Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

As we know, a musical composition does not by nature have the presence of a picture, a sculpture, a novel, or a movie. It lays dormant in the score and needs to be made audible. It is the performer’s obligation to kiss it awake. “Bring the works to life without violating them,” was Edwin Fischer’s advice.   First, I’d like to explain what Mozart means to me. He is certainly not the charmingly restricted Rococo boy wonder that he may have appeared to be some hundred years ago. I consider him one of the very greatest musicians in the comprehensive humanity of his da Ponte operas, in the universe of his piano concertos, in his string quintets (which are matched only by those of Schubert), in his concert arias and his last symphonies. For the pianist, his piano concertos are one of the peaks of the repertoire; they reach from tenderness and affection to the border of the demonic, from wit to tragedy.    How may we characterize Mozart’s music? Considering the character of a composer, we are prone to assuming that the person and the composer are an equation. Yet the music of a great composer transcends the personal. There is a mysterious contradiction: while the person is clearly limited, the mastery and the expressive force of the great musician is well-nigh unlimited. In his work, Mozart, according to Busoni, presents the solution with the riddle. Among Busoni’s Mozart aphorisms, we find the following: “He is able to say a great many things, but he never says too much.” And: “His means are uncommonly copious, but he never overspends.” To find such a measure of perfection within a great composer is particularly rare as it is usually the followers, the minor masters, who smooth out whatever the great ones have offered in ruggedness and uncouthness.    Not that his contemporaries noticed such perfection. Time and again, they considered his music to be unnatural, full of unnecessary complication and unreasonable contrast. The exception was Haydn, who pronounced Mozart to be the greatest of all composers.    We find amazing boldness particularly in late Mozart. Think of the second movement of his F major Sonata KV 533, or the beginning of the development section in the G minor Symphony’s finale. It would be a mistake to exaggerate such passages in performance — they speak for themselves. The transitional bars in the G minor Symphony almost amount to a twelve-tone row — there is just one note missing (the G).           In my contemplation of Mozart, I like to start not with musical speech but with singing. Once more, Busoni finds the right words: “Unmistakably, Mozart’s music proceeds from singing, which results in an unceasing melodic production that shimmers through his compositions like the beautiful female contours through the folds of a light dress.” Mozart was a cantabile composer. Not unreasonably, he bears the reputation of being the greatest inventor of melodies next to Schubert. (Permit me to mention in this context a third name, that of Handel.) We can only register with astonishment the fact that there were contemporaries who complained about a lack of cantabile in Mozart’s operas. The operatic traits in his piano concertos, the characterizing incisiveness of many of his themes have been frequently noted.   Not without good reason, the pianist Andras Schiff has called Mozart’s concertos a combination of opera, symphony, chamber music, and piano music. There we imagine a singer singing, but the operatic also includes the characters embodied on stage, the action of temperaments, the lifeblood. The pianist, like the singers, operates within a firm musical frame. Mozart, in his letters, describes his rubato playing as occurring within a firm rhythmical scheme. To be sure, there also will be some modifications of tempo, but they should remain conductible. I know there were scarcely conductors in Mozart’s time. Tempi therefore had to be stricter, you had to play together, and one could often not expect more than one run-through rehearsal, if any. Performances in Haydn’s or Mozart’s time must have been quite different from what we expect today — a rather cursory experience, a rough outline of a work without the refinement of a well-studied concert.    In Mozart’s correspondence, singing and cantabile are frequently mentioned. How does one sing on the piano? Continuous finger legato is not the answer. Singing has to be articulated. We know that the piano literature offers examples of cantabile passages played by the thumb or the fifth finger. Here and elsewhere, the pedal will be of considerable assistance. I know there are pedal purists. I am not one of them.    Cantabile calls for continuity. Mozart’s father Leopold, one of the leading musical authorities of the eighteenth century, writes in his Treatise on the Fundamental Rules of Violin Playing, known as the Violin School: “A singer who would pause with every little figure, breathe in, and perform this or that note in a particular fashion would unfailingly provoke laughter. The human voice pulls itself spontaneously from one note to the next… And who doesn’t know that vocal music should at all times be the focus of attention of all instrumentalists for the sake of being as natural as possible?” According to Mozart’s father, the bow should remain on the violin wherever there is no real break, so that one bowing can be connected with the next. (Leopold Mozart’s Violin School appeared first in 1756, the year Wolfgang was born. My citations are from the third edition, published in 1787.)    Evidently, an all-too-fragmented delivery that dissects the cohesion of the music will not do justice to this ideal. Which doesn’t mean that we may ignore Mozart’s articulation marks at will. I have always done my best to respect them all.   Cantabile themes are most likely happening in the piano’s upper middle range. This is one of the reasons why I prefer the modern piano to a Hammerklavier, notwithstanding the peculiar charms of the older instrument. On our pianos,