Pity the poor Theme! Opinion has it (in the academy at any rate) that the Theme of the Theme and Variations of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A major, k331, has been talked to death and should be barred indefinitely from use as a musical example. While my epigraphs date from the 1980s, opinion has only hardened in recent years. Fast-forward to 2004: when she called for suggestions for pieces to be discussed in evening study sessions, the organizer of the stimulating conference that gave shape to this volume gently suggested that k331/i and others like it, which ‘have traditionally been debated in music-theoretical writings and handbooks of analysis’, should be avoided at those sessions.

Rhetoric about the Theme's overexposure can take a comic turn. For an adroit little article entitled ‘Dismembering Mozart’, Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker borrowed the title of their piece from the exasperated hyperbole of an unnamed critic: