One day I was sitting in a house on a lake, and I had a notebook and a pen, hoping to feel ‘inspired’ to write something. And while I thought about it, I noticed a blur in the marble’d cover moving around. It was a pale spider. I was listening to this Quintet at the time, and since then the image has stuck. Because the opening theme really sounds like a spider crawling around, first with the short Mannheim rocket, then with the chromatic twirling, and one the ‘melody” goes, interrupting itself, and jumping into new keys. The main subject is developed to where it includes several new musical ideas, and patterns that make you think you’ve reached the end of the phrase but then he adds another transitional flourish. The major key melody is built out of patterns used in the first melody, which is the kind of motivic manipulation that Schoenberg would point out as being a major influence on his own chamber writing. Even though Mozart is marketed as easy listening, we take for granted that he was considered a very difficult and dense composer in his time, and this first movement shows a great example of that. The second movement is unusual in being a minuet, making you expect a light courtly sound, but he ‘stabs’ the music with diminished seventh chords. When it first happens, Mozart only writes two ‘stabs’. Later in the repeat, he writes three, which throws us off balance and is shocking even when you know it’s coming. It acts like a more theatrical affect. The second diminished chord is on four different pitches than the first one. When Mozart writes the third, he uses the last four pitches that weren’t used in the first two, playing all twelve pitches and creating a kind of harmonic ‘balance’ to make up for playing three instead of two. Not that Mozart would expect the listener to catch that at first, but it’s just another reminder that this isn’t music for babies or for falling asleep. As expected, though, the slow movement is a moment of respite. The use of five voices gives it a rich sound, and it feels like one of his church hymns. The peace breaks up with a pulsing ostinato that has dramatic interruptions with chromatic dissonant chords. After a short pause, a new ostinato with a syncopated rhythm comes in, with a lighter melody played over it, and turning into an opera duet with the kind of wordless-passion that Mozart excels at. The finale has a slow introduction, another pulse leading us in. The music builds up and up, falls down, but after a moment to drift away, we fly into a fun G major jig. The last surprise is the most pleasant; after so much brooding music, we can relax a bit and have a comedy ending. The first violin also gets a lot of show-off time, playing as if they’re the soloist to their own little concerto. In a fun stormy section he gives each instrument time to shine in counterpoint until the end.
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turnnoffyourmind
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