Mozart: The 'Jupiter' Symphony

Elaine R. Sisman, General editor Julian Rushton

This guide to Mozart’s last and most celebrated symphony explores the historical background and aesthetic context of the work as well as the music itself. The early chapters examine the expectations of the symphony in Mozart’s Vienna, Mozart’s career in 1788 – the year of the three last symphonies - and the changing reception of the ‘Jupiter’ over the subsequent two hundred years. A separate chapter is then devoted to each movement of the symphony with musical discussion illuminated by a broad array of topics. Finally, a lucid exposition of rhetoric reveals the connections between elevated and learned styles and the sublime, enabling the reader to grasp the effect Mozart’s music had upon his contemporaries.

Bibliographic Details

8 tables 14 music examples

Contents

• Preface
• 1. The symphony in Mozarts Vienna
• 2. Grand style and sublime in eighteenth-century aesthetics
• 3. The composition and reception of the Jupiter Symphony
• 4. Gesture and expectation: Allegro vivace
• 5. Structure and expression: Andante cantabile
• 6. Phrase rhythm: Menuetto, Allegretto
• 7. The rhetoric of the learned style: Finale, molto allegro
• Appendix: A. Oulibicheff, The Jupiter Symphony of Mozart (1843).