From Jan Swafford, The Reign of Love – A Mozart Biography

By Orion Music and Arts, Cambridge MA, 2023-2024

Copyright, ©, Orion Music and Arts MA 2023-2024, 

All Rights Reserved

Mozart’s Contribution to Violin Performance – the Five Violin Concerti 

The music historian Jan Swafford considers Mozart’s violin concerti as some of the finest to have been composed for the instrument of all time, as well as being some of the most outstanding and noteworthy of the Classical period.

Expansion

Composed between 1733 and 1775, Mozart’s violin concerti expanded upon the earlier Baroque concerti in terms of motivic material, which he also economized in terms of fit and use within a more compact structure. 

Dialogue

With livelier musical and dialogic exchanges, the Mozart violin concerti featured musical material that was both varied and harmonized with considerable harmonic and melodic sophistication.

Timbre and Opera

Also achieved was a greater violinistic musicality and virtuosity, possible as Mozart himself played the instrument, and was able to make use of his knowledge of the timbre and acoustic possibilities of the instrument in both violinistic and lyrical or operatic ways.

Contributions

These contributions to violin performance and violin playing development are not inconsiderable – being both masterworks of violin performance repertoire, and also significant points of developmental transition that brought violin playing to new levels of technical and musical heights combined. 

FURTHER INFORMATION

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By Orion Music and Arts, Cambridge MA, 2023-2024

Copyright, ©, Orion Music and Arts MA 2023-2024, 

All Rights Reserved

For Purchase

To purchase a copy of Jan Swafford’s The Reign of Love, a musical biography useful also for violinists hoping to improve their performance through knowledge of history, please click here.