Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, and Pathways ed. by Paul Corneilson (review)

Reviewed by: Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, and Pathways ed. by Paul Corneilson Julian Rushton (bio) Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, and Pathways, Bach Perspectives 14, ed. Paul Corneilson (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2022). xi, 132 pp. This aptly titled book derives from the proceedings of a joint meeting of the American Bach and Mozart Societies (Stanford, 2020). The series in which it appears is named for the elder composer, or rather composers, as more than one Bach is involved. However, five of these six deep studies touch, or do more than touch, on Mozart. Eleanor Selfridge-Field writes on keyboard transcriptions by J. S. Bach and J. G. Walther; not surprisingly, we learn most about the latter, who is far less researched. Here are catalogued in detail what The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians merely mentions as "14 concs. by other composers, arr. Kbd." Selfridge-Field also lists Bach's sixteen transcriptions, registering some different attributions for the music being reworked; some remain hazy, and perhaps always will. For Walther's transcriptions, possible routes of transmission are traced via manuscripts or Roger's Amsterdam publications. Particularly interesting is the analysis of these composers' relative fidelity to sources (see 20–21). Bach enriched the textures, and for "musical" (I would say "practical") reasons, he accommodated the higher flights of Vivaldi's violin writing to the Weimar organ keyboard, but he "did not violate the integrity of pre-existing material as nonchalantly as Walther did" (21). The article places the works discussed within a wider "culture of musical transcription … a tide of adaptation and allusion that swelled periodically from their time to ours" (22). As indeed it still does. Yoel Greenberg writes on precedents for the "Secondary Development" with examples from J.S. and C.P.E. Bach and Leopold Mozart. Previous theorists of sonata form, it is suggested, have not fully represented the implications for understanding mid-century composers as precedents (rather than merely precursors). This is because they assume that the "double return" of the opening key and theme must define the point of recapitulation, whereas binary-form [End Page 304] movements of the mid-century sometimes make only passing reference to the theme at this point; they may lack clear dominant preparation until the true recapitulation comes with "secondary" material resolved in the tonic, and closure often "rhyming" with the first part. This is not the only chapter that is a useful corrective to the way mid-century composers are squeezed between the giants that came before and after them—Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart. But in their sonata-type pieces C. P. E. Bach and others produced satisfying designs that should be appreciated for their own qualities. The argument could be developed in connection with, for instance, the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, whose works were disseminated mid-century, even in England, prior to the arrival there of another of Bach's sons, Johann Christian. Greenberg's examples, besides graphs of prolonged circles of fifths and extracts from the Bachs and the elder Mozart, conclude with an early work by Wolfgang Mozart that seems more mid-century than "high classical." In his maturity, however, "the double return had assumed a meaning, both harmonic and thematic, that it would not have had in the mid-eighteenth century" (36). One can only concur. Noelle M. Heber's chapter is titled "A Pursuit of Wealth: The Freelance Endeavors of Bach and Mozart." Heber concludes that despite their frequent complaints about being short of money, their income from salaries, patronage, teaching, publication, and fees placed them within the middle-earnings bracket. This was not unusual; rather than being pioneers of a freelance existence, each was typical of his time in having a mixed portfolio of professional earnings. The limited market for Bach's published works in his Leipzig years was balanced by a respectable salary, whereas Mozart in his Vienna years, having abandoned any ambition to be "a famous Kapellmeister" (as his father had hoped), found more scope for publication, and received fees for writing operas. Unlike with Bach, however, sales of his work grew rapidly after his death, and his widow, by now also the widow...