Mapping Musical Dramaturgy: Towards a Theory of Rhetorical Performance

The article explores a musical dramaturgy of topical and rhetorical references from the point of view of a performer. Using an early Mozart symphony, K. 19 (London, 1765), the profound links between improvisation and composition in the eighteenth century are manifested. For Enlightenment aesthetics, as well as for the early romantics, spontaneity is a token of genuineness, and the best key to beauty and truth. The term ‘rhetoric’ is used in a more radical sense as it is usual in musical analysis, to include gestures that not always classify as ‘figures’. Also, dramaturgy is the term proposed instead of musical ‘narrative’. Finally, a model of musical agency in five self-contained steps is proposed. It is based on a hermeneutic approach, and also on historical theoretical texts.