music analysis; topic theory; musical-rhetorical figures; Mozart; piano concerto

Topic theory has uncovered an extensive thesaurus of characteristic musical topoi (hunt, military, pastoral, storm, learned style, singing style, sensitive style etc.), which appear widely in the instrumental (as well as vocal) music of the eighteenth century (and beyond). This thesaurus should be consulted by any musician or listener who aspires for stylistic competence appropriate to the repertoire at hand. Given the association of topics with different social contexts and cultural practices, topics are highly capable of linking seemingly abstract instrumental music with a rich network of cultural associations (hunting music, for example, is associated with masculinity, chivalry, adventure, the outdoors, and the like). Musical-rhetorical figures belong a somewhat obscure chapter of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music theory. With their Latin and Greek names, competing classifications, conflicting definitions and roots in classical rhetoric (once commonly taught at schools, but now largely forgotten), they often seem nebulous and hardly fit for purpose. However, when used judiciously, they can illuminate important rhetorical aspects of music, which often features rhetorical questions (interrogatio), exclamations (exclamatio), interruptions (abruptio), hesitations (dubitatio), expressive chromaticism (pathopoeia), ascending/descending/circular motion (anabasis/catabasis/circulatio), sighs (suspiratio) and other rhetorical features which amplify music’s expressive power. The aim of this paper is to show how these approaches can be integrated into the conventional framework of a Caplinian formal analysis and applied to eighteenth-century instrumental music. I will explore how musical topics and rhetorical figures are used to differentiate individual parts of common formal designs (such as sonata form or rondo), which thus become transformed from abstract schemata into expressive or even dramatic trajectories.

Topic theory has uncovered an extensive thesaurus of characteristic musical topoi (hunt, military, pastoral, storm, learned style, singing style, sensitive style etc.), which appear widely in the instrumental (as well as vocal) music of the eighteenth century (and beyond). This thesaurus should be consulted by any musician or listener who aspires for stylistic competence appropriate to the repertoire at hand. Given the association of topics with different social contexts and cultural practices, topics are highly capable of linking seemingly abstract instrumental music with a rich network of cultural associations (hunting music, for example, is associated with masculinity, chivalry, adventure, the outdoors, and the like). Musical-rhetorical figures belong a somewhat obscure chapter of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music theory. With their Latin and Greek names, competing classifications, conflicting definitions and roots in classical rhetoric (once commonly taught at schools, but now largely forgotten), they often seem nebulous and hardly fit for purpose. However, when used judiciously, they can illuminate important rhetorical aspects of music, which often features rhetorical questions (interrogatio), exclamations (exclamatio), interruptions (abruptio), hesitations (dubitatio), expressive chromaticism (pathopoeia), ascending/descending/circular motion (anabasis/catabasis/circulatio), sighs (suspiratio) and other rhetorical features which amplify music’s expressive power. The aim of this paper is to show how these approaches can be integrated into the conventional framework of a Caplinian formal analysis and applied to eighteenth-century instrumental music. I will explore how musical topics and rhetorical figures are used to differentiate individual parts of common formal designs (such as sonata form or rondo), which thus become transformed from abstract schemata into expressive or even dramatic trajectories.