Martin Scherzinger
Columbia University

Three distinct analytic readings (linear, hypermetric and motivic) of the Adagio from Mozart's K.218 are presented alongside one another in order to sustain and elaborate different kinds of ambiguity in the piece. The first and second analyses (sketched in large-scale graphs) illustrate a sense of voice leading that across durational units (set up by pacing of the flow) and, through this disjuncture, bring to perception those features of the movement that maybe regarded as unique. Thus a failure to align rhythmic and tonal events signifies as pertinently as success; and even constitutes the very particularity of the movement. The third (motivic) analysis defines its 'motives' as much by what they fail to bring about as by what they bring about; and thus less as a strictly contiguous series of tones that can be identified as a unit and more as a 'functioning' assemblage that guides some of the piece's movements. Taken together, instead of settling on the simpler or the more salient analysis, this reading prefers to articulate various possible readings (and the types of salience that pertain to these readings) that are provoked by undecidable moments. Various interpretative speculations are scattered throughout.