Mozart’s Operatic Cadence

Abstract A corpus study of Mozart’s operas and his scenes for voice and orchestra revealed 106 instances of a schema that I call the operatic cadence. Unlike the galant schemata discussed by Robert O. Gjerdingen and others, this schema is a vocal formula and it comprises a complex network of voice-leading patterns displaying several family resemblances. I propose that the second peculiarity is conditioned by the first. Because the schema is a vocal formula, it was constrained by the vocal range of the singer, and the shape of its melody had to be negotiated against this constraint. I reconstruct the compositional problem Mozart was faced with when fashioning an instance of the schema, and I model the process of triangulation that he had to embark upon in order to solve this problem. I suggest that the flexibility of voice leading displayed by the operatic cadence, which affects its recognizability, is compensated for by consistent treatment of mode, tempo, meter, rhythm, texture, dynamics, and text setting. The crucial importance of these parameters for the definition and identification of the schema problematizes the near-exclusive focus of schema theory on pitch and the association of the operatic cadence with the high style links it to topic theory.