- The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Note on Sources and Musical Examples
- About the Companion Website
- Introduction
- Topics and Opera Buffa
- Symphonies and the Public Display of Topics
- Topics in Chamber Music
- Music and Dance in the Ancien Régime
- Ballroom Dances of the Late Eighteenth Century
- Hunt, Military, and Pastoral Topics
- Turkish and Hungarian-Gypsy Styles
- The Singing Style
- Fantasia and Sensibility
- <i>Ombra</i> and <i>Tempesta</i>
- Learned Style and Learned Styles
- The Brilliant Style
- Topics and Meter
- Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven
- Topics and Formal Functions: The Case of the Lament
- Topics and Tonal Processes
- Topics and Form in Mozart’s String Quintet in e Flat Major, k. 614/i
- Topical Figurae: The Double Articulation of Topics
- The Troping of Topics in Mozart’s Instrumental Works
- Performing Topics in Mozart’s Chamber Music with Piano
- Recognizing Musical Topics Versus Executing Rhetorical Figures
- Eloquent Performance: The Pronuntiatio of Topics
- Amateur Topical Competencies
- Expectation, Musical Topics, and the Problem of Affective Differentiation
- Listening to Topics in the Nineteenth Century
- General Index
- Index of Musical Compositions
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter considers the topical competency of late eighteenth-century amateur players and listeners. Focus is on selected string quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Pleyel. The analytical strategy is comparative, and therefore the analyses are limited to movements governed by clearly defined topics. The troping of learned and galant elements is the focus of discussion of three minuet movements, all of which incorporate contrapuntal techniques to varying structural and expressive ends. Parametric density is the focus of discussion of four chasse movements. In both sets of examples, issues considered include topical content and syntactical function, topical dissonance, and social and cultural associations.
Keywords: Haydn, Mozart, Pleyel, topical competency, amateur, minuet, chasse
Melanie Lowe is Associate Professor of Musicology at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. Author of Pleasure and Meaning in the Classical Symphony and co-editor of the forthcoming Rethinking Difference in Musical Scholarship, she has widely published on Haydn and other eighteenth-century subjects, topic theory, music in American media, and music history pedagogy.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- Note on Sources and Musical Examples
- About the Companion Website
- Introduction
- Topics and Opera Buffa
- Symphonies and the Public Display of Topics
- Topics in Chamber Music
- Music and Dance in the Ancien Régime
- Ballroom Dances of the Late Eighteenth Century
- Hunt, Military, and Pastoral Topics
- Turkish and Hungarian-Gypsy Styles
- The Singing Style
- Fantasia and Sensibility
- <i>Ombra</i> and <i>Tempesta</i>
- Learned Style and Learned Styles
- The Brilliant Style
- Topics and Meter
- Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven
- Topics and Formal Functions: The Case of the Lament
- Topics and Tonal Processes
- Topics and Form in Mozart’s String Quintet in e Flat Major, k. 614/i
- Topical Figurae: The Double Articulation of Topics
- The Troping of Topics in Mozart’s Instrumental Works
- Performing Topics in Mozart’s Chamber Music with Piano
- Recognizing Musical Topics Versus Executing Rhetorical Figures
- Eloquent Performance: The Pronuntiatio of Topics
- Amateur Topical Competencies
- Expectation, Musical Topics, and the Problem of Affective Differentiation
- Listening to Topics in the Nineteenth Century
- General Index
- Index of Musical Compositions