Publisher's Synopsis
"Why do Mozart's musical works in his range of major and minor keys sound so different one from the other? This study of his orchestral, chamber, and theatrical works in E flat major and A major explores several possible answers: tuning and temperament; instrumentation; musical intertextualities; key-specific idioms; and the role of opera in establishing a tonal vocabulary that, in turn, offers new ways of thinking about musical meaning across a wide range of genres in late eighteenth-century music. These issues are central to understanding Mozart's creative processes, as well as the listening strategies that he cultivated in his audiences. His first orchestral work, written just before his ninth birthday, was a symphony in E flat major; his last was the Clarinet Concerto in A major. The two keys sit at opposite ends of his tonal spectrum and have quite different characters. As a result, one can speak of a family of pieces in each key,
