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
Hello from Vienna. I'm Daniel Adam Maltz.
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.
Let’s look at the opening bars of Mozart's Sonata in B Flat, K 570 and see what we find.
To understand why Mozart did this, you have to dig a little bit into the way the tone works on this piano. It has a quick decaying tone which means that when you play a key, it immediately starts to decay. If you listen closely to modern pianos, the sound swells and gets bigger before it starts to decay. Therefore, the two note slurs in the opening measures, and pickup notes — like the ones before the slurred turns — sound very choppy and cut off on modern pianos 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 elsewhere in Mozart’s music, 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.