming more and more to accept-indeed embrace-a Mozartwhose music was grounded in the then and there, in the ways of the world he inhabited.I

am sure that we all have changeswe would hope, either overtly or covertly,to see come about from this bicentennial second look at Mozart'smusic. My hope-one that I have hardlykept covert-is that our notion of the 'absolute'Mozartmay finallydisappearand the Mozart who used his music as a mirror to catch glints of the worldaroundhim maytakeits place.ForI many-faceted think that this is not to demean but to celebratea man who had an intense love for the social pleasuresof his life, and whose music would havehad farless animation if it had been cut off from them. More materially, if we ourselves come to understand more about the living sources of this animation, our performancescan only become more directed, more lively and more illuminating. Turningto vocal music specifically,in the mid-18th centurythe criticaltide wasturningagainstthe intrusion in opera of the old-fashioned divertissements that consisted of a succession of social dances with little or no connection to the plot. It was now good taste to require more dramaticdances, which emphasizedthe virtuoso dancerand bore an explicitlink to the plot. By the 1760s dancewas beginningto separatefrom operaas a serious art in its own right;witness the popularityof the pantomime ballets of Noverre and Angiolini, with their attemptsto be directlymimetic of the action (as if such a thing wereeverfullypossiblewithoutsome mediationof conventional gesture). In Mozart's operas, however, social dance did not disappear;it went, so to speak, underground,to become part of the musicalmaterialof the ariasand ensemblesof his matureoperas.And it was not divorcedfrom expression,as were the social dances interspersedwith the action in the tragddie lyrique.For the patternsof social dance were in themselves,as Mattheson stressed,bearersof affect;writtento accompany dancesperformedon socialoccasions,they mirroredthe social and affectivehierarchy. Although I will forbearmentioning everydance pattern that found its wayinto Mozart'smusic, a quickview of a spectrum of dances from slow to fast would start with the austere triple pattern of the sarabande,all restraint and Spanish hauteur. In the middle would stand the quicker, evenly accented triple of the complaisantminuet, which in its noble congenialitybecame
known as the 'Queen of all the dances'. Quicker triple measures were often bound together into compound duple, or 6/8, where a duple beat on a higher level controlled the lower-level pulse of the lilting triple; the gigue in 6/4 (later 6/8), although a court dance, had strong rustic connotations, and habitually appeared in operas
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY 1992 143

as the metre of peasantchoruses.The gigue had two sisters,slowerversionsof 6/8:the so-calledpastorale,modand the siciliano,slowerthan erate-tempoedandlegato,3 the pastorale,and typicallyin dotted rhythms;both had strong Arcadianassociations.The gavotte,a moderatetempoed dance in duple metre, also had a history of associationwith the pastoralmode, and with its comThe rhythmicpatternof its usual panion, the amorous.4 music is an inversion of the 'pedestrian'rhythmicpattern of the march, in which a simple i12 3 4 1 becomes 3 4 1 1 2. It articulatesa complex rhythmicarch across the bar-lineto establisha coy beatingrhythmthat could be said to mirrorthe pastoralmode in its most artificial manifestations;the gavotte frequently comes with a musette bass, as for example, in the gavottesof Bach's English Suites. These and other dance rhythms would have been familiarto Mozart'saudiences,as also would have been their affectiveconnotations. They formed a powerful vocabularyof expression,which Mozart frein the arias quentlyemployedto choreographcharacter and ensemblesof his mature Italianoperas. in Wewill illustratethis union of dance and character Mozart'sLe nozzedi Figaroand Don Giovanniby considering two of those dances-the minuet and the gavotte-first as danced, and then as employed in various operatic contexts. We hope to give a sense for the dance patternsthemselves,and then to show how the understandingthat grows from absorbingthe gestures of these dances-internalizing them, as it were-can directthe singerto both a style of execution and a bearing on stage;these patternscan be read as virtual'stage directions'.We do not propose that the steps of the dances should be directly translatedinto the singer's motion; the dance rhythmsin Mozart'sariaswere stylized, and it is the ethos of the dance gesturesratherthan the steps of a particularchoreographythat the singer must hope to absorb.

masters.The most comprehensiveaccountsarefound in books by four masters of differentnationalities:Gottfried Taubert, Rechtschaffener Tanz-Meister(Leipzig, 1717);Pierre Rameau, Le maitre a danser(Paris,1725); KellomTomlinson, TheArt of Dancing(London, 1735); and Gennaro Magri, Trattoroteorico-prattico di ballo
(Naples, 1779).

While Taubertand Tomlinson seem to have made careersin their native countries, Rameauwas dancing master at the Spanish court at the time his book was published. Magriwas a highly skilled theatricaldancer who performedmostlyin NaplesandVenice,but in both
1759 and 1763/4 he was engaged at the Burgtheater in

Vienna. Given the long life and widespreadpopularityof the minuet it is to be expected that it was not danced in exactly the same way everywhereor at all times. But while the descriptionsand notated scores of the dance show certaindifferences,the threebasic essentialsof the minuet remainthe same:one pas de menuetequalstwo measuresof 3/4 time (or one of 6/4, as the music is sometimes written), the spatialfiguresfollow each other in a prescribedorder,and a good performanceof the dance must be distinguishednot merely by a good technique but through the fine air and carriageof the dancers. ' The minuetwas the epitomeof the aristocratic danse deux,designedto be performedby one couple alone at a time in order of social precedence.Simplertechnically than the other popular Baroque and choreographically dansesa* deux,the bourrees,gavottes,sarabandes, gigues and so forth, the minuet is neverthelessfar from easy. The better the dancer'stechnique the easier it appears, and the greatest difficulty in performing the minuet impressivelylies in its apparentsimplicity.As Kellom Tomlinsonexpressedit: as well as difficult The minuetis one of the most graceful of the the Plainness to arrive at a Mastery Dances of, through to are the that Address of Air and and the requisite Body Step its Embellishment. Dancing the minuet In upper-class society, learning the minuet was conWENDY HILTON The minuet and the gavotte survived,each in its own sideredto be essential.Its study enabledyoung persons way, during Mozart'slifetime. In the ballroom at least, to develop the impressiveyet unostentatiousair which they continuedto be dancedwith some of the basicsteps would distinguishthem in society.No action in everyday dance publications formallife was left to chance,yet the ultimateaim wasto first describedin early18th-century beginning with Raoul Auger Feuillet's textbook on appearsupremelynatural.This idealwas expressedsucas: 'Good breeding shows itself dancenotation, Choregraphie, publishedin Parisin 1700. cinctly in The Spectator . it . where most . favour which menuet The ballroom ordinaire, appears the least.'5 gained as givenby the dancing of The ideals subthe and Louis XIV of court at the self-presentation during 166os never in an masters stiff, carriageof the artistocratic erect, yet lay society, sequently throughout European was described and notated by numerous dancing head, a steady waist to keep the body upright and
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F/

the ball,c.1780, copperplate Archiv derGesellschaft derMusikfreunde) Before (Vienna, engraving wrote their accountsin the firsthalf of the 18thcentury, providediagramsof the minuet figures,GennatoMagri,
writing in 1779, unfortunately relies on verbal descrip-

centred,and a complete lack of affectationat all times. In his accountof the minuet Magriexpressesthe same idealsas the earliermasters.He describesthe minuetas a sustained dance, the technical execution of which requires 'ambitious feet' and a 'hidden control'. The dancers should maintain open, relaxed expressions, their mouths smiling slightlyto expressa certaincheerfulness. The arms must move as though naturally,but above all the dancing must be distinguishedby good taste, and a noble carriageand air.6 Therewereseveralbasicpas de menuet. The one probused most the 18th as centuryprogressed ably frequently a deuxmouvements; was the pas de menuet that is a stepunit in which the knees are bent and stretchedtwice. Each stretchingof the knees providesa rhythmicstress within the step-unit. Most characteristically the bends and stretchesare distributedto provide a cross-rhythm between steps and music. While Rameau, Taubert and Tomlinson, who all

tions, whichmakeshis intentionsdifficultto understand at certainpoints. However,his descriptionsof the steps are reasonablyclear. He describesplaces where a foot touchesthe groundlightly,or slidesalongthe floor when closing towardthe other foot. So the steps are stylistically differentfrom those given by the earliermasters. betweensteps and Magridoes not use the cross-rhythm instead the two bends and stretches are distrimusic; buted so that an accent occurs on the first beat of each measure. The minuet in Mozart'sarias
WYE J. ALLANBROOK

Letus now reviewa few of the many passages in Lenozze di Figarothat use minuet rhythmsto dramaticpurpose. One of the most notable is the firstpartof Figaro's aria
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145

'Sevuolballare' in Act1, whereFigaro a vanniminuet turnsup at a crucialmoment in Lenozzedi early imagines vivid social revengeagainstCount Almaviva for his Figaro,but not in this case as a mere identifierof social intentions to Figaro (asrevealed cuckolding bySusanna class. Insteadit is inflectedin order to transferthe gena momentbefore).The ariais in two parts,whichin ealogical word 'noble' (as in 'noble-born') into the their orderingimitate currentpracticein the ball- domain of moral character.It occurs at that telling room-first a tautandelegant minuet,in whichFigaro moment when the Count, trapping the Countess, he to 'teach thelittleCounthowto dance', suspects, in flagrantedelictowith Cherubinoand presspromises darkly in whichhe enumer- ing his advantagewith ignoble bullying,opens the door andthena quick2/4 contredanse of revenge. atesthe machines to the Countess'scloset to find not Cherubinobut SusAnother oneactually labelled diMenuetto, anna, who has cleverlymanagedthe substitutionin the aria, Tempo solo in nick of time. 'My lord,' she says simply, 'what is this is Marcellina's but rarely performed important Act4 of Figaro, whichopensin civilminuetrhythms as bemusement? Take your sword; kill the page! That she singsof the civilmatinghabitsof the beastsof the cursedpage-see him here.'Molto andante,in 3/8 time, to the secondpartof the strings play the unadorned accompaniment to a field.(Thisis in contradistinction the aria, where in march-likeduple rhythmsshe minuet that follows the rhythmic pattern of the Don thatmalesof the human Giovanniparadigm-a crotchet and four quaversper describes the crudebehaviour bar. There is no melody at first; the strings project their exhibit toward others.) significant species of DonGiovanni instead the 'essence of minuet'. As Susanna gains scenein theActi finale Theballroom takes in strengthfromher triumph,hervocalline gradually of thesocial worldof theopera a microcosm presents or German on greaterarticulationand ornament.The moment is a Teitsch danceimagery-theclumsy peasant the quintessential'shock tutti' to use the vocabularyJohn andMasetto, dancestumbled through by Leporello assumedby the aristocratic Platoffhas urgedon us.7Susannais in completecontrol; bourgeoiscontredanse dance and made it andtheminuetdanced hisrank, seducer whobetrays by she has takenthe Count'saristocratic not to to the conclusion that tur- her own. It is difficult in thisordered theonlytruearistocrats themaskers, leap here must The Susanna as the DonGio- she is noble, and that he is not. moil.A minuetwiththe samerhythms
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not be the pert servantgirlwe havesometimeswitnessed in the opera, but fully graced, and gracious in her sarcasm, catching the gestures of the dance in her every movement and utterance.The dance's 100-yearhistory of civility and decorum lies behind the meaning of this carmoment; it is distilledinto Susanna's extraordinary riage. As she sings against the background of the rhythmsof the 'Queen of all the dances',we are moved by her evident nobility, and assuredof the proprietyof her friendshipwith the gentle Countess. Dancing the gavotte
WENDY HILTON

We have some gavotteswhich were published in dance notation during the early 18th century.Some are ballroom dances for one couple; others are for the theatre, where there was a frequent use of the gavotte in rustic scenes. Many of the ballroom contredanses which became increasinglypopular during the 18th century were also gavottes. Many of the most beautiful were those composed by Mozart. In the gavotte, as in the minuet, there is an unusual The gavotte in Mozart'sarias relationship between the steps and the music, which WYE J. ALLANBROOK begins on the half-bar. The shortest musical unit is There are some wonderful moments in Le nozze di 3 4 1 2 but the step-unit proceeds I1 2 3 4 1. So the Figaro and Don Giovannithat use gavotte scansions.

step-units and musical units constantly overlap, until the half-cadenceand cadencebars,where choreographicallya step-unit is used to resolvethe conflict-if I may use so strong a word-and reacha momentarysense of resolution. Basicgavottestep-sequencesconsist of three step-units followedby a springjoining the feet together, calleda pas assemblde. This step,which is commonly used to complete a phrase,is likenedby KellomTomlinsonto a full stop in writing.It is usuallyfollowedby a half-bar rest. The pas assembld is used in the gavotteto reflectthe half-cadence or cadence measures. A typical gavotte step-sequence would consist of one contretempsde de gavotte another contretemps gavotte,a pas de bourree, and a pas assembled. Sometimes a preliminarystep-bend is used to reflect the two upbeatsin the music. In more complexchoreogwill be replacedby a step-unit raphiesthe pas assemblds (such as a pas coupd)which moves throughout the bar but reflectsthe cadenceby being slower than the other step-units.

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foot marchin 'Notte e giorno faticar'of Act 1i Leporello's is momentarilymetamorphosedinto a gavottewhen he thinks of that 'caro galantuomo'Don Giovanni inside makinglove to his 'bella';the flirtatiousrhythmsstrike just the rightnote of salon preciosityas the servantimitates aristocratsat play.The gavotterhythmsemerge in clearcontrastto those of the 'footmarch'that opens the aria,and what mightbe calleda 'cavalry charge'that follows, horns and all, to reflectthe military(and perhaps pursuits. covertlythe erotic) side of the aristocrat's Figaroinflectsa gavotteaftermarchrhythmsto somewhat the same effect in the beginningof his Act i hymn to Cherubino, 'Non pii andrai':after a martial contredansein which he addressesthe 'amorousbutterfly', he grafts an erotic metaphor to the military as he describesthe page'splumed cap and-here the mincing beat of the gavotteis especiallyappropriate-his 'blushing, womanly complexion'. In Act 2 of Figarothe gavotteshapes one entire and very important section of its magnificent finale (bars 398ff.).Firstthe Count, confrontingFigarowith a piece of damning evidence,takesup the gavottewith a disingenuous innocence that barely masks his malevolent
intent. By the end of this section (bars 441ff.) the co-

conspirators-the Countess,Susannaand Figaro-have

made the gavotte their own, turning it into a pastoral hymn set in full vocal splendour,and embellishedwith a musettebass;this pedalpoint rollsout like an organnote to groundand deepen the coy gavotte,whose innocence no longer seems a mask. In all these instances it is crucial that the singer or singersbe sensitizedto the brief passageof gavottescansion and project it clearly,otherwise the point is lost; often, as in the firsttwo cases,the point is madeby contrastwith another rhythm,here that of the march, and the differencesmust be projectedclearly. The gavotteappearsin a more centralrole in the first near the part of Zerlina'saria 'Batti,batti, bel Masetto', end of Act 1 of Don Giovanni; this aria is her 'reseduction' of MasettoafterElvirahas given her a hardlook at the dangers of trusting roving cavaliers. Guilty for but savedfrom the actualfall,she havingwantedto stray, refusesto beg, but must cajoleMasettoback. Her solution is an arch parody of submission that is intensely sexual: Beat,o beat,my fineMasetto, yourpoorZerlina: I shallstandherelikea littlelambawaiting yourblows. I'lllet you pullout myhair,I'lllet you carve out my eyes; andthenI'llbe happy to kissyourdearlittlehands. Her appeal is couched in a mixture of musical idioms,

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which must be, so to speak, deconstructed;it comes in two parts,the gavotterhythmsand the powerfulunderlay of a cello obbligato.Leavingasidethe obbligatofor a moment, we can focus on the force of the gavotte rhythms.The firstline is a kind of lasciviouspun: its plosive consonants are onomatopoetic, and the crisp beating effect of the dance rhythmscarriesthe pun over into the music. To perform the aria deadpan, as a serious invitationto the action Zerlinais proposing,would be to renderit grotesque.(This, however,is frequentlydone; Zerlinasings the ariain the stairwellof her PeterSellars's basementapartmentin SpanishHarlem,her eyes coursbut a ing with tears.)It is not a sado-masochisticfantasy, playfulapology in which a parodyof sexual submission serves as a promise of a more profound surrender-a willingreturnto the worldZerlinahad brieflythoughtto flee. The first two lines of the text have gavotte articulations, and the violins are given gavotte bowings. Although later in the section the outlines of the dance become slightlyblurred,its clarityat the outset makesit the dominant conceit of the 2/4 section. Thefaux-naifgavottewith its sexualovertonesmay in this context suggestthe courtesan.Perhapsit is in order to mitigate this impression that Mozart introduces the cello obbligato, whose bowings within the bar rather than acrossthe bar-lineset up cross-rhythmsagainstthe gavotte.Its deep sonoritiesand fluidlegatomoderatethe effect of the Alberti bass; the obbligato smooths and softens the mincing rhythmsof the dance. It is a second layerof affect,graftedonto the gavotte,and plumbing a deeper level of passion; perhaps it suggests Zerlina's loyaltyto and abidingaffectionfor Masetto,which make her perverselittle act of seduction finallyright-minded. It is importantfor the singerto separatethe two levels of gesturein her firstreadingsof the piece, and to maintain the gavotte rhythmsagainstthe flowing patternsof the cello, at the same time finding a carriageand gestures that help to reflectthe affectof the dance. This complex rhythmiclayeringis joyfullyresolvedin the second section of the aria,which breaksinto the relaxedand lilting rhythmsof the 6/8 pastorale,evokingthe Arcadianbliss Zerlinaenvisions for the two of them: 'Peace,peace, O my life!In joy and contentmentwe'llpassour nightsand
days.' The cello obbligato continues, but no longer seems superimposed; assimilated into the thinner texture of the 6/8, it now supports the structure of the dance pattern. Coquettishness has yielded to heartfelt joy. This text was presented at the New Yorkconferenceas a lecture-demonstration, with vocal illustrations provided by

Danielle Strauss,soprano,accompanied by UrsulaHeckMerrill.Demonstrations mann and Kenneth of the minuet and gavotte weregiven by Riccardolazzetta, Luis Peral, SabrinaSandvi and Chen Yu Tseui,studentsof the Juilweredesignedby Thomas liardDanceDivision.Costumes Augustine. is on thefaculty of St John'sCollegein WyeJ. Allanbrook Maryland.Sheis theauthorofRhythmicGesAnnapolis, She ture in Mozart:Lenozzedi Figaroand Don Giovanni. in the instrua on is currently studyof expression working mentalworksof Mozart. Hilton is on thefacultyof theJuilliard School,and Wendy Dance Workshop teachesan annual Baroque for Stanford She is the authorof Dance of Court and TheUniversity. ater: The French Noble Style, 1690-1725 and general editor of the Dance and Music seriesfor the Pendragon Press.
'Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommeneCapellmeister (Hamburg, Die Kunstdes JohannPhilipp Kirnberger, 1739),ii, chap. 13,ss.8o-135; reinenSatzesin derMusik(Berlin,1774-9), i, p.202 and n.78 2Michael Kelly,Reminiscences of MichaelKelly(New York,1969), i, p.223 3Thepastoralewas not strictly a dance, but a style of music; the compound duple metre, legato and drone bass are documentedfrom the early17thcentury;see 'Pastorale'New Grove. By the later18thcentury,however,it had commonly come to be assumedthat the pastorale was a dance;see JohannGeorgSulzer,AllgemeineTheorie dersch6nen Clavierschule (Leipzig,2/1786-7),iii, p.6o; Daniel GottlobTUrk, Kainste 1982), (Leipzigand Halle,1789),trans.R.H. Haggh(Lincoln,Nebraska, Lexikon(FrankP.395.Heinrich ChristophKoch in his Musikalisches furt-on-Main,1802) does not accept this notion, but instead defines the pastoraleas 'apiece that expressesthe song of the idealizedworldof Fora furtherdiscussionof dancetypesin compound duple shepherds'. meter, see W.J. Allanbrook, RhythmicGesturein Mozart (Chicago, 1983),pp.40-45. 4Thegavottewas in some of its versions a kissing dance;see M.E. New Grove. Little, 'Gavotte, 17July1711 Spectator, 5The 6See GennaroMagri, Theoretical and PracticalTreatise on Dancing, trans.M. Skeapingwith A. Ivanovaand I.E.Berry, ed. I.E.Berryand A. Fox (London, 1988),pp.187-8. 7J.Platoff, 'Musical and Dramatic Structurein the Opera Buffa vii (1989),pp.219-25 Finale' Journalof Musicology,

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