Part of the Listen to This Audio Guide
Every note that Mozart set to paper can be viewed at the site of the Digital Mozart Edition, a collaboration between the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg and the Packard Humanities Institute. In the online version of the New Mozart Edition, you can search for music by genre or Köchel number.
The extremes of Mozart's world go from the obscene canon "Leck mich im Arsch" (p. 71) ...
Chorus Viennensis, from the Philips Complete Mozart Edition.
...to the finale of the "Jupiter" Symphony, which has a curiously similar principal theme:
Charles Mackerras conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Linn Records 308.
In this recording of the Andante from Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, the "beguiling four-bar melody" to which I refer in the book (p. 73) occurs at 3:54, in the major, and at 9:44, in the minor:
Lara St. John, violin, and Scott St. John, viola, with Colin Jacobsen conducting The Knights; Ancalagon Records [available Oct. 2010].
Here is a passage from the early opera La finta semplice in which the characters Giacinta and Ninetta sing "Perdono," asking for forgiveness (p. 77):
Ann Murray and Eva Lind, with Peter Schreier conducting the Kammerorchester "Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach," from the Philips Complete Mozart Edition.
The passage is remarkably similar, in textual and musical terms, to the great moment in The Marriage of Figaro when the Count asks for the forgiveness of the Countess (pp. 77-78):
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Count and Kiri te Kanawa as the Countess, with Karl Böhm conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.
"O wie angstlich," Belmonte's tensely lyrical aria from The Abduction from the Seraglio, sung by the great German tenor Fritz Wunderlich in a vintage TV appearance (p. 79):
Here is the complexly layered passage from the Adagio of the late-period String Quintet in D, in which Charles Rosen discerns "four completely different kinds of rhythm" (p. 80):
The Brentano Quartet, with Huang Hsin-Yun, viola; Aeon 747.
In his final year, Mozart completed the Piano Concerto No. 27, with its entrancing Larghetto:
Richard Goode and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; Nonesuch 79608.
The classic "lament" figure — the descending pattern that I discuss in Chapter 2 — reappears in the overture to Mozart's Don Giovanni, immediately after the colossal opening chords (pp. 82-83):
René Jacobs conducting the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra; Harmonia Mundi 901964.66.
Here is the scene of Don Giovanni's demise, in a historic 1954 performance from the Salzburg Festival. Cesare Siepi is the Don, Dezső Ernster is the Commendatore, Otto Edelmann is Leporello, and Wilhelm Furtwängler conducts.
