The Acoustic Images of Quasi-Ensemble Music-Making in the Slow Section of Mozart’s Clavier Sonata in B-flat Major, К. 570

Abstract

Music for clavier from the 18th century graphically recreates the acoustic images of the musical instruments and models of quasi-ensemble music making of that period. This tradition of “reflected musical texts” was typical for the Baroque period, when piano music presented a quasi-ensemble score condensed into two-staff notation. The acoustic features of the European practice of music-making in ensembles have also been universally reflected in the musical graphics of the piano sonatas of the Viennese Classicists — Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. On the basis of the observations of this migration within the musical text of the slow movement of Mozart’s Sonata in B-flat minor, K. 570, the article demonstrates the modifications of the structural dialogic models of Baroque practice and the process of their transformation into unfolded narrative-contextual signs, the peculiar features of the musical scores, and the acoustic images of the 18th century music-making practice.