Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:19am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Mozart and Compositional Process Session Chair: Catherine Coppola | |
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Mozart vs. Classi(ci)sm: The Jupiter Symphony's Finale as a Revolutionary Manifesto Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Institute of Music Few works in the history of Western music have been as admired as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. Praise has overwhelmingly focused on the contrapuntal mastery deployed in the finale’s coda, where the composer overlaps the five main themes that the movement previously presented in juxtaposition. Although Joseph and Michael Haydn, among others, had written fugal finales in symphonic works, a closer examination of Mozart's strategy through the lens of topic theory, intertextual comparison, and political context suggests that the composer signals more than polyphonic virtuosity: in the Jupiter’s finale, each of these five melodies is linked to distinct social classes. A year earlier, in the ballroom scene that concludes the first act of Don Giovanni, Mozart had already overlapped dances explicitly linked to different social strata, bringing them together within the same time and space. Focusing on the Jupiter, I will examine the political implications of such compositional strategies. Two main factors particularly support my argument that Mozart’s last symphony carries a subversive political agenda. First, according to Stanley Sadie, the coexistence of buffo, serious, and middlebrow characters in musical works implied a revolutionary agenda, which conservatives at the time harshly criticized in Mozart’s works. Second, significantly suspect was his active participation in a Masonic lodge in Vienna that was banned in 1795 under the reign of Francis II due to its alleged connections with the French Revolution. My paper will show how Mozart employs invertible counterpoint to generate textural mobility, creating an egalitarian musical space that resists control by a single privileged topic, theme, or instrument. Instead, each of them has its moment to lead the democratic ensemble (by, for example, operating as the top voice of the orchestra). In so doing, the Jupiter invites all social classes to partake in a musical celebration of liberty, fraternity, and equality, foreshadowing the ideals of the French Revolution. Thus, Mozart uses polyphony to dramatize the coexistence and reconciliation of diverse musical identities as an allegory for an idealized society, resonating both with Enlightenment-era discourses on social harmony and with enduring questions about plurality and inclusion in musical and social life. | |