On 16 Jul 2002, at 17:37, David H. Bailey wrote: > I am very happy for everybody who pretends to be deaf like Beethoven > when they compose. I am not like that. I am not a Mozart. I can't > conceive of scores complete in my head and write them down perfectly so > I don't ever want to change a note. (Come to think of it, Mozart > couldn't do that either, I distinctly remember seeing some corrections > and revisions in some manuscript facsimiles.)
Mozart preferred to compose at his piano, according to things he wrote in his letters. He also composed in his head. As to corrections in the autographs, yes, there are myriads of them, including entire complete movements that have been crossed out and discarded, or very extensive completely composed passages. But don't confuse corrections during notation in the manuscript with the act of composition. Creating the autograph was a matter of writing down what was already composed. In that act, Mozart often changed his mind and revised and rewrote what was already composed. And even his writing down was in stages. He almost always began with the violin and the bass line (top and bottom staves of the customary Italian score order of the time), and then filled in the inner voices after completing the outer lines completely. In sections where the violin or contrabass/cellos weren't playing, he'd put in the corresponding parts in the winds, etc., melody and bass. After that pass through the score, he'd return and orchestrate the inner parts. On the other hand, he'd often notate some of the inner voices during the initial pass, especially (I have always presumed) when he wanted to remember particular good ideas that occurred to him while writing the skeleton score. And many works that are today called fragments show this process interrupted at precisely the point after Mozart had notated just enough for the score to recall to *his* mind the completed compositional idea. It's an important principle: composers write down in early stages not the complete compositional conception, but sufficient information to insure that they can recall the complete conception at a later date. As works became more complex, composers needed more stages in the "compositional" process (using the term loosely to apply to the whole process from initial idea to finished score). Wagner wrote large parts of the Ring Cycle up to the 1st Act of Siegfried 10 years or more before he finished. And he regretted having written it in a short score that was not complete enough for him to recall everything he'd had in mind at the time. When he returned to composing, he used more complete scores and more intermediate score types. Notation is a tool, a tool for memory, a tool for revealing relationships, a tool for conveying a musical conception (both to other people and to the original composer!). Given that we are all individuals, we are all likely to use it differently. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
