ON IMPROVISATION IN HARMONIEMUSIK LITERATURE
Today the composer hopes for as many performances as possible for his
composition, indeed he even hopes that listeners yet unborn will hear his work. But the
composer of the Baroque and Classical Period generally composed for a single
performance by a specific body of performers and in most cases the composer expected to
be present. The court composer, with his requirement to constantly produce music on
demand, did not have the luxury of time to think of posterity. Earlier composers were also
heir to a rich tradition of improvisation by all instrumentalists, a tradition as old as music
itself. Indeed, it was only as recently as in the Renaissance that players began to read from
written music on a regular basis.
For all the above reasons, we can understand why earlier court composers
frequently wrote music in a simple form, anticipating that the player would “finish” the
composition by improvisation in performance. In slow movements, in particular, this was
commonly expected. As Charles Burney observed,
An adagio is, generally, little more than an outline left to the performers
abilities to color. [If he does not, he will] soon excite languor and disgust in the
hearers.1
When, in late Bach and Handel, we find the composer beginning to actually write
everything out, the performers complained that the composer was taking away their role
and furthermore making the music incomprehensible. Thus Johann Scheibe wrote of Bach
that by his writing everything out he “makes the melodic line utterly unclear.”2
1 Charles Burney, in “Adagio,” in Rees’ Cyclopedia (London, 1819).
2 Johann Adolf Scheibe, Critische Musicus (Hamburg, 1737), I, 12.
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It is less widely understood that this same tradition continued to some degree during
the Classic Period. Indeed, we have eye-witness reports by Spohr and Berlioz that players
were even continuing to freely improvise well into the 19th century.
In the following discussion of improvisation in Harmoniemusik, I will omit the
entire category of single ornaments and instead concentrate on compositional
circumstances which call for true improvisation.
First, it is clear that the type of melodic elaboration which was so commonly
executed during the Baroque continued during the Classic Period. There are a number of
cases where we have both the original form of the notation and what the player actually
performed. Among such examples in Mozart’s own handwriting, perhaps the most striking
is found in a letter of June 9, 1784, to his father. Mozart’s sister had apparently questioned
if a passage in the Concerto in D, K. 451, should really be performed as written. “Oh, no,”
Mozart responded,
...in the Andante of the Concerto in D there is no question that in the solo in
C something needs to be added. I shall send it to her as soon as possible...
In the solution he provided we can see how far removed his performance suggestion was
from his notation.
A similar example of melodic elaboration can be found in an early eight-wind
version of the Gran Partita, K. 361/370a. In the example provided, which dates before
January, 1791, we can see how a clarinet player has written the version he prefers in place
of Mozart’s.
The next two conditions which call for improvisation in Harmoniemusik might be
classified as “short-hand,” places where the composer simply did not take the time to write
out the music, leaving it to the player.
The first type of “short-hand” notation has to do with the filling of wide leaps,
something I believe the composer must have regarded as obvious. We find a typical
illustration in the second movement of the Mozart Piano Concerto in C, K. 503, where,
following a series of running thirty-second notes, Mozart simply outlines (for himself) how
these fast notes will continue in performance. Surely no one today would contend that
these widely leaping slow notes should be played as written. Similarly, Josef Triebensee in
the first oboe part of his partita, Variations on a Theme of Mozart, simply outlines a two-
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octave leap to be filled by the player. This, by the way, is surely what Weber expected in
those passages of great leaps in his solo works for clarinet, yet today we generally hear
players squawking back and forth from the top to the bottom of the register of the
instrument.
In concerti of the Classic Period one will sometimes see the solo part running along
in sixteenth-notes, then suddenly one measure of two half-notes followed by more running
sixteenth-notes. In this case, the composer is indicating a place to breathe, with the rest of
the bar to be filled in with sixteenth-notes.
Another type of musical short-hand by early composers involved “chord symbols.”
It is important to remember that the figured bass symbols, so common to the Baroque and
pre-Classic Periods, were not used in the upper voices and those composers did not yet
have our modern device of representing chords by the use of Roman Numerals. So how
could these composers notate a “chord symbol”? The answer is by simply outlining the
chord itself, usually in simple triadic fashion. During the Baroque this was done by
“Alberti bass” figures. A perfect example is founding the well-known Vivaldi Piccolo
Concerto in C, in which the solo part alternates between genuine melodic material and dull,
repetitive Alberti bass measures. In this work, written for his students, it is clear that
Vivaldi, in writing a measure in Alberti bass, was saying to his student, “Play what you
will, but play in sixteenth notes and here is the chord.” This is nowhere more evident than
in the initial entrance of the piccolo in the first movement. The solo part consists of ten
measures of Alberti bass notation, ‘music’ of utterly no interest whatsoever. But, perhaps
the orchestra is doing something interesting? No, the orchestra has ten bars of a repeated
C major chord! Clearly, anything the soloist plays here would be more interesting than
what Vivaldi wrote!
We recall a similar kind of notation during the Classic Period in a wind instrument
Serenade by Salieri. In the Minuet, the oboe has a beautiful melody throughout. But in the
Trio we see only the outlining of triads. It seems clear that the oboist was expected to
improvise, using the chord symbols provided by Salieri. Another obvious example of this
kind of notation can be found in the first movement of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. The
first theme and its repetition are separated by a brief little passage for the clarinet, a
fragment which sounds to us like what clarinet players play when warming up -- and in a
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sense, this is what the soloist is doing in this the beginning of the first movement. In the
development section, Mozart suddenly gets carried away and composes the entire
development section not on the principal themes but on this little “warm-up” figure. He
provides each string instrument with an extended written-out improvisation of this figure.
But when it is the soloist’s turn, for the clarinet he merely indicates the chords, again by
outlining the triads. It is quite clear to us that Mozart never anticipated that a clarinet
soloist would actually play what he wrote, although that is exactly what every clarinetist
does today!
The final circumstances calling for improvisation in Classic Period music are those
places marked by a fermata symbol. We pass over the cadenza, which is well understood
today. But there is another type of improvisation called for by the fermata symbol and that
is the Eingang, which, by the way, is Mozart’s own term. Unlike the cadenza, in the
Eingang the player was expected to improvise a brief passage by which the solo part
connects, or leads into, the following music. There is a well-known example of this, in
which Mozart wrote out the Eingang, in the “Romanza” movement of the Gran Partita.
Whether one is to play a cadenza or an Eingang, when one encounters a fermata, is
determined by the harmony. If the harmony is a I 6/4 chord, a cadenza is required. If the
harmony is the dominant, or any chord functioning like a dominant, an Eingang is called
for. Thus it may come as a surprise to clarinetists to learn that there are no cadenzas in the
Mozart Clarinet Concerto, but there are three Eingänge.
A typical place in Harmoniemusik literature for an Eingang is in the final
movement of the Partita in C Minor, K. 384a, where we find a fermata symbol just before
the final C Major section which ends the work. Indeed, in the NMA publication of
Mozart’s own string quintet arrangement of this same work, the editors point out that an
Eingang should be played for the first violin.
Additional examples of anticipated Eingänge may be found in the first movement of
the Gran Partita, both at the end of the Largo and just before the end of the movement.
We believe that anyone who hears this music with improvised Eingänge will never again
find it satisfying to listen to a sustained fermati followed by silence.
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