Topoi and Narratives in Classical Instrumental Music: Ideen and il filo in Mozart’s Clavier Sonata KV 311/284c

Abstract

The article deals with the thematicism and thematic work in the first movement
of Mozart’s Piano Sonata KV 311/284c (1777). The analysis of thematical process in this
instrumental composition is examined under the angle of correlation between the contemporary
and historical approaches: 1. the correspondence of the music theory concepts that were part
of the lexicon of Wolfgang Amadeus and Leopold Mozarts (Ideen, il filo), with a complex of
musical-analytical terms of our time, formed both in line with the historically informed theory,
and in the context of the general theory of musical composition and form; 2. the comparison of
research methods of the musical-thematic plan in the English-language and Russian musicology
of the last half century.
Sonata KV311/284c does not pertain to the number of Mozart’s compositions that have already
been studied earlier from the point of view of the theory of topoi, which makes its analysis of
additional interest. The article defines the topoi in the first Allegro, demonstrates their distribution
in the sonata form, traces the logic of motivic and thematic transformations. The similarity of
the “plotline”, which is formed from the relationship of the elements of the musical text (tonal,
harmonic, melodic, textural, dynamic, etc.), began to be examined in musicology during the last
third of the 20th and the early 21st centuries through the prism of the concept of narrative analysis.
Such a plotline in Mozart’s sonata unfolds on two levels. The first is the typical for the sonata
form “deducibility” of all themes from the main theme, that is, a certain “obligatory tonefabula”
of the sonata composition (a term by Rostislav Berberov). The second level is the presence of an
individual “intonation fabula” (a term by Inna Barsova), which is realized through the correlation
of motives. In this plot, the archetypal narrative of comedy described by Almén (Byron Almén,
2003, 2008) gets its original embodiment.
Thus, when considering the works of Mozart, both narratological analysis and the identification
of a “common” classical musical language have significant prospects. At the same time, the
relationship between the concepts that have been brought into scholarly use in our time and the
concepts that have come from the 18th century is by no means unambiguous. The modern terms
“narrative” and “topos” primarily define typological models, while the terms taken from the
personal communication of Wolfgang and Leopold Mozarts fix individual of such models specific
compositions.

Keywords: piano sonatas by W. A. Mozart, Sonata KV 311/284c, musical narrative, musical
topoi of the 18th century