amplify these beginnings and to establish a definite
standard of structure. In both schools this standard represented an
application of the Three-part form principle; the French arranging
their contrasts, slow, fast, slow (the so-called French overture--of
which we have an example in Handel's Messiah) and the Italians, fast,
slow, fast (the so-called Italian Overture). Although Gluck
(1714-1787) did much to establish a more dramatic connection between
the overture and the play, even the best of his Overtures, Iphigenia
in Aulis, is a rather loosely expanded tripartite structure with a
good many meaningless passages. But Mozart, coming after Haydn's
definite establishment of the Sonata-form and with the growing
interest of the public in instrumental music for its own sake as an
incentive, could take advantage of these circumstances to display his
genius and to delight his hearers with a piece of genuine music. This
he did and his operatic overtures are of such distinct import and
self-sufficiency that they are often detached from the opera itself
and played as concert numbers. The Magic Flute Overture is also
noteworthy because of the polyphonic treatment of the first theme
which is a definite fugal presentation in four voices. The second
theme, beginning in measure 64, and soon repeated, is light and
winning, meant to supplement rather than to contrast strongly with the
first theme, which indeed keeps up at the same time, in the inner
voices, its rhythmic impetuosity. The Exposition ends with a graceful
closing phrase, _e.g._,

[Music]

and the usual cadence in the dominant key. It is considered that the
Adagio chords for the trombones, interpolated between the Exposition
and the Development, are suggestive of the religious element in the
play that is to follow. The Development is remarkable for the spirited
imitative treatment of the first theme, for the bold way in which the
voices cut into each other and for the fusion of its closing measures
with the Recapitulation. The chief feature in this brilliant passage
is a piling up of the theme in stretto form (see measures 148-153).
The Recapitulation is somewhat shortened and the melodic outline of
the second theme is slightly changed; otherwise it corresponds with
the Exposition. After the closing phrase we have some pungent
dissonances, _e.g._

[Music]

Rossini, it is said, was never tired of eulogizing this Overture and
certainly for spontaneity and vigor it is