During these days of chaos and uncertainty, I find myself spending more and more time with music that is organized and certain and have been finding my greatest solace in Bach and Mozart.
Yesterday I came across this odd E-natural half note in measure thirty-nine of the Andante of Mozart's 10th Piano Sonata, K330 that would make more sense to me if that E-natural were a quarter note on the second beat of the measure, since it is so deeply at odds with the F naturals in the bass when it falls on the first beat. But it is in the first edition, published while Mozart was still alive, and it is in the manuscript (shown below the first edition).
My solution to the problem of mitigating that extra dissonance is to play it very softly.
[click for larger images]
Anyway, I did notice something surprising about this manscript: Mozart used the soprano clef for the right hand.
Of course I looked at all the Mozart Piano Sonata manuscripts I could find in the IMSLP, and I found that he only used the soprano clef in one other sonata: the F major, published as number 12 (K332/300k). But then I noticed that this is one that Mozart titled "Sonata III." Look!
I looked up
"soprano clef" in Merriam-Webster, and was disappointed to see that their definition of it could be taken as misleading.
They are, of course, talking about the published words "soprano clef" being first used in 1786. Just in case you are wondering, Mozart's 10th and 12th Sonatas were published by Antaria in 1784 with a treble clef in the upper staff. I wonder if the first use of "soprano clef" in print might have been referring to something related to that publication. Probably not.
Also, don't bother to click on the illustration link: you will get a treble clef, not a C clef. You will find a better explanation
here.
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