At the end of the eighteenth century, Mozart raised the clarinet to new prominence in his operas no less than in his chamber music, symphonies and concertos. In his operas, I will argue, he used clarinets not just more prominently, but specifically to dramatise his characters finding enlightenment – or ‘daring to know’, as Immanuel Kant put it in 1784.Footnote 1 Mozart's characters feel their immediate situation intensely, but they also find the courage to know its larger political, social and moral meaning. This knowledge influences their subsequent actions, often leading them to enlightened choices such as forgiveness, reconciliation and clemency. In this way, Mozart fundamentally changed the dramatic character of both serious and comic operas by incorporating recognition – an element of tragic drama – at the heart of key moments. This gives a depth of characterisation that grounds and humanises the Protean playfulness of Mozart's comic surface.
Mozart inherited long-established musical topics of instrumental texture: oboes were associated with the pastoral, trumpets with regal or bellicose topics, and so forth.Footnote 2 As a new hybrid instrument, the clarinet offered the chance to shape a different kind of topic that illuminated the drama of self-understanding and recognition in contrast to the relatively fixed (and unexamined) affects characterised by older topics. Although he began by following the contemporary practice of using clarinets mainly to accompany love scenes, I will argue that Mozart increasingly called on clarinets to illuminate changes in political and social awareness. In this story, individual moments of erotic awareness come to connect ever more strongly with political and social currents of the Enlightenment.
In terms of the mythical contest between Apollo as Reason (represented as playing string instruments) and Marsyas as Love (winds and horns), Mozart used the clarinet to evoke a new synthesis of enlightened feeling, blending reason with love.Footnote 3 Beginning with the novel hybrid character of the clarinet, we will consider its association with amorous scenes in operas by Mozart's contemporaries, as well as the social milieux that connected him and his clarinettists with the Enlightenment. After reviewing the contemporary landscape of musical topics, we will consider Mozart's changing operatic use of the clarinet in three ways. First, in Idomeneo he shaped a new topic I call the ‘enlightened pastoral’. Where the traditional pastorale evoked an unchanging idyll handed down from posterity (often using flutes or oboes), the enlightened pastoral (using clarinets) depicted recognition and changing awareness, both in political and romantic contexts.Footnote 4 Second, Mozart increasingly used clarinets to underline scenes of recognition even outside the pastoral vein. Third, becoming ever more prominent as a solo voice, the clarinet became a sensitive interlocutor, essentially a protagonist, particularly in La clemenza di Tito (K621, 1791). Put provocatively, Mozart here enthroned a clarinet as the true – and enlightened – emperor of Rome. In short: those who study, perform and stage his operas may find in Mozart's use of the clarinet not only a striking orchestral colour but a voice in its own right, so strongly does it engage the protagonists’ struggle to understand fidelity, betrayal and forgiveness in political no less than erotic life.
An enlightened instrument
As a newcomer to orchestras composed of long-established instruments, the clarinet was a hybrid child growing up with the Enlightenment. Johann Gottfried Walther noted in 1721 that the recently invented clarinetto ‘from afar sounded rather similar to a trumpet’.Footnote 5 Combining this higher ‘clarino’ register with the sensitive low register of its close relative, the chalumeau, the clarinet could project both brilliance and intimate sensitivity.Footnote 6 Yet only during the eighteenth century did technical advances in the construction of the clarinet provide both its chalumeau and clarino registers with satisfactory intonation and tone quality.Footnote 7
Originally a folk instrument, restricted to the range of a twelfth in its fundamental register, the chalumeau was an attractive novelty. In Giovanni Bononcini's Viennese carnival opera Etearco (1707), two comic characters, hearing the remark ‘I'd like to find both bassoons and oboes’, retort ‘I'd like there to be chalumeaux as well’.Footnote 8 Among composers from the German world, Georg Friedrich Handel, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Johann Adolf Hasse all used chalumeaux in their operas.Footnote 9 In the operas and oratorios written between 1708 and 1728 by the Viennese court Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux, the chalumeau served as an alternative to the oboe in pastoral or love scenes.Footnote 10 Daniel Schubart's Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (written during 1784–85 but first published in 1806) noted the novelty of concert music using chalumeaux, an instrument ‘previously only shepherds knew’, emphasising its pastoral associations.Footnote 11
The newly invented clarinet was an even more attractive novelty, its inventor praised for heightening ‘the great delight of all music-lovers’.Footnote 12 The clarinet came into wide use in Neapolitan opera during 1770–1800.Footnote 13 Schubart emphasised its newness: ‘much younger than the oboe, first known in Germany only forty years ago’. He particularly noted that ‘its character is the melting feeling of love – the entire sound of a sensitive heart … The sound is so sweet, so languishing, that anyone who can draw out its middle colours will certainly conquer all hearts’. And referring to ongoing improvements in its design: ‘Today this instrument is always becoming more perfect.’Footnote 14 Mozart followed these developments closely; although clarinets in B-flat and A were not generally known until after 1770, he was already using B-flat clarinets in his Divertimento in E-flat (K113, 1771).Footnote 15
By this time, wind ensembles including clarinets (referred to as Harmoniemusik or Harmonie) had become popular. In 1782 Emperor Joseph II established ‘my Harmonie’, an octet of pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns that played weekly for him and formed the core of the Burgtheater wind section.Footnote 16 They gradually became regular members of opera orchestras in Vienna, while the Burgtheater initially only hired clarinettists as needed.
In what follows, I will focus on Mozart's solo clarinet parts, which called for highly skilled players. Although they had been in Vienna since 1773, the celebrated clarinettists Anton and Johann Stadler were first engaged at the Burgtheater in 1779–80 as supplementary musicians who only became regular members in 1781–2.Footnote 17 In his operas, Mozart came to use the clarinet ever more freely, facilitated, according to Albert Rice, by ‘the flexibility and virtuosity’ of the Stadler brothers and ‘their specially made basset clarinets with an extension of two notes to the lower register’.Footnote 18 Indeed, Anton became the preeminent exponent of the basset clarinet, invented around 1788 by Theodor Lotz.Footnote 19 Anton's command of the technologically most innovative instruments came with ‘so soft, so lovely a tone that no one could resist it’, as Johann Friedrich Schink described his playing of Mozart (1785) – a sound ‘whose like I never before heard with your instrument’.Footnote 20
Although Schink was surprised that ‘a clarinet could imitate the human voice so closely’, this newest of instruments could evoke the oldest feelings. A London review from 1789 noted that the clarinet ‘assumes the softness of a pastoral pipe’ when played skilfully, especially its chalumeau register, which particularly contributed to the clarinet's pastoral and amorous associations.Footnote 21 On the other hand, a Parisian reviewer in 1786 observed that the sounds drawn from the clarinet ‘often resemble those of the glass harmonica, whose purity they have’.Footnote 22 In Paris at that time, Franz Mesmer used the special tonal qualities of the glass harmonica to induce and control therapeutic crises in his patients.Footnote 23 Such comparisons with the glass harmonica therefore suggested that the clarinet could also have mesmeric power, especially through its special ‘purity’ of sound. A 1788 description of a glass harmonica examined by the Académie des Sciences likewise noted its ‘magical sounds, penetrating and pure, whose harmonious and sweet notes, which one can sustain, swell, draw out, develop & die away imperceptibly, touch, enchant, charm the soul & plunge you into the most delightful meditation’ – a description that also fits a skilfully played clarinet.Footnote 24 This might not have been lost on Mozart, who had since childhood been personally acquainted with Mesmer, whom he satirised in Così fan tutte.Footnote 25
The amorous clarinet
To illuminate the context within which Mozart wrote, we first consider the operatic use of the clarinet by his mentors and contemporaries Johann Christian Bach, Vicente Martín y Soler, Giovanni Paisiello and Antonio Salieri.Footnote 26 Their common practice was to use clarinets to accompany love scenes, often in paired ‘amoroso’ textures.Footnote 27
Mozart considered himself a musical son of Bach, whom he met in 1764 in London, where he (at age eight) played sonatas sitting on Bach's knees, taking over and completing a fugue Bach had started.Footnote 28 Seeing Bach again in Paris in 1778, Mozart wrote to his father, ‘I love him, as you know, with my whole heart’.Footnote 29 Thus, Mozart probably noted Bach's use of clarinets, beginning with his first London opera, Orione (W.G4, 1763).Footnote 30 In a 1777 letter, Mozart discussed Bach's Lucio Silla (W.G9, 1774), whose libretto (somewhat altered) Mozart had earlier used in his own Lucio Silla (K135, 1772).Footnote 31 Bach's aria ‘Anch'io per un'ingrata’ used two clarinets d'amore in close harmony (Example 1) to accompany Silla's sighing and pining: they are notated on the third and fourth lines from the top, accompanying Silla's ‘Sospiro e peno’ (‘I sigh and suffer’). This amoroso style (as it came to be called) is an important point of reference.Footnote 32 In this example, the clarinets evoke Empfindsamkeit, the ‘sensibility style’ that Bach pioneered and which was so important to Mozart.Footnote 33
Johann Christian Bach's aria ‘Anch'io per un'ingrata’ from Lucio Silla (W.G9, Act I no. 8, bb. 31–5, 1774). Courtesy Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, Darmstadt.
Among his older contemporaries, Giovanni Paisiello became one of Mozart's most important models.Footnote 34 After meeting in Italy in 1770, they later played quartets together and exchanged scores.Footnote 35 Paisiello initially used clarinets in scenes of Elysium or the Underworld, though he later reserved them for amorous scenes, whether serious or comic, as in Il barbiere di Siviglia (1782).Footnote 36 Paired clarinets, mandolin and pizzicato strings create the romantic ambiance for the Conte's serenade ‘Saper bramate’ (Act I no. 5). Amoroso clarinets accompany Rosina and the Conte's duet in the finale to Act II (no. 18). Likewise, Rosina is accompanied by amoroso clarinets and bassoons in her pensive cavatina ‘Giusto ciel’ (no. 11); and clarinets are also featured in the wind accompaniment to her comic scene ‘Già riede primavera’ (no. 13) – a solo clarinet answers Rosina's plaintive ‘Io piango afflitta e sola’ (at reh. 61). Mozart composed an insertion alternative for this aria in its 1789 Viennese performances in German, ‘Schon lacht der holde Frühling’ (K580); the extant fragmentary manuscript indicates that he included two clarinets and two bassoons (as had Paisiello) but it does not provide their parts.
Although Mozart remarked that Vicente Martín y Soler's music was ‘really very pretty’, he judged that ‘in ten years’ time no one will take any more notice of it’.Footnote 37 Nevertheless, he had Don Giovanni's onstage wind band play a well-known tune from Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara (1786), an opera in which paired clarinets give a special colour to three amorous scenes: the cavatinas of Lilla (‘Ah pietà de mercè’, scene 4) and the Principe (‘Più bianca di giglio’, scene 5), and Lilla's aria ‘Dolce mi parve un dì’ (scene 14).
Antonio Salieri's use of clarinets probably depended on the availability of such superb players as the Stadlers in Vienna. In Les Danaïdes (Paris, 1781), Salieri tended to use clarinets doubling oboes, a sonority that for John A. Rice ‘while attractive in itself, soon grows tiresome’.Footnote 38 Elsewhere, Salieri used clarinets more soloistically in new contexts. In La grotta di Trofonio (Vienna, 1785), Ofelia's aria ‘D'un dolce amor’ (Act I scene 3) features a pair of clarinets that spin an elegant melody that goes beyond simple amoroso style.Footnote 39 Even more prominently, a lovely clarinet solo forms the centrepiece of luxuriant imitations of birdsong in Artemidoro's aria ‘Di questo bosco ombroso’ (scene 11, Example 2), which Mozart may well have noted as he prepared his later operas. The serious Artemidoro enters holding a copy of Plato; the solo clarinet evokes a pastoral scene (perhaps the idyllic setting of Plato's Phaedrus) but here accompanies ‘a philosophic soul’ (as he calls himself) rather than an earthly lover.Footnote 40 On the other hand, the sorcerer Trofonio shortly (scene 13) transforms the meditative Artemidoro into a high-spirited lover who now repudiates Plato (‘Cieli! Che fu? … Evviva la gioia’). Meanwhile, his happy-go-lucky counterpart Plistene suddenly becomes an admirer of Plato, shocking his beloved by proposing platonic love. The clarinet reemerges as a solo voice in Ofelia's puzzled scene (15) ‘È un piacer’, which recalls the orchestration of ‘D'un dolce amor’. She wonders why her serious Artemidoro has suddenly changed into a giddy hedonist, accompanied by an amoroso clarinet.
The introduction to Artemidoro's aria ‘Di questo bosco ombroso’ (Act I scene 11) from Antonio Salieri, La grotta di Trofonio (Vienna, 1785). Courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Salieri's Tarare (Paris, 1787) also used clarinets both for love scenes and more unusual contexts. In his Prologue (scene 3), they depict human souls coming to corporeal life to the words ‘Quel charme inconnu nous attire’.Footnote 41 In John Rice's view, Salieri generally associated clarinets with Tarare: amoroso clarinets (with bassoons and horns) accompany his love aria ‘Astasie est une déesse’ (Act I scene 6). Salieri carried this same orchestration over to Atar's love aria ‘Soave luce di Paradiso’ (Act II) in his extensive recomposition of this opera for Vienna as Axur, re d'Ormus (1787) – which became Joseph II's favourite opera.Footnote 42 Rice notes that Salieri's treatment in these operas of ‘barbarous’ or ‘Turkish’ themes played into Joseph's political struggles with the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 43 Mozart surely observed how Salieri and Martín y Soler, his rivals for imperial favour, dealt with political and amorous scenes, including their use of clarinets.
The frequent use of amoroso clarinets to accompany love scenes reflected shared feelings about that instrument's inherent relation to women and their voices. Among Mozart's contemporaries, the extraordinary dramatist Heinrich von Kleist was for the poet Clemens Brentano ‘one of the greatest virtuosi on the flute and clarinet’.Footnote 44 Even if Brentano was exaggerating, Kleist's description of clarinet technique casts an interesting light on the instrument's gendered connotations. Writing to his fiancée in 1800, Kleist expressed his desire to find a beautiful, innocent girl with ‘the merest spark of soul in her’ and then ’take her and finish her education in my own way’ – a process he compared (rather disturbingly) to how he had prepared a clarinet mouthpiece: ‘[I cut] a piece for myself from a fresh reed, formed it to my own lips, shaved and scraped away with my knife until it fit my embouchure [Mundes paßte] exactly – and it worked superbly. I played to my heart's content’.Footnote 45 Although Kleist seems to view the clarinet as embodying the stereotype of a submissive female, Amy Emm notes that in the unfolding of his peculiar metaphor ‘the notion of the woman as a musical instrument gains subversive, even empowering potential’.Footnote 46 Here, the clarinet's reed becomes an intermediate zone in which the instrument's individuality requires reshaping as it meets the player's mouth. Kleist's awareness of clarinet technique illuminates the subtleties of his ‘love affair’ with his instrument and, by extension, with the young woman he envisaged bending and shaping.Footnote 47 By century's end the connection of the clarinet to the female voice had become a commonplace.Footnote 48
Mozart, Stadler and the Enlightenment
Although Mozart used clarinets in all his completed operas from Idomeneo onwards, he may have been limited by their fluctuating availability in the imperial orchestra, where they may not have been regularly included until 1787.Footnote 49 Table 1 shows that he used clarinets more frequently in his later operas (especially the final three) and even more markedly that he increased their prominence within the orchestral texture as well as using them more soloistically. This also affected orchestral timbre, because the darker hue of clarinets was in the opinion of Vienna-based Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, writing in 1790, ‘far richer in tone than [oboes] and most wind instruments’; in fact, he thought that basset horns were ‘the most richly toned of all wind instruments’.Footnote 50 Lotz's Viennese clarinets (favoured by the Stadlers) had particularly dark sound qualities.Footnote 51 Thus, we might conclude that the greater prominence of clarinets in Mozart's orchestration in the later operas led to a darkening of orchestral timbre, especially when oboes were not included.Footnote 52
Mozart's usage of clarinets in his completed operas.
Mozart's orchestrations changed during a period in which Masonic music prominently featured clarinets, which thereby associated the instrument with the Brotherhood's progressive attitudes. Mozart learned of the Enlightenment from his father and others in his Salzburg milieu, such as the Firmian brothers, who had founded a reading society at the university that espoused ‘free scientific tendencies’.Footnote 53 Mozart's later association with the Freemasons showed his sympathy with their advocacy of human brotherhood and knowledge.Footnote 54 This put him in contact with Ignaz von Born, an eminent natural scientist, mineralogist and leader of the Illuminati, as well as the master of the Masonic lodge Mozart and his father attended.Footnote 55
Probably through Mozart's efforts, Anton Stadler joined that lodge in 1785, where he likely played in such Masonic compositions as Die Maurerfreude (K471), which honoured Born's discoveries in extracting metals through amalgamation.Footnote 56 The close friendship of Mozart and Anton Stadler revolved around the clarinet as well as their brotherhood's enlightened attitudes.Footnote 57 In 1800, Stadler drew up a ‘Musick Plan’ for a new music school in which ‘whoever wants to understand music must know the whole of worldly wisdom and mathematics, poetry, elocution, art and many languages’, showing his sympathy with Enlightenment ideals.Footnote 58 He noted that ‘education, therefore, and literature are necessary for the true musician, if he wants to become great, because if he is entirely without all other knowledge he becomes a half thing’. This implies that he considered Mozart, whom he greatly admired, to have such broad qualities of enlightened learning.
With this context in mind, we will consider how Mozart depicted the protagonists of his operas reaching enlightenment in the sense of daring to know, a sentiment he knew from his Masonic milieu even if he had not read Kant's text.Footnote 59 In that spirit, Mozart's characters first recognise and express what they are feeling and then find the courage to know its larger moral and political implications, which inform their subsequent actions. In so doing, I suggest that Mozart sought ways to illuminate and dramatise the process whereby his characters reached those new levels of awareness.Footnote 60 To depict such emergent realisations, Mozart had at his disposal a new kind of instrument, invented in his own century, the product of enlightened human design, which thereby distinguished itself from the families of instruments bequeathed by tradition. Having inherited a strong basic association between clarinets and feelings of love, he developed this relationship to encompass realisations of larger political and social consequence. The clarinet became a striking newcomer among Mozart's ‘instrumental personae’ as dramatic agent and interlocutor, and thereby expanded the universe of topics to a new kind of textural topic.Footnote 61
A new kind of topic
Let us consider the meaning of ‘topic’. In his letters, Mozart discussed the effect of what he called ‘Turkish music’, thereby showing his awareness of some of the ‘characteristic figures’ that scholars, following Leonard Ratner, came to call ‘topics’.Footnote 62 Since then, the repertoire of what Ratner initially divided into ‘types’ and ‘styles’ has grown markedly; Kofi Agawu listed twenty-seven members of ‘the Universe of Topic’, while Wye J. Allanbrook's ‘provisional list’ reached 110, with the proviso that the ‘topical cosmos … is amenable to infinite extension’, including ‘topical modulation’, which means ‘transforming one affective stance’ or topic into another.Footnote 63 Trying to summarise prevalent usage, Danuta Mirka defined topics as ‘musical styles and genres taken out of their proper context and used in another one’.Footnote 64 I will, however, also use ‘topic’ in the older sense of a ‘place’ (topos) of discourse, chosen for its rhetorical aptness and effect.Footnote 65 As long as rhetoricians could establish a topic they and their audience could experience together, it need not necessarily be one long established by tradition. Indeed, an uncommon topic might have the advantages of freshness and novelty.
Mozart's dramatic imagination went beyond the level of external action to a profound interest in the changing feelings of his characters, their internal struggles and their realisations. Whether or not he had read the Poetics, he was steeped in a long theatrical tradition that shared Aristotle's admiration of plots built around ‘recognition’ (anagnōrisis, sometimes translated as ‘discovery’), a term which came into German as Erkennung.Footnote 66 Aristotle used this term to describe ‘a change from ignorance to knowledge [Erkenntnis], and thus to either love or hate, in the personages marked for good or evil fortune’.Footnote 67 Although recognition or discovery begins with an epistemic ‘change from ignorance to knowledge’, for Aristotle that change does not remain dispassionate because it leads ‘to either love or hate [Liebe oder Haß]’.Footnote 68 In other words, knowledge lies at the centre of tragic recognition, which is not just a series of disjunct affects – love and hate following each other disconnectedly – but an intelligible causal sequence. Mozart brought the dramatic power of such knowledge from tragedy into his operas, though they are fundamentally comic, each ending in felicity rather than woe: he used the clarinet to mark how characters begin by feeling, then seek knowing that informs acting.Footnote 69
The enlightened pastoral: Idomeneo
Mozart first used clarinets in the orchestra of Idomeneo (K366, 1781), both in traditional amoroso passages and in new contexts that go beyond romance to register awareness of larger political significance. Although two clarinets are present from the overture onwards, Mozart's use of them is noticeably limited. They are silent for most of the opera and, when they do appear, they generally form part of the Harmoniemusik, blending their distinctive sonority with other winds.Footnote 70 For instance, in Idamante's first aria ‘Non ho colpa’ (no. 2), clarinets are mainly part of the larger orchestral texture. A clarinet emerges momentarily as a solo instrument (bars 32–8, 103–9) to accompany Idamante's offer to pierce his own breast to prove the love that Ilia doubts, and an amoroso pair underlines his declaration that he adores her (79–81). Likewise, Mozart's insertion rondo for no. 10b ‘Non temer, amato bene’ (K490, 1789) uses amoroso clarinets alongside an elaborate violin obbligato.
Clarinets enter more noticeably in the orchestral texture of no. 6 (especially bars 12–15, 59, 81), in which Idomeneo begins to struggle with his oath to sacrifice the life of whomever he sees next – his own son Idamante. Clarinets also appear in no. 26, in which Idomeneo prays to Neptune to pacify his fury and mitigate his harshness (‘Accogli, o rè del mar’).Footnote 71 As if reverting to their traditional association with love scenes, the clarinets in Ilia's aria ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri’ (no. 19) join the Harmoniemusik, with brief solos as she describes how she adores Idamante (bars 43–4, 107–8). In the quartet (no. 21), clarinets in canon underline the final repetition of the group's realisation that ‘such grief is worse than death’ (‘Peggio è di morte sì gran dolore’, bars 142–7); and pianissimo clarinets hover over the quartet's final bars (164–6), underlining their realisation that ‘no one has ever suffered a harsher fate or greater punishment’. For the first time in Mozart's operas, the clarinets underline a scene of recognition that goes beyond romantic love to evoke the larger problems raised by Idomeneo's oath.
Clarinets appear even more prominently as solo instruments in the final scene (no. 30) as Idomeneo renounces his kingdom in favour of Idamante and Ilia. By so doing, he agrees to the enlightened solution provided by the voice of the god Neptune, who ended the barbarous ancient practice of a father sacrificing his son. Clarinets are the only woodwinds in the texture, often the highest sounding voice, contrasting with a pair of horns and the strings in a texture I call ‘enlightened pastoral’. In Idomeneo's valedictory recitative, Mozart couples martial with tranquil instruments, as if to draw our attention to their peaceful coexistence.Footnote 72 At first, the clarinets begin by answering the horns in contrary motion (bar 5), inverting a characteristic horn arpeggio that had begun in canonic statement within the strings. Then the horns recede into the background of the clarinet's idiomatically graceful statement of sighing thirds in amoroso texture (bars 7–8, 42). Finally, the initial canonic statement returns in condensed form, rising through the instruments so that in the end the clarinets and horns repeat the same material, no longer inverted (bar 52). Idomeneo's succeeding aria (no. 30a) continues the same texture, adding only bassoons (a common pairing in Harmoniemusik). Here, the horns recede into the role of accompaniment and punctuation, as Mozart emphasises the dialogue between clarinets and bassoons, which at times speak together, at times in response to each other. This gentle texture underlines the pastoral quality of the aria, in which Idomeneo turns towards peace, comparing himself to an old tree that blooms again in his children (‘Torna la pace al core’).Footnote 73
Although Mozart could have woven such a pastoral texture with other instruments, by reserving the clarinet's special timbre for this moment he adds an additional element to the traditional topic of pastoral, which Johann Georg Sulzer described in terms of ‘innocence, naturalness and placid tenderness’.Footnote 74 To this long-established Arcadian vision, Mozart added the clarinet to underline enlightenment breaking through from traditional limitations. Beyond all expectation, Neptune freely abjured his ancient right to hold mortals to their promises, now recognising situations that call for rational reconsideration. The god thereby renounced a literal and strict interpretation in favour of a broader, more reasonable understanding, allowing the abdication of the father to substitute for the promised death of the son. Mozart's ‘enlightened pastoral’ underlines this act, which goes beyond romantic love to encompass larger acts of clemency and enlightened political behaviour.
Enlightened feelings: Die Entführung aus dem Serail
In his next operas, Mozart continued to use clarinets to underline moments of recognition, as well as adding them to more traditional amoroso textures.Footnote 75 Die Entführung aus dem Serail (K384, 1782) includes clarinets in many orchestral tutti and as part of Harmoniemusik but only gives the clarinet prominent solos in Belmonte's aria ‘Ich baue ganz auf deine Stärke’ (no. 17, bars 5–6, 44–50, 135–40). Here, Belmonte's feelings of love for Konstanze animate his larger recognition of the power of love set against the adversity of imprisonment. Rather than simply evoking the ‘pastoral’, in the ‘exalted march’ of this aria the clarinet seems to emphasise his recognition at several important moments. Indeed, a clarinet first presents a new triplet figuration (148–52) that Belmonte immediately takes up in his climactic fioriture (153–7).Footnote 76 Overcoming the anxiety he had confessed in the preceding recitative, he has now summoned the courage to act. In other passages of this aria and additional numbers that highlight love, the clarinets appear paired, often in amoroso textures.Footnote 77 At those moments, the clarinets underline the natural beauty of the lovers Konstanze and Belmonte, contrasting them with Osmin in his mock-triumphal aria ‘O, wie will ich triumphiren’ (no. 19, bars 50–64, 105–11), which exemplifies the preposterous and unenlightened conventions of the seraglio.Footnote 78
Stages of enlightenment in Le nozze di Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro (K492, 1786) uses clarinets even more prominently to delineate the changing stages of emotional realisation. Paired clarinets and bassoons accompany the Countess in ‘Porgi amor’ (no. 10) to underline her changing awareness, progressing from her initial unhappiness through confused reflection to a new understanding of her dilemma: ‘Either restore my treasure to me, or else let me die’.Footnote 79 Responding to the slow march of the opening bars, the clarinets initiate the amoroso topic, to which the bassoons then sympathetically respond (bars 8–10, 15–16, 26–8, 30–2, 49–51); note especially how the clarinets by themselves (without bassoons) first answer the Countess's initial statement at bars 26–8 (Example 3).Footnote 80
Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, ‘Porgi amor’, bb. 24–8. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 16, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1973). NMA Online (http://dme.mozarteum.at/nma/), published by the Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg in collaboration with the Packard Humanities Institute, 2006ff. Musical examples reproduced with kind permission of the Mozarteum Salzburg [12 April 2024].
Because the Countess explicitly addresses Amor (Cupid), the amoroso clarinets could be heard as the voice of the god responding to her prayer for relief (‘ristoro’) by reminding Amor of her love. Nor is the role of the clarinets limited to a recollection of days past, merely soothing or nostalgic. Immediately after bar 32, when the Countess first prays ‘at least let me die’, the clarinets respond by initiating the boldly rising melodic line, which the Countess joins. It then overshoots the crucial structural pitch g′′, reaching a surprising pause on high a-flat′′ (bars 34–6, Example 4).Footnote 81 The intervention of the clarinets underlines her self-awareness, to which the bassoon responds with its sensitive solo g-flat′ (bar 8), as if it too acknowledges her grief. The Countess's turn towards forgiveness (achieved at the end of the opera) seems to begin with her recognitions in this aria.
Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, ‘Porgi amor’, bb. 34–6. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 16, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1973).
Andrew Steptoe wondered why similar dramatic material in ‘Dove sono’ and ‘Sull'aria’ does not call for a comparable use of the clarinets. Perhaps by withholding them in those arias, Mozart meant to suggest a certain quality of wilful fantasy, of escape from painful awareness into ardent delusion.Footnote 82 In the wake of ‘Porgi amor’, a single clarinet initiates the theme of Cherubino's ‘Voi che sapete’ (no. 11), a literal request for enlightenment about the nature of love.Footnote 83 Clarinets also come to the fore in no. 26 (‘Tutto è disposto’) to underline Figaro's sarcastic call for men to ‘open your eyes a little’ (‘Aprite un po’ quegli occhi’, bar 27) to the perfidy of women (bars 34–5).
For the new Susanna (Adriana Ferrarese del Bene) in the 1789 revival of Figaro, Mozart replaced ‘Deh vieni non tardar’ with the alternative rondò ‘Al desio di chi t'adora’ (K577), featuring pairs of basset horns, bassoons and horns. Both arias present Figaro listening in hiding while Susanna invites her beloved to join her; ‘Deh vieni’ seems more provocative, as if she relished testing whether her jealous fiancé will indeed understand that she is really singing to him, not the Count. Stationed firmly in the pastoral rhythm (6/8 sicilienne) and key (F major), ‘Deh vieni’ is presented as a performance, a love-serenade whose pizzicato strings imitate a mandolin, as had Paisiello's ‘Saper bramate’.Footnote 84 Its text evokes provocatively the ‘pleasures of love’ (‘piaceri d'amor’) consummated in darkness by a lover ‘crowned with roses’ (‘incoronar di rose’).
Although also set in the pastoral F major, the text of ‘Al desio’ (presumably also by da Ponte) evokes Susanna's changing inner state in a stately march from hope (‘speranza’) to fear of abandonment and death (‘morirò’), should the beloved forget his promises. Mozart uses the basset horns prominently to mark those promises (‘promessi’) in bars 11–14 and 18–20, as well as the promised ‘consolation’ (‘ristoro’) of love (bars 20–33). So clear is this underlining that one has the feeling that Susanna is covertly reminding Figaro of their promises and their love, which he seems on the verge of forgetting. In so doing, the basset horns become reminders of their shared understanding, which Figaro's jealousy threatens to erase. Here, the instruments speak directly even when Susanna herself cannot. Likewise, in the ensuing allegro, arresting arpeggios in the chalumeau register of the basset horns underline her most direct, though still veiled, declaration in bars 57–66 and again (after her cadenza) in bars 77–84: ‘May those who know the feelings of love / Sympathise with my suffering’ (‘Chi d'amor gli affetti intende, / Compatisca il mio penar’). Mozart's use of the basset horns illuminates a new facet of enlightenment: maintaining understanding in the face of confusion and jealousy requires no less insight than reaching it in the first place.
Enlightenment and ambiguity: Don Giovanni
As befits its darker character, Don Giovanni (K527, 1787) used clarinets to underline more ambiguous moments of enlightenment. In the quartet ‘Non ti fidar’ (no. 9), clarinets accompany Donna Anna and Don Ottavio's realisation that Donna Elvira is noble, even as Giovanni insists that she is mad (‘Cieli, che aspetto nobile’, bar 10). They also underline Elvira's full realisation of Giovanni's betrayal (inserted in 1788 as K540c, no. 21b, ‘Mi tradì quell'alma ingrata’, bar 38). Finally, paired clarinets accompany Donna Anna's attempt to dispel Ottavio's misunderstanding of her true state of mind as love, not cruelty (no. 23, ‘Crudele? … Non mi dir’, bar 36).
At the same time, Mozart continued to associate clarinets with love in arias beyond his own operas. In 1787, for example, he composed the bass aria ‘Mentre ti lascio, oh figlia’ (K513) to a text also used by Paisiello, here using amoroso clarinets to dramatise a father's painful parting from his daughter, thereby extending this textural use from romantic to paternal love. In 1789, Mozart wrote two insertion arias for a revival of Martín y Soler's Il burbero de buon core, first presented in Vienna in 1786. Both arias have texts about love and both rely on skilful soloistic clarinets. ‘Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia’ (K582, for Act I scene 14) fits into a passage that Martín y Soler set in recitative, as does ‘Vado, ma dove? oh Dei!’ (K583, for Act II scene 5). In his original version, Martín y Soler used clarinets only occasionally to double oboes, even directing the clarinets (early in Act I) to remain outside the theatre, clearly because they were not needed until the next act.Footnote 85 By calling for solo clarinets, Mozart set his own stamp on these arias and implicitly commented on Martín y Soler's orchestration.
Enlightenment and disillusion: Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte (K588, 1789) also includes clarinets as harbingers of enlightenment but (in comparison with Figaro) now uses them to create subtle ironies, indicating that disillusionment may be a further stage of recognition. A pair of amoroso clarinets accompanies the sisters’ first duet (no. 4, ‘Ah guarda, sorella’) examining the portraits of their beloveds, foreshadowing ironically their imminent interchange (compare with no. 21, discussed below). These clarinets soon enough imitate outright laughter in their accompanying figurations to the mock parting scene between the couples (No. 6, ‘Sento, o Dio’, bars 19, 21) and also accompanying Don Alfonso (in No. 10, ‘Soave sia il vento’, bars 28–31), whose participation in this tender farewell scene is especially freighted with irony, given that he himself arranged their parting.Footnote 86 Note here that Mozart accompanies the lovers with strings (bars 1–27), reserving for Alfonso the amoroso clarinets, thus sharpening the contrast and hence also the irony of his participation in the scene. The same principle may illuminate why, as the sisters first spurn the ‘Albanian’ suitors, Mozart chose oboes to accompany them (no. 13, ‘Alla bella Despinetta’, bars 56–80 and following passages), but uses a clarinet to double the scheming Despina, Guglielmo and Ferrando (bars 81–102).
Something of this ambiguity may also inform Mozart's orchestration of Fiordiligi's heroic aria ‘Come scoglio’ (no. 14): the alternation between clarinets (bars 15–18) and oboes (bar 22 and following) may reflect her faltering resolve to resist her new suitor. The heavy irony of the ‘dead’ Albanians returning to life under Doctor Despina's mesmeric cure is underlined by a pair of clarinets, in limping alla zoppa rhythms (Act I finale, ‘Dove son! che loco è questo!’).Footnote 87 After the sisters have succumbed to the ‘Albanians’, their mock-betrothal scene (no. 21) unfolds to amoroso clarinets, clearly harking back to their initial ‘portrait’ duet (no. 4), heightened further by a solo clarinet (bars 16–20), a texture not used at any previous point in the score and saved to highlight this moment. Likewise, the clarinets illustrate the ‘beating’ hearts of the newly affianced lovers (no. 23, ‘Il core vi dono’, bars 28–38, 86–93, 110–17), underlined by a solo clarinet postlude (bars 117–20).Footnote 88
At such dramatic moments of incipient enlightenment, Mozart did not use clarinets exclusively; his choice of instrumental combinations calls for subtle assessment, as do his topical allusions. The obbligato horns in Fiordiligi's great rondò ‘Per pietà, ben mio, perdona’ (no. 25) may invoke the noble associations of that instrument to indicate her essential nobility, rather than simply refer to the age-old symbol of cuckoldry, as some writers have suggested.Footnote 89 Beside these often-noted horns, the solo clarinet is no less important (bars 13–15) in the orchestral texture.Footnote 90 In particular, note how horn fioriture (bars 23, 56–8, 86–7) are echoed and even amplified by the answering clarinet (26, 60–2), especially accompanying Fiordiligi's climactic cadential trill (124). This careful orchestration enables and illuminates her reaching a recognition that, though clouded by denial, later leads to her acknowledgment of her love for Ferrando.Footnote 91
This also prepares us to hear the irony of the clarinets replying in the major to Ferrando's angry accusations of betrayal in the minor (no. 27, ‘Tradito, schernito’, bars 7–11). Likewise, a solo clarinet doubles Despina's cynical praise of love (no. 28, ‘È amore un ladroncello’). In the finale to Act II, Mozart uses a wind chorus led by clarinets to underline both the ‘bogus’ wedding feast (bars 89–93) with the ‘Albanians’ and the ‘real’ wedding (from 40 bars before the work's end), thus casting ironic doubt on both.
Magic and knowledge: Die Zauberflöte
Mozart's use of the flute as an emblem of music's magic power in Die Zauberflöte (K620, 1791) does not prevent him from using the clarinet to underline important moments of enlightenment, the explicit concern of much of the opera.Footnote 92 Mozart may intend us to remark on the distinction between the flute and its specifically magical powers (as when Tamino's flute enchants the animals in no. 8 or quells the dangerous waters during the ordeal in no. 21) and the rational, non-magical kind of enlightenment indicated by the clarinet. When Tamino realises the object of his love through contemplating her image in ‘Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön’ (no. 3), a pair of clarinets accompany his growing awareness of his feelings (bars 15–17); later, they adorn Pamina and Papageno's praise of love, ‘Bei Männern’ (no. 7, bars 32–41).Footnote 93
Mozart also uses clarinets in many contexts that go beyond romantic love. The March of the Priests (no. 9) uses the dark texture of doubled basset horns, bassoons and trombones, as does Sarastro's succeeding aria ‘O Isis und Osiris’ (no. 10), the most explicit statement of the enlightened ideals of his order. Clarinets accompany the first mention (no. 5, bars 214–25) of the three boys, who will advise Tamino and Papageno to be ‘constant, patient and discreet’ (no. 8, bars 15–18, 24–7, ‘Sei standhaft, duldsam, und verschwiegen!’), nowhere referring to love. In the ‘learned style’ of enchained suspensions, clarinets and bassoons also accompany the boys in their other appearance in Act II (finale, no. 21, bars 1–45).Footnote 94 The clarinets fall silent when the distraught, suicidal Pamina arrives but resume when the boys reason with her.
When Tamino avows that he seeks ‘that which belongs to love and virtue’ (Act I no. 8, bars 88–90, ‘Der Lieb' und Tugend Eigentum’), the manuscript shows that Mozart crossed out his original orchestration for flute (used just previously in this scene) and rescored this passage for clarinets, which had been silent for forty-nine bars (Figure 1).Footnote 95 This seems to confirm his choice of clarinets to underline the theme of enlightenment (‘Tugend’) here, which the three boys had adjured Tamino to pursue only a few bars before. By connecting love with virtue at this point, Mozart identifies them both as objects of rational choice, in contrast to Pamina's irrational distress.
The manuscript of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Act I no. 8, bb. 88–92. Courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (D-B): Mus.ms.autogr. Mozart, W.A. 620.
The clarinet as interlocutor and protagonist: La clemenza di Tito
We have already noted cases in which Mozart used a clarinet as an interlocutor, accompanying his characters along the arc of recognition. In two arias in La clemenza di Tito, this interlocutor becomes so vivid as to become virtually a protagonist its own right. Indeed, these arias can best be understood as a pair, for they both feature a virtuosic clarinet obbligato. In Act I, Sesto sings ‘Parto, parto … Guardami, e tutto oblio’ (no. 9) to persuade the vengeful Vitellia that he ‘will be what you would most have me be, do whatever you wish’ (‘Sarò qual più ti piace, / Quel che vorrai farò’). On the surface, this great aria seems to depict not enlightenment but the depths of self-willed delusion: Sesto seems ready to kill Tito, his friend and sovereign, to satisfy Vitellia's jealous demands. What is the clarinet doing here? I would suggest that it evokes the inner dialogue that speaks behind and through Sesto's desperate assertions, as if the clarinet were a kind of inner confidant, even a voice of conscience, which does not double Sesto's line (as if to indicate acquiescence) but comments in a more complex way. Indeed, we have known from the opening recitative of Act I that Sesto's inner state is deeply conflicted.
In ‘Parto, parto’, Mozart unfolds a carefully staged progression, beginning with the arched and embellished lines with which the clarinet initially responds to Sesto, each of which represents not just an echo but a deepening of Sesto's initial melodic idea, as if the clarinet were, through its benign instrumentality, inspiring him to heighten and purify his thoughts. Compare, for instance, Sesto's initial melodic gestures, straightforward and largely triadic (bars 4–12), with the sinuous reply of the solo clarinet (13–15), which, though recognisably emergent from Sesto's antecedent phrase, is much more complex and beautiful (Example 5).
Mozart, La clemenza di Tito, ‘Parto, parto’, bb. 1–21. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 20, ed. Franz Giegling (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970).
Note especially how Sesto's cadence (bars 11–13) contrasts with the far greater rhythmic complexity of the clarinet's semiquaver and demisemiquaver fioritura (bars 13–14), which, in an understated but unmistakable way, juxtaposes new possibilities of expressive flexibility with Sesto's comparative rigidity. He in turn seems to recognise this newly beautiful turn (literally and figuratively) by his expressive rising sixth on ‘sarò’ (bars 14–15, his first use of this interval) and his subsequent ornament. The clarinet takes his rising sixth literally a step further, to a rising seventh (bars 15–16), though the instrument (characteristically) smooths the melodic arch in its own rather more suave way towards an unstressed termination (bar 17). After Sesto echoes this rising seventh (bars 16–17), the clarinet responds with a perfect octave that dissolves into the most complex (and most rhapsodic) fioritura yet, once again seeming to show Sesto how things ought to be done, though always sympathetic to the voice. The instrument that began as an echo has become a leader and guide. Hearing the authority with which it has moved to the dramatic centre of this scene, one might speak playfully but truthfully of the clarinet that became emperor of Rome, or at least of Sesto's heart. We feel the comparison between Tito's clement rule and the clarinet's no less enlightened sway.
The clarinet's flexible commentary advances to a new level of influence when Sesto returns to his dogged reassertion that he will be what Vitellia wants (‘Quel che vorrai farò’), seconded by the heroic neo-Baroque conventionalities of dotted French rhythms in the strings, forte (bar 20). All this the clarinet quietly ignores without comment, merely resuming its gorgeous melodic line, taking up where it last left off, now adding an even more ravishing downward arpeggio into the chalumeau register (bars 22–3). Indeed, much of this dramatic impact depends on the extended low range of the B-flat basset clarinet. Although Sesto now resumes his initial words, ‘Parto’, his growing ornamentation eats away at the stolidity of his initial melodic style, as if his attention were now increasingly on the clarinet's transcendent example. From this point until the end of the introductory Adagio, the clarinet scarcely ceases its inventive elaboration, ever more complex and beautiful, exploring registers (down to its lowest B-flat) and delicate rhythmic textures far beyond Sesto's – or any human's – range. In the process, Sesto's line acquires new degrees of melodic flexibility and continuity; it is hard to avoid the impression that, rather than the clarinet ‘accompanying’ him, he is accompanying it.
No surprise, then, that the succeeding Allegro begins with the clarinet's solo voice (Example 6), rather than Sesto's, announcing a beguilingly ornamented riposte to the strings’ initial triadic gambit (bars 44–6). Sesto does not even try to match the clarinet's subtle grace, though his continuation of the strings’ triadic material shows a commendable awareness of the clarinet's leadership; Sesto here shows himself accommodating the clarinet rather than placating Vitellia.
Mozart, La clemenza di Tito, ‘Parto, parto’, bb. 44–54. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 20, ed. Franz Giegling (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970).
In truth, the clarinet shows itself to be a far more admirable mistress than Vitellia. Consider the evidence of the clarinet's wonderful dolce invention (bars 57–9 ff.), which we can only stand back and admire (as does Sesto at ‘A questo sguardo solo’, Example 7, bars 59–61). The ensuing growing animation of the Allegro assai, and the aria as a whole, can best be understood as leading towards its final, climactic words: ‘Ah, what power, O gods, you have given beauty!’ (‘Ah, qual poter, oh Dei! donaste alla beltà’). These words are given in triplets, which the clarinet first introduces in its chalumeau register (its accompaniment figures at 104–11), and are taken up immediately by the voice to ornament the word ‘beltà’, then handed back and forth between voice and clarinet ever more virtuosically until the aria's end.
Mozart, La clemenza di Tito, ‘Parto, parto’, bb. 55–65. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 20, ed. Franz Giegling (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970).
In this extended and remarkable passage, the clarinet seems to illuminate the nature of the beauty that is driving Sesto to commit himself to actions he himself questions and ultimately regrets. However misguided and even treasonable the actions are that he here swears to perform, the voice of the clarinet highlights the place beauty has in his motivation, for this superlative beauty is very real, even if his momentary decisions are flawed. The radiant tone of this aria has everything to do with the lover's awareness of the beauty that draws him on, even while he avoids contemplating what his actions mean. There is scarcely any precedent in Mozart's operas for the soloistic virtuosity he here requires of the clarinet, which thus acts to underscore not only ‘beltà’ but virtue (virtù), here manifest in its correlate, virtuosity.
Through a fortunate turn of circumstance, Sesto does not murder Titus, as he had sworn to do. Sesto's fidelity to her mad demands moves Vitellia to confess her own role to Titus and to beg for mercy. She reflects on her situation in the rondò ‘Non più di fiori’ (no. 23), accompanied by a basset horn in F that emerges progressively from an initially accompanimental role (along with other winds) to become an obbligato. In this, as in other respects, this aria is a companion to Sesto's ‘Parto’. Where the clarinet had directed Sesto's thoughts towards a gentler beauty than Vitellia's fierce vengeance, now the basset horn helps her overcome her despair by sympathetically underlining her self-realisation and indicating to her the way in which she may find mercy in Tito's eyes. The choice of the lower-pitched basset horn (compared to Sesto's clarinet companion) is interesting. Vitellia's notable passages in her lowest register may mandate this choice: this gentle-sounding instrument seems an especially appropriate foil for her intensity.
As with Sesto's aria, the progression of ‘Non più di fiori’ is gradual and carefully judged. The initial Larghetto is so pastoral and calm as to belie her grim words: ‘No more shall Hymen descend to weave fair garlands of flowers’. The utter calm of its F major harmonies evokes the paradise she feels she has lost in a tranquil melody the basset horn shadows with subtle doubling, another example of the ‘enlightened pastoral’. Only at the very end of this section does the basset horn come forward as an audible solo voice, though in accompanimental arpeggios, which anticipate its full (and sudden) soloistic emergence at the beginning of the following Allegro, asserting the parallel minor (bar 44 and following, Example 8). Here the basset horn gives voice to Vitellia's melancholy, as if encouraging her to explore her feelings directly: ‘O wretched me! How horrible! Ah, what will be said of me?’ (‘Infelice! qual orrore! Ah, di me che si dirà?’).Footnote 96 The agitation mounts in the broken orchestral texture, rapidly alternating forte and piano with intense syncopations (bars 50–5). As Jessica Waldoff notes, this Allegro presents the psychological process of Vitellia's self-discovery.Footnote 97
Mozart, La clemenza di Tito, ‘Non più di fiori’, bb. 41–52. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 20, ed. Franz Giegling (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970).
Having disclosed this inner realm of pain, the basset horn now also initiates a gentle chromatic melody in the major (Example 9, bars 56–60), to which Vitellia sings ‘Chi vedesse il mio dolore, pur avria di me pietà’ (‘Yet he who could see my distress would have pity on me’, Example 10, 60–4). This phrase fascinatingly blends scalar simplicity with chromatic subtlety, as if to illuminate the expressive sympathy involved in pity. This delicately balanced mood draws Vitellia from her self-absorbed state into increasingly responsive and animated dialogue with the basset horn, which proposes a characteristically instrumental elaboration (Example 9, bars 68–70). Vitellia later uses this passaggio verbatim in her peroration (Example 10, 154–60).
Mozart, La clemenza di Tito, ‘Non più di fiori’, bb. 53–70. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 20, ed. Franz Giegling (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970).
Mozart, La clemenza di Tito, ‘Non più di fiori’, bb. 153–7. Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, series 2, group 5, volume 20, ed. Franz Giegling (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970).
Mozart has Vitellia appropriate this distinctive phrase as a way of preparing and approaching her climactic passage of Treffsicherheit (162–5). This technical term, denoting virtuosic feats of vocal accuracy in large leaps, literally means ‘unerring aim’, a kind of moral certainty appropriate to the state of clear resolution she has reached.Footnote 98 Thanks to the basset horn's tutelage, she reaches her moral decision and self-realisation with a kind of joy.Footnote 99
Conclusion
By using clarinets in these new ways, Mozart changed and deepened the fundamental dramatic character of his operas, especially at crucial moments in the arc of a character's development. He brought a tragic element of recognition and enlightenment to what remained essentially comic works. To mark and set those moments apart, he used clarinets, whose subtly contrasting sonority distinguished them from the other winds. By implicitly writing for Anton Stadler (or someone of comparable skill), he enlisted an intimate friend to collaborate in setting these all-important scenes, a friend who shared his interest in enlightenment and whose playing (like Mozart's composition) was always bent on evoking the nuances by which recognition comes to life. Indeed, the clarinet's deep associations with the pastoral helped sooth the protagonists’ emotional turmoil as well as the audience's sympathetic reaction, so that they could listen and follow these subtle dramatic evolutions with the necessary attention and receptivity.
If indeed Mozart increasingly used the clarinet in his operas to underline the process of personal enlightenment, we may hear with new ears the Clarinet Quintet (K588, 1789) and Clarinet Concerto (K622), which Mozart wrote just before and after his lightning composition of La clemenza di Tito. These purely instrumental works show that he felt drawn to the clarinet as a solo voice, not only as an obbligato companion for an onstage character. We may also understand Mozart as presenting us with the voice of the clarinet so that we might now more directly engage with its special interlocutory power. Just as the clarinet and basset horn were the confidants who helped Sesto and Vitellia through their troubled thoughts, in this concerto Mozart allows the clarinet to address, help and console us in turn by bringing into concord knowledge and feeling, reason and love. Perhaps we may also understand his prominent use of basset horns in the Requiem as expressing his belief that death may be the final enlightenment, as Mozart wrote in the final letter to his father – ‘the true final purpose of our lives … the key to our true happiness’.Footnote 100 Along with so many of his operatic characters, we may owe our finest moments of recognition to the voice of a clarinet.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Emily Dolan, Daniel Leeson, Pierpaolo Polzinetti and James Webster for their kind advice, criticism and encouragement. I especially thank Sarah Hibberd and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions.
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