- Heartz, Daniel. “Mozart and His Italian Contemporaries: La clemenza di
Tito.” Mozart Jahrbuch21 (1978–1979): 275–293.
Examines various settings of Metastasio’s libretto. - Heartz, Daniel. “The Overture to La clemenza di Titoas Dramatic Argu-
ment.” In Mozart’s Operas(#1276), 319–341.
In several Mozart operas, some “late or even final musical gesture in the work
became... the nucleus of the overture.” Clemenzademonstrates this more
than any other: the overture is “a compendium of musical ideas from passages
throughout the drama.” These passages are not simply melodies but harmonic,
rhythmic, or melodic fragments. - Durante, Sergio. “Mozart and the Idea ofvera opera: A Study of La clemenza
di Tito.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard U., 1993. 479p.
Così fan tutte
ASO131/132 (1990), COH 1995, Rororo (1984).
- Tyson, Alan. “Notes on the Composition of Mozart’s Così fan tutte.” JAMS
37 (1984): 356–401. Reprinted in #1273.
There is little documentation from which to derive a genesis for the opera, but
the autograph, sketches, and printed libretto of 1790 provide some informa-
tion. The sequence of the writing is revealed in part by study of the paper used
(watermarks, numbering of the sheets, and so on). - Steptoe, Andrew. “The Sources of Così fan tutte: A Reappraisal.” M&L 62
(1981): 281–294.
The libretto is of uncertain origin: an invention of Da Ponte or an adaptation
from? The plot is a “fusion of two traditional stories... developed in the
light of current stage fashions.” Those stories (topoi) were the wager theme
and the Procris myth; the latter was exhibited in the Decameronand Shake-
speare’s Cymbeline. The Viennese context of the times (antisentimental) gave
shape to the libretto. - Levarie, Siegmund. “Das Fermaten-Motiv in Così fan tutte.” Mitteilungen der
Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum43–3/4 (November 1995): 37–40.
During the opera a rhythmic pattern consisting of a dotted quarter note held
(fermata) followed by an eighth note and quarter note is heard 44 times. These
instances are examined closely and found to have a common ground in the
story, because they occur in times of conflict between what is said and what is
real: an ambivalence of feeling or ironic contrast. The pattern is not limited to
any melodic structure. It is a rhythmic leitmotiv. See next entry. - Glasow, E. Thomas. “Così fan tutte’s Sexual Rhythmics.” OQ11-4 (1995):
17–29.
Independently of the preceding study, Glasow sets out to deal with the fer-
matas in Così. He counts 153 of them, 48 in the finale of act 2. These fermatas
are in various rhythmic patterns, not just in the pattern that concerned
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 249