When Is the Brilliant Style Not the Brilliant Style? Topical Mention, Ambivalence, and Negation in Mozart and Beethoven

In the recent scholarship on topic theory, it is generally assumed that the identification and labeling of topics serves as the first and most important step in the process of producing a topical reading of a piece of music, either in analysis or performance. Yet this framing rests on the premise that pieces of music sustain an unambivalent relationship with the topics referenced within them—that is, that topics constitute, rather than problematize, the expressive vocabulary of a given piece. This article calls such a relationship into question, arguing that some works self-consciously or ironically “mention” without fully “using” the topics referenced within them. Although examples are drawn from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, String Quartet, K. 387, and Piano Sonatas, K. 332 and K. 533, the article’s main case study engages Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in E-flat, op. 12, no. 3. All of these pieces sustain an uneasy relationship with their topical universes, both presenting hints of topical references and repeatedly negating them. In Beethoven’s opus 12, no. 3, in particular, such negations are provocative, especially where they involve lapsed references to the “brilliant style,” which receives a surprisingly ambivalent treatment at the composer's hands. The article argues that such music, by presenting challenges for both analytical and performed interpretation, necessitates the development of a more nuanced model for the interplay of topics and the works in which they operate.