Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Borges; jpl
JPL says: Give me Beethoven over the often vapid music of Mozart any day.

Borges condescendingly replies:

Astonishingly misinformed.

From age seven through high school, I was taught (violin, viola, clarinet, and piano) by a wonderful music teacher whose former students include several successful and even renowned classical musicians. He was from Russia, Georgia, to be exact. He understood my utter and complete capitulation to all things J.S. Bach. Quoth Mr. Korisheli, my teacher:

"Mozart wrote lot of junk, Beethoven wrote lot of junk, but Bach didn't write any junk."

Still, Borges, all those years growing up and playing Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart on both keyboard and in orchestras, I'll tell you from my uninformed position that Mozart's stuff was generally repetive, boring, formulaic, predictable .. dare I say, vapid. There were exceptions, but not many. Beethoven, on the other hand, was never vapid, that I can think of. And quite a lot of it wasn't junk at all, but adventurous, risk-taking musical explorations that for the past 40-plus years have inspired me and filled me with wonder. Not quite up there with Toccatta and Fugue in D Minor, but very close. Mozart was a puppy playing safe in a fenced yard compared to Beethoven. Put that in your "informed" pipe and smoke it!

109 posted on 06/16/2005 9:53:56 AM PDT by Finny (God continue to Bless President G.W. Bush with wisdom, popularity, safety and success.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies ]


To: Finny
Mozart was a puppy playing safe in a fenced yard compared to Beethoven. Put that in your "informed" pipe and smoke it!

Do they allow smoking on FR? :-)

I said this earlier but it bears repeating: Mozart's music was anything but safe. It was regarded as abstruse and difficult to follow. There was nothing predictable about his unorthodox modulations which even puzzled even Haydn and Rossini. Apart from the fact that Mozart virtually invented and perfected the Opera. (Le Nozze De Figaro and Don Giovanni might be the 2 best of all time...Die Zauberflote could be 3rd), he expanded Sonata-Form to an expressiveness it hadn't appoached earlier. Beethoven freely acknolwedge that there are things in Mozart that he could never have written (the slow movement of th 20th Piano concerto). Mozart's music is simply a perfect and completely innovative melding of form, content, technique and inspiration.
135 posted on 06/16/2005 10:36:32 AM PDT by Borges
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 109 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson