Document Type

Article

Abstract

Karol Berger’s influential study, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow, argues that

“what matters to Bach . . . is not the linear flow of time from past to future . . . Rather, time is made to follow a circular route or neutralized. . . . Mozart and his contemporaries “straighten[ed] the temporal cycle into an arrow.”

The present essay suggests that, in considering the music of Bach and Mozart we are not dealing with two different concepts of time but rather with two different analogies: one with space, the other with time. It argues that, for Bach, the spatial metaphor is more helpful than a temporal one.

Bach’s music is concerned with movement through a tonal “space” filled with objects of interest for us to perceive right now. Bach’s focus is generally on the present, eventful scene at any given moment. Mozart and his contemporaries, in contrast, perfected the means of dramatizing the process of harmonic modulation. The aesthetic interest is now on expectation as much as on what is happening now.

Mozart the Dramatist “relates” suspenseful stories with a beginning, middle and end. Bach, especially in his didactic instrumental compositions, “explores” intricate architectonic structures held together and put into perspective by the gravitational force of functional tonality.

The difference is not so much, a contrast of two temporal metaphors—arrows and cycles—but rather of a metaphor of time and another of space.