Mozart a fraud?

[Opus106]

What about my Chopin ghost theory Mr. Newman? You never addressed it. I say it's valid!

Ssshhh... the last post was made 6 hours ago. Let this thing sleep. It's a weekend, after all.  

[robnewman]

J.B. Vanhal
Concerto for Viola and Orchestra
2nd Movement
(c.1777)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ojuelljeyew

-ditto-

3rd Movement

http://www.mediafire.com/?2mimzmuwjy2

//

[robnewman]

5/5

'HAFFNER' SYMPHONY (CONCLUSION)

The version of the 'Haffner' Symphony, KV385 held at the Estense Library in Modena, Italy further confirms this work existed for over a decade before Mozart claimed it as his in Vienna. Examination of this score and of the background to this work indicates it existed soon after the arrival of Andrea Luchesi in Bonn as Kapellmeister in 1771 and is, itself, on Italian watermarked paper at Modena. This work was one of several sold in copyist versions to various princes of the Holy Roman Empire including Salzburg. The fact that this work is today with 8 other 'Mozart' symphonies at the music library of Modena when not a single work of that form is attributed to Mozart in Bonn Hofkappelle's inventory records of 1784 indicate that it became a 'Mozart' Symphony some time shortly after 1784. (In fact it was first performed and later published in Mozart's name by 1785 by Artaria in Vienna and has been known as 'his' ever since).

The scoring of the version at Modena (minus trumpets, timpani, flute and clarinet) further confirm this is its earliest version. But it (like versions at Modena of the 'Prague' Symphony and even of the 'Jupiter' etc.) go unmentioned decade after decade by editors of the Koechel Catalogue. An inconvenient truth (like this thread) which is still little known. Buried away and not easily accessed !!

Each 'Mozart' symphony has its own story. The 'Haffner' is no exception.

RN

[robnewman]

Andrea Luchesi (1741-1804)

Italian composer and teacher. The last holder of the prestigious post of Kapellmeister at Bonn in Germany (1774-1794) and little known composition teacher of music students there including the young Ludwig van Beethoven . He married locally and was to work for over 20 years there. His final years spent in writing operas for the new German National Theatre there - also lost. Most of Luchesi's works from 1771 onwards are lost or have been attributed to others (including various symphonies) but this early work written in Italy and a handful of others survive. This and several others of his are known to have been in the repertoire of Mozart and his sister and were played by them up until at least 1780. Luchesi's early sonatas for keyboard and violin, Op. 1,  published at Bonn in the year after his arrival were the first music published there and are noted by several sources to anticipate the style of Beethoven. They've recently been recorded.

Andrea Luchesi (1741-1801)
Concerto in E Flat Major for Keyboard
First Movement
Allegro
c.1765/7

http://www.mediafire.com/?z040ojqqkmf

[robnewman]

Thank you to this forum for allowing this thread to run. It says a great deal of its owners and administrators. And thank you for those who have been constructive in their posts on this subject.

//

'The Manufacture of Mozart' - (Preface)

In the last few years the difficult challenge of writing accurate and down to earth accounts of the life and career of the iconic composer W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) (i.e. those which do justice to modern discoveries), seem to have been met, at least partially, by the appearance of a number of works that are results of a new 'revisionist' trend within Mozart research. Examples include those by the German researcher Volkmar Braubehrens, whose ' Mozart in Vienna, 1781-1791' and Ruth Halliwell's, 'The Mozart Family - 4 Lives in a Social Context' are only two examples. Another (though it may be more accurately described as a 'damage limitation exercise') has been publication of William Stafford's, 'Mozart Myths'. All are results of a growing realisation and appreciation of the fact that the lives of music composers and their careers cannot, forever, include a Mozart  who is presented as a naïve and transcendental genius, who floats through the episodes of his musical life as a mercurical creature of fiction and whose links with real people and places are treated as superficial backdrops to the telling of his extraordinary, often exaggerated and often incredible story. There is only so much mileage in the 'genius' tag.

Our subject here is Mozart. But to call in to question almost every aspect of his myth,  to deny his immense status as a music composer,  to separate facts from fictions, to argue that he, W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) was not a musical 'genius', to show that his reputation within the musical world and within western culture is largely undeserved, to present evidence that we are  dealing in Mozart's case with a unique and clever cultural fraud foisted on generations of students, and to re-examine with a critical eye key details of his life and career and even those involved in the manufacture of his giant status - these are subjects which will make special demands on you, dear reader as they have on me during the research and writing of this book. My aim here is nothing less than to 'peel an onion', so to speak, and this with as few tears as possible. So that we might gain by having examined Mozart from more than the traditional perspective, and can arrive at a verdict that is sustainable and which is supported by documentary and other evidence.

I make a number of assumptions. First, that you as a reader may be reasonably familiar with the broad outlines of the Mozart story and may have read a biography or even seen a film on the subject. Second, I hope you take no offence if this survey, from time to time, pursues different lines of enquiry from those you usually come across in a biography, since the scale and implications of  a far-reaching study cannot avoid dealing with little known aspects of Mozart and his reputation that are rarely discussed in polite company. And third, I assume you will be pleased to know this work is evidence-based and that considerable effort has been spent in trying to obtain reliable information on a man who, after all, is one of the great cultural heroes of our civilization.

Mozart is a paradigm, and in a paradigm we can so easily go round and round in circles without questioning the assumptions on which our beliefs are based. Besides, for almost 200 years Mozart, his music and his reputation have been subjects larger than the man himself, and, even as a child and at every stage of his short life Mozart was being described and portrayed as such. This virtual idolatry and the exaggeration which became such a feature of his life was to continue for decades after his death in December 1791 and it even accelerated. So, at least, says the evidence. In fact Mozart's  posthumous rise to 'superstar' status at the hands of propagandists, publishers and biographers was as great a factor, if not more so,  in creating the image we have today than that which he knew during his own lifetime. So that the study of Mozart is, from the very outset, virtually beyond biography alone. We think, we assume, the broad outlines of his story and of his legendary musical achievements must be true. That they're already worthy of our belief. That they have been confirmed by a mass of expert study. But, unlike virtually all areas of academic study we rarely question the assumptions on which the story itself is based.

Again, what place are we to give to the beliefs of Mozart in a study of his life and career ? Or those of his friends ? What place did beliefs and agendas play in the lives of Mozart's patrons ? Of his publishers and propagandists ? His fraternal associates ? What importance do we give to the creation of his posthumous reputation and of the later publication of literally hundreds of great musical works in his name ? Again, what of the glaring defects we find within standard biographies in glossing over dozens, even hundreds of musical works that have been falsely attributed to him over the past 200 years and more ? And what shall we make of the hyperbole that surrounds the mere mention of his name ? Since our ultimate appeal is to both documentary evidence and common sense  what shall we make of the documentary evidence itself, its significance and reliability, especially if it has come mainly from correspondence of the Mozart family, or from anecdotes, testimony and diary entries that are closely associated with him if these are never subjected to fair and reasonable criticism  and often without regard to their social, religious and other contexts ? Again, what do Mozart's music manuscripts have to say ?

Difficult as it may be, we can and must study Mozart as we would study the life, career and reputation of any other musical composer. The mere fact of doing so may commit ourselves to the most controversial, the most radical, possibly the most despised and surely the most honest approach of them all.

R.E. Newman
London
May 2009

[Catison]

I found this article from The Onion news magazine to be apt.

Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!

By Matthew Barnes
May 28, 2009 | Issue 45•22

I...I think it's finally over. Our reactionary emotional response seems to have stopped it dead in its tracks. If I'm right, all we have to do now is smugly reiterate our half-formed thesis and—oh, no! For the love of God, no! It's thoughtfully mulling things over!

Run! Run! It's making reasonable, fact-based arguments!

Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its character and keep moving haphazardly from one flawed point to the next!

All together now! Put every bit of secondhand conjecture into it you've got!

Goddamn it, nothing's working! It's trapped us in our own unsubstantiated claims! We need to switch fundamentally unsound tactics. Hurry, throw up the straw man! Look, I think it's going for it. C'mon...c'mon...yes, it's going for it! Now hit it with the thing that one guy told us once while it's distracted by our ludicrous rationalizations!

Gah! It's calmly and evenhandedly deflecting everything we're throwing at it. Our deductive fallacies are only making it stronger! Wait...what on earth is it doing now? Oh, no, it has sources! My God, it's defending itself with ironclad sources! Someone stop the citing! Please, please stop the citing!

The language is impenetrable! For all that is good and holy, backpedal with all your might!

Where are the children? Someone overprotect the children! They cannot be exposed to this kind of illuminative reasoning. Their young, open minds are much too vulnerable to independent thought. We have to shield them behind our unshakeable intolerance for critical thinking.

What?!? Noooooooooo! Richard! For the love of God, it's convinced Richard!

No time for tears now. Richard's mind has been changed forever. But we mustn't let it weaken our resolve. Mark my words, our ignorance will hold, no matter the cost. Now, more than ever, we have to keep floundering ahead with blind faith in our increasingly fallacious worldview.

For Richard's sake.

What's that? Now it's making an appeal to reason? Never! Do you hear me, you eloquent, well-read behemoth? Never! We'll die before we recognize what we secretly know to be true! The cognitive dissonance only makes our denial stronger!

We have but one hope left: passive-aggressive slights disguised as impersonal discourse.† Okay, everyone, careful now...careful...if this is going to work, we have to arrogantly assume that it won't be smart enough to catch on to our attempt to salvage some feeling of superiority and—oh, God, it's calling us out! Quick, avoid eye contact and stammer an apology! Tell it we were just joking! Tell it we were joking!

Arrgh! Our pride! Oh, Lord, our pride! It burns!

All is lost. We don't stand a chance against its relentless onslaught of exhaustive research and immaculate rhetoric. We may as well lie down and—Christ, how it pains me to say it—admit that it's right. My friends, I would like to take these last few moments of stubborn close-mindedness to say that it's been an honor to dig myself into this hole with you.

Unless...wait, of course! Why didn't we think of it before? Volume! Sheer volume! It's so simple. Quickly now, we don't have much time! Don't let it get a word in edgewise! Derisively cut it off mid-sentence! Now, launch the sophomoric personal attacks! Louder, yes, that's it, louder! Be repetitive, juvenile, and obstinate! It's working! It's working!

We've done it! It's walking away and shaking its head in disgust! Huzzah! Finally—defeated with a single three-minute volley of irrelevant, off-topic shouting!

Ironic, really, isn't it?

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/oh_no_its_making_well_reasoned

[robnewman]

In a nutshell - 'Always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth' - LOL !!  

[robnewman]

(Some members here have asked for a chapter to be posted on the forthcoming work on Mozart's life, career and reputation. But, so as to avoid antagonising readers and to avoid endlessly exchanging emails I would like to post here only a short part of its Preface/Introduction. And to agree to disagree. In the hope that others can judge this issue from both sides, having the complete work available).

Anyway, here's a short excerpt from its 'Introduction' -

''That the official career of W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) was 'stage managed', falsified, and virtually all invented  from the time of his childhood in Salzburg onwards until the time of his death in December 1791 by the wholesale and systematic supply to him at each and every stage of his career (and even beyond it, in terms of its publication) of music he never composed is not a view shared by many people. That this fraudulent life was further exaggerated and even further invented and propagated by a series of later propagandists, biographers and publishers in the decades which followed Mozart's death in late 1791  - this too may be regarded as highly controversial. Nor are such things likely to be well received by those of more conservative musical and cultural view. And nor would it occur to many readers (even critics) that such opinions could be argued at length, let alone sustained over the span of an entire book. But no good will come of hiding this conviction of mine till the end of the work, seeing that its been obtained by detailed study of his life and career over many years, some aspects of which are now presented here for this first time on such a scale. This belief of mine, this thesis, is,  I sincerely believe, reinforced by the fruits of long and fair examination of virtually all aspects of Mozart's life, career and reputation and is, I respectfully submit, able to shown true beyond reasonable doubt. Or, at least, is able to be expressed coherently for the first time for the sure criticism and judgement of music lovers and general readers by means of evidence. So they these same readers can at least form their own considered judgement on this important cultural, musical and historical issue having examined it from more than one perspective. This irrespective of the fact that the body of music today attributed to W.A. Mozart undoubtedly includes some of the finest ever written, by anyone, in any century.

This work examines the life and career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) in the light of modern discoveries. It also examines, in some detail, Mozart's posthumous rise to  fame and the dissemination of his iconic status in the musical and cultural world over the decades which followed. The scale of this work, though large, has been condensed, so that an overview of what is a complex and multi-faceted subject is made possible, and so that particular aspects are seen in some detail.

I've made efforts to avoid continually revisiting a specific aspect of Mozart except where it clarifies a point on which there may be dispute. Nor has an attempt been made to follow a strict chronology. Nor have I used vast numbers of footnotes. So that this work is kept to manageable size and so that its contents can easily be compared with biographies and standard reference works.

Contrary to popular belief, the death of Mozart in Vienna in December 1791 was not the occasion of a great outpouring of public grief in the Austrian capital.  But since the subject of Mozart's status,  reputation and achievements in Vienna (1781-1791) are of obvious importance to the subject we begin by freshly examining his life and achievements during his final decade. We will soon appreciate that even this Vienna decade is a far from straightforward subject. Popularised versions of Mozart on this period are in fact riddled with paradoxes, contradictions, loose ends, exaggerations and omissions. Nowhere more so than in respect of his final days.

Mozart's own death in late 1791 was commemorated very differently in the Austrian capital than in, say, Prague. In Prague a memorial service was quickly organised and attended by thousands of adoring citizens from all classes of Bohemian society. In stark contrast to what happened in the Austrian capital. Of relevance to which is the statement by Mozart's close colleague and principal librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte -

''Mozart, thanks to the intrigues of his rivals, had never been able to exercise his divine genius in Vienna, and was living there unknown and obscure, like a precious jewel buried in the bowels of the earth and hiding the refulgent excellence of its splendours''.

(Lorenzo da Ponte - Librettist and working colleague of Mozart -  'Memoirs')

Da Ponte is keen that we believe in Mozart's musical genius. But he takes the unusual step of admitting, even emphasising, repeatedly, that his colleague was virtually 'unknown' in Vienna.  A remarkable thing to say of the mercurial Mozart of those Vienna  years. Mozart's invisibility and his musical failure in Vienna is stated, repeatedly. But such things tend to be glossed over by the casual reader and they easily become lost. He says Mozart at no time demonstrated his musical talents in Vienna. He compares his late friend to a buried and obscure jewel, etc.

It's one example of Mozart's life and career in Vienna which contradicts the version to which we are accustomed. And yet, as we will see, similar contradictions exist for virtually all key aspects of Mozart's life and career. They are rather typical. The benefits of  fair and reasonable doubt on Mozart have tended by sheer tradition and hyperbole  to influence what is generally believed. We find in favour of his 'genius'. So that Mozart's iconic status becomes a sort of biographical credit card. Extracting him and his well known story from even the most glaring contradictions and difficulties.  So that when a contrary and radically opposing line of evidence is presented we seem hardly able to appreciate it for what it  is. We assume his career in Vienna had periods of great personal success and acclaim followed by rapid decline. But no sooner is this challenged than we search for our 'credit card' and extol his musical genius.

The truth is that over the past two centuries biographers and propagandists have blown a cloud of dreamy and ever expanding bubbles over the Mozart scene, so to speak. These bubbles, of different size and colour, each more wonderful than the one before, have accompanied the legend of Mozart's musical genius, success and reputation. He is typically presented as a well known and greatly loved virtuoso and composer of legendary abilities in those same Vienna years. A teacher of literally dozens of talented pupils etc. One of the first freelance composers to earn an income from all his activities in a ceaseless blaze of creative activity. This is the Mozart of renown and of legendary ability loved and revered by musical Vienna but who, we discover, is unable to find a secure position of employment.  'Ah ! Such is the price of genius'. And this inability is counterbalanced by our ability to believe in his near miraculous talents and by crediting him with literally hundreds of great musical achievements over this same period for which, we are told, the documentary evidence is alone sufficient.  Glaring contradictions are glossed over. Because Mozart was a genius. But the steady stream of 'bubbles' blown around his constantly inflated image, almost without us suspecting it, rob us of context or ability to accept criticism against the icon which stands before us. Obscuring reality, dulling our critical faculties, and eliminating any chance to understand the Vienna in which Mozart lived or the fuller details of his life. The emergence of a Mozart myth has come at the expense of these vital contexts being removed and, in their place, a disembodied figure is projected on to the screen of musical history which lacks virtually all context. The real Mozart further transformed by an endless stream of eulogies. Emerging as little more than a hologram whose main feature is that he and his life are, even in terms of biography, detached from reality. So that our belief in the Mozart myth, and our appreciation of the music of others at the time, its influence on his own, and a whole series of other vital issues have become peripheral. This sanitised and disembodied image of Mozart has become the stuff of biographies themselves on which a stream of further exaggerations and errors have been added as academic and nutritional supplements. This to our perpetual delight and fascination. Making the straightforward business of a Mozart biography far, far more challenging than it would otherwise be.

Mozart, from a biographical aspect, would present any self-respecting biographer with a series of unusual, almost unique challenges. Not least those underpinning Mozart's god-like status.  A modern biographer would be aware that he is producing a work on a figure that would be eagerly awaited by those already familiar with its well known outlines. But its narrative, however well written and retold would be sure to consist of the usual list of major events in Mozart's 'official' life, his most famous works, these introduced chronologically and given some degree of context by reference to members of Mozart's family and reference to number of his musical patrons, though these discussed in only a superficial sense. The 'story' would unfold in highly predictable and even traditional fashion. Added footnotes and even inclusion of less well known facts on our hero. So that such a new biography would find its welcome place in an already vast library of the same.  

But Mozart biographies (and there are several outstandingly good examples) have long tended to differ from those we may read on the lesser known figures of history. In several important ways. First because they rely so heavily on still earlier biographies. And second because biography is not an ideal form in which to critically examine or criticise established views on any person. Nor are journal articles. To repeat popular views or 'received wisdom' only to call its reliability into detailed question would be a tedious and clumsy business, hard to write, and even harder to read. The result of such a work would hardly be described as a biography at all.  Besides, we can easily understand that Mozart biographies (and those of other 'great composers')  have always tended towards a kind of circular argument in respect of the composer's 'official' life and achievements. This silent conservatism is due as much to the limitations of biography itself as to its contents. So that the closest we can come would seem to be a 'documentary biography'.

An alternative approach would be a series of Mozart articles of the kind we might find in, say,  specialist music journals. Where the most important aspects are examined and cross-examined in the light of modern discoveries. This would have real value in a microscopic sense. But it would also, almost by definition, lack overview and linkage with a whole host of other important factors and would hardly allow appreciation of the whole subject.

All of these indicate that a solution exists in writing neither a biography nor a series of journal articles but a work which is a combination of both. In to which a third element is added -  details of the posthumous manufacture by propagandists, authors and lecturers of Mozart's iconic status and its dissemination within the musical world and within western culture as a whole in the early to middle 19th century. The net result of incorporating all these aspects within the same work would, with difficulty, be a modern and critical study of the Mozart phenomenon, as a whole. Which is the aim here''.


R.E. Newman
2009
//

[Joe_Campbell]

It's a bit odd that the focal point of this most recent post is a quote that was originally posted by someone else early in this thread. It seems to have become the cornerstone of your argument.

[robnewman]

It's a bit odd that the focal point of this most recent post is a quote that was originally posted by someone else early in this thread. It seems to have become the cornerstone of your argument.

You are of course refering to the statement of Lorenzo da Ponte -

''Mozart, thanks to the intrigues of his rivals, had never been able to exercise his divine genius in Vienna, and was living there unknown and obscure, like a precious jewel buried in the bowels of the earth and hiding the refulgent excellence of its splendours''.

(Lorenzo da Ponte - Librettist and working colleague of Mozart -  'Memoirs')

Well, thanks, but not even the 'spin merchants' of the Mozart industry can avoid the implications of what is being said here by Lorenzo da Ponte, a close working associate of Mozart in Vienna, can they ?

Far from being the 'cornerstone' of my argument, it is an indisputable example of how the paradigm of Mozart's iconic status is maintained, by arguing from completely different points of view at the same time !

Such is the appeal of the Mozart myth and so dominant has it become within our society and within even the academic world today that the uniqueness of its appeal is to accustomise us to the absurdity of a 'genius' who is one moment the celebrated hero of musical Vienna, the composer of musical masterpieces by the dozen, the adored virtuoso of the Austrian capital, and teacher of more pupils than any biographer has ever been able to count. But is, on the other hand, unable to obtain a permanent post of employment in his entire life nor any detailed education in all the elements of composition, and whose adoring public is one moment able to include a list of the great musical dilettante of Vienna and, the very next, to contain only one concert patron's name by 1789 - this within a few years of his greatest, most public successes. The composer of 'Le Nozze di Figaro', 'Don Giovanni', 'Cosi fan Tutte', 'Die Zauberflote' and the same creature of Apollo who, we later learn, dies in poverty and obscurity in the winter of 1791. The glaring contradictions in this story, even of his Vienna years, are matched only by the glaring contradictions in all the earlier periods of his life and career.

To note that Mozart, during his whole lifetime, published only around 144 works in total of the 626 that were finally attributed to him by Ludwig Koechel, and that only 30 of these publications in Vienna date from his last Vienna decade (1781-1791) is almost bizzare in itself. Since he, Mozart, is portrayed as being a 'freelance' composer, more highly dependent on the sale of music than most of his own musical contemporaries.

Here's a question recently asked by a child here in London -

'Sir, if Mozart had no money in his last years, why didn't he try to sell some of the hundreds of musical masterpieces which he was keeping under his piano' ?  
('Out of the mouths of babes' etc.).

The simplicity of the child's question is as devastating as the statements of Lorenzo da Ponte. Since there is no evidence of frantic attempts by Mozart to have published hundreds of his unpublished masterpieces all across Europe as his financial and social situation was in meltdown during those last Vienna years. Strange, right ?  You are, after all, a genius composer. And a freelance composer. Now, if a baker runs in to difficulty, financially, does he not try, specially hard, to sell his cakes and bread, with more energy than ever before ? And what of a writer, or a painter ? But there is no evidence of any increase of publishing activity by Mozart in the last years of his life  in Vienna. Something does not add up, does it ? The ability of people to believe B.S. in the face of common sense and downright simplicity never ceases to amaze me. 

The statements of da Ponte are typical and are not a cornerstone of the argument. They come from a source we can and must consider. And, because they're easily accessible and have been discussed here. So I've repeated them. Play back the tape. Consider what the Mozart propagandists have said and play the darn stuff back at them. Isn't that the best way to counteract propaganda ? But entire chapters develop the case with much fuller evidence.

[robnewman]

- Preface -

To criticise in some detail the 'official' career of  W.A. Mozart (1756-1791), to call in to question his musical abilities, both as a composer and as a legendary performer,  to ask if he was truly the composer of virtually all the great musical works that are published and widely performed in his name, to question the truthfulness and reliability of documents which date from his own time, many of them describing him as being a musical 'genius', to question the contents of well known Mozart biographies - to argue, instead, that the life and musical career of this Salzburg 'genius', this colossus of western culture, was really a gigantic cultural fraud of the late Holy Roman Empire virtually from beginning to end (a fraud continued and further exaggerated for decades after his death by sympathetic publishers and propagandists) - these are views so controversial, so unusual and so rarely considered within 'polite and educated society' that a number of experts who specialise in these areas of study, having heard that such a work may appear soon and being alarmed at the prospect of it becoming reality are queuing up to rescue the iconic status of their musical hero from such a strange, seemingly unprovoked and lengthy attack. Saying that I must have studied my subject for too long, that mine is the work of a man whose fertile imagination has 'got the better of him', that I've succumbed to a rare academic illness, that publication of a work against the Mozart we all know and love may even corrupt the young, that it might lead to ugliness within their beautiful world if read by the innocent etc., and that the views expressed here and the evidence presented in its support are the musicological equivalent of  'tilting at windmills' or of 'whistling in to the wind'.

Mozart is, of course, big business. And yet you may be surprised to know how rarely his huge musical status and his alleged achievements have ever been criticised in any detail.  'Mozart studies' (so-called) is an elitist and highly conservative offshoot of musicology whose workers assume 'everything we have heard and read of Mozart is true' or, at least, so worthy of belief that the paradigm that underpins this virtual secular religion is hardly appreciated. The first Austrian institute founded to propagate Mozart's music and to disseminate information on him, the Mozarteum of Salzburg (1841), is today seen internationally as one of the great centres of music study and is able to obtain funding, regularly, for vast promotional work that is read and believed as reliable worldwide. Mozart has  been for almost two centuries one of the pillars of the musical establishment - a subject so complex and so highly regarded by teachers and schools in widely available literature that it may seem unthinkable that any complaint, however well researched, can be made against its ethos, and against the industry which promotes and has come to dominate the education of students in matters of musical history.

And yet criticise Mozart we must, since there is no science, nor any body of academic study, great or small, which should escape or avoid detailed criticism of the assumptions on which it is based and on which it has always been based.

R.E. Newman
London
2009

[robnewman]

'The Manufacture of Mozart'

Preface
Introduction

Chapter 1 - Mozart in Vienna (1781-1791)
Chapter 2 - The Symphonies
Chapter 3 - The Keyboard Concertos
Chapter 4 - The Operas
Chapter 5 - The Sonatas
Chapter 6 - The Chamber Music
Chapter 7 - The Wind Concertos
Chapter 8 - The Church Music
Chapter 9 - Childhood and Youth
Chapter 10 - The Structure of the Emerging Mozart Industry
Chapter 11 - Posthumous Mozart
Chapter 12 - Posthumous Mozart (2)
Chapter 13 - The Manuscripts
Chapter 14 - The European Tours
Chapter 15 - Mozart, composer without Context
Chapter 16 - The Mozart Family Correspondence
Chapter 17 - Corporate Mozart
Chapter 18 - Mozart goes Global

Footnotes, Diagrams, and Bibliography


//

[The new erato]

Chapter 11 - Posthumous Mozart
Chapter 12 - Posthumous Mozart (2)

Yes, at least I agree that his posthumous work s must have been produced by somebody else.

[Joe_Campbell]

Yes, at least I agree that his posthumous work s must have been produced by somebody else.

[robnewman]

Yes, at least I agree that his posthumous work s must have been produced by somebody else.

He doesn't have any posthumous works. For sure. Not even Mozart  Well, don't quote me on that, will you ? LOL 

[robnewman]

Mozart's iconic status within western musical culture is little more than a fantasy, a fairy story. But one that has a global fan base. Manufactured in the late 18th century and still, today, dominating the teaching of music history to a grotesque extent. But on issue after issue the facts surrounding Mozart's life, career and even his reputation as a performer and composer simply do not add up. Crucially important evidence was hidden, turned on its head, systematically, routinely, even traditionally, its sources often out of reach and massaged by an endless stream of biographers, each quoting the other, in a mockery of musicology. To subscribe to the Mozart myth you will be made ignorant, almost without realising it, of virtually all of Mozart's musical contemporaries, just for a start. You will be asked to believe things of him which dumb down your own critical faculties.  And this is not new. Its been happening for over 200 years in countless publications, and even in film, in a storyline which is rarely, if ever, subjected to cross-examination and criticism but which we can and must give to any area of valid research.  'Mozart studies' (so-called) exist and have always existed in a bubble. As to whether they are a valid branch of musicology is for readers to decide.

Do yourself a favour. Examine this issue from more than one side so you can form your own judgement. This great music today attributed to W.A. Mozart is not that of a provincial Salzburgian musician. Mozart, in fact, spent not a single day at school in his entire life nor studied for any period of time under any recognised teacher of music. History deserves better. So does music. And so do you.

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[robnewman]

Vanhal, Myslivececk, Righini, Fiala, Luchesi, Paul Wranitsky, Anton Wranitsky and at least half a dozen other contemporary composers - all of them known to Mozart - (none of whose music is well known to Mozart fans and most of it hardly recorded) were all writing music in 'Mozart's' style long before Mozart was.   And, in plain fact, MANY works today attributed to Mozart are NOT even 'Mozartean' in their own style !  Many symphonies, for example. And that's just a start.  Must be a coincidence, of course. Pity their music has been so suppressed, right ?

Gee !!!  

[71 dB]

Pity their music has been so suppressed, right ?

Of course it is! 

Thanks for your answer, Poju.

No problem Karl!  0:)

[Josquin des Prez]

Natural selection isn't suppression. I think Mr Newman should stick to his own thread and refrain from trolling the rest of forum.

[karlhenning]

Pity their music has been so suppressed, right ?

Right; greatness is so oppressive to the run-of-the-mill!

Natural selection isn't suppression. I think Mr Newman should stick to his own thread and refrain from trolling the rest of forum.

Word (both remarks).

I think it's worse pity when so much of the for-dentist-office-waiting-rooms classical programming gives so much airtime to the mediocre contemporaries of Bach, Mozart & Beethoven.