Its harmonic language, though indeed mostly diatonic, encompasses some moments of perplexing haziness, enough to intrigue the tonal analyst. On the contrary, the challenge of analyzing “Deh vieni” lies in its surfeit of musical riches. (1) Hutchings suggests that Susanna’s “Deh vieni” resists analysis because it is so simple, offering no snarls of complexity to be unraveled by an evening with paper and pencil. This article accepts his invitation by fashioning a motley analysis of Susanna’s aria “Deh vieni non tardar” from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Excerpt of Elisabeth Schumann’s ( 2011) performance of “Deh vieni” A friend of mine who has a notable hiatus in his musical education heard Elisabeth Schumann’s record of ‘Deh vieni’ he told me that “Verdi did write some fascinating tunes after all”! I recommend ‘Deh vieni’ to the analyst for a tough evening.Īudio Example 1. How trivial ‘Deh vieni’ (the ‘Figaro’ one) looks on paper-a mere aria di portamento employing few other intervals than those of the common chord and no harmonies outside the primary triads. In an essay on “The Unexpected in Mozart,” Arthur Hutchings ( 1939, 25–26) invites us to linger over one of Mozart’s famous melodies: The central analytical questions are what genre “Deh vieni” belongs to and how its features serve the functions of that genre.Ĭopyright © 2018 Society for Music Theory The analysis engages with musical details by starting from hypotheses about what the piece is (serenade or psychologizing aria), what it does (deliver text or embody expressive action), and how its musical features afford those identities. Observations from disparate domains coalesce into an interpretation of the aria. This shift in perspective realigns how different musical parameters collaborate to produce meaning. Instead, the music scripts a shift of the audience’s perspective, moving from a quasi-literal representation of the performance to a depiction of Susanna’s affective experience of performing. The aria stages a diegetic performance in which Susanna serenades an absent beloved while Figaro eavesdrops, but the aria is not simply a facsimile of Susanna’s performance. KEYWORDS: Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, aria, serenade, genre, hermeneutics, topic theory, schema theory, text and musicĪBSTRACT: This article offers an analysis of “Deh vieni non tardar,” Susanna’s last aria in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.
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