JAVS Summer 2026

Quantz consistently warns against excessive length and empty virtuosity. Ultimately, he argues that the purpose of a cadenza is not merely technical display but the creation of a striking and expressive musical statement. 20 Daniel Gottlob Türk’s School of Clavier Playing (1789) largely reinforces Quantz’s observations. Türk explicitly acknowledges his familiarity with Quantz’s treatise, and many of his comments on cadenza construction echo the same concerns regarding stylistic appropriateness, improvisatory character, and expressive restraint. Consequently, Quantz and Türk together provide a remarkably consistent picture of late eighteenth-century expectations for cadenza performance. A second major source for this study is Mozart’s own concerto cadenzas. Because Stamitz and Mozart belonged to closely related musical traditions and worked during the same period, Mozart’s surviving cadenzas offer valuable evidence of how Classical performers transformed concerto material into extended solo passages. As Lili Kraus observes, Mozart’s cadenzas frequently combine thematic quotations, virtuosic passagework, recitative-like gestures, and unexpected harmonic turns while maintaining a clear relationship to the movement from which they arise. 21 Particularly in first movements, Mozart often organizes his cadenzas around a loose multi-sectional design that balances thematic recall with opportunities for display. 22 Finally, David Lasocki and Betty Bang Mather’s The Classical Woodwind Cadenza: A Workbook provides a practical framework for understanding Classical cadenza construction. Their approach begins not with abstract rules but with stylistic immersion: studying repertoire, listening to representative examples, and identifying recurring formal, harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic patterns. 23 This methodology aligns closely with the present study. Rather than attempting to reconstruct a lost Stamitz cadenza directly, the goal is to identify principles shared across eighteenth-century treatises, surviving cadenzas, and Stamitz’s own musical language. The following sections examine those common characteristics and consider how they may inform the creation of a historically informed cadenza for the first movement of Stamitz’s Viola Concerto in D major .

length and complexity, surviving treatises and written examples reveal several common structural conventions. Understanding these conventions is essential for constructing a historically informed cadenza for Stamitz’s Viola Concerto . A cadenza functions as an extended embellishment of a cadence and typically occurs immediately before the final orchestral tutti of a concerto movement. The soloist enters on a fermata, often over a cadential 6/4 harmony, temporarily delaying the expected harmonic resolution. During this passage the orchestra either sustains the harmony or falls silent, allowing the soloist complete freedom of expression. the soloist normally sustains a trill on the supertonic, implying a dominant harmony before resolving to the tonic. In eighteenth-century practice, the trill begins on the upper note and is commonly intensified through a gradual crescendo and acceleration, signaling the orchestra’s return. 24 The final tonic note simultaneously concludes the soloist’s improvisation and initiates the closing tutti. While Classical aesthetics generally favored balance, symmetry, and formal clarity, the cadenza provided a rare opportunity for controlled freedom. Within a relatively stable harmonic framework, performers could depart from the movement’s regular meter and phrase structure, demonstrating both technical skill and imaginative invention. This balance between convention and spontaneity is central to understanding eighteenth century cadenza practice. Notational conventions further reflect the consistency of this tradition. Lasocki and Mather document several common methods of indicating the beginning and end of a cadenza, while surviving concerto repertory demonstrates remarkably similar cadential patterns across different composers. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate these conventions and show that the cadential framework found in Stamitz’s concerto closely resembles those found in the viola concertos of Hoffmeister and Zelter. 25 These similarities suggest a shared performance tradition and provide an important foundation for reconstructing a stylistically appropriate cadenza for Stamitz’s concerto. The conclusion of the cadenza follows a particularly standardized pattern. As described by Lasocki and Mather,

Structural Conventions of Classical Cadenzas Although Classical cadenzas vary considerably in

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 42, Summer 2026 Online Issue