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"Dearest Papa! I cannot write in verse, for I am no poet. I cannot arrange the parts of speech with such art as to produce effects of light and shade, for I am no painter. Even by signs and gestures I cannot express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer. But I can do so by means of sounds, for I am a musician."
-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, November 8, 1777
In the summer of 1778, at the age of twenty-two, Mozart composed his only piano sonata in A Minor. Marked by its sense of gravity and its departure from both his own and others' compositional styles, this work draws attention to the distinctive yet elusive representation of affect through the nonverbal medium of music. It likewise invites reflection on the affinities between music and the words spoken in psychoanalysis. Both are aural experiences that demand attentive listening. Pinchas Noy has conceptualized the relations among tone, nuance, and inflection in ordinary talk as the "music of speech" (1993, 135). Paradoxically, it is the music of speech that enables us to communicate about the language of music. Beginning with a discussion of the events that gave rise to the composition of the A Minor Sonata, I shall examine Mozart's musical language to illustrate how the formal properties of music illuminate some key psychoanalytic concepts as well as conscious and unconscious processes.
Mozart in 1778
Mozart's biographers have usually emphasized his relationship to his father, Leopold. My focus, however, centers on the psychological impact on his musical compositions of the death of Mozart's mother, Anna Maria, in Paris during the summer of 1778. At his father's behest and accompanied by his mother, Mozart had gone to Paris to seek fame and fortune. This was the first time he and Anna Maria had traveled together without Leopold. A rhyming letter from son to mother prior to the trip (a copy of which survives in the Salzburg Mozarteum) demonstrates not only Wolfgang's wish not to go to Paris but also the anally playful way he communicated with her:
Oh, mother mine!
Butter is fine.
Praise and thanks be to Him
We're alive and full of vim.
Through the world we dash,
Though we're rather short of cash.
But...