CMPCP/IMR Performance Research Seminars are sponsored by the AHRC Research
Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice and the Institute of
Musical Research. For further information see www.cmpcp.ac.uk/imr2014.html.
Completing Mozart fragments: on musicology and forgetting
Timothy Jones (Royal Academy of Music)
24 March 2014
17.00 - 18.30
Room 102, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1
Our understanding of Mozart's fragmentary compositions has been transformed
over the last twenty years by the work of Alan Tyson, Ulrich Konrad and
others. While Tyson's paper studies raised fundamental questions about the
dates of many fragments, Konrad's research has led to a re-evaluation of
Mozart's approach to 'quality control' in some of his unfinished music.
Scholarly findings on this topic have prompted musicians to attempt new
completions of Mozart fragments. Such completions can sit uncomfortably on
categorical boundaries: neither pure musicological research, nor - in a
conventionally understood sense - composition, they nevertheless have
something in common with the performance demands inherent in Mozart's music
(such as the need to fill gaps in the score with cadenzas and Eingänge in
his concerto movements). In this talk Timothy Jones considers the issue of
balancing capriccio and musicological knowledge within a reconstructive
sprezzatura, drawing on some of own recent attempts to complete Mozart
fragments, including the Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra, some late
chamber music fragments, and two movements from the Requiem.
Timothy Jones is the Deputy Principal (Programmes and Research) at the Royal
Academy of Music. Since completing doctoral work at the University of Oxford
on stylistic aspects of Mozart's piano concertos, he has published on the
instrumental music of Mozart and Beethoven. His completions of Mozart
fragments have been performed in Europe and the USA.
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