Comments and Discussion
Challenge 1: The phrase is too simple to be a trademark of Mozart's music.
FALSE.
MISUNDERSTOOD.
The "trademark" aspect is not in the phrase itself, but rather what Mozart did with it.
While the basic phrase itself is fairly simple, what Mozart did with it is amazing
and unique. The sheer quantity and quality of its usage is surprising, as well as the
numerous ways in which he wove it into his music. To use a metaphor, Mozart
created "a forest of trees, all similar but slightly different, and all interesting".
Mozart seemed almost obsessed with it, re-shaping it in countless ways. He turned
a simple, 2-chord phrase into a study of musical creativity over the entire span of
his composing career - almost 30 years.
Additionally, there's the matter of the evidence.
The evidence says "it's almost everywhere". Disputing evidence seems like a pointless
thing to do. In this paper I've listed only a fraction of the "trademark phrase" occurrences.
But the challenge is often in finding the phrase. It's often "buried" in the music, and
it takes some detective work to find it.
It's likely that phrases which are difficult to locate exist because he was simply
continuing to create new versions of expressing the same thought, and the simpler
expressions had already been used.
And if he was using that phrase as a musical signature, he HAD to use it wherever possible.
With this phrase, the Devil is in the details. From a "complexity" standpoint, finding all the
phrases and documenting them would not only be difficult, it would be overwhelming.
But 18 citations, plus sound clips from 2 early pieces, and 7 general references in the FAQ
and elsewhere, is not a bad start.
Challenge 2: There are very few notes in the trademark phrase.
TRUE.
The trademark phrase contains only 6 notes as 2 chords or phrases. The 6 notes represent
a reduction in the number of notes from the original music to the minimum necessary to
identify the phrase.
Challenge 3: There are too few notes in the phrase to make it unique.
TRUE.
But it's not a unique phrase.
The uniqueness lies in the frequency, method, and variations used by Mozart,
(compared with other composers), not in the phrase itself.
Challenge 4: There are sometimes intervening flourishes in the examples.
TRUE.
This is usually "Delayed Resolution" and is permitted.
Challenge 5: This particular trademark phrase uses different chord names than you've listed.
IRRELEVANT.
The names of the chords are irrelevant to this "trademark phrase" concept since it deals
only with chord relationships.
Readers are free to use any chord names they wish.
Challenge 6: Music is not numbers (This pertains to the numeric definition, only).
TRUE.
But musical elements can be described with numbers.
A MIDI file is almost all numbers, yet it converts these numbers into audible and
listenable music - complete with "pedal events" for the piano, to "concert hall echo".
Numbers are used everywhere in music - from the meter (3/8, 4/4, etc) to scale definitions
(12-tone system, etc) to chord definitions (perfect 5th, dominant 7th, etc) to note pitches in
cycles per second (more numbers). If numbers can also describe note relationships, then there
is no rational case to be made using against them where useful and practical. Saying that "music
is not numbers" is like saying "medicine is not numbers", then proceeding to discuss a patient's
blood pressure numbers, his cholesterol numbers, his white cell count, etc. Medicine may not be
numbers, but numbers play an essential role in describing the patient's health.
Use of the numeric definition is optional since the trademark phrase is well-described by
using musical terms. The numeric definition may have applicability in computer analysis.
Challenge 7: The phrase is very common in the non-Mozartian musical literature.
WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?
I'm talking about evidence that a single composer used the phrase to the degree that
Mozart did, and with similar sophistication.
In this paper, I provided 18 citations and 17 sound clips of the trademark phrase
as used by Mozart. Let's see your evidence.
Cite the piece, the movement, the measure, and the notes, and provide 20 examples
from a single composer. Be sure the phrase is not simply expressed as 2 chords
in all your examples, but with some creativity and nuance.
Only a FEW other examples of its usage have been found to date:
There is occasional usage by JS Bach, Gasparini, Mozart's composition students/assistants,
a Chopin piano concerto (which doesn’t fully qualify), and certainly others.
Mozart's composition students and assistants were probably copying their teacher,
so counting such examples would be questionable. In any event, count them or not,
none of them went on to become "great" composers with musical output performed
regularly at concerts, and contributing to the popular, classical-music literature.
If some other composer used the phrase as often as Mozart did and in the way Mozart did,
complete with variations, then so be it: It would qualify as that composer's musical
trademark, and we would have 2 composers who adopted that phrase: Mozart and
another composer.
Challenge 1 - Beethoven's 5th Symphony:
"In Beethoven's 5th Symphony in C minor, first movement, at measures 20 and 21,
an augmented 6th is followed by a major chord (G major). Both chords comply
with the requirements of the Trademark Phrase in terms of their note relationships,
if you ignore some of the extra notes.
Therefore, this is an example of another composer using that phrase - right?".
(This is just prior to the repeat of the theme).
Response: It's not a valid example.
Analysis of Challenge 1:
mm 20, 21
Chord 0 Chord 1 Chord 2
C--C--G--C--Eb C--Eb--Ab--C--Gb--C ---> G--D--B--G
--- = problem notes --- = trademark notes
Repeat of theme...
(--> Ab-->Ab-->Ab-->lower F)
Click to hear sound clip
This challenge is close, but there are 2 problems:
1. Wrong lowest notes.
There is a problem with the lowest notes in Chord 1 - the C-Eb.
Beethoven's use of a lower C and Eb emphasizes that we are not dealing with a
foundational Ab-C-Gb musical idea which would form the first chord of the
Trademark phrase. The lower C-Eb pair acts as a stress reliever on the chord and
disqualifies it.
If the lowest note had been an Ab (forming the bottom note of the augmented 6th),
the first chord would have qualified, as in: Ab--C--Eb--Ab--C--Gb--C before compression.
However, the 2nd chord would not have qualified. The upper C (the leading voice)
doesn't lead to a lower B in the 2nd chord, with the possibility of note interpolation,
as explained below.
2. Wrong melody.
Consider the leading voice, shown below in green.
Chord 0 Chord 1 Chord 2
C--C--G--C--Eb C--Eb--Ab--C--Gb--C ---> G--D--B--G
Click to hear sound clip
We have Eb, lower C, higher G.
Here the C has to jump up a 5th from Chord 1 to Chord 2, to continue as a G in the leading voice:
C ---> G
(In a trademark phrase, the Gb in the first chord would normally be the leading voice - not the C).
Of course, in an "interpolation" situation, the C would be valid as the top note if the 2nd
chord contained a lower B as the top note. The following example would be a valid trademark
phrase, if Beethoven had written it this way:
Chord 0 Chord 1 Chord 2
C--C--G--C--Eb Ab-----Gb--C ---> G--D-----G--B Beet5c.mid before interpolation
C--C--G--C--Eb Ab-[C]-Gb ---> G----[B]-G Beet5d.mid after interpolation
This effectively puts the pairs of thirds Gb-C and G-B as the leading voices.
Interpolation validates the phrase and changes the leading voice to Gb--->G -
a note change up one step.
Valid leading voices in Chords 1 and 2 would have been either:
1. Gb ---> G (up one step) or
2. C ---> B (down one step)
But Beethoven didn't write it that way. His leading voice is C ---> G (up one fifth), and there is no underlying
melody which progresses up one step from "Gb to G", or down one step from "(Gb)-C to (G)-B", to make it
a valid trademark phrase. It just doesn't qualify as a trademark phrase despite the augmented 6th and major chord.
..........................................................................................................................
What about the Mozart example A6 (K.594): The lowest note is correct (Db), but the leading voice in the
right hand jumps up a 5th from F to C (mm 5.3 to 6.1)? Doesn't it do the same thing as Beethoven's 5th
does with the leading voice?
Shouldn't the melody progress up by one step from B to C to be a trademark phrase?
The answer is Yes: It should, and it does progress up from B to C, but not as the leading voice.
This is because there are 2 additional melodies in that section of K.594 which progress from B to C:
1. The secondary B-->C melody at mm 5.1 to 6.2 in the left hand - part of the trademark phrase.
2. The tertiary melody in the pedals from mm 5.1 to 6.2 which includes B-->C.
Example A6 (K.594)
------------>F---->C---->C leading voice (highest melody), right hand
B----->B---->B---->B---->C left hand melody
Db---->F---->B---->C---->C pedal melody
5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2
The pedal melody also creates a 2nd layer of the trademark first chord in its first 3 notes.
In other words, the melody from 5.1 to 5.3 is the same as the notes of the first chord (Db-F-B),
followed by the top note of the 2nd chord (C) at 6.1.
Db---->F---->B---->C---->C pedal melody
Db---->F---->B---->C---->C pedal melody
5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2
Click to hear sound clip of pedal melody
The pedal notes from 5.1 to 6.2:
-
Provide an underlying, melodic trademark path from B to C.
-
Reinforce the notes of the of the 1st and 2nd trademark chords
A6 (K.594)
m 4.3 m 5.1 m 6.2
Chord 0 Chord 1 Chord 2
Bb---E---Bb ---> Db----F----B ---> C----E-----C TM phrase in yellow
Bb---E---Bb ---> Db----F----B ---> C----E-----C TM melody in light green
with Chord 0 added
Db--->F--->B----> C pedal melody with B->C highlighted
(5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1/6.2)
Chords 0,1,2. Chords 0,1,2, plus pedal melody,
plus leading voice.
Click to hear sound clip - Chords 0,1,2, then with additional harmony
Click to hear sound clip of entire phrase with all notes and proper timings
While the leading voice in the right hand jumps up a 5th from F to C, the melody in the
trademark phrase and the melody in the pedals moves up from B to C as a normal, trademark
phrase would. In the Beethoven, there's no such underlying melodic progression.
Beethoven's music has its trademarks, but creative and consistent use of this phrase is probably
not one of them. It simply wasn't his style.