Mozart wine

Verse 1 [PERFORMANCE: Poised, warm, guarded; slight smile early, darken by the end.] [HARMONY: i | iv6 V | i | VI || iiø65 | V7 | i ; brief B-flat warmth.] [MELODY: Mid-range, mostly stepwise; one 4th/5th leap; suspensions on key words.] By candlelight I enter, and the room, already half persuaded, turns to meet me. A bow, a smile—one need not labour much when brightness has gone on ahead and greets me. I touch the key; at once the air grows civil, more gracious than my heart is. They are pleased to take for ease what costs me, and to name delight that very thing by which I’m fleeced. Verse 2 [PERFORMANCE: More intimate; elegant self-justification; seductive but controlled.] [HARMONY: i | V/iv iv | i6 | VI || III | iv | V7 | i ; warm, then back to minor.] [MELODY: Speech-like opening into legato; light chromatic color; noble tessitura.] I lift the glass. Why should I not? The hour asks something warm of us, and I oblige it. A man must keep good company with joy, or else the silence, growing overwise, begins to read him. Wine is kind to form; it rounds the sharper sentence in the breast, makes even inward tumult learn to bow and sit, like any courtier, finely dressed. Chorus [PERFORMANCE: Broader, radiant surface; darken quickly at “theft.”] [HARMONY: VI | III | iv | V7 || i | iv6 | Ger+6 | V7 | i.] [MELODY: More arching and memorable; repeated tones, then a leap; tighten at end.] So let them laugh; I give them cause enough, and if my hand spends freely, it spends music. What would they have—that I should stand quite still and hear the dark collect itself and use me? No—while the candles favour me, I turn even want to grace, and want itself to art. They praise the gold that passes through my fingers. I feel the theft. I do not stop my heart. Verse 3 [PERFORMANCE: Firmer, clearer, less flirtation; real weight on “squander.”] [HARMONY: i | iv V | i | VI || iiø65 | V7/VI VI | iv | V7 | i.] [MELODY: Slightly tighter rhythm; expressive rise on “gift” and “rapture.”] The bishops may look on and call it folly. I do not quarrel with so just a word. Yet folly, when it learns a little measure, may pass for charm, and often is preferred. I know the gift is not my own to squander; I know as well how quickly rapture goes. Still, when the string begins beneath my hand, some sweeter rashness in my spirit grows. Bridge [PERFORMANCE: Inward, near-confessional; thin accompaniment; revelation at the close.] [HARMONY: iv | i6 | N6 | V7 || i | VI | iiø7 | V7/iv || iv | Ger+6 | i64 V7 | i.] [MELODY: Most recitative-like; narrow start, gradual ascent, chromatic tension.] And if, beneath this well-conducted mirth, another count is kept, I hear it faintly— not as rebuke alone, but as a claim that follows every brightness and awaits me. I answer it with cadence, cup, and laughter; with all that most resembles being free. Yet even now, while all the room grows radiant, something more grave stands up in me—and sees. Final Chorus [PERFORMANCE: Fullest reach; mask thins line by line; end in recognition.] [HARMONY: VI | III | iv | V7 || i | iv6 | Ger+6 | V7 || i | iiø65 | VI | iv || N6 | i64 V7 | i.] [MELODY: Return larger; strongest ascent on “all of me”; grave final descent.] So let them laugh; I give them cause enough, and if I err, I err in light, not languor. I make a song of what I cannot keep; I spend the flame and call the spending splendour. But when the last chord loosens from the air and courtesy no longer shelters art, what has shone through me does not ask my pleasure. It asks for all of me—and knows my heart.