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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