chrisbi - glad you agree -but no slurring allowed!

JF

Ha - yet another milestone for the thread - now over 8k hits!

So many tuning in to find out who and/or what is more gorgeous than old Pachelbel (or maybe who and/or what Pachelbel is/was in the first place ).

I can only imagine the extent and intensity of the collective delight when "who and/or what" is discovered...

JF

I'm late to this thread and maybe feeling like a bit of a rube, but my whole life I have thoroughly enjoyed the sparser, cheerful Mozart arrangements referred to by some posters as artificial or 'toy' music. Those more simple melodious works have to be crafted so perfectly to sound the way they do, and I both love the sound AND the compositional skill behind them. Spare is, in many ways, a very much more demanding type of score to master than a more rollicking or fierce piece.


So add me to the throng of Mozart fans. His music, performed well, makes my heart happy

Brilliantly stated AM You're obviously a person of the highest possible artistic standards, and your taste in music is impeccable!



Mine too - and makes my stomach growl (although that could be something else)

JF

Hey JF,
Thought you might be interested to see this:
autograph of Mozart's Minuet in G
Didn't you play this for one of the ABF recitals? And aren't you glad we have modern printed scores to work from now?

MaryBee - thanks very much! Fascinating to see that score - he was 5 years old when he composed this!

Yes, I did play it, but I think it was for one of the Piano Bars.

JF

Here's a Fun Mozart Fact - and this one recently surprised me.

Did you know that his official name is:

Johannes Christian Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart ?

Note that Wolfgang is his third given neme and that the often used name Amadeus is not included.

Amadeus is Latin (I believe) and means "loved of God", which is what Gottlieb (German) means. Mozart never used this name during his lifetime - it was added later by admirers and gradually became universally adopted.

JF

I didn't know that! What a fun factoid to bring up to a music lover sometime, if I have the opportunity.

You mean just like I did...


Here's another one: Mozart composed his first symphony (K.16) at the age of eight!

This was influenced by the work of a composer he admired greatly - Johann Christian (J.C.) Bach, the 11th son of J.S. Bach. J.C. was living in London then and was working under the auspices of King George III (who you might remember was soon to have some difficulty with his colonists in America ).

JF

Yet another FMF:

Mozart was not only a keyboard (harpsicord - the piano was fairly new at that time) prodigy but also a violin prodigy - at the age of 6 he was playing this instrument in the performance of string trios and quartets with highly accomplished and experienced adults.

JF

Even more FMF:

Mozart composed many of his works - even the larger ones like symphonies and concerti - in his head, and only later "copied them out" on paper - and when he did so he wrote out the individual instrumental parts separately before putting them together as a complete score - for this unique and "other-worldly" ability he was simultaneously credited with having divine inspiration and charged with being under the influence of the devil.

JF

Still more FMF:

Contrary to the play/movie "Amedeus" (which got a lot of things about Wolfy wrong) Mozart did not die (in 1791 at the age of 35) from poisoning at the hands of Antonio Salieri - it was more than likely a chronic subdural hematoma (slow leakage of blood into the space between the skull and the brain) complicated by a return of rheumatic fever (he had suffered from several bouts of this before) in combination with the medical proceedure that killed many more people than it ever saved - blood letting.

JF

And yet more FMFs:

Franz Joseph Haydn ("The Father of Classical Music") was the one composer living at the time whom Mozart greatly admired - even idolized. They eventually became good friends and played together several times in performances of both Haydn's and Mozart's String Quartets - in fact, Mozart dedicated 6 of his S.Q.s to Haydn, which are appropriately named "The Haydn Quartets". Haydn proclaimed Mozart the greatest of all composers, which to Mozart was the greatest possible compliment.

JF

For those of you who enjoy the violin - especially in the format of the orchestral concerto - here is one of the best collections of Mozart's Violin Concerti, performed by the world renowned Academy of Ancient Music on authentic period instruments in an historically accurate style:

Mozart Violin Concerti

Enjoy, TJ

TJ, you got me for a minute... I was wondering, who does this TrapperJohn guy think he is, taking over JF's thread?!

BTW, I love Mozart's violin concertos. I have a CD set with Itzhak Perlman on violin and James Levine conducting. It is breathtaking.

MaryBee - I appreciate your concern, but it's OK - I gave him permission to "oversee" the thread - but he's on strict probation and will be watched closely for his civility and congeniality - and for his advanced degree of adoration of Mozart

And still yet more FMFs:

It seems Wolfy was very fond of crude, graphic, bawdy, gutter-style, bathroom humor, which permeates many of his personal letters to friend and relatives - we can easily overlook this because of his unmatched genius - the same bad behavior from other mere mortals cannot be so easily tolerated - especially on public internet Forums!

Trap

Rising...

Coincidentally, as this thread was bumped, I just read a nice essay on Mozart in Roger Scruton's "Understanding Music". The essay (Chapter 7, "My Mozart") is reproduced in full in the Google Books preview, so you don't need to buy the book to read it. A quotation, about the simplicity of some of Mozart's ideas - "Anybody could do it. Nobody else could have done it".

It seems he was quite a study in contrasts. He could be an insensitive jerk sometimes, and yet he could be a generous friend. One of the stories related in a lecture series I'm listening to (Rober Greenberg's The Chamber Music of Mozart) tells of how he helped out his friend Michael Haydn (Joseph's brother and a very respected composer). Michael had a deadline for composing six violin and viola duets. After completing four of the six pieces, he fell very sick, couldn't complete the last two, and was in danger of losing his position. When Mozart discovered this, he wrote the last two duos in the style of Michael Haydn, passing them off as Haydn's work and saving his job.

MaryBee - excellent true life adventure tale about our "study in contrasts" boy genius! I had forgotten about that incident.

Robert Greenberg is quite a well-spoken authority on Classical music in general and Mozart in particular - I have his fascinating and highly informative CD course "Great Masters: Mozart-His Life and Music" which is also part of the "Great Courses" series from The Teaching Company, and from which I've taken many of the "factoids" about Wolfgang that I relate above.

Here's Amazon's offerings:

The Great Courses (Mozart)


Trap

I like some of Mozart all of the time and all of Mozart some of the time ...

and I've enjoyed this thread ... since to read it didn't take much time

Is this the same as saying, in effect, that you like all of Mozart all of the time? Awfully close...



We try to keep the conversation both stimulating and concise...in a word: "Pithy"...

Trap

Not so simple then - it takes a genius to make it look easy.

Trap

There have been long-standing rumors that he did much the same thing for the under-appreciated post-Baroque composer P.D.Q. Bach, a distant cousin of J.S and founder of the notorious "Frankfurt School", but these have remained unsubstantiated despite highly determined efforts of world-renowned musicologists for centuries...

Trap

Stumbled over this thread because it's so diligently bumped by its OP.

Over the last week, I've listened, amongst others, to my collection of Beethoven's Piano Concerti played by Murray Peraiah and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Bernard Haitink), and these pieces are just a few examples of a richness, intensity, contrast, depth and "ballsiness" that I hardly ever hear when listening to Mozart. Images come to my mind of grape cordial vs. well-wooded red wine (or a kiss on the cheek vs. warm-blooded you-know-what) - but hey, let me not interrupt your flow here...

Anyway, if (only) those people who think that the sparse, cheerful Mozart is the best have "highest possible artistic standards" and "impeccable taste in music", then I'm out of here...

Ah yes - "ballsiness" - the ultimate artistic standard - well, if you haven't heard countless examples of those qualities (including tasteful and well-placed instances of ballsiness) in Mozart then you just haven't been giving him the time and attention he deserves (and you owe to yourself).




If Ludwig is a quick, slobbering jump in the backseat of an old Chevy then Wolfgang is a slow, easy "merger" on a warm, breezy beach at sunset - each has it's time and place and good points, but, after all, life is a beach...



Sorry to hear that and glad you stopped by - admittedly, Mozart isn't for everyone - there are standards of achievement to satisfy every taste, no matter how subpar or imperfect.

Trap