How to write your own Mozart cadenza

I’ve had a Mozart monkey on my back for nearly 30 years now, so it feels good to throw it off.

When I was 16, I finally (on my 3rd try) made the finals of the national American String Teachers Association competition. I was just about to take the stage, when suddenly the head of the jury appeared backstage with a question for me:

“What cadenza are you playing for Mozart 4?”

I stared at him blankly for what seemed like ten minutes before giving the only answer I could:

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you’re going to play, or you don’t know who wrote it?” he asked with a sneer.

I couldn’t believe it myself! I had spent months preparing my Mozart concerto and its cadenza, written by the illustrious 19th-century virtuoso, Joseph Joachim. But I’d never bothered to look up at the corner of the cadenza page to see his name. To me, it had been just another page of music I had to learn.

Maybe that’s why I also had my first-ever memory slip that day? I’ll blame the jury guy just to be safe.

Anyway, I swore then and there that someday I would play my own cadenza. The problem was, nobody was asking me to play Mozart 4 except in auditions. And I wasn’t willing to take the plunge in an audition.

Then, two summers ago, I got “the call”. “Can you step in and play Mozart 4 with the LA Phil in two days?”

Well, sure! But there went my promise to play my own cadenza. Joachim it would have to be, for the hundredth time.

So this winter, despite no Mozart 4’s on the books, I went ahead and wrote something, just so I’d have it in my back pocket. Go ahead, call me now and ask me to play Mozart 4! I’m ready!

Here’s a look and a listen at what I came up with:

It’s clear to me now that the reason I hesitated for so long was because I didn’t feel qualified. I’d done a bit of arranging/transcribing, and written a couple of unaccompanied pieces (does the Violympic Theme bring anyone back to 2020?), but an original cadenza seemed out of my league.

Then I realized that all I really had to do was to arrange and transcribe Mozart’s themes, and figure out ways to get from one to another. It didn’t have to be Pulitzer-prize-winning material!

Plus, writing your own music used to be “the thing to do”; practically every famous violinist also composed, at least until 1930 or so. If it was good enough for Milstein…

So I started by writing down all of the major gestures or motifs that I could find in the first movement of Mozart 4. Here’s a sample of my sketchbook:

You can see that I numbered each motif in order to refer to them later. Then, I just started playing around with each one, adding double-stops, changing keys, etc.

If I found a sound or an effect that I liked, I wrote it down. I figured I would throw most of my ideas out eventually, but I didn’t want to lose one that might bear fruit.

I’ll admit that I got seduced by the idea of combining two motifs into one, the way that Kreisler did so magnificently in his cadenza for Beethoven. I managed to do it, but my motifs are much shorter so it was easier to pull off!

The hardest part for me was making sure the whole thing wasn’t in D Major; Or A Major; or D, then A, then D… you get the picture. So I decided on some sections that would take a more daring turn harmonically. I’d just have to live with some modulations that recalled a church organist lurching from one hymn to another in a distant tonality.

Inevitably, if you take this on, you have to decide how far you’re willing to wander from the style of your source material. I used to be more narrow-minded about these things: if a performer played a cadenza that didn’t sound as though it could have been written by the composer of the concerto, I caught a fit of the vapors.

Of course, I was always willing to make an exception if the cadenza was written by a genius like Kreisler. Kreisler could sound like Kreisler, I decided. But everyone else had to play “by the rules”.

Well, maybe it’s part of getting older, but these days I’m happy to hear everyone write and play like themselves. If they have respect for the source material, and overall integrity to their playing, I enjoy their style and willingness to put it out there.

So while I’m proud of having finally put something down on paper (or screen, anyway), and happy to have one more cadenza “out there” for other violinists to play, there’s a much bigger benefit to having written my own piece inspired by Mozart.

I now know his concerto much better than I ever could have through practice alone! And, let me tell you, I have spent thousands of hours practicing Mozart 4. Just ask my wife Akiko, who’s had to suffer through that opening more times than anyone deserves.

I especially enjoyed the freedom that comes with asking “what if?” What if Mozart had tried this turn instead of that one? What if this passage went up an octave? What if this bit had been minor instead of major?

It’s one thing to be told that Mozart’s music is great, or to have an intuitive sense that it is. It’s another altogether to try the alternatives yourself, and to realize anew that Mozart really knew what he was doing! Shaping those moments is much more satisfying when you feel how “right” they truly are.

Finally, when it comes to performing my own “Mozart”, I don’t worry nearly as much as I do when I play the genuine article. I wrote this music, I tell myself, so I know exactly how it should go and how to make it so.

So why shouldn’t I take the same attitude toward everything that I play? Life’s too short to worry about composers and performers from the past stalking my waking hours.

Those ghosts are hard to ignore, though… and that’s another benefit of playing your own material: there’s no Heifetz recording to live up to!

As one composer-performer I know likes to say, “When you write the music, you set the standard.”

I’ve already gotten lots of requests from other violinists to pull back the curtain on my cadenza process, and I’m always happy to share.

But I think this topic is bigger than just cadenza-writing, so I’ve decided to lead a free 3-day workshop called Piece it Together, geared toward violinists who may never have seen themselves as music creators. I want you to know what it feels like to play around, knowing that you have the authority to decide how the music really goes… no matter who wrote it!

I’ve got a real composition teacher, Joseph Sowa, to help out, and he’ll lead us through some Bach b minor Partita analysis. Then we’ll take that and run with it, improvising on Bach’s movements and ultimately drafting our own. We’ll do the same for Mozart, following my cadenza process.

It should be lots of fun, especially for those who don’t have any formal training in analysis or composition. I say it’s time to follow in the footsteps of Paganini, Wieniawski, Ysaye, Kreisler, Milstein, and all the rest!

If you want to join me March 22-24, or even if you’re just curious and want to download my cadenza (and my preliminary sketches for it), click this link: