Bathos and Mozart
A few years ago a friend of mine told me, “What bothers me about Mozart is that as soon as he is about to do something profound, he changes his mind.” I didn’t disagree. In fact, I thought that he had succinctly described something that I had felt and loved about Mozart for a long time. But I lacked the language to explain why I found this idea so significant. Why were these moments meaningful to me?
Introduction to Bathos
Translating to “depth” in ancient Greek, bathos as a contemporary term was popularized by Alexander Pope, who used it to parody poets’ attempts and ultimate failures to write in a sublime style. Pope argued that poetry is bathetic when, instead of reaching a state of sublimity, the tone of the writing becomes trivial. I imagine my friend would argue that this definition of Bathos applies to Mozart. But from its original use as a term of degradation, it is often now employed to describe an intentional shift, a “deliberately contrived effect of pathos manqué or any kind of deliberate anticlimax, whether ironic, gay, or serious”(Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics). This comes much closer to my perception of Mozart. The question then becomes: is bathos in Mozart’s music intentional or not? My aim is to show that Mozart use of it is not only deliberate but also an integral part of his musical language.
Bathos as a Shift in Register
Even with this framework in place, we are left without sufficient terminology to identify the musical qualities that shift to produce a bathetic effect. How does music evoke something sublime? What about something trivial? Luckily, with Mozart in particular, there is often a referential framework from which we can extrapolate central aspects of contrast. In Mozart’s time, even purely instrumental works were written in the language of opera and thus provided metaphorical, if not sometimes literal, referents from which their audience could derive meaning.
One component of this referential quality is the concept of register — not with regards to pitch, but language. In language, register is “nothing more than a name for a kind of diction, which is nothing more than a name for a certain, distinctive way of saying something”(James Wood, How Fiction Works). For example, one would use a high register when addressing a figure of authority (“I would like to”) and a low register to address a family member (“I wanna”). Sublimity and triviality, then, can be categorized as having a high and low register, respectively.
In Mozart’s time, music had a very clear register depending on its intended audience or circumstance. Performances in court or in church required a high register and thus used music that was often recognizably academic or ceremonial. Music played at home or sung on the streets, on the other hand, used a lower register, often identifiable through folk melodies or folk-like music. What’s more, the concept of register can be expanded beyond explicit academic or folk music to encompass non-referential qualities that operate within the same framework: even when Mozart does not write “academically” (i.e. contrapuntally), he uses harmony, rhythm, etc. to create the impression of a high register. The same goes for his ability to evoke a low register — something casual — without always using folk music.
This simple terminology is helpful because it allows us to categorize hundreds of different characters and ideas as having either a low or high register — or, because bathos is contingent upon contrast, as a lower or higher register than what came before. In the next sections, I will take a look at shifts between and combinations of high and low registers to illuminate the ways bathos is central to Mozart’s works.
Horizontal Bathos in Mozart
In looking at the various manifestations of bathos in Mozart, I have found that its most helpful to distinguish between horizontal and vertical examples, where horizontal bathos occurs in time (the high register occurring first, followed the lower register) and vertical bathos occurs simultaneously both high and low registers are played at the same time).
It’s easiest to start with examples of bathos that evoke easily recognizable high and low registers. In Mozart’s last symphony, K. 551, there is an intense build from m. 89-98 as the exposition appears to come to a close. Mozart arrives in the dominant (G major) and adds timpani and trumpets — clear instrumental indicators of formal, ceremonial music. Thus, while the writing is not academic like the famous fugal finale of this same symphony, the register is nonetheless relatively high. But in m. 99, most instruments stop playing, the violins arpeggiate quickly down to piano, and there is an entire measure of silence. What follows is a new theme taken from an aria Mozart wrote several months earlier, “Un bacio di mano.” The text of the passage reads, “Voi siete un po’ tondo,” or roughly, “You are a little dull.” That is, this new passage is decidedly casual and even a little silly. The music, too, reflects a low register: the harmony changes only once per measure, there is plentiful repetition, and the melody is easily singable.
Formally, it’s placement at the end of the exposition is also telling of its popular or folk qualities, as Charles Rosen describes in The Classical Style:
The melodies with a marked popular flavor are most striking...towards the close of the expositions of the first movements...These ‘popular’ tunes are used as cadential forces, to round off and to articulate the form.
Thus, Mozart bathetically uses this popular tune to both “round off” the exposition and undermine the expectation set by the previous passage.
The deliberateness of this use of bathos is revealed when Mozart restates the same popular melody at the beginning of the development. After the end of the exposition, one expects the development to explore the motivic material from the earlier themes through foreign keys and fragmentation. In other words, there is a natural expectation of a high register, a move away from the simple, “rounded off” quality of popular music. However, the folk melody that was only just played at the end of the exposition returns once again.
Mozart quite literally shows us the descent of register: he transitions to the development with four notes: G, F, (B flat), and finally down to E flat. The transition is so simple it is almost banal. But it perfectly frames the ridiculousness of simply repeating the same melody in a different, remote key. From this initial example it is clear that Mozart not only understands the dramatic potential of bathos but also its ability to articulate formal features that are integral to the work’s ultimate success.
To this point, we can observe Mozart using bathos to construct an entire movement in his Symphony No. 31 in D, K. 297, the “Paris”. Take the opening bars of the Andante: the first measure is forte, sustained, and lyrical. The openness of G major evokes something serious or at least stately, something fitting for the court. This idea is affirmed by the symphony’s key, D major, used generally for ceremonial occasions (indicated again by the addition of trumpets and timpani to the orchestral forces).
But measure 2 changes completely: the violins’ drop to piano and their energetic grace notes are much more playful than the opening. That is, there is a bathetic drop from a high to low register. Measure 3 returns to forte before dropping more suddenly to piano on the third eighth note of m. 4. Measure 4 is compacted even further with a quick forte in the violins followed by the playful release of a downward scale. In m. 23, the shift is not as sudden but perhaps even more dramatic: a bar of forte, dotted-rhythm unison is followed by three measures of a lyrical melody in piano.
These sudden registral drops are used so continuously throughout the movement that they can no longer be solely attributed to Mozart’s penchant for dynamic contrast. Dynamic contrast itself is not capable of sustaining such tensions, only highlighting them. Instead, it seems that Mozart is actively exploring the limits of bathos in a symphonic setting, creating an entire movement out of this one particular technique.
We can also see bathos аs a structuring tool in its ability to provide and resolve tensions across large-scale forms, as seen in the “Prague,” Symphony No. 38 in D, K. 504. First, bathos is integral to the quicksilver character of the opening introduction.
The symphony begins with the orchestra in our go-to high register key of D major: it is a call to attention for something ceremonial and serious. But in m. 3, Mozart immediately changes to a timid and light piano played by just the strings. The register is raised once more in m. 4 as the harmony moves to B minor in forte. But it drops bathetically again in m. 5. This alternation continues until an unmistakably high-register tragic character emerges in m. 16. The music gets softer and softer as the introduction comes to a close and our anticipation of more tragic music only increases.
But the beginning of the Allegro does not fulfill this expectation: instead, the music shifts to a playful, sparkling D major. This drop, from a tragic introduction to a playful and light-hearted Allegro, is a wonderful example of bathos on a structural level. The quick bathetic changes of the opening few bars suggests such a structuring while continuing to obscure the direction of the work. In this way, bathos allows Mozart to create a narrative that feels at once inevitable and surprising.
Vertical Bathos in Mozart
While in Mozart’s opera buffa there are plentiful examples of horizontal bathos like those found in the symphonies, these dramatic works are unique in their ability to create a sense of vertical bathos, in which a low and high register simultaneously exist in plot and music, respectively. Using the idea of bathos in this nontraditional sense allows me to address one of the central questions I have always had about the da Ponte operas: namely, how can the plot be so absurd while the music is so sublime? And more specifically, is the listening experience mainly comedic or mainly serious? The idea of vertical bathos allows us to recognize that the power of this tension lies in the combination of low and high registers, that interpretation does not require a prioritization of one over the other but is instead contingent upon balancing the two.
Two particular scenes epitomize this tension: “Sul aria” from Le Nozze di Figaro and “Soave sia il vento” from Cosí Fan Tutte (both of which, coincidentally, refer to the wind or a breeze). In these two scenes, astonishingly beautiful music (high register) is paired with text that reflects an absurd, trivial plot (low register).
To me, there are very few things as sublime as “Sul aria”: its lightly lilting 6/8, the simplicity of the violin ostinato, the call and response of the two female voices, and the final joining of these voices in thirds as they ascend to a climax that is celestial yet indisputably human. The beauty of this duet is perhaps still best expressed by Morgan Freeman’s character in The Shawshank Redemption, when, as he listens to it played over the loudspeaker, he reflects:
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
But the plot is supremely trivial: the Countess dictates to Susannah a letter to her husband, the Count, as a ploy for the two women to expose his infidelity. They write, “Questa sera spirerà sotto i pini del boschetto,” or, roughly, “This evening will sigh under the pines,” enticing the count to meet Susannah in the forest.
“Soave sia il vento” presents an almost identical juxtaposition of sublimity and triviality: the gently rolling 16th notes in the violins, the chorale-like vocal writing, and the poignant repeated cadential figure of the last phrase is contradicted by the fact that Fiordiligi and Dorabella are bidding farewell to war-bound lovers who are actually just conspiring with Don Alfonso to prove their partners’ infidelity.
Does the music serve merely as camouflage, used like falsely poetic language to disguise a scheme? Is the plot actually serious, and the audience intended to reflect on the importance of fidelity? Is the music as unaware of the mens’ plot as Fiordiligi and Dorabella? Does it merely reflect what the Count will feel when he reads Susanna’s letter? It is tempting, but I think misguided, to try to reconcile the tension by answering one of these questions in the affirmative. To do so would be akin to reconciling the contrasts we looked at in Mozart’s symphonies, when clearly these contrasts are integral to the dramatic function of the music. For me, this is the point at which bathos once again becomes a useful analytical tool.
The combination of sublime music and trivial plot functions in precisely the same bathetic manner as the instrumental examples listed above. When watching the operas, the experience of this juxtaposition is a series of micro-bathetic drops as one is subconsciously and repeatedly enveloped by the beauty of the music and then extracted from this sublimity by one’s recognition of the trivial plot. The qualities of sublimity and triviality are inextricably woven together, neither subordinate to the other.
The dramatic power this has is perhaps best extrapolated by imagining the same scenes with one of the components altered. If Susannah and the Countess were actually singing about a desire to find true, lasting love, the scene would feel purely sentimental, perhaps overindulgent. On the other hand, if the music were lighter, sillier, to reflect their intentions of writing such a letter ( the letter-reading scene in Verdi’s Falstaff, for example), I wouldn’t feel that there is anything truly at stake for either character — it would be a farce. If the music were even heavier and more profound (“Ach ich fühls” from The Magic Flute), the contradiction would become too great, too absurd.
We can begin to see that the bathetic quality of these scenes is not so much a contradiction as it is a remarkably well-proportioned balance, one that keeps us emotionally invested in the trivialities of the plot without nullifying the fact that it is still trivial. What is required of the interpreter is not a choice about which register to prioritize but the ability to keep the two in perfect harmony, so to speak. I like this perspective because it allows me to enjoy each register unapologetically. I can love the sublimity of the music without feeling that it is in any way diminished by the triviality of the plot. If anything, being drawn out of the music by the plot allows me to be continually surprised by each sublime transformation.
Conclusions
To bring it all back to my friend’s critique of Mozart, I am further convinced that this quality of moving away from profundity just at its precipice is a key part of what makes Mozart so wonderful. If that means that Mozart is not “profound” in the sense of something consistently serious and emotional, so be it. But there is also a sense of profundity in finding such a balance between the sublime and the ridiculous, between high and low registers. It brings to mind one of Rosen’s most lasting points in The Classical Style:
The procedures of Haydn and Mozart must be understood in a larger context, that of the creation of a popular style which abandons none of the pretensions of high art. Their achievement is perhaps unique in Western music (332).
It is in these moments of bathos that Mozart can most actively be seen synthesizing the popular and high art styles. For me, recognizing bathos in Mozart is one part of unlearning one of our field’s most repeated and toxic forms of self-promotion: that classical music is somehow innately separate, and thus implicitly superior, than any popular or contemporary works. This exploration has reminded me that Mozart would have been appalled at such an idea, and that the best way to honor and celebrate him is not to ossify his works as miracles of the past but to strive to emulate this remarkable cultural synthesis.