ginning in measure 120 and sustained with unflagging energy
for seventy measures, makes this one of the most stimulating
developments in symphonic literature, not excepting Beethoven
himself. The Recapitulation, in subject matter, is an exact du-
plication of the Exposition and allows us to recover gradually
from our excitement and to return to the ordinary world of men
and events. The presentation of the second theme, however,
shows Mozart’s mastery of melodic variation. The substance is
the same, but the import of the melody is intensified,e.g.
[Music: Exposition]
[Music: Recapitulation]
[Footnote 127: See the Waltz movement of theFifth Symphony
and the second movement of theSixth.]
[Footnote 128: This expanding of interest is distinctly felt in
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, in Brahms’s First, in Tchaikowsky’s
Fifth and in that by César Franck.]
The Overtures to Mozart’s three operas: TheMarriage of Fi-
garo,Don Giovanniand theMagic Fluteare of particular inter-
est, not only for the beauty of their contents but because they
are our earliest examples of the Overture fashioned in complete
Sonata form. Originally the Overture had been a prelude to
the opening of a play, a prelude of the lightest and most mea-
gre nature. Examples, beginning with Monteverde, abound in
all the early Italian opera composers.[129] Lully of the French
school and Alessandro Scarlatti of the Italian were the first to
amplify these beginnings and to establish a definite standard of
structure. In both schools this standard represented an appli-
cation of the Three-part form principle; the French arranging
their contrasts, slow, fast, slow (the so-called French overture—
of which we have an example in Handel’s Messiah) and the
Italians, fast, slow, fast (the so-called Italian Overture). Al-
though Gluck (1714-1787) did much to establish a more dra-
matic connection between the overture and the play, even the
best of his Overtures, Iphigenia in Aulis, is a rather loosely ex-
panded tripartite structure with a good many meaningless pas-
sages. But Mozart, coming after Haydn’s definite establishment
of the Sonata-form and with the growing interest of the public
in instrumental music for its own sake as an incentive, could
take advantage of these circumstances to display his genius and
to delight his hearers with a piece of genuine music. This he