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Hello -- I am working on Mozart's Sonata K310. I have never played anything quite like it in terms of emotional intensity. The first movement leaves me emotionally drained, and I have found that I am practically obsessed with getting this piece down.

I found myself wondering what it is about this piece that is so emotionally wrenching. So I did a Google search -- but did not find much info. I did learn that KV310 is only one of 2 or 3 Sonatas that Mozart wrote in a minor key. I also learned that Mozart composed KV310 around the time that his mother died (which would explain alot frankly).

Is there anyone in the forum that may have a bit more historical information about KV310 that you would like to share?

Thanks -- I enjoy this forum immensely.
Virginia from Virginia

Maynard Solomon has some brief discussion of this Sonata in his book on Mozart, both historical and musical; Solomon, Maynard. Mozart, a Life. New York, Harper Perennial, 1995.

As well as some well-chosen descriptive words describing the mood of various moments in the Sonata, he states that it cannot be exactly determined whether the Sonata was composed just before or just after his mother's death, "... but [...] the issue of maternal/filial fusion and separation dominated the period of its composition no less than the issue of a rupturing paternal/filial symbiosis. The adagio/andante archetype, whose first stirrings date from 1773, when the Mozart family structure began to disintegrate, thus found its exemplary form during the stormy process of Mozart's attempt to separate from both his mother and his father, and from the combined parent figure that confronted him in fantasy as a monolithic entity." (p. 203).
etc., etc.

You might want to get hold of the book to read more about this Sonata.

Regards,

Dear Bruce,

Thanks for your helpful comments and the book reference. I've ordered it on-line.

My interest in and passion for this Sonata is unlike anything I've yet encountered musically, so I want to learn all I can about its composition.

The only thing my piano teacher told me when she assigned it was (to paraphrase) "This piece I think requires a certain level of maturity to play it."

Well, since I'm older than dirt I guess she thought I could muddle through it. :p

Bruce, I always appreciate your posts and many others who post regularly. Your comments are very helpful and instructive to those of us who are not as musically advanced (age notwithstanding)!

Best regards to all,
Virginia from Virginia

Virginia ;

Thank you for your kind comments.

I should add that not all musicologists look with total favour on Solomon's book on Mozart. Solomon was, also, the founder of Vanguard Records in 1950. You can read more about him here :

Solomon

Regards,

A very comprehensive biography of Mozart is “W. A. Mozart” by Hermann Abert (English transaction by Stewart Spencer). Here is a pointer to a review of this biography in the New York Review of Books by Charles Rosen in which he states that this is “not only the most satisfactory but also the most readable and entertaining work on Mozart available in English.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20694

I agree with Virginia that Mozart’s A minor sonata K. 310 is a really amazing work with tragic emotional intensity. It is a great piece to play.

A companion piece to this work is Mozart’s sonata for piano and violin in E minor, k. 304. The fact that both of these dark works were written around the time of the death of Mozart’s mother leads may not have been a coincidence. The vast majority of Mozart’s works are written in a major key. However, the relatively rare minor key works Mozart wrote include some of his best music.

The drama in the development section of the first movement is accentuated by the fact that Mozart uses the dynamic markings ff and pp. It is rare for him to do this in his solo piano music (the pianos of Mozart’s time did not have the dynamic range of modern instruments); a single f and p are what one expects to see in Mozart’s sonatas. This development section is already anticipating the raging fury Beethoven would unleash in his minor key sonatas.

One of the interesting things about this sonata is that after Mozart indicates piano for the secondary theme in C major, there are no more dynamic markings for the rest of the exposition. The same applies to the recapitulation in which the secondary theme is in A minor. If we are to follow Mozart’s dynamic markings, both the exposition and recapitulation should be played piano from the appearance of the secondary theme to the conclusion. However, this is not how the piece is generally played and not the way I learned it either. Pianists almost always introduce some dynamic variation after the secondary theme appears, and the ending is usually played forte. Although this is a clear violation of Mozart’s dynamic markings, it adds variety and might make the piece more dramatic. It has always been difficult for me to reconcile situations like this where the composer has clearly written that a piece should be played one way but so many people have performed it another way that people pretty much expect it to be performed in the manner contrary to the composer’s notations on the score.

Otis and Bruce,

Thanks so much for your comments and references!

Bruce, I'll never play another one of my sixties Vanguard LPs again without thinking about Maynard Solomon and the Vanguard Label in an entirely different light!

Otis, I had not seen that NYTimes Book Review by Charles Rosen -- what a scholar he is! I'm currently wading through Rosen's book "The Classical Style" which covers Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven" (and he acknowledges the controversy on how one defines "classical" and defends his decisions). I highly recommend it -- although admittedly much of it is over my head, because I simply am not familiar with many of the works he discusses. This book won the National Book Award in 2005, and should probably be on the reading list of every serious classical musician.

However, Rosen's book does not really talk to Mozart's psyche. The closest he comes is in his discussion of how Mozart deals with "weight" in a finale to a work written in a minor key -- where he writes (a direct quote from the book):

"On the rare occasions when Mozart chose to end in minor -- that is with some of the harmonic tension still echoing in the mind when the music is over -- he always compensated for this by an added simplicity of phrasing and articulation, as in the E minor Sonata for Piano and Violin K.304 and the A minor and C minor Sonatas for piano, K.310 and K 457, or by the sectional variation-form as in the D minor Quarter K.421 and the C minor Piano Concerto K.491. And none of these immediately follows music as complex and as anguised as the first three movements and the introduction to the finale of the G minor Quintet."

Your responses have given new meaning to the phrase, "Seek and you shall find!"

I'll keep reading --- and practicing -- and musing about Mozart's psyche and the complexity of parent/child relationships.

Many thanks.

Virginia from Virginia

The wife of a former teacher of mine wrote this:

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/american_imago/v064/64.1nagel.html

Seems like it's exactly what you're looking for.

You'll need to go through your own university or other public library to get it though.

Dear Kriesler,

YES -- this is exactly what I've been looking for -- some thoughtful discussion of and insight into Mozart's psyche at the time he wrote this Sonata -- which is very powerful emotionally. It truly speaks to me like no other.

I'm currently studying piano at the Levine School of Music -- and we have a pretty good library in Washington, DC -- so I am definitely going to track down this journal article.

Thanks so very very much for taking the time to post the link, Kriesler!

I can hardly wait to get my hands on it.

Virginia from Virginia

Virginia --

I love this sonata too -- my favorite Mozart solo piano work. I played it on my senior recital in college. As simple and straightforward as the notes are in the first movement, I found this one very difficult to master. The second movement is sublime, especially if you have good legato technique. And the finale is full of dark, propulsive energy; even in the sweet major key interlude in the middle, it pushes relentlessly forward to the powerful, pointed conclusion.

You're going to love this piece even more when you get it under fingers. Meantime, enjoy the journey.

Emanuel Ravelli,

I could not agree more! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

BTW, I sent you a private post --I think we are neighbors (geographically speaking).

Virginia from Virginia