Moz-Art à la Haydn

Every composer has found inspiration in the    music of others: the two-way relationship between Mozart and Haydn is a classic example. With Schnittke the inspiration was of a different order. He was not unusual in being influenced by composers he admired, Shostakovich above all in his case, but his creative imagination found a peculiarly intense stimulus in specific scores, unfinished or fragmentary ones having a particular fascination for him. Mahler’s sketches for a piano quartet inspired Schnittke’s own Piano Quartet of 1989 and his discovery of what little survives of Mozart’s music for a carnival ballet, K.446, led to a series of works under the title of “Moz-Art” (an untranslatable German pun meaning something like “Moz-ish” or “Mozart of a kind”). The first of them, Moz-Art for two violins, was written in 1976 and was followed by Moz-Art à la Haydn in 1977, Moz-Art for mixed chamber ensemble in 1980 and    Moz-Art à la Mozart for eight flutes and harp in 1990.

The Haydn element in Moz-Art à la Haydn becomes apparent only towards the end. It begins, according to the stage directions, in complete darkness, which creates a suitably eery atmosphere for the successive entries of the instruments appointed to assemble a montage of fragments of the Mozart material. The lights go up on a loud tremolando chord which introduces an entertaining assortment of sometimes direct, sometimes distorted quotations – not all of them from K.446: the most familiar comes from the Symphony No.40 in G minor. The work ends, like Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, as one by one the instrumentalists leave the stage. All that is left in the closing bars is a conductor and a solitary double bass.