The Fugal Moment
The Fugal Moment
On a Few Bars in Mozart’s Quintet in C Major, K. 515
Charles Rosen wrote, “although the C major Quintet is accepted as one of Mozart's greatest works, it is not generally recognized as perhaps the most daring of all.” This chapter examines Rosen's claim with some observations about a few notes in the midst of the first movement of the work, where the daring is most deeply felt. It focuses on the music that begins at measure 170, where the cello finally joins a cadencing in A minor that had begun a few bars earlier. Its deep E might at first suggest the incipit of another of those grand arpeggiations that have been setting new paragraphs in motion since the opening bars. However, it is nothing of the kind, but rather the incipit of a fugal subject.
Keywords: Mozart, C major Quintet, Enlightenment, classical music, Charles Rosen, fugue, fugal subject, incipit
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