Coaching Mozart's String Quintet in E-Flat Major: Finding the Rhythmic Shape

[1] Years ago I had the distinct privilege of coaching five members of a major symphony orchestra in a rehearsal of the first movement of Mozart's String Quintet in E-FlatMajor, K. 614. Although I had spent many hours contemplating this movement when analyzing it for my doctoral dissertation, I wondered about which aspects (if any) of my very detailed analysis might be of value in preparing suggestions for the performers. I thought back to the words of Edward T. Cone, who suggested that the key to meaningful interpretation lies in understanding "the rhythmic life of a composition" (Cone 1968, 31). In the past few decades we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of analytical studies devoted to musical rhythm (particularly as it relates to pitch structure) and more authors are paying attention to how such analytical insights can inform and enliven musical performance.(1) It is the purpose of the present study to explore this area, using the first movement of K. 614 as a test case. My coaching of this movement with the string quintet was recorded, and several excerpts from that recording session are included as MP3 files to accompany the musical examples.[2] My methodology will follow Heinrich Schenker's ideas about rhythm and meter, as explained by Carl Schachter and William Rothstein.(2) In my discussion I hope to strike a balance between a consideration of higher-level rhythmic structures (phrase structure and hypermeter) and the treatment of rhythms that occur on the musical surface; indeed, I intend to illustrate the interaction of these. The principal goals of the analysis are: (1) the identification of a "basic rhythmic shape" for a given passage, which may be enhanced in performance by slight adjustments in tempo, intensity, or duration (Wallace Berry's terms tempo and articulation (Berry 1989, 2-3)); (2) the exploration of how this basic shape interacts with other materials, and how this interaction may affect performance; and (3) a consideration of rhythmic structure in relation to pitch structure, including the explanation of passages in which the phrase rhythm contains an irregularity due to the compression or expansion of measure groups, and possible responses to these irregularities in performance.[3] Before going any further, I offer several caveats pertaining to my approach. First, by my concept of a basic rhythmic shape, I do not mean to make complex music inappropriately simple; rather, the basic rhythmic shape acts as a point of reference for the discussion of a particular passage. Second, I do not claim that my performance suggestions to the quintet constitute the ultimate way to perform a given passage; I merely suggest one valid way among many. Third, I agree with William Rothstein and Joel Lester when they caution us that not all analytical findings could or should be projected in a musical performance (Rothstein 1995, 238; Lester 1995, 210); I hope to avoid matters that, while of interest to the analyst, are simply too arcane to be underscored by the performers. Finally, some readers might identify my interpretive suggestions as the very things that an intuitive performer might do solely by intuition. I have no problem with this view, for I believe that analytical findings can often serve to justify largely intuitive performance decisions.(3)[4] The beginning of the first movement of the Quintet in E-Flat, K. 614, is given in Example 1. An MP3 of the quintet's performance from my coaching session is provided. The opening (measures 1-4) juxtaposes two contrasting ideas in two different registers: x, a hunt topic featuring an upper neighbor-note pattern in the one-line octave (measures 1-2); and y, a more refined melody descending from the two-line to the one-line octave (measures 3-4). How should my performers approach idea x, given the high redundancy of its accented upper neighbor-note figure? A possible answer may be found if we consider idea x in its larger context, as it relates to idea y (whose interpretation is clearer). …