Posted on 03/12/2006 10:43:13 AM PST by randita
March 12, 2006
The Mozarts We Don't Know
By BERNARD HOLLAND
ANYONE with the faintest connection to classical music likes Mozart. Hating "Don Giovanni" or the "Jupiter" Symphony would be like hating a sunset. Mozart has come not just to represent musical beauty but, in a way, to define it.
We know the Mozart landmarks. In concerts, recordings, radio and television, they come at us from every side. Familiarity makes us forget how new this music was to the audience of his best years; from 1782 to his unexpected death in 1791.
Did contemporary listeners adore him as we do? Relatively speaking, yes. Did his own times reward him? Yes. After we discard the neglected-genius, suffering-hero image — the boilerplate romance of 19th-century artistic mythology — Mozart was clearly no starving artist. He and his wife, Constanze, did not dance away the hours at home to keep warm. He was buried not in a pauper's grave but simply, according to sanitation laws that applied to all the newly dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
classical music ping
What's the gist of the article? BugMeNot is blocked from the NYT. Thanks.
He stole all his ideas from Africa!!
He stole all his ideas from Africa!!
ANYONE with the faintest connection to classical music likes Mozart.
Thanks for the post. A very nice (and informative) article for this Mozart lover!
I just ordered his complete works 170 CDs from Amazon.de (not the US amazon.com) for $110 shipped. The WSJ had this tip a week ago. I can't wait until they arrive. Amazon.com has it for about $300.
Granted, his money situation was desperate when illness suddenly carried him off, but Mozart was not guiltless. His immediate prospects were promising, and he had a glittering spell of prosperity and high living to look back on. Mozart's late-life finances were the Rococo equivalent of credit card abuse: incurring one debt to satisfy another. He lived elegantly though not with particular extravagance. The business of being a composer had its social side, and both he and his wife dressed accordingly. On one business trip, he turned down public transportation and acquired his own carriage. No taxi, subway, bus or hired car for Mozart; he bought a limo.
But there was bad luck.
Mozart spoke to three audiences (four, counting the church): first, the emperor; second, the Viennese rich, who let him put on concerts in their houses; and third, the people in the streets, who wanted their opera in German, preferably in Viennese dialect. In Prague, where "Don Giovanni" and "La Clemenza di Tito" had their premieres, Mozart could do no wrong.
Emperor Joseph II in Vienna was an invaluable admirer and financial supporter. When Joseph died in 1790, one of Mozart's major props had been shot out from under him. Joseph's successor, Leopold II, was preoccupied with international and political problems, and though Mozart's music did not disappear from court functions, neither the emperor nor the empress, Maria Luisa, liked it much. (She is said to have called "La Clemenza di Tito" a porcheria tedesca: liberally translated, a German pig sty.)
In 1785 and 1786 Mozart did well for himself by organizing concerts in the homes of those musical and rich enough to keep their own private orchestras, or at least wind bands and string quartets. Well-heeled listeners, solicited by Mozart, subscribed to these events and paid for tickets. (Two examples of such tickets survive today.) Most of the best piano concertos were written for semiprivate events like these, along with concert arias, symphonies and chamber pieces.
Some blame bewilderment over Mozart's complicated music for the dwindling of his subscription audiences. War with the Turks was a better explanation. Customers were away fighting it. Money was tight. Art seemed for the moment a luxury, not a necessity. And Mozart was not too wise with money, though a good deal of it passed through his hands.
The people in the streets never abandoned him. Classical music was not isolated from popular music, as it is today. There was one musical language and grammar operating on a sliding scale of sophistication. Music slid both ways. Indeed, carefully written tunes by Schubert and Dvorak, subjects of art songs and symphonies, "descended" to folk-music status and can still be heard in the wee hours, sung by beer garden patrons all over Central Europe.
The educated classes, particularly in Prague, "got" the original twists and turns of Mozart's music, but his connection to the public at large began with language. "Don Giovanni" and "Le Nozze di Figaro" never received widespread attention until they were translated into German, and indeed, German translations of Mozart's Italian operas persisted in Central Europe until the end of World War II.
Mozart's first big public success was in German with Viennese inflections. Of "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction From the Seraglio"), Mozart said in 1782, "No one wants to hear anything else; the theater is swarming with people." The smash hit of "Die Zauberflöte" nine years later was akin to "The Sound of Music" and "The Producers" rolled into one. The box office was still turning away frustrated ticket buyers nightly when Mozart died.
Why does Mozart hold our interest? Consider Domenico Cimarosa, who became Emperor Leopold's music director in 1791. Cimarosa is rightly remembered for his opera "The Secret Marriage." It is a lovely piece; civilized, graceful, with lovely arias and smooth ensembles. Above all, it is clear. When Cimarosa is happy or unhappy the music tells us so.
Now listen to Mozart's brief choral piece "Ave Verum Corpus." The opening statement is warm, major-key and almost innocent. With the words "cujus latus" the music continues its major-ness; then, after one measure, it descends suddenly into an unstable harmony (a diminished seventh chord, if you are interested). We are headed toward minor-ness and a darker mood.
This is powerful listening in itself, but then, in the very next stroke, Mozart alters a single note (C sharp to C natural) and by some miracle our ears find themselves driven, not inevitably downward into D minor, but upward into the reconciling key of F. Just as we put up our umbrellas, the sun comes out. We don't know whether to be happy or sad, and so we are both. These few measures are something Cimarosa would not have thought of in a thousand years.
---------------------------------------
The gist is, I think, that Mozart was one of a kind. He is like Shakespeare. Mozart was a gift from God to us.
I always tell people, if they should wonder, how one tells the difference between geniuses. How to tell Mozart from Wagner, Puccini and Verdi? I love all four of them...they were all gifts from God. Mozart was His finest gift (in music) to us.
Wagner's music just carries you away; Verdi's music sends shviers up and down the spine; Puccini's music makes you weep for its beauty; Mozart's music comes straight from God--it's that beautiful.
I saw the picture of Mozart you posted from google. I'm more accustomed to this one ABOVE, also from google. Doesn't look like the same man as the one below.
He was a slave owner too.
He just took dictation.
ML/NJ
Thanks for posting the rest. I can't improve on your own remarks. Too bad that geniuses burn out so quickly.
The flip side is the number of murder and mayhem-inclined types that have not been born.
IIRC, the premise was that the people having the greatest percentage of abortions come from the anti-civilized society class.
Obviously, it's better to fix problems upstream before they go downstream. Tax dollars should not be encouraging the
growth of non-responsible behaviors.
Dear randita,
Thanks for the ping!
Classical Music Ping List ping.
If you want on or off this list, let me know via FR e-mail.
Thanks!
sitetest
Or how many Hitlers.
I thought the above pict was that of his father? I could be wrong.
Well stated.
LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.