Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The theoretical and musical background to the relationship between the piano and orchestra in Mozart's concertos.

The interactive relationship between the piano and the orchestra in Mozart's concertos is an issue central to the appreciation of these great works, but one that has not yet received serious attention, a gap which this new study seeks to remedy by exploring the historical implications and hermeneutic potential of dramatic dialogue.
The author shows that invocations of dramatic dialogue are deeply ingrained in late-eighteenth-century writings on instrumental music, and he develops this theme into an original and highly positive view of solo/orchestra relations in Mozart's concertos. He analyses behavioural patterns in the concertos and links them to theoretical discussion oflate-eighteenth-century drama and to analogous relational development in Mozart's operas Idomeneo, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni.
Mozart's piano concertos emerge afresh from this new approach as an extraordinary medium of Enlightenment, as significant in their way as the greatest late-eighteenth-century operatic and theatrical works.
SIMON P. KEEFE is James Rossiter Hoyle Chair of Music, University of Sheffield.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction (p. 1)
• 1 Heinrich Christoph Koch's Commentary on the Late-Eighteenth-Century Concerto Towards an Understanding of Dialogue, Drama and Solo/Orchestra Relations in Mozart's Piano Concertos (p. 9)
• 2 Antoine Reicha's Dialogue (p. 24)
• 3 Mozart's Piano Concertos and Late-Eighteenth-Century Dramatic Dialogue a Study of Competition and Co-Operation in Three First Movements (p. 45)
• 4 Towards a Dialogic Apotheosis the First Movements of Mozart's Piano Concertos K. 271-491 and Beyond (p. 75)
• 5 From Opera to Concerto to Opera (1780-1787) (p. 101)
• 6 Dialogue and Drama in Mozart's Three-Movement Concerto Cycles (p. 147)
• Select Bibliography (p. 187)
• General Index (p. 201)
• Index of Mozart's Works Discussed in This Book (p. 204)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Nearly every discussion of Mozart's piano concertos mentions "dialogue" as a significant and even generative concept. Keefe's book provides historical context for such discussion, starting with treatises by Heinrich Christoph Koch, who wrote at the end of the 18th century, and Antoine Reicha, who wrote during the 19th. Reicha's formal consideration of musical dialogue and his derivation of dialogue types provide much of the impetus for the present book. Keefe (The Queen's Univ., Belfast) draws parallels between action in Mozart's concertos and action in 18th-century drama. He goes on to trace the cross-pollination of Mozart's concertos and operas in more detail, perhaps, than has been revealed before in a single place. However, he views everything in the peculiar light of dialogue as a compositional technique; this limits the book's prospective audience. Cuthbert Girdlestone's ancient Mozart's Piano Concertos (Eng. tr., 1948) remains the starting place for study of these works. The present book may be recommended to music historians and other specialists at the graduate level and above. B. J. Murray University of Alabama