Slur Markings: Understanding Mozart's Intent
Mozart wrote more than just notes. He wrote detailed articulation marks – like slurs – that dramatically affect the interpretation of his music. The unique characteristics of Classical-era pianos impacted his use of slurs. Let's take a look.
TRANSCRIPT
Today, we're talking about slurs.
If you look through his music, Mozart had a very detailed way of using slurs. In fact, it's very difficult to find a measure in his music where he didn't notate some sort of slur. Clearly they were just as important as the notes themselves.
And, we can read in his father Leopold Mozart's “Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing,”
“Among the musical signs the slur is of no little importance, although many pay but little attention to it.... How greatly the slurring and detaching distinguishes a melody. Therefore, not only must the written and prescribed slurs be observed with the greatest exactitude but when, as in many a composition, nothing at all is indicated, the player must himself know how to apply the slurring and detaching tastefully and in the right place.”
Slurs were an indispensable part of the musical language of the 18th and early 19th Centuries.
I would like to take a look at the opening bars of Mozart's Rondo in A Minor, K 511 and see what we find.
Now, to understand why Mozart did this, you have to dig a little bit into how this piano works. It [has] a quick decaying tone which means — when you hear a tone — it's immediately decaying. If you listen closely to modern pianos, the tone swells and gets bigger a little bit before it starts to decay.
Therefore, runs like in bar four – where we have two note slurs – and also unmarked pickup notes – like to bars two and three – sound very choppy and cut off because the sound hasn't had time to grow yet.
So, most modern pianists will compromise and make a very long, legato singing line – which the modern piano does very well – except that's not what Mozart wrote. What Mozart wrote is this...
[Music playing]
If we look later in this piece, it's fascinating to see how detailed he was with his slurs. It was clearly a part of his language, and if we ignore them, then we're losing what Mozart was trying to say.