Mozart's Archaic Endings: A Linguistic Critique

Abstract

Rhetorical studies of Mozart have assumed a rationalist conception of language, ignoring the empiricist model that actually dominated the Enlightenment. The two models, comparable structurally to the stile antico and style galant, collide in Mozart's learned finales. A study of three finales, from the Mass in C minor, the Concerto in E♭, K.449, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, shows how Mozart negotiated irreducible contradictions within Enlightenment thought by switching between the two models.

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Stephen Rumph

Stephen Rumph ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Washington, Seattle.