How did Mozart's orchestral music take the classical age to its peak?

The first 200 words of this essay...

Pippa-Jayne Flaxman 29th December 2002

How did Mozart's orchestral music take the classical age to its peak?

Mozart never composed music exactly to the mathematical structure and style that his friend Haydn and other composers used in the classical period. Mozart took the structure the others used and added his extravagant flair.

In his orchestral piece 'Piano Concerto in A major', Mozart doesn't use any oboes and only has one flute instead of the usual two. He uses a new instrument the clarinet, which he uses two of. Two bassoons and two horns complete the wind section.

He has the strings in the normal four parts with the double basses playing the same notes as the cellos but sounding an octave lower.

The form of this piece is exposition, development and recapitulation.

Mozart begins with an orchestral exposition using periodic phrasing, in which the strings play an eight bar phrase which ends on the dominant and the wind answer this by playing eight bars an octave higher ending on the tonic.

Periodic phrasing could sometimes get a bit predictable, so instead of the eight bar consequent ending at bar sixteen Mozart repeats those