Guidebooks I-II-III-IV.pdf

Concert Masterworks

Part I

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5

Professor Robert Greenberg

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Robert Greenberg has composed over forty works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles.

Recent performances of Greenberg’s work have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago,

England, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and The Netherlands, where his Child’s Play for String Quartet was performed at

the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam in 1993. Greenberg holds degrees from Princeton University and the University

of California at Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in music composition in 1984. His principal teachers were

Edward Cone, Claudio Spies, Andrew Imbrie, and Olly Wilson. Professor Greenberg’s awards include three Nicola

De Lorenzo Prizes in composition, three Meet the Composer grants, and commissions from the Koussevitzky

Foundation of the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, XTET, and the Dancer’s Stage Ballet

Company. He is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he is chair of the department of

music history and literature and director of curriculum of the Adult Extension Division. Greenberg is creator, host,

and lecturer for the San Francisco Symphony’s “Discovery Series.” Greenberg has taught and lectured extensively

across North America and Europe, speaking to such corporations and musical institutions as the Van Cliburn

Foundation, Arthur Andersen, Bechtel Investments, the Shaklee Corporation, the University of California/Haas

School of Business Executive Seminar, the Association of California Symphony Orchestras, the Texas Association

of Symphony Orchestras, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Greenberg’s work as a teacher and

lecturer has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal , Inc. magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle . Greenberg is

an artistic co-director and board member of COMPOSERS INC. His music is published by Fallen Leaf Press and

CPP/Belwin and is recorded on the Innova label.

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, send complete

description of intended use to The Teaching Company/Rights and Permissions, 4151 Lafayette Center Drive, Suite

100, Chantilly, VA, 20151, USA.

Table of Contents

Concert Masterworks

Part 1

The Classical Piano Concerto

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5

Professor Biography ...........................................................................................1

Course Scope .......................................................................................................3

Mozart, Lectures One–Four: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major …………. 5

Beethoven, Lectures One–Four: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Major ………27

Glossary ……………………………………………………………………….47

The Classical Piano Concerto:

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 (1786)

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Major, Op. 73 “Emperor” (1809)

Scope:

The piano concerto, a large, multi-movement composition for piano and orchestra, emerged during the late

eighteenth century during a musical period referred to as the “Classical Era.” The lectures in this Concert

Masterworks volume will examine the classical piano concerto in general and two exemplary works of Mozart and

Beethoven in particular. Supporting our investigation will be considerations of the lives and character of each

composer and of the times in which they lived. Topics for discussion will include the Enlightenment, the classical

aesthetic ideal, and the Viennese piano (or “fortepiano”). We will look at the Classical Era and its development of

pertinent musical forms and trace the evolution of the featured instrument, the piano, during this fascinating period

in musical history. Finally, we will consider the place of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s piano concerti within the scope

of their overall musical output.

Although he admittedly had his antecedents, we credit Mozart as being the “father” of the piano concerto. Most of

his 27 piano concerti are of such stunning compositional quality and expressive breadth that they both set the

standard by which piano concerti were measured and served as models for generations of composers. During the

final decade of Mozart’s life, which he spent in Vienna, he wrote more piano concerti (seventeen) than any other

type of long composition.

No one was more influenced by Mozart’s piano concerti than Beethoven. His own piano concerti, though rooted in

“classical” practice, transformed the genre from the relatively civil, conversational works of eighteenth-century

Classicism into the dramatic and heroic works of nineteenth-century Romanticism. In this Beethoven and his art are

mirrors of his age. While Mozart had lived to see the French Revolution, he was spared its excesses; he died almost

a year before the abolition of the monarchy in France and the subsequent execution of Louis XVI. Beethoven, on the

other hand, lived to see these events overshadowed by the rise and fall of Napoleon, and followed by the stirrings of

modern nationalism.

Our focus for the development of the classical era piano concerto will be on Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C

Major, K. 503 (1786), and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Major, Op. 73 (1809). The emphasis of these

lectures will be on the musical substance of the concerti themselves—their formal structure, thematic relationships,

expressive content, and the role of the piano soloist.

In the Mozart lectures, we will examine the role of Enlightenment philosophy in the development of classicism in

music. We will consider Mozart’s life and development as a musician, and his career as a performer and composer.

Along the way, we will look at the development of the piano, contrasting it with the harpsichord from which it

evolved. The fact that Mozart began playing the harpsichord and only later took up the piano is significant.

We will discuss form in music, particularly sonata-allegro and sonata-rondo form. We will see how Mozart uses

these forms as he develops and transforms his themes from one movement of his concerto through the next, in a

process of elaboration that relates, but does not repeat the thematic material. We will examine this process in some

detail with the aid of the “Word Score,” a kind of “talking through” the music that helps us appreciate what is going

on from one passage to the next. In the end we will learn that what Mozart does in the three distinct movements of

his concerto is to unify the whole in a creative and satisfying manner.

This 25 th piano concerto is a supreme example of Mozart’s musical genius. It contains extraordinary melodic wealth,

exhibits developmental coherence, and is constructed with structural precision. In it Mozart exhibits superb good

taste; the concerto is beautifully proportioned, coherent in intent, and expressive in content. In short, it is a work of

pianistic brilliance.

In the Beethoven lectures we will also consider the composer’s life and times. We will see Beethoven develop has a

child of the new humanism, and as a pianist, first and foremost. We will also learn of the further developments in

piano design and construction, and Beethoven’s role in those developments as both a performer and composer. We

will discover that Beethoven’s relationship to the piano was very different from that of his older contemporary,

Mozart. Indeed, Beethoven’s relationship to Vienna and the musical world there, while having parallels with

Mozart’s career, is distinctly different.

Although Beethoven uses the same classical forms in his work as Mozart, what he does both with those forms and

with the piano will revolutionize concerto writing ever after. We will learn about Beethoven’s heroic period and

how he establishes a new relationship between the solo piano and the orchestra. In addition, we will develop an

appreciation for Beethoven’s use of both melodic and harmonic structures, and how he manipulates the concept of

harmonic pitch to create a stunning new effect that continues to delight concertgoers today.

Beethoven’s 5 th concerto is a revolutionary work written in a revolutionary time. The composer’s vision of the piano

was a far cry from that of his contemporaries. The “Emperor” is a theatrical work in which the relationship of the

piano as a character, to the orchestra as a character realizes the operatic ideal in the music of Beethoven’s heroic

period.

The Classical Era represents the pinnacle in the development of a musical form that continues to provide hours of

enjoyment for audiences today. As such, it not only merits our attention, but also provides us with a fascinating

glimpse into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers. Through our study we share in the

excitement of the evolution of the pianos and of the compositions of the age. Best of all, by examining the process of

composition in close detail, we get a sense of “being there” as Mozart and Beethoven craft their works.

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