Steven Jan<\/p>\n
THE ILLUSORY MOZART: SELFISH MEMES IN THE PRIESTS\u2019 MARCHES FROM IDOMENEO AND DIE ZAUBERFL\u00d6TE<\/p>\n
for Julian Rushton<\/p>\n
I want to claim almost limitless power for slightly inaccurate self-replicating enti-ties, once they arise anywhere in the universe. This is because they tend to become the basis for Darwinian selection which, given enough generations, cumulatively builds systems of great complexity.
\n(Dawkins 1989: 322)<\/p>\n
1. CONTEXT: THE LATE SUMMER OF 1791<\/p>\n
In comparing the Priests\u2019 Marches from Mozart\u2019s Idomeneo K. 366 (1781) and Die Zauberfl\u00f6te K. 620 (1791), Rushton observes that the earlier march \u2018\u2026breathes an air of mystery which anticipates another temple, in Die Zauberfl\u00f6te\u2019 (1993: 105). The affinity is apparent to the ear, yet the marches share much more than a mood of hushed devotion: my concern here will be to show that musical similarities between them are such that one can clearly regard the later march as replicating, in various ways, much of the content of the earlier.
\nFirst, the background. By mid-July of 1791 Mozart had completed the bulk of the work on Die Zauberfl\u00f6te, but in his Verzeichn\u00fc\u00df aller meiner Werke we see the opera entered, in that month, using the opening bars of Tamino\u2019s \u2018Zu hilfe!\u2019 (number 1) as the incipit (see Rosenthal and Tyson 1991: 57). With the exception of Die Ent-f\u00fchrung aus dem Serail, the overture was the last part of Mozart\u2019s operas to be com-posed, being put aside while vocal sections were completed so the singers could begin work. With Die Zauberfl\u00f6te, the composition of the Priests\u2019 March, the only other ex-tended instrumental number, was also deferred, Mozart presumably intending to write it later with the Overture.<\/p>\n