Mozart in Vienna: The Final Decade by Simon P. Keefe (review)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, like practically all composers during the 1700s, was also a performer. In Mozart's case, he was one of the most highly regarded keyboardists in Europe, particularly renowned for his improvisations—an activity that fuses music creation with performance. To quote one of Mozart's early biographers, Franz Niemetschek: "We did not know what we should admire most … the extraordinary compositions, or the extraordinary playing" (Wir wußten in der That nicht, was wir mehr bewundern sollten, ob die ausserordentliche Komposition, oder das ausferordentliche Spiel; p. 9 [Keefe's translation], quoted from Franz Niemetschek, Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart [Prague, 1798; repr., Munich: Bibliothek zeitgenössicher Literatur, 1987], 27). A new biography of the composer, Mozart in Vienna: The Final Decade by Simon P. Keefe, addresses how both aspects of Mozart's career intertwine in his music.

The book focuses primarily on how Mozart's activities and interactions with performance and performing informed the music he composed during the final decade of his life. It covers pieces that Mozart composed for himself, those he wrote for specific singers and virtuoso instrumentalists, and those he composed for amateur performers, specifically sonatas and chamber works destined for publication. Keefe shows that "performance was an ever-present concern" for Mozart (p. 7) and that his "dual role as performer and composer" (p. 5) were "mutually reinforcing" (p. 9) and "affected [his] compositional processes" (p. 7). The music Mozart composed during the final decade of his life was "designed to promote talents"— his own and those of others (p. 606). Mozart's scores, the author argues, are then better understood as guides for, or in some cases reflections of, successful performances rather than "perfectly chiseled, definitively finished works" (p. 15): "By returning to autograph scores, early published editions, and performance copies, and bringing other performing contexts and concerns to the fore we begin to recapture—or at least to rethink— some of the … decisions taken by Mozart as performer-composer" (p. 606).

In his thorough and methodical examination of these scores, Keefe challenges common assumptions about Mozart and his music. The opening chapters show that, rather than behaving rashly, Mozart was in fact quite pragmatic when he first arrived in Vienna. For instance, he composed the Wind Serenade in E-flat Major, K. 375, for a friend's sister, knowing that Joseph II's chamberlain would probably be present at her name day celebrations; Mozart later revised the piece to fit the instrumentation of the emperor's personal chamber group.

Keefe also offers detailed analyses of the concerts that Mozart designed for himself. He demonstrates how the repertoire that Mozart selected for his first public concert (3 March 1782) promoted himself as a gifted keyboardist and improviser and as a composer of both operatic and instrumental music. The composer "took minimal musical risks" by including the Piano Concerto in D Major, K. 175, which had received popular acclaim in the past, and the best arias from Idomeneo (p. 39). In contrast, Mozart's 1 April 1784 concert departed from customary Viennese practices by including a rare public performance of a chamber work, the Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452. As a result, the event showcased Mozart in multiple roles: composer, soloist with orchestra, pianist within a chamber ensemble, and (during an extended improvisation) solo performer.

Throughout the book, Keefe repeatedly demonstrates that Mozart was very concerned with timbre and the interplay between individual musical lines. Late additions to manuscripts reveal that the composer often adjusted dynamics or inserted, removed, or simplified instrumental parts. Numerous music examples in the book reveal these adjustments. Mozart seems to have paid particular attention to the sonic impact of openings and endings of pieces, as these passages often incorporate "special timbral, textural, dynamic, melodic and harmonic effects" (p. 17).

Sources also suggest that Mozart frequently "embraces diversity rather than uniformity...