The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century

in a classic Turn of Phrase, Robert O. Gjerdingen (1988: 23–27) proposes a network-based analysis of the opening of Mozart's Piano Sonata K. 283, intended as an improvement on Schenkerian readings by Felix Salzer (1962, 2: 79, example 248) and Joel Lester (1982, 1: 176, example 15-2). In Gjerdingen's reading (see my paraphrase in Example 1), the passage is an exemplar of the $1^$–$7^$ . . . $4^$–$3^$ schema, later renamed “Meyer”; in the readings by Salzer and Lester, the passage is conceptualized in relation to Heinrich Schenker's Ursatz. Beyond debates about tree versus network hierarchies, do these conflicting analytical readings reflect irreconcilable theoretical differences, or are they merely the outcome of positing different musical prototypes? Is there any hope for a historically informed solution that is reflective of actual practices of historical...