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.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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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, 02:57:17am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Mozart and Compositional Process Session Chair: Catherine Coppola | |
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Mozart as Historian: Renaissance Tonal Style as Viewed in the Eighteenth Century McGill University How did eighteenth-century musicians view earlier tonal practices? This paper marshals compositional and theoretical evidence to show that eighteenth-century musicians had a keen awareness of Renaissance tonal style. The features of this style include pervasive triadic root-position harmonies; localized accidental inflections in imperfect-to-perfect interval progressions; and avoidance of augmented and diminished intervals. Drawing on eighteenth-century theorists (Werckmeister 1702; Niedt 1717; Paolucci 1765; Martini 1772), as well as examples of stylistic pastiche by Telemann, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven, this paper demonstrates that Renaissance tonal idioms constituted a well-established, albeit rarely used, stylistic topos in the eighteenth century. As a case study, this paper focuses on the trio sections of two early Mozart minuets (from symphonies K. 130 and K. 132), which evoke Renaissance music through characteristic progressions. Prior scholars (Zaslaw 1990; Heartz 1995; Brown 2002) have described these trios as “modal,” a term widely used by recent authors—but never by eighteenth-century theorists—to describe Renaissance tonal style. Mozart’s use of this style in minuet trios suggests that he sought to satirize and “exoticize” Renaissance music by juxtaposing its antiquated tonal style with galant idioms. Such a teleological view of music history reflects widely held eighteenth-century views of older music, such as those of Rameau (1722), Mattheson (1739), and Burney (1776). Mozart’s use of Renaissance tonal style thus sheds light on eighteenth-century attitudes toward past versus present styles, as well as notions of music-historical progress. | |