ABSTRACT
The author begins with the most closely dissected of Mozart's piano sonata movements from the rhetorical point of view, the first Allegro of the F major K.332. In an earlier study of Mozart's piano sonatas, he attempted to demonstrate possible rhetorical frameworks for their appreciation, drawing in detail on models from ancient Greece and Rome and their reinterpretation by eighteenth-century writers. John Irving, Mozart's Piano Sonatas: Contexts, Sources, Style, part III. The author aims to complement linguistically inspired approach by reference to broad rhetorical readings that may inflect our understanding of Mozart's texts, either conceptually or else in performance. Topical reference as a guide to the understanding presupposes that the frame of reference is a broad one and no respecter of generic identity. The chapter provides an early example of a slow movement with real emotional depth. It is particularly notable for the combination, following the central double bar, of chromaticism with dramatic hiatus for expressive effect.
