Steps Toward a Normative Music Analysis: Making Moral Choices through Sympathetic Narrativity in Mozart's Piano Concertos K. 453, 466 and 467

This article develops the conjecture that inference from facts to normativity is a precondition for building a narrative account of a concerto movement as a dialogue between self-fashioning musical actors. This article searches for the exact mechanism for becoming normative. Normativity serves as an “ought” relationship between two thematic entries, thus initiating internal communication and dialogue and the allegory of a moral choice between the themes. This relationship is regulated by the 18th-century concept of self- and other-directed sympathy, and is formalised as eight transformation functions that serve as epistemic filters and appear in either a consecutive or simultaneous manner depending on the mechanism of representation. Throughout the article, the influence of fact value-divide on analytical methodology is discussed. The conceptual tools that are used in constructing the framework are reflective equilibrium, sympathy, narrative high point and narrative coherence/unity. The existential semiotic Moi vs Soi distinction is proposed as a possible solution for inference from facts to values.