MOZART AND THE "AUTHOR FUNCTION"
by Christopher Schatz
Attributing recently discovered works to known authors has become an important topic of research in literature, arts, and music. Anonymity presents a problem for critics, for whom closure is needed prior to explanation. As Barthes suggests, without an author it is difficult to impose meaning on a work; such a work is without limit and without signification (Barthes, 147).
A musicological study conducted by John Spitzer on one hundred sixty-eight critical texts about an unauthenticated work supposed to be by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat for winds, K. 297b, attempts to show that the positive and negative responses of critics relate to previous impressions of authorship. Three categories of authenticity for belief and evaluation are cited: authentic, spurious, and problematic. The texts show that most critics who believed the piece to be authentic reviewed it positively, most of those who believed the piece to be spurious reviewed it negatively. If the evaluation of the value of a musical work is dependent on preconceived notions of attribution, then Foucault's author function is indeed at work in the discourses of music criticism and music perception.
The critical language used is especially interesting when viewed alongside beliefs of attribution. Various critical essays discussed the same features and qualities of the dubious Sinfonia Concertante in strikingly similar language. Spitzer shows how positive reactions tended to include similar adjectives such as expansive, light-hearted and Mozartian, whereas negative reactions were characterized by adjectives such as monotonous, banal, and un-Mozartian. Besides the opinionated and nonmusical nature of these adjectives, a tendency can be seen for critics to use different sets of vocabulary depending on their beliefs on authenticity. Thus, a specific "Mozart-lexicon" and a specific "dubious lexicon" can be posited for the discussion of such an unauthenticated work (Spitzer, 340-2).
The question of how attribution affects critical hearing has become a puzzle for social psychologists and musicologists. Spitzer concludes that different views on the attribution of the Sinfonia Concertante, by assigning more or less important music historical contexts, result in different critics having completely different listening experiences of the same work of music (Spitzer, 347). The relationship between critical approval or disapproval and authenticity and inauthenticity as demonstrated by Spitzer's survey of critical reactions supports Foucault's assertion that discourse about literature, art, and music are centered on the author function. The way we react to a performance of the Sinfonia Concertante is based on our previous understanding of its author.
REFERENCES
Barthes, Roland, "The Death of the Author." Image, Music, Text. Hill and Wang: New York, 1977. pp. 142-148.
Foucault, Michel, "What is an Author?" The Foucault Reader. ed. Paul Rabinow. Pantheon Books: New York, 1984. pp. 101-120.
Spitzer, John, "Musical Attribution and Critical Judgment: The Rise and Fall of the Sinfonia Concertante for Winds, K. 297b." Journal of Musicology , Vol. V/3 (summer 1987), pp. 319-56.
Webster, James, "External Criteria for Determining the Authenticity of Haydn's Music." Haydn Studies: Proceedings of the International Haydn Conference, Washington, D.C., 1975. ed. J. P. Larsen, H. Serwer and J. Webster. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 1981. pp. 74-81.