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Così fan tutte and the century of libertinism 0:00 I'd like to start by opening one of its doors. I want to have you listen to an excerpt from one of Mozart's last operas, called Così fan tutte. Word for word in Italian, it means they all do like that. We're in the eighteenth century, it's Mozart, it's the height of libertinism. We're among educated, refined people, I don't know that they have much perspective on all this.
0:33 Mozart is lucky enough to have a librettist. We're not yet at Wagner, who will be the first to write both his texts, as Charles Trenet will later do for song, and the music—no. Here, the composer writes the notes and someone else writes the texts. And this librettist is called Da Ponte, a defrocked priest, as they said at the time, so someone who knows all about libertinism. It's the age of Beaumarchais, it's the age of The Marriage of Figaro, it's the age of Don Giovanni, it's the age of the Marquis de Sade, it's the age of Dangerous Liaisons.
1:03 And Mozart was the only one who could express the quintessence, if I may say so, of this movement. He alone could unite libertinism and generosity. What is it about?
1:45 Two guys, fairly young, soldiers of his majesty, officers, of a operetta-like majesty, we're near Naples, who are in a tavern with a slightly older fellow, a somewhat more mature man, and what are they talking about? In your opinion, of course, girls. And each one says of his own, really, mine is the most beautiful, the best, etc. And the slightly older guy tells them, no, they're all the same, etc. And of course the young men don't like that, because after all their fiancée's honor is at stake. But how? Mine is nothing like what you say, she's not a libertine at all, she's faithful, she's beautiful, she has every virtue, etc.
2:17 Don Alfonso, the somewhat mature fellow, tells them, come on, come on, put your sword away, we're in the eighteenth century. It's the century where happiness is sought, that's the eighteenth century. Even Voltaire and Rousseau, who can't stand each other, agree at least on that, that it's the important value. So he tells them, I bet you a hundred sequins that before the day is over, she'll be unfaithful to you. Bet taken, you're going to disappear, make it seem the king is calling you to war, and then you come back immediately after, disguised as Moldavians. I want you to hear only the scene where the two young men come to announce to their fiancées—who were expecting them to say, well, here it is, I'm asking for your hand in marriage—the good news.
The farewell quintet: being moved while pretending 2:55 No, instead, to tell them, hard blow, the king is calling us to war, we're forced to part for a long while, and we don't know if we'll come back. You can imagine, it's tears, it's everything you can think of. Time is short, there's a boat there ready, we saw it on the Bay of Naples, ready to take them aboard. And what I want to have you hear is what's called the farewell quintet. The two girls, the two young men, and the mature man—five of them singing. We're in comic opera, we know all this is a comedy, that they're not really leaving.
3:28 The music Mozart writes is one of the most overwhelming ever written. Like people leaving for war, you know, you've seen trains, handkerchiefs, mothers watching their sons leave. So it's something of a farewell. Yet all this isn't serious, it's comic opera, we know full well that the masks will fall, there will be a happy ending, we're in comic opera. So how can Mozart make music cut through with onomatopoeia as if cut by tears? The soprano begins with a phrase that rises like the stem of a flower, like that, and all the voices, which were somewhat broken like sobs, come together, converging toward the end of the ensemble.
4:04 Why are they so overwhelmed and overwhelming in the way they tell them, right at the moment they're pretending to be moved? As if the very act of pretending suddenly freed them and allowed them, by playing the comedy, to be perhaps more in love than they had ever really been in reality. It's this magnificent ambivalence that Mozart managed to express through the music I'd like you to share.
Communicating something common; the 27 piano concertos 6:37 It's something we often forget, especially in these times when everyone wants to lock us into our own respective bubbles. If we communicate, it's because we have something in common. In 'communication' there is 'common.' Between you and me, for example, there's the French language. There's a shared code, otherwise we wouldn't be communicating. So as long as we're communicating, we have to set aside what's uniquely our own. Let's leave what's singular, unique and personal to the proper name. And in communication, let's emphasize what we can share.
7:11 There's no contradiction at all between having things that are unique and things to share. If I had to impose my musical tastes on you, playing the classic game with all of Mozart—if I were condemned on a desert island to choose only one part of Mozart's work, 'I would isolate, within his output, the whole of his concertante works for piano.' There are 27 concertos for piano and orchestra that he wrote throughout his life. That's exceptional, I might add, in sheer number.
7:42 For reference, Bach wrote about ten concertos for keyboard. There's no piano, they're harpsichords. Beethoven will write 4 piano concertos, very developed, each immense. Mozart writes 27. That proves he had a predilection for the piano formula as the figure set against the symphonic background of the orchestra. It's not the great philharmonic orchestra we know today with 100 instruments. It was essentially strings, but with—and this is already what makes Mozart's concertos original—a richness.
8:16 Within the concerto, Mozart lets us hear little concerti, concertations between instrumental groups within the orchestra, wind instruments. The flute answers the bassoon. It's not only the piano, if you will, that's brought to the fore. It is of course the royal soloist in all this, but with a great deal of humor. It's not a king stiff in his majesty, that's never the case with Mozart.
8:46 With a liveliness all his own. There's always a mischievous side to Mozart. If I'm keen to have you hear one of the gems that make up this garland formed by Mozart's 27 piano concertos, it's because something miraculous happens here, something unusual, unheard of, and unforgettable.
9:17 Miracle in the double sense—I'm not one for grandiose words—very precisely in the double sense that holds both the marvelous, where you can hardly believe your ears, and the exceptional. What Mozart does here is extremely rare, even within his own output. We're in a rondo, a fast tempo, playful, light, cool, so we're relaxed.
The interruption of the finale of the 22nd concerto, a new melancholy 9:48 And then suddenly the miraculous event I'm telling you about arises just as the finale is about to end. That's what generally happens in the finale, right—the rondo comes back four or five times, the soloist does increasingly elaborate things, plays his cadenza, and then it's over, we applaud and wait for the next concerto.
10:22 But here Mozart springs a surprise on us. Just as we're about to reach the conclusion, suddenly the concerto stops. There's a silence that lasts a few seconds, the time of a beat between two clocks. We hear a chord that halts the orchestra, but only for a few seconds.
11:01 And musically speaking, it resumes much slower. With suddenly the presence of wind instruments, clarinets giving a twilight color, extremely sensual, but not a triumphant sensuality—we're not at the Marquis de Sade's—but a sensuality full of melancholy. As if we were realizing that time is passing and we wanted to slow it down to the utmost. The music becomes much more introverted, but not in the sense of great sadness, rather a slightly weary languor, an almost physical fatigue.
11:57 Children who have played almost too much—children never get enough of bathing in the sea, in the pool, in the river. But it's as if here, they had played so much that they feel a slight languor and watch the sun set. They have a little of the melancholy of those who know they'll soon have to go home, and who therefore savor all the more deeply and beautifully the last rays of sunlight. The piano repeats note for note the motif stated by the winds and its clarinets. The piano repeats it. But it's unexpected, this sudden mood of melancholy—not morbid at all, is it?
12:44 It's not depression! With Mozart a new kind of melancholy comes to light, one that foreshadows the coming century, when people will speak of the mal du siècle, of an incurable melancholy. But in Mozart, it doesn't explode. Mozart, as I told you, is entirely poised on the balance point. Or as Rousseau put it exactly at this time, 'with this sadness, sir, that I would not have wished not to have.' Already, and this foreshadows the Romantic period to come, there can be a voluptuousness of melancholy.
13:14 And when the piano has finished repeating everything, there's again a tiny silence, and the rondo picks back up as if nothing had happened—an angel has passed by, no one saw anything, nothing was seen, nothing was taken. It was La Bruyère who said, a century earlier, 'There is in art a point of perfection, as there is of goodness or maturity in nature.'
13:51 Whoever senses it has perfect taste. Whoever falls short of it or goes beyond it has faulty taste. Mozart is never wrong when it comes to taste. Twenty-second concerto, in E-flat, finale, end of the final movement.
