Mozart's clarinet concerto pulls my heartstrings. Tell me why.

May 5, 2018 11:46 AM

I am obsessed with this chord progression in the adagio from Mozart's famous clarinet concerto (1:18-1:36 in the linked video). Can any musically-minded people tell me why it is so effective? I'm specifically interested in what it is about the interplay between chord progression, melody and instrumentation that feels so yearning and poignant. Get as technical and music-theory-y as you like.
posted by Jellybean_Slybun to Media & Arts (11 answers total)

Alrighty; I'll leave the heavy theory to others about the chords. I am but a humble avocational clarinetist. This piece is #1 in the clarinet repertoire, at least in terms of popularity with both clarinetists and non-clarinetists. If you play an instrument, you of course think your leading repertoire pieces are great. I was talking about this piece with the concertmaster of our orchestra (who is, of course, a violinist), and he said: "It's one of the best pieces of classical music, period."

Violinists have ALL the repertoire, so this was a high compliment.

I think that Mozart captured a fine balance between a major key and a minor feel. The melodic gestures jump to a high note and linger on their way down, at least in the section you cited in the video. I was talking about this piece once with my wife as we were listening to it in the car, and I talked about how sad the piece seemed. She said "it seems so joyous to me."

This may not be true for everyone, but I think anything balanced between joy and sadness, sweet and bitter, evokes nostalgia. It's a classical piece, not from the romantic era, so there isn't any "programmatic" intent, i.e. Mozart didn't write it intending to evoke his childhood, or waves on the beach, or something specific, but I get that feeling from the music, personally, and even more so in his clarinet quintet - nostalgia.

You mentioned the instrumentation: There are later composers who perhaps better exploited the clarinet's unique characteristics as an instrument, but Mozart was writing very early in the clarinet's history, and he did a great job of making use of the clarinet's very solid LOW range. If you notice in the album cover on your video, Shifrin is playing one instrument and holding another. The one he's playing has an extended range (down to low concert A, I think), as opposed to the standard A clarinet's range. This enabled him in this recording to get down to some very low notes (3:20-4:40 or so is a good demo of this). Long story short on this - the instrument for which this concerto was written fell out of practice, and the extended range clarinet in A is the modern equivalent/workaround. You'll often hear it performed on the standard clarinet, but to do that you have to re-work some of the lower notes. Which is why Shifrin owns an instrument for which there is basically one work - he's that good on Mozart...

Getting out of the nerdy weeds a bit about the instrumentation, I think Mozart built a very nice contrast between light, airy strings and the meaty, complex sound of the clarinet.
posted by randomkeystrike at 12:20 PM on May 5, 2018 [26 favorites]

That strain again, it had a dying fall.

Shaky knew his stuff.
posted by zadcat at 12:35 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

It reminds me of "Thanks For The Memory" but I don't how close it is.
posted by bongo_x at 12:38 PM on May 5, 2018

Here is a video with the score. The relevant bit starts around 13:50. If I'm interpreting all of the key signatures correctly, the descending theme is first played over:

I-IV

...then it's restated a note higher over:

ii-V

...then another note higher over:

iii-iv

I might have a chance to get more theoretical after my daughter released my attention.
posted by clawsoon at 12:38 PM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Anecdata and not particularly theoretical, but I was able to predict the leading note of the third fall by the other two. I haven't mapped it out, but I'm thinking the skeleton of the progression has been re/used in other, more recognizable ways.

FYI, I'm always thinking in folk terms for well-tempered compositions because I've found it common at this point in history for musical figures in standard keys, rhythms, and intonations to arrive at my ears as referents. This has been your applied musicology conjecture for the day.

As for instrumentation, I've read that the saxophone is the instrument that most closely matches the timbre of the human voice. I imagine there are hints of that in clarinet, if not all reeds, and if I've ever learned one thing about composition (debatable), it's that the human ear will zero in on anything that might be a voice. If the ear is trying to discern a voice, the listener is going to pull in every memory of what kind of voice it might be, which is going to drag capital-m Meaning into the equation. I'm not afraid to drag Derrida into this. Anyway, that's all I got.
posted by rhizome at 12:50 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: clawsoon has it right, it is basically a sequential pattern that keeps repeating one step higher:
I-IV
ii-V
iii-vi

another key element is the secondary dominant before both the ii and iii chords, which gives us:
I IV (V/ii)
ii V (V/iii)
iii vi
IV I/V V I

Part of what makes it effective is the rise in tension due to several sources:
1) the ascending progression itself. This is mirrored by the ascending line moving in the iii-iv bars
2) the tonality increasingly moves away from the tonic, with the furthest point being the V/iii
3) the secondary dominants add an internal tension-release cycle, but with the resolution becoming increasingly unsatisfying

All of this tension makes the concluding section so satisfying, even though it is a fairly standard cadence. And this doesn't include the orchestration and voice-leading, which as noted above play a big role.

As far as other songs, this kind of sequential ascending pattern is pretty common - Hendrix's Hey Joe (IV-I, V-II, VI), Bewitched bothered and bewildered (I V/ii, ii V/iii, iii). I'm sure there are some that are literally I-IV,ii-V, but none come to mind at this moment.
posted by ianhattwick at 1:12 PM on May 5, 2018 [8 favorites]

Whoops, yes, iii-vi is what I meant to type.
posted by clawsoon at 2:30 PM on May 5, 2018

Wikipedia lists I-IV-ii-V as the Montgomery-Ward bridge, but I can't think of (or find with some cursory searching) any songs which go all the way to I-IV-ii-V-iii-vi. It's lovely with this tune, though.

To add a tiny bit to ianhattwick's analysis: I-IV is incredibly common. For example, I'm pretty sure that 7/8s of van Morrison's total output consists of I-IV. (I exaggerate, but only slightly.) Lots and lots of music uses I-IV.

The second statement goes up a fourth, too, but it's going from a minor to a major: ii-V.

And the third statement goes up a fourth once again, but this time we're fully minor: iii-vi. When we get to that vi, we've reached the relative minor, and - for me - that's the most satisfying point in the progression.
posted by clawsoon at 3:21 PM on May 5, 2018

(For more on how common movements by fourths are, you might be interested in the circle of fifths/circle of fourths if you haven't already encountered it. Mozart isn't doing that this time, though.)
posted by clawsoon at 3:26 PM on May 5, 2018

I know nothing about music, but I always found this this clip from Amadeus enlightening.
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 3:31 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

I don't have anything to add to the analyses above, but you might also like Chopin's Piano Concerto #1, especially the second movement, performed here by Martha Argerich.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 7:15 PM on May 5, 2018 [2 favorites]