Music of the Clocks and Spheres: Mozart and Haydn's Experiments with Time

Abstract Compositions for musical clocks made possible a newly objective exploration of the relationship between music and time. Works by George Frideric Handel, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach reflected the absolute and uniform flow of Newtonian time. In contrast, Leopold Mozart's clock music alternated between two different metres and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used more complex tempo ratios in a musical installation ( k 608) built around a dramatically illuminated pendulum. Repeated thousands of times, this installation pitted clock against music, in effect providing a new kind of experiment that favoured relative Leibnizian time over uniform Newtonian time. As if responding to k 608, Joseph Haydn incorporated his own clock music into his Symphony No. 101 in order to underline, yet then to stop, time, while Schubert's Fantasy in F minor, d940 , brought these temporal experiments into a new realm of intimate musical experience.