Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Written improv in Mozart sonatas repeat sections??

Case in point:

The autograph manuscript for Scriabin's 7th Sonata (the so-called "White Mass") was auctioned off several years ago. Aside for the utterly gorgeous calligraphy, a marking at the top of the 1st page caught my eye. In every edition, the "tempo" marking is "Allegro" which always struck me as very odd, considering all the crazy markings strewn throughout the piece. Turns out there is no "Allegro" marking in the autograph, but instead in true Scriabin fashion, he proudly writes the "tempo" marking of "Prophetique".

Kreisler-I had this same situation with the various 'available' editions of Clementi Sonatinas as I was editing and recording my edition of the Sonatina Album for Hal Leonard. Equally, Gershwin's publishers at Harms wanted to make money, as did Gershwin, and the differences from the manuscript to the published edition is different. Piano nerds like Alicia Zizzo and Jeffrey Biegel (LOL) play the original, which Warner Bros. published as the Annotated Rhapsody in Blue in the solo version arranged by Zizzo.

Have you listened to Malcolm Bilson's recordings? I haven't listened to his recordings a whole lot but I think I do recall him adding some improvisation in some of the sonatas. I'm sure Andrew Willis and John Salmon, from the UNCG faculty, would have much to say regarding improvisation/performance practice in classical sonatas.

Personally I don't have a problem with adding variants when repeating a section and I know Salmon approves of this practice.

On a side note, I have a photocopy of Artaria's first edition of K533. Close study will reveal to you that Mozart gave the copyist the exposition, most of the development and only the changes in the recap. Mozart must have asked for the articulation from the exposition to be copied throughout. The copyist really messed up - he obviously didn't understand it.

Is it possible to scan and post some of the things that we would be surprised to see?

a) I shan't be at home for a few weeks b) you'll encounter the same 'surprises' in the urtext, it's just clearer what has happened in the original edition.

I checked out the Mozart Ausgabe. Anybody got a different articulation to this? I'm sure my first edition is different.

Yes--I have in the Peters edition some slight differences. Those quarter note pick-ups do not have accent marks (which we typically see in other classical works of Haydn, Dussek and the Beethoven editions), and Peters offers a slur for beats 1 and 2 in the RH of measure 104 (your first measure--it's not 108, is it? Peters does not have measure numbers). Peters also indicates a crescendo in measures 105-106. On the repeats, I do apply this, or the first time through, depending on what comes before.

"How do you feel about a new recording which will be 'urtext' with slight variation in the repeats?"

To hear once, interesting maybe, (as would be a live performance) but for repeated listening I'd rather do without the "slight variation" as Mozart's music works perfectly well without it.
Furthermore, I believe that the small, "tasteful" embellishments which some pianists add to these scores might well be wide of the mark as regards authenticity.
The piano solo versions which Hummel made of a number of the Mozart Piano concertos contain some highly elaborate decoration of the "solo" parts especially in the slow movements. It might be argued that Hummel did this in order to throw the solo sections into relief in his two-hand adaptations, but there is other evidence in the form of written down elaborations of the slow movements of several Mozart concertos by P K Hoffmann, who had heard Mozart play, which suggest that the composer improvised very elaborate embellishments when he performed.
Of course Hummel,being a highly creative personality in his own right, might have provided variants which reflected his own tastes and habits just as much as Mozart's but, personally, I would be very interested in hearing recordings (or live performances)of those Mozart concertos which Hummel edited with the solo part re-constructed to incorporate his additions.

Good point--I am doing these variants, not just mordents and a few trills, yet nothing overtly virtuosic that is personal on my end. I simply hear the music as though it was written before, in my head, and then write it down. I have composed a cappella double choir music this way, and as I am listening to these sonatas in my head, I hear through the music as written, and then go back to the repeat and listen inside to what else the music is saying to me in a slightly altered way. I wonder if Mozart would have said to us, 'Please, when you repeat this section, don't play it the same way you just did--I never would'. Food for thought. Naturally, when one does this, there is room for many possibilities--yet only one will end up on the recording. I would like to do the entire cycle again in 25 years, if I am still around, with a fresh approach.

Yes, that's what I thought. I'm sure in my Artaria bar 104 has NO accent while bar 105 does. Play it that way (what Mozart is indicating is have the usual beat 1 accent on bar 105 but not on beat 1 106 - instead accent beat 4 105) and you'll see the phrase has more integrity.

To make it clearer here's what Artaria is (I think):
If that's so then the Ausgabe editor has done a pretty poor job.

That is better. At some point, everything we study in manuscripts and various editions just open our own mind to the style and possibilities. What we do with that becomes something organic--hopefully!