Overture Magazine 2013-2014 March-April 2014 | Page 17

orchestra’s theme to show off its coloratura
abilities and the exciting contrasts between
its lowest and highest notes. There is also
melancholy in this outwardly serene music,
and after its initial gymnastics, the clarinet
expresses this in a slightly mournful melody
in the minor mode.
The clarinet’s most haunting tones are
displayed in the Adagio second movement, one of Mozart’s most sublime slow
movements. Here the clarinet becomes a
great operatic diva, its drooping phrases
singing of loneliness and loss. Mozart
experienced considerable depression in
his last year and had often remarked that
he did not expect a long life. His music
frequently expresses a profound sense of
life’s transitory nature and the sadness that
hides behind beauty— and never more
poignantly than here.
Such thoughts of mortality are mostly
pushed aside in the merry Rondo finale.
The clarinet leads off with a chirpy rondo
refrain exploiting the instrument’s comic
side. But high comedy also includes room
for more serious emotions, as Mozart had
demonstrated over and over in his great
comic operas. And thus, between returns
of this refrain, he develops other melodies in surprisingly moving ways, and his
adventurous harmonies wander into darker
minor-key territory. However, Mozart
never forgets who is the star and gives the
clarinetist plentiful opportunities to show
off his fleet virtuosity.

Instrumentation: Two flutes, two bassoons,
two horns and strings.

Overture to The Magic Flute

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In the last three years of his all-too-brief
life, Mozart experienced a steady stream of
disappointments. The fickle Viennese public seemed to have lost interest in his music,
a major court appointment always eluded
him, and he had to borrow large sums of
money from his Masonic brother Michael
Puchberg to support his wife and children.
Then in the middle of 1791, another
fellow Mason, the singer-impresario
Emanuel Schikaneder, came to the rescue

Costumes of Downton Abbey
march 1, 2014–January 4, 2015 • winterthur museum

View exquisite costumes and accessories worn upstairs and downstairs on the
period drama television series. to purchase timed tickets to the exhibition, please
call 800.448.3883 or visit winterthur.org/downtonabbey.
Advance purchase of tickets is strongly recommended. timed tickets required. Included with general
admission. members free.

The exhibition at Winterthur is presented by
With support from the Glenmede Trust Company
Downton Abbey ®. Photographs © Nick Briggs, Carnival Film & Television Limited, 2010–12. All Rights Reserved.

Winterthur is nestled in Delaware’s beautiful Brandywine Valley on Route 52,
midway between New York City and Washington, D.C. Take I-95 to Exit 7 in Delaware.

MArch– April 2014 |

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