Flawed Masterpieces (That We Love Anyway) Mozart's Symphony No. 39

[00:00:00]Hello friends, this is Davewitz, executive editor at classicstoday.com, here with flawed masterpieces that we love anyway. And today we're talking about Mozart Symphony number 39 in Eflat. What a gorgeous symphony this is.

[00:00:19]It's so beautiful with its fabulous writing for clarinets and it's amazing tunes. It's simply delicious until you get to the ending. Oh my god, how unsatisfying that is. The ending is and then you're waiting for the ending.

[00:00:38]But that was the ending. It's a problem and it's part of a larger problem. A problem that actually Mozart never quite came to grips with. You know, he's a genius, but even geniuses have their moments. And this was Mozart's. that is what to do with second half repeats to make the music like sensible. Uh the there's a really interesting aesthetic issue here. I know some of you think that I just stick up these titles for like clickbait purposes, but that's not true. Well, it's partly true. I mean, yes, I want people to watch the video, but but more than that, I want to talk about real aesthetic issues. you know, issues with music that we listen to and love. So that we listen to it thoughtfully rather than mindlessly because mindlessness is not good.

[00:01:32]Thoughtfully is good. So here's the aesthetic issue that Mozart was grappling with and didn't really in the way that Heiden and Beethoven really did.

[00:01:43]The form of sonata music, sonata style music in Mozart's day required conventionally that movements in sonata form consisted of two halves, both repeated. It was called binary form. It was a hold over from the earlier Baroque era. Um, and it it, you know, it made sense because, you know, if you're going to get a bunch of people together to play something, you want to make sure that they have enough stuff to do and enough, you know, it spends time doing it. Um, and hearing everything twice is actually not a bad idea if it's good music and and it's enjoyable. It has a symmetry and a formal balance that's really very satisfying. Um, and because it's so satisfying and so symmetrically lovely, um, lots of things in classical music come in pairs. The themes for theme and variation movements come in two halves, both repeated. Rondo movements usually have themes that are in two halves, both repeated. And this writ large became the structure of whole movements in two halves, both repeated.

[00:02:57]Um, and that's fine until until Hayen and Mozart and Beethoven learned to make abstract orchestral music dramatic used to you learned to to handle tonality, key transition as a way of pushing the music in an extremely goaldirected fashion after developments and and and incidents And then that almost a narrative structure in the music. And so it reaches an inevitable climax, a logical climax that demands resolution with a recapitulation in the home key of the movement you're in. All of these things make the music move from point A to point B. And even if it's going to return to point A, it's not returning in exactly the same form to point A.

[00:03:55][snorts] And Mozart understood that as well as anybody. And his music is extremely goaldirected.

[00:04:02]The problem happens when you reach that goal [snorts] and then all of a sudden you have to go back to to the beginning and start all over again. Now I in the first half of a sonata movement that repeat isn't so terrible. You don't always need it. As we talked about with respect to Beethoven 7th, for example, in the first movement, some of the repeats are badly managed. Beethoven's is badly managed. [snorts] And but usually because the movement hasn't gone so far yet in its journey to its eventual goal, going back to the beginning and repeating the basic material, thematic material, um, doesn't do so much damage. It actually sometimes helps to get the tunes in your head. And then after they develop and things happen and then it all resolves at the end, you feel, oh, that's really great.

[00:04:55]It works beautifully. But to to to get to the ending and then go back to the middle to the beginning of the development section, which is where it goes back to when you have a second half repeat, um, can be really difficult. I mean, the first composer who wrote music that really intended that you do all the repeats was Hayen. He managed to make sure that either the return to the middle was a surprise or it had a logical somehow the syntax made sense and the ending made sense. That was, you know, part of his genius. He actually gave that some thought. Beethoven um just eliminated second half repeats entirely as did Heiden at the end of his career. They threw them out. They said it's just ridiculous. Um it's not it's not giving us anything. Mozart never did. Mozart, in addition to a wonderful ability to dramatize his music, had an incredible love of symmetry. He liked that symmetry. He enjoyed those two halves both repeated. He loved the fact that the ending that he would come to at the very end was going to be the ending of the whole work and it was all going to get repeated and he didn't care.

[00:06:13][snorts] The problem was that there are moments in Mozart where a second half repeat is absolutely dreadful idea. The finale of the Jupiter Symphony is like the case in point because it's a fabulous contrauntal buildup at the end.

[00:06:31]glorious peration. I mean, it just couldn't be more fulfilling. And then to have it end the way it ends, dumping it up with the fanfares going and all that and to go back to the middle and do it again. Uh, just an awful idea. An absolutely awful idea. But Mozart didn't care. He just didn't care. He said, "Okay, you know, it's supposed to have two halves, both repeated, and they will." But in the 39th symphony, the E flat symphony, my god, I mean, it just stops in the middle of nowhere. However, if you go back and do the repeat, it works really, really well. I mean, that ending seems designed to take the repeat because the beginning of the development section is the same as the ending of the whole symphony. is going dump and then the development begins with D.

[00:07:25]So it really really works if you take that repeat because the ending doesn't sound like an ending. It sounds like it ends mid-phrase and going back actually completes the phrase. So it sounds just totally right. Unfortunately, if you do that, the the ending whether you do it once or twice is totally unsatisfying.

[00:07:48]I mean, if you do it once, at least you could say, "Well, maybe it's kind of a joke. It just stops." You know, it's all right. But if you go back and then do it again, it sounds even worse the second time around because now you really expect it to go back and finish itself.

[00:08:04]And it seems not a joke, just a mistake.

[00:08:07]It's just just abrupt and it just just stops in the middle of nowhere. And I the first time I heard it, I fully expected the music to continue with something else. Mozart was not big on writing kodas, you know, he didn't want the additional stuff. Once he recapitulated and everything was nice and neat and symmetrical, he tended to just like say, "Okay, that's enough.

[00:08:29]It's over." [snorts] Um, and that was it. So, so you know, this is one of those symphonies that has like a a real issue.

[00:08:43]I mean, number 40, the finale of 40 has a similar issue. you know, goes back and does that twice.

[00:08:55]Not so good either, but not nearly as bad as as number 39 because 40 actually ends very satisfyingly. I mean, the ending is definitely the ending, but 39, nope. It's just hanging out there in space someplace. And while you could argue, like I said, that it's it's a bit of Mozartian humor, um, I don't think so. I just don't think so. It doesn't sound like a joke, it doesn't have that haha character at all. It just it just runs out of gas and that's it. And it's it's it's it's a it's a it's a flaw.

[00:09:33]It's a weakness. You know, Mozart had them. They all did. Um, and it's the only one I can detect in what is otherwise absolutely stunning masterpiece, you know, amazing amazing symphony. And it arises from this this conflict between the the two aesthetic principles, the idea of binary movements with both repeated and the increasingly dramatic goal-directed tonally oriented sonata style. Um, Heiden Mozart saw Heiden and Beethoven worked it out.

[00:10:09]Mozart probably would have, I suspect, you know, given when he died and fact that he was an insane genius, but he didn't. He didn't get there. And Symphony number 39 is evidence of the fact that he didn't get there. So, keep on listening, friends. Thanks for joining me. Take care.