Mozart's Jupiter Symphony

Graham said that the last movement of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is one
of his favorite pieces of music ever, so I checked it out. I really
dug it, and also noticed something interesting here:

http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg/8/81/IMSLP100325-PMLP01573-Mozart_Symphony_41_SCORE.pdf

Check out bar 330, last movement.

For those who have Spotify, the thing I'm talking about is around 10:08 here

http://open.spotify.com/track/0srZ3hrQB3eyeKMHIvwbEQ

So Mozart's a huge fan of augmented sixth chords for most of this
piece, which has one section repeated twice that features like 3 or
four German sixth chords in a row running down the spiral of fifths.
At this section, though, he does something different: he goes from C
major to Fm/Ab, before making the rather bold* move to Dbmaj/Ab, which
he resolves as a retonicized IV-I a few times before going to Ab7, and
resolving that to Cmaj/G.

It's interesting because he spells this Ab7 as an actual Ab7, e.g.
with a Gb instead of an F#, which would have made it a German sixth
chord. But, functionally speaking, he's using the Ab7 to "mimic" the
German sixth here, or is otherwise equivocating between the features
of Ab C Eb Gb and Ab C Eb F#. He's used this same sort of Ab+6 ->
Cmaj/G resolution a million times in this piece, which he's obviously
reprising here with the added "bold" detour to Dbmaj.

If you work it out in JI, the tonal shift from Cmaj to Fm to Dbmaj to
Abmaj to Ab7 has the Gb out as 64/45. And then the F# which would be a
leading tone to G is 45/32. So, I won't say this is exactly an example
of 2048/2025 tempering, as it's not really a direct comma pump, but
certainly interesting.

Are enharmonic respellings or equivocations like this very common in
classical music? I hadn't heard of anything like that before Schubert,
if memory serves correctly.

-Mike

*Well, for Mozart, it's bold anyway.

On 2 April 2012 08:41, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Graham said that the last movement of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is one
> of his favorite pieces of music ever, so I checked it out. I really
> dug it, and also noticed something interesting here:
>
> http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg/8/81/IMSLP100325-PMLP01573-Mozart_Symphony_41_SCORE.pdf
>
> Check out bar 330, last movement.
>
> For those who have Spotify, the thing I'm talking about is around 10:08 here
>
> http://open.spotify.com/track/0srZ3hrQB3eyeKMHIvwbEQ
>
> So Mozart's a huge fan of augmented sixth chords for most of this
> piece, which has one section repeated twice that features like 3 or
> four German sixth chords in a row running down the spiral of fifths.
> At this section, though, he does something different: he goes from C
> major to Fm/Ab, before making the rather bold* move to Dbmaj/Ab, which
> he resolves as a retonicized IV-I a few times before going to Ab7, and
> resolving that to Cmaj/G.
>
> It's interesting because he spells this Ab7 as an actual Ab7, e.g.
> with a Gb instead of an F#, which would have made it a German sixth
> chord. But, functionally speaking, he's using the Ab7 to "mimic" the
> German sixth here, or is otherwise equivocating between the features
> of Ab C Eb Gb and Ab C Eb F#. He's used this same sort of Ab+6 ->
> Cmaj/G resolution a million times in this piece, which he's obviously
> reprising here with the added "bold" detour to Dbmaj.
>
> If you work it out in JI, the tonal shift from Cmaj to Fm to Dbmaj to
> Abmaj to Ab7 has the Gb out as 64/45. And then the F# which would be a
> leading tone to G is 45/32. So, I won't say this is exactly an example
> of 2048/2025 tempering, as it's not really a direct comma pump, but
> certainly interesting.
>
> Are enharmonic respellings or equivocations like this very common in
> classical music? I hadn't heard of anything like that before Schubert,
> if memory serves correctly.
>
> -Mike
>
> *Well, for Mozart, it's bold anyway.
>
>

There’s a very similar passage in the slow movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony:

http://mcalley.net.au/examples/Beethoven_5.png

Beethoven spells the German 6th chord “correctly”, changing G flats to
F sharps for the actual chord. I suspect Mozart spelled it with the G
flat because there are F natural neighbouring notes under the G flats,
and if they were spelled as F sharps the neighbouring notes would have
been E sharps, so I think it’s a case of pragmatic spelling. And I
think Mozart would rather have put up with tuning differences between
G flat and F sharp (if any) than explain to the performers what an E
sharp is doing in the score.

Vaughan

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 12:12 AM, Vaughan McAlley <ockegheim@...>
wrote:
>
> There’s a very similar passage in the slow movement of Beethoven’s 5th
> symphony:
>
> http://mcalley.net.au/examples/Beethoven_5.png
>
> Beethoven spells the German 6th chord “correctly”, changing G flats to
> F sharps for the actual chord. I suspect Mozart spelled it with the G
> flat because there are F natural neighbouring notes under the G flats,
> and if they were spelled as F sharps the neighbouring notes would have
> been E sharps, so I think it’s a case of pragmatic spelling. And I
> think Mozart would rather have put up with tuning differences between
> G flat and F sharp (if any) than explain to the performers what an E
> sharp is doing in the score.
>
> Vaughan

Right, that makes sense. I think it's just interesting to note that
Mozart equivocated here between Gb and F#, which are two notes that
weren't the same back then.

-Mike