Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline some of the elements inherited from the Baroque, Post-Baroque and Pre-Classical style in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart´s works. This stylistic connection is approached from the point of view of the musical language similarities between the fantasias for piano composed by Mozart and by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Originating in the Baroque musical genres, from the point of view of the improvisatory nature of the socalled stylus phantasticus, the free fantasia is pre-eminently a manifestation of the profane art, due to the deliberate renunciation of the regular compositional procedures. As an autonomous genre, it emerged in the late half of the 18th century, and its emancipation path was marked by C. Ph. E. Bach´s music. According to records, beginning with 1782, Mozart was intensely confronted with the music and musical aesthetics of the Berlin court (mostly with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach´s works), as well as with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel, which left a lasting impression on his musical imagination. His works were composed in the different forms of manifestation of the stylus phantasticus, and were inspired by the tradition of the improvisatory technique of the 18th century and, especially, of C. Ph. E. Bach´s free fantasias. The musical examples inserted in the text are meant to illustrate this assertion.

Download article