Monday, March 10, 2014

Themes in Mozart K. 604 and 605

Even in his last menuets, Mozart bows to the formal tradition of the antecedent-continuation design. Perhaps the fact that these were written specifically for formal balls had something to do with it (in the last years of his life, Mozart held an official post writing dance music for the Imperial court).
Here are the melody and bass for the first part in K. 604, nos. 1 & 2: (click on the graphic to see a larger image)



In contrast, the German dances of K. 605 use simple period forms in nos. 1 & 2, and a sentence (or perhaps antecedent-continuation, depending on how you read bars 3-4) in no. 3: