which starts alia breve and prestissimo ends up in 2/4 and organization of time that is at the heart of Mozart's

heart of Mozart's crea-

only allegro assai. tive act.
To realize Mozart's tempo indications as accurately as
possible in all their subtlety therefore requires both a Jean-Pierre Marty, composer, conductor and pianist, is the
knowledge of 18th-century tempo conventions and a Director of the American (Conservatory in bontainebleau.
careful examination of even- element of the musical He has been working on the question of Mozart's tempo
structure. This is one of the performer's most chal- indications since ;y66, and has published The Tempo
longing and stimulating tasks. Upon his or her success Indications of Mozart (Yale L'niwrsity Press,
depends the listeners perception of that particular

Wye J. Allanbrook and Wendy Hilton

Downloaded from http://em.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, San Fransisco on April 25, 2015
Dance rhythms in Mozart's arias

1 Masked ball in the large Ridoiitiih<uil \ unna 1 17K0 pen and wash (\ itnna Histonsehts Museum dcr Stadt)

Mozart and the dance p e r f o r m e r s to use the social dance forms as a textbook
WYI I. A I 1 WllllOOK
for the stueh of r h y t h m a n d character in m u s k — t h e s e
Music written tor t h e d a n c e is a familiar presence in the texts a n d others like t h e m are part of o u r s t a n d a r d ana-
nuisic of the high B a r o q u e . T h e r h v t h m i of social elance lytkal e q u i p m e n t , a n d seem no m o r e out of the way to
viturate French opera, tor example, and the dance ••uite^ u^ than those writers' instructions in t h o r o u g h b a s s and
and partitas of t h e Kite i~th ant) e'arly i.Mh centuries. Mat- c o u n t e r p o i n t . H e n c e we scarcelv raise ,\n evebrow at
ilieson's e \ h a u s i i \ e disc u s s i m ^ of particular daiKe^ and anab'ses that seek to set the m o r e "abstract music ot the
their affects, k i r n b e r g e r •< exhortation to c o m p o s e r - a n d period in a dance framework: to idenntv a IVKII fugue

I A B I V M I ' S I (: I I li R I" A R V 1 9 9 2
subject as a bourree, for example, or a Handel ana as a am sure that we all have changes we would hope, either
sarabande seems fully legitimate. overtly or covertly, to see come about from this bicen-
But as the 18th century moves toward its end, our per- tennial second look at Mozart's music. My hope—one
spective suffers an abrupt change: we are reluctant to that I have hardly kept covert—is that our notion of the
speak of dance patterns as animating the music of 'absolute' Mozart may finally disappear and the Mozart
Mozart; what seemed nobly expressive in Baroque music who used his music as a mirror to catch glints of the
suddenly appears mundane, and a needless contracting many-faceted world around him may take its place. For I
of his expressive horizon. This reluctance does entail a think that this is not to demean but to celebrate a man
certain disregard for the evidence. We know from Con- who had an intense love for the social pleasures of his
stanze Mozart, for example, via the memoirs of the tenor life, and whose music would have had far less animation
Michael Kelly, that Mozart loved to dance, and that he if it had been cut off from them. More materially, if we
often said that 'his talent lay in that art rather than in ourselves come to understand more about the living

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music'.2 We know that Mozart wrote dance music all sources of this animation, our performances can only
through his life, most intensely toward its end, when, in become more directed, more lively and more
his capacity as Royal Imperial Chamber Composer, he illuminating.
composed for the ballrooms of the Viennese many rich Turning to vocal music specifically, in the mid-i8th
sets of minuets, contredanses and German dances. (The century the critical tide was turning against the intrusion
last two types, the dances of the hour, had eclipsed the in opera of the old-fashioned divertissements that con-
stern hierarchy of the French court couple dances, and sisted of a succession of social dances with little or no
were performed on social occasions along with the more connection to the plot. It was now good taste to require
genteel minuet, which remained an important pres- more dramatic dances, which emphasized the virtuoso
ence.) We know that a movement called 'minuet' con- dancer and bore an explicit link to the plot. By the 1760s
ventionally graced most symphonies and chamber dance was beginning to separate from opera as a serious
works, and that the last movements of these same works art in its own right; witness the popularity of the pan-
frequently took their quick comic grace from the con- tomime ballets of Noverre and Angiohm, with their
tredanse in its 2/4 version (although this has not helped attempts to be directly mimetic of the action (as if such a
us to recognize that this habitual employment in 'seri- thing were ever fully possible without some mediation of
ous' music of the popular dances then danced in the conventional gesture) In Mozart's operas, however,
dance halls made the symphony into a kind of analogue social dance did not disappear; it went, so to speak,
to the Baroque dance suite). Finally, if we look closely we underground, to become part of the musical material of
see scattered throughout Mozart's works unmistakable the arias and ensembles of his mature operas And it was
rhythmic references to dances old and dances newly not divorced from expression, as were the social dances
popular, to dances he enjoyed performing in daily life interspersed with the action in the tragedie lynque For
and those old-fashioned ones the sense for which he had the patterns of social dance were in themselves, as Mat-
absorbed from his classical Kapellmeister training. So theson stressed, bearers of affect; written to accompany
the evidence is that dance had as lively a presence in dances performed on social occasions, they mirrored the
Classic music as it had had in the Baroque; the old ways social and affective hierarchy.
had just changed with the times, and taken on new
manifestations. Nevertheless, something stills our fac- Although I will forbear mentioning every dance pat-
ulty for comparison here. I suspect it is the notion, tern that found its way into Mozart's music, a quick view
inherited from our 19th-century predecessors, of the of a spectrum of dances from slow to fast would start
limpid purity of Mozart's music, the notion of a Mozart with the austere triple pattern of the sarabande, all
who, while childlike, nevertheless kept his eye on the restraint and Spanish hauteur. In the middle would
otherwordly and the absolute. stand the quicker, evenly accented triple of the com-
plaisant minuet, which in its noble congeniality became
I must immediately confess that in this litany of our known as the 'Queen of all the dances'. Quicker triple
failings I am setting up something of a straw man. measures were often bound together into compound
Things are changing rapidly in Mozart analysis; writers duple, or 6/8, where a duple beat on a higher level con-
are coming more and more to accept—indeed trolled the lower-level pulse of the lilting triple; the gigue
embrace—a Mozart whose music was grounded in the in 6/4 (later 6/8), although a court dance, had strong
then and there, in the ways of the world he inhabited. I rustic connotations, and habitually appeared in operas

EARLY M U S I C FEBRUARY 1 9 9 2 143

as the metre of peasant choruses. The gigue had two sis- masters. The most comprehensive accounts are found in
ters, slower versions of 6/8: the so-called pastorale, mod- books by four masters of different nationalities: Gott-
erate-tempoed and legato,3 and the sicihano, slower than fried Taubert, Rechtschaffener Tanz-Meister (Leipzig,
the pastorale, and typically in dotted rhythms; both had 1717); Pierre Rameau, Le maitre a danser (Pans, 1725);
strong Arcadian associations. The gavotte, a moderate- Kellom Tomlinson, The Art of Dancing (London, 1735);
tempoed dance in duple metre, also had a history of and Gennaro Magn, Trattoro teonco-prattico di hallo
association with the pastoral mode, and with its com- (Naples, 1779).
panion, the amorous.4 The rhythmic pattern of its usual While Taubert and Tomlinson seem to have made
music is an inversion of the 'pedestrian' rhythmic pat- careers in their native countries, Rameau was dancing
tern of the march, in which a simple | 1 2 3 4 | becomes master at the Spanish court at the time his book was
3 4 I 1 2. It articulates a complex rhythmic arch across published Magn was a highly skilled theatrical dancer
the bar-line to establish a coy beating rhythm that could who performed mostly in Naples and Venice, but in both

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be said to mirror the pastoral mode in its most artificial 1759 and 1763/4 he was engaged at the Burgtheater in
manifestations; the gavotte frequently comes with a Vienna.
musette bass, as for example, in the gavottes of Bach's Given the long life and widespread popularity of the
English Suites. These and other dance rhythms would minuet it is to be expected that it was not danced in
have been familiar to Mozart's audiences, as also would exactly the same way everywhere or at all times. But
have been their affective connotations They formed a while the descriptions and notated scores of the dance
powerful vocabulary of expression, which Mozart fre- show certain differences, the three basic essentials of the
quently employed to choreograph character in the arias minuet remain the same: one pas de menuet equals two
and ensembles of his mature Italian operas. measures of 3/4 time (or one of 6/4, as the music is some-
We will illustrate this union of dance and character in times written), the spatial figures follow each other in a
Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni by con- prescribed order, and a good performance of the dance
sidering two of those dances—the minuet and the must be distinguished not merely by a good technique
gavotte—first as danced, and then as employed in vari- but through the fine air and carriage of the dancers.
ous operatic contexts. We hope to give a sense for the The minuet was the epitome of the aristocratic danse a
dance patterns themselves, and then to show how the deux, designed to be performed by one couple alone at a
understanding that grows from absorbing the gestures time in order of social precedence. Simpler technically
of these dances—internalizing them, as it were—can and choreographically than the other popular Baroque
direct the singer to both a style of execution and a bear- danses a deux, the bourrees, gavottes, sarabandes, gigues
ing on stage; these patterns can be read as virtual 'stage and so forth, the minuet is nevertheless far from easy.
directions'. We do not propose that the steps of the The better the dancer's technique the easier it appears,
dances should be directly translated into the singer's and the greatest difficulty in performing the minuet
motion; the dance rhythms in Mozart's anas were styl- impressively lies in its apparent simplicity. As Kellom
ized, and it is the ethos of the dance gestures rather than Tomlinson expressed it.
the steps of a particular choreography that the singer The minuet is one of the most graceful as well as difficult
must hope to absorb. Dances to arrive at a Mastery of, through the Plainness of the
Step and the Air and Address of the Body that are requisite to
Dancing the minuet its Embellishment.
WENDY HILTON In upper-class society, learning the minuet was con-
The minuet and the gavotte survived, each in its own sidered to be essential. Its study enabled young persons
way, during Mozart's lifetime. In the ballroom at least, to develop the impressive yet unostentatious air which
they continued to be danced with some of the basic steps would distinguish them in society. No action in everyday
first described in early 18th-century dance publications formal life was left to chance, yet the ultimate aim was to
beginning with Raoul Auger Feuillet's textbook on appear supremely natural. This ideal was expressed suc-
dance notation, Choregraphie, published in Pans in 1700. cinctly in The Spectator as- 'Good breeding shows itself
The ballroom menuet ordinaire, which gained favour most . . . where it appears the least.'5
at the court of Louis XIV during the 1660s and sub- The ideals of self-presentation as given by the dancing
sequently throughout European artistocratic society, masters lay in an erect, yet never stiff, carriage of the
was described and notated by numerous dancing head, a steady waist to keep the body upright and

144 EARLY M U S I C FEBRUARY 1 9 9 2

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2 Before the ball, c.1780, copperplate engraving (Vienna, Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde)

centred, and a complete lack of affectation at all times. wrote their accounts in the first half of the 18th century,
In his account of the minuet Magri expresses the same provide diagrams of the minuet figures, Gennato Magri,
ideals as the earlier masters. He describes the minuet as a writing in 1779, unfortunately relies on verbal descrip-
sustained dance, the technical execution of which tions, which makes his intentions difficult to understand
requires 'ambitious feet' and a 'hidden control'. The at certain points. However, his descriptions of the steps
dancers should maintain open, relaxed expressions, are reasonably clear. He describes places where a foot
their mouths smiling slightly to express a certain cheer- touches the ground lightly, or slides along the floor when
fulness. The arms must move as though naturally, but closing toward the other foot. So the steps are stylisti-
above all the dancing must be distinguished by good cally different from those given by the earlier masters.
taste, and a noble carriage and air.6 Magri does not use the cross-rhythm between steps and
There were several basic pas de menuet. The one prob- music; instead the two bends and stretches are distri-
ably used most frequently as the 18th century progressed buted so that an accent occurs on the first beat of each
was the pas de menuet a deux mouvements; that is a step- measure.
unit in which the knees are bent and stretched twice.
Each stretching of the knees provides a rhythmic stress The minuet in Mozart's arias
within the step-unit. Most characteristically the bends WYE J. ALLANBROOK
and stretches are distributed to provide a cross-rhythm Let us now review a few of the many passages in Le nozze
between steps and music. di Figaro that use minuet rhythms to dramatic purpose.
While Rameau, Taubert and Tomlinson, who all One of the most notable is the first part of Figaro's aria

EARLY M U S I C FEBRUARY 1992 I45

'Se vuol ballare', early in Act 1, where Figaro imagines a vanni minuet turns up at a crucial moment in Lenozzedi
vivid social revenge against Count Almaviva for his Figaro, but not in this case as a mere identifier of social
cuckolding intentions (as revealed to Figaro by Susanna class. Instead it is inflected in order to transfer the gen-
a moment before). The aria is in two parts, which in ealogical word 'noble' (as in 'noble-born') into the
their ordering imitate current practice in the ball- domain of moral character. It occurs at that telling
room—first a taut and elegant minuet, in which Figaro moment when the Count, trapping the Countess, he
darkly promises to 'teach the little Count how to dance', suspects, in flagrante clelicto with Cherubino and press-
and then a quick 2/4 contredanse in which he enumer- ing his advantage with ignoble bullying, opens the door
ates the machines of revenge. to the Countess's closet to find not Cherubino but Sus-
Another aria, one actually labelled Tempo di Menuetto, anna, who has cleverly managed the substitution in the
is Marcellina's important but rarely performed solo in nick of time. 'My lord,' she says simply, 'what is this
Act 4 of Figaro, which opens in civil minuet rhythms as bemusement? Take your sword; kill the page! That

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she sings of the civil mating habits of the beasts of the cursed page—see him here.' Molto andante, in 3/8 time,
field. (This is in contradistinction to the second part of the strings play the unadorned accompaniment to a
the aria, where in march-like duple rhythms she minuet that follows the rhythmic pattern of the Don
describes the crude behaviour that males of the human Giovanni paradigm—a crotchet and four quavers per
species exhibit toward their significant others.) bar. There is no melody at first; the strings project
The ballroom scene in the Act 1finaleof Don Giovanni instead the 'essence of minuet'. As Susanna gains
presents a microcosm of the social world of the opera in strength from her triumph, her vocal line gradually takes
dance imagery—the clumsy peasant Teitsch or German on greater articulation and ornament. The moment is a
dance stumbled through by Leporello and Masetto, the quintessential 'shock tutti', to use the vocabulary John
bourgeois contredanse assumed by the aristocratic Platoff has urged on us." Susanna is in complete control;
seducer who betrays his rank, and the minuet danced by she has taken the Count's aristocratic dance and made it
the maskers, the only true aristocrats in this ordered tur- her own. It is difficult not to leap to the conclusion that
moil. A minuet with the same rhythms as the Don Gio- she is noble, and that he is not. The Susanna here must

, * 'I* EARLY M U S K ;
-. FLSTIVAL

4-
A Glorious Week of Music
April 27 to May 3, 1992
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra — American Debut Camerata Trajectina, Renaissance chamber <
La Fontegara Amsterdam, recorder ensemble La Capilla Virreinal de la Nueva Espana
Benjamin Bagby performing Beoz^ult La Fontegara — Mexico
Leo van Doeselaar & Wyneke Jordans, fortepiano Les petites violons
F.duardo Lopez Banzo, harpsichord — Spain Michael Schopper, baritone
Fortuna Desperata Scenic Production by the members of
Boston Camerata The Royal Conservatory at the Hague
Texas Baroque Ensemble plus many mow event*.'

SAN .WTi'MU I ARI.Y Ml'SIf I 1 STIVAt

(joethc Institute •sA\ WTi'MO. T! X -s2:.M SA

Holl.mil K-sm.il KirK Music l t n . v h i \ \ ~]2 22-*

I46 EARLY MI/SIC FEBRUARY 1992

not be the pert servant girl we have sometimes witnessed step-units and musical units constantly overlap, until
in the opera, but fully graced, and gracious in her sar- the half-cadence and cadence bars, where choreograph-
casm, catching the gestures of the dance in her every lcally a step-unit is used to resolve the conflict—if I may
movement and utterance. The dance's 100-year history use so strong a word—and reach a momentary sense of
of civility and decorum lies behind the meaning of this resolution. Basic gavotte step-sequences consist of three
extraordinary moment; it is distilled into Susanna's car- step-units followed by a spring joining the feet together,
nage. As she sings against the background of the called a pas assemble. This step, which is commonly used
rhythms of the 'Queen of all the dances', we are moved to complete a phrase, is likened by Kellom Tomlinson to
by her evident nobility, and assured of the propriety of a full stop in writing. It is usually followed by a half-bar
her friendship with the gentle Countess rest The pas assemble is used in the gavotte to reflect the
half-cadence or cadence measures. A typical gavotte
step-sequence would consist of one contretemps de

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Dancing the gavotte
WENDY HILTON gavotte, a pas de bourree, another contretemps de gavotte
We have some gavottes which were published in dance and a pas assemble.
notation during the early 18th century Some are ball- Sometimes a preliminary step-bend is used to reflect
room dances for one couple, others are for the theatre, the two upbeats in the music. In more complex choreog-
where there was a frequent use of the gavotte in rustic raphies the pas assembles will be replaced by a step-unit
scenes. Many of the ballroom contredanses which (such as a pas coupe) which moves throughout the bar
became increasingly popular during the 18th century but reflects the cadence by being slower than the other
were also gavottes. Many of the most beautiful were step-units.
those composed by Mozart.
In the gavotte, as in the minuet, there is an unusual The gavotte in Mozart's arias
relationship between the steps and the music, which WYE J ALLANBROOK
begins on the half-bar. The shortest musical unit is There are some wonderful moments in Le nozze d\
3 4 I 1 2 but the step-unit proceeds I I 2 3 4 I. So the Figaro and Don Giovanni that use gavotte scansions.

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EARLY M U S I C FEBRUARY 1 9 9 2 147

Leporello's foot march in 'Notte e giorno faticar' of Act 1 made the gavotte their own, turning it into a pastoral
is momentarily metamorphosed into a gavotte when he hymn set in full vocal splendour, and embellished with a
thinks of that 'caro galantuomo' Don Giovanni inside musette bass; this pedal point rolls out like an organ note
making love to his 'bella'; the flirtatious rhythms strike to ground and deepen the coy gavotte, whose innocence
just the right note of salon preciosity as the servant imi- no longer seems a mask.
tates aristocrats at play. The gavotte rhythms emerge in In all these instances it is crucial that the singer or
clear contrast to those of the 'footmarch' that opens the singers be sensitized to the brief passage of gavotte scan-
ana, and what might be called a 'cavalry charge' that fol- sion and project it clearly, otherwise the point is lost;
lows, horns and all, to reflect the military (and perhaps often, as in the first two cases, the point is made by con-
covertly the erotic) side of the aristocrat's pursuits. trast with another rhythm, here that of the march, and
Figaro inflects a gavotte after march rhythms to some- the differences must be projected clearly.
what the same effect in the beginning of his Act 1 hymn The gavotte appears in a more central role in the first

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to Cherubino, 'Non piu andrai'' after a martial con- part of Zerhna's ana 'Batti, batti, bel Masetto', near the
tredanse in which he addresses the 'amorous butterfly', end of Act 1 of Don Giovanni; this aria is her 'reseduc-
he grafts an erotic metaphor to the military as he tion' of Masetto after Elvira has given her a hard look at
describes the page's plumed cap and—here the mincing the dangers of trusting roving cavaliers. Guilty for
beat of the gavotte is especially appropriate—his 'blush- having wanted to stray, but saved from the actual fall, she
ing, womanly complexion'. refuses to beg, but must cajole Masetto back. Her solu-
In Act 2 of Figaro the gavotte shapes one entire and tion is an arch parody of submission that is intensely
very important section of its magnificent finale (bars sexual:
398ff.) First the Count, confronting Figaro with a piece Beat, o beat, myfineMasetto, your poor Zerhna
of damning evidence, takes up the gavotte with a disin- I shall stand here like a little lamb awaiting your blows
genuous innocence that barely masks his malevolent I'll let you pull out my hair, I'll let you carve out my eyes,
intent. By the end of this section (bars 44iff.) the co- and then I'll be happy to kiss your dear little hands.
conspirators—the Countess, Susanna and Figaro—have Her appeal is couched in a mixture of musical idioms,

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148 EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY 1992

which must be, so to speak, deconstructed; it comes in Danielle Strauss, soprano, accompanied by Ursula Heck-
two parts, the gavotte rhythms and the powerful under- mann and Kenneth Merrill Demonstrations of the minuet
lay of a cello obbhgato. Leaving aside the obbhgato for a and gavotte were given by Riccardo Iazzetta, Luis Peral,
moment, we can focus on the force of the gavotte Sabnna Sandvi and Chen Yu Tseut, students of the Juil-
rhythms. The first line is a kind of lascivious pun: its plo- liard Dance Division. Costumes were designed by Thomas
sive consonants are onomatopoetic, and the crisp beat- Augustine.
ing effect of the dance rhythms carries the pun over into
the music. To perform the ana deadpan, as a serious Wye } Allanbrook is on the faculty of St John's College in
invitation to the action Zerhna is proposing, would be to Annapolis, Maryland. She is the author o/Rhythmic Ges-
render it grotesque (This, however, is frequently done; ture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni She
Peter Sellars's Zerhna sings the ana in the stairwell of her is currently working on a study of expression in the instru-
basement apartment in Spanish Harlem, her eyes cours- mental works of Mozart

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ing with tears.) It is not a sado-masochistic fantasy, but a
playful apology in which a parody of sexual submission Wendy Hilton is on the faculty of the Juilhard School, and
serves as a promise of a more profound surrender—a teaches an annual Baroque Dance Workshop for Stanford
willing return to the world Zerhna had briefly thought to University She is the author o/Dance of Court and The-
flee. The first two lines of the text have gavotte artic- ater. The French Noble Style, 1690-1725 and general
ulations, and the violins are given gavotte bowings. editor of the Dance and Music series for the Pendragon
Although later in the section the outlines of the dance Press
become slightly blurred, its clarity at the outset makes it
'Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg,
the dominant conceit of the 2/4 section. 1739). u> chap 13, ss 80-135, Johann Philipp Kimberger, Die Kunst des
reincn Satzes in der Musik (Berlin, 1774-9), '. P 202 and n 78
The/aux-/ifl;/gavotte with its sexual overtones may in 'Michael Kelly, Reminiscences of Michael Kelly (New York, 1969), 1,
this context suggest the courtesan. Perhaps it is in order P223
3
to mitigate this impression that Mozart introduces the The pastorale was not strictly a dance, but a style of music, the
compound duple metre, legato and drone bass are documented from
cello obbligato, whose bowings within the bar rather the early 17th century, see 'Pastorale', New Grove By the later 18th cen-
than across the bar-line set up cross-rhythms against the tury, however, it had commonly come to be assumed that the pastorale
gavotte. Its deep sonorities and fluid legato moderate the was a dance, see (ohann Georg Sulzer, Allgememe Theone der schonen
effect of the Alberti bass; the obbhgato smooths and Kunste (Leipzig, 2/1786-7), 111, p 60, Daniel Gottlob Turk, Clavicrschule
(Leip/.igand Halle, 1789), trans RH Haggh (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1982),
softens the mincing rhythms of the dance It is a second p 395 Heinnch Chnstoph Koch in his Musikahsches Lexikon (Frank-
layer of affect, grafted onto the gavotte, and plumbing a furt-on-Main, 1802) does not accept this notion, but instead defines
deeper level of passion; perhaps it suggests Zerhna's the pastorale as 'a piece that expresses the song of the ideali7ed world of
shepherds' For a further discussion of dance types in compound duple
loyalty to and abiding affection for Masetto, which make meter, see W) Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart (Chicago,
her perverse little act of seduction finally right-minded. 1983). PP 40-45
It is important for the singer to separate the two levels of "The gavotte was in some of its versions a kissing dance, see M E
Little, 'Gavotte', New Grove
gesture in her first readings of the piece, and to maintain ''The Spectator, 17 July 1711
the gavotte rhythms against the flowing patterns of the "See Gennaro Magn, Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Dancing,
cello, at the same time finding a carriage and gestures trans M Skeapingwith A ivanovaandlE Berry, ed IE Berry and A
Fox (London, 1988), pp 187-8
that help to reflect the affect of the dance. This complex 7
) Platoff, 'Musical and Dramatic Structure in the Opera Buffa
rhythmic layering is joyfully resolved in the second sec- Finale', Journal of Mustcology, vn (1989), pp 219-25
tion of the aria, which breaks into the relaxed and lilting
rhythms of the 6/8 pastorale, evoking the Arcadian bliss
Zerhna envisions for the two of them: 'Peace, peace, O
my life! In joy and contentment we'll pass our nights and
days.' The cello obbligato continues, but no longer seems
superimposed; assimilated into the thinner texture of
the 6/8, it now supports the structure of the dance pat-
tern. Coquettishness has yielded to heartfelt joy.

This text was presented at the New York conference as a lec-

ture-demonstration, with vocal illustrations provided by

EARLY M U S I C FEBRUARY 1 9 9 2 I49

 The New Critical Edition of the Works by
ANTONIO VIVALDI
Editorial Committee: t Denis Arnold, Francesco Degrada, Paul Everett, Gianfranco Folena, Peter Ryom, Reinhard Strohm

Giustino
Dramma per musica by Niccolo Beregan, RV 717

Downloaded from http://em.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, San Fransisco on April 25, 2015
Critical edition by Reinhard Strohm

Full score - volume of pp. 528 with Italian/English Preface

including a facsimile reproduction of the original Libretto
Critical commentary English text - volume of pp. 124
(PR 1276/07 - the two volumes are sold together)

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