Stylistic Integrity, Performance Practice, and Mozart’s Cadenzas

Who cares about integrity these days? You do. We all do. In our “information age” we care that the integrity of the data pertaining to our electronic devices is uncorrupted to assure that those devices can function. We are concerned about the integrity of our food—where the carrots in our lunch came from, that they are unsullied by chemicals, etc., to assure that we get needed nutrition. However, there is little information for today’s musicians about the integrity of Mozart’s style—which is crucial to our understanding and fully experiencing his music.

Musicians who play his music realize there is “something” about it that is uniquely valuable. The more we play it and go into it the more we find that this “something” is the thorough systematic integrity of Mozart’s music that he deliberately designed through the way he composed it. Mozart said that he “worked harder than anyone” in composing his music. The result is his compositional style, in which every aspect of his music works together for its pure and powerful integrity.

Mozart’s style is both his compositional style (what he wrote) and performance style (sounding out what he wrote, in the way he specified how his music should sound). While the integrity of what Mozart wrote is given, musicians today are responsible for representing that integrity in their performance and teaching. Those who perform or teach Mozart’s concertos also need to know how this integrity of style exists fully in Mozart’s cadenzas.

Where can musicians today find information about Mozart’s style—both in general, and about his cadenzas—especially for performing with stylistic integrity where Mozart’s cadenzas are missing, such as for his six late concertos K.466, K. 467, K. 482, K. 491, K. 503 and K.537? Because the way Mozart composed his music is the source of its integrity, only his cadenzas or cadenzas in his style can uphold the integrity of his style in performances of his concertos. Thus where Mozart’s cadenzas are missing, musicians must supply cadenzas that are in Mozart’s style. To do this, today’s musicians need to know how to ascertain both the particular elements of Mozart’s individual style, as well as how he recast those elements in his cadenzas in a way that can be called his “cadenza style.”

Stylistic integrity and the study of performance practices

Because supplying cadenzas are often considered one of a number of “performance practices” that were common in Mozart’s time, it is not unusual for musicians to consider supplying cadenzas today as they were supplied in in his time. However, we must ask: do performance practices in Mozart’s time raise our awareness of his style and the integrity of his music, or, rather, were those practices never a part of Mozart’s musical style per se, and are they in fact damaging to the integrity of his music in our performances today?

Supplying cadenzas “stylistically” for Mozart’s concertos, which must be done where his are missing, is a deep-seated point of confusion for musicians today. This confusion stems from musicians’ mistaking “stylistic” to mean a general style, or way, of doing something (aka, a “practice”) rather than a musical style, in this case Mozart’s, which is necessary for stylistic performance of his music. A cadenza by Mozart (or a cadenza in Mozart’s cadenza style) shares the same stylistic elements with the movement (indeed the entire concerto) in which it appears, and thereby provides stylistic continuity and integrity for the concerto performance. Although performers in Mozart’s time supplied cadenzas by improvising them or play them from memory (as was then the customary mode of operation, style or practice), today, in contrast, when we speak of Mozart’s cadenza style we are referring to his unique individual musical style as evident in his cadenzas.

Although the two meanings of “style”—one being a mode of presentation, and the other being a composer’s musical style—are not similar, musicians today confuse them. The result of this confusion is that today’s musicians continue to supply cadenzas as they were presented according to performance practices of Mozart’s time, but those cadenzas are not in Mozart’s musical style. Unfortunately, this practice is extremely harmful to musicians’ representation of Mozart’s music since, by disrupting Mozart’s style in performances of his concertos, those cadenzas destroy the power of his music’s communication. The result is tragic: listeners are robbed of the experience and understanding of Mozart’s music.

Recognizing the harm that this style of performance practice causes is similar to our present-day recognition of past sociopolitical or economic practices that are found to be out of place when examined through the lens of today’s awareness. For example, study of traditional social practices may reveal motives and attitudes in the past that—even if they have been held for hundreds of years, and are thus venerated—are damaging, in which case those past attitudes are being refuted today. Especially in cases where persons or values have suffered from those attitudes, representatives or reminders (such as statues in public places) are being removed.

We can consider the practice of supplying cadenzas that are not in Mozart’s style for his concertos in a similar light. Although musicians today may attempt to justify supplying cadenzas that are not in Mozart’s style by saying, “performers have done so since Mozart’s time,” this argument is invalid because the reasons why performers in Mozart’s time supplied cadenzas in other-than-Mozart’s styles no longer exist. Performers then did not have access to Mozart’s cadenzas because Mozart didn’t share them (except with his sister and, occasionally, students). Thus other performers did not have knowledge of his cadenza style to create cadenzas accordingly even if they had wanted to (which the next point questions). Secondly, performers then were equally composer/improvisers who supplied cadenzas in their own individual styles to promote their reputation and livelihood. In a plethora of composer/performers in Mozart’s time, his compositional style was not fully known, nor the artistic value of it assumed as it is today.

Times have changed, as well as underlying circumstances and attitudes. The composer/performer tradition has died out. Today’s performers are not in the classical milieu and do not have, nor are expected to have, an individual compositional style for supplying cadenzas in the absence of Mozart’s. Musicians today who recognize the artistic value of Mozart’s music do not challenge it by asserting their personal whims or stylistic choices above Mozart’s in performances of his works.

The practical circumstance—that musicians in Mozart’s time didn’t have access to his cadenzas because he didn’t share them—is also different today. Today, we don’t have access to certain cadenzas by Mozart because they have been lost; yet many are available for our use and study. Another difference is that much of the music performed in Mozart’s time, including his concertos, was new—so new, in fact, that the ink was sometimes barely dry for a first performance. Musicians then had insufficient access to his music or time to study his particular style, whereas musicians today have ample opportunity to develop awareness of Mozart’s style, and supply cadenzas accordingly.

How to develop an awareness of Mozart’s cadenza style

The primary source for musicians’ study today to develop awareness of Mozart’s cadenza style is his existing cadenzas (especially autograph manuscripts where available, including online). Musicians today are fortunate that the study of Mozart’s music over two centuries since his time includes research in recent years by Mozart scholars who have identified certain aspects of his cadenza style through study of Mozart’s examples. Foremost have been Eva and Paul Badura-Skoda (Interpreting Mozart on the Keyboard, 1962, and Interpreting Mozart, 2008), who contributed seminal disclosures concerning basic formal organization (such as the three sections in Mozart’s first-movement cadenzas) and suggestions for gathering materials from the movement for use in creating cadenzas in Mozart’s style. Other scholars (for ex. Ellwood Derr and Ruth Rendelmann) have shed further light on proportional concerns and harmonic considerations, and theorists have investigated systematic constructions in Mozart’s music that characterize his compositions.

The 26 new cadenzas, lead-ins and embellishments offered on the Joy of Mozart site closely follow the style of Mozart’s own cadenzas in all previously defined ways, as well as according to new findings concerning their stylistic characteristics by the present author, including aspects of Mozart’s motivic constructions, his use of pitch and register in structural boundaries, and his unusual use (compared to that in other forms) of markings of expression, including for structural definition.

The present article is to be followed by Understanding Mozart’s Cadenza Style, and a Performer’s Guide for each group of the cadenzas, lead-ins and embellishments in Mozart’s style offered on the Joy of Mozart site for Mozart’s Concertos: K.466, K.467, K.482, K.491, K.503, and K.537. Essentially a three-part study of Mozart’s cadenza style, these articles are offered on the Joy of Mozart site to increase today’s musicians’ understanding and enjoyment of Mozart’s music!