Mozart 225

[Mahlerian]

True. I knew that and should have specified where has musical success came from. But nearly all of Mozart's success within his own lifetime were purely ephemeral. He was known more as an outstanding piano player than as a composer, his works were 'overly rich' by and large. If you look, and I really have, Haydn was almost the only person who wrote anything unreservedly positive, and I think it was because the music was simply too complex for the times. Haydn mastered the art of making complex things sound simple, Mozart, perversely, made simple things sound complex. 

Mozart, like Schubert, may not have lived long enough to see himself become an established composer.  At the age of Mozart's death, wasn't Haydn in the employ of the Esterhazy family?  He wouldn't have had the international reputation he later achieved.

[Gurn Blanston]

Mozart, like Schubert, may not have lived long enough to see himself become an established composer.  At the age of Mozart's death, wasn't Haydn in the employ of the Esterhazy family?  He wouldn't have had the international reputation he later achieved.

Almost. He was 29 when he went to work for The Family. However, as early as 1763, his Op 1 & 2 string quartets and some early symphonies were being published in Paris and Amsterdam, and by 1770, they were also being published in London, all without Haydn's knowledge. So he was already an international success based strictly on his music, not on PR. By the time he went to London 20 years later, he was a known quantity. The reason he wrote new music for them is because his old music was already very well known.

[Karl Henning]

I appreciate your delicacy, sieur   0:)

[Jo498]

From the point of view of statistics Mozart and Beethoven are the most performed composers today (they alternate depending of the year).  Bach always comes third.  This will probably be very different in 50 years, but most of us wont be there to witness.

Why should it be probably very different in 2067? (If I beat my grandfather by a year or two, I will still be around)
Was it "very different" 50 years ago? I doubt that, I am pretty sure that Mozart and Beethoven were among the most performed composers as well in 1967. Not sure about Bach, but he probably was at least among the 10 most performed as well.
Even going back 100 years, Beethoven was probably among the top 3 and some works by Mozart, mainly Figaro, Don Giovanni and Zauberflöte have basically been repertoire staples (or at least were regularly performed) since the 1790s.

These things do change, but not as quickly and haphazardly as some people seem to assume.

[Jo498]

Yes, but your claim of 'successful' is completely retrospective, he was not successful in his own time, only a few of his contemporaries were far enough out on the cutting edge to appreciate him. He was really quite dead by the time that changed. This is not true for any of the others which Jeffrey lists. I'm not entirely sure where that line of argument would go (although I know you are), but I am equally very sure that Mozart was not intending to write for the future, he was trying to support his family first and foremost. And in this, he was only a marginal success. More than the mythmakers would admit, but less than his goal of having them live comfortably.

I beg to differ. Mozart's success was not yet very stable but he was a very successful composer, especially regarding his relative youth, the risks he took both with his "freelance" work in Vienna and the daring of his compositions. His main problem was that he was living larger than e.g. Haydn ever did (Leopold was quite impressed by Wolfgang's lifestyle when he visited in 1785) and thus spent all his money and then some, so he was not acting very rationally because his success lacked stability and continuity. But he was able to send his wife to expensive spa cures and his son to an expensive boarding school. If you have not read it, I highly recommend Braunbehrens' "Mozart in Vienna 1781-91", 1991, ISBN-10: 0060974052

Like JS Bach, Mozart was not regarded as an "über alles"-Genius in his lifetime but both were quite successful and highly respected.

[Spineur]

These things do change, but not as quickly and haphazardly as some people seem to assume.

Yes they do and not haphazardly as you say.  Mendelssohn rescued Bach from oblivion, didnt he ?  And Mozart big comeback came from the eighties, because of

[asin]B001JNNE64[/asin]

We may not like it, but it is a fact.  After this film, a bunch of "Mozart" or "Mostly Mozart" festivals started everywhere .
Mozart has been on the rise ever since.  Only a couple years ago did he took Beethoven supremacy as most performed composer.

[Karl Henning]

Lincoln Center's Midsummer Serenades – A Mozart Festival began on August 1, 1966

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostly_Mozart_Festival

[Spineur]

Lincoln Center's Midsummer Serenades – A Mozart Festival began on August 1, 1966

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostly_Mozart_Festival

Perhaps, but it really took off in the eighties.  I lived in NYC from 82 to 92 and attended a great deal of the classical life.  I just witnessed this.

[Karl Henning]

You do have a point;  yet, Mozart did not drop off the radar to anything like the degree that Bach had prior to Mendelssohn's revival.

[Jo498]

"Amadeus" and probably even more the anniversary 1991 might have boosted Mozart among people who did not know much about classical music before. But he was never forgotten although some of the Romantics (after Beethoven for whom Mozart was the most important composer in his youth) disregarded most of his works, Don Giovanni was always considered one of the major operas and the Magic Flute remained very popular. Note that the Pushkin play a main plot element of Shaffer/Forman's "Amadeus" is based on was written in 1832! So Pushkin presupposed that people were familiar with Mozart and some of his music. And Rimsky wrote an opera based on the Pushkin in 1897; I do not think one will find a decade in the 19th century when Mozart was not played. The Koechel catalogue was compiled in the 1860s, fat biographies appeared around the same time etc.

At least since the Salzburg Festival in the 1920s his works were a cornerstone of that festival, slightly later the operas in Glyndebourne. Certainly not all works but a fair sample was very popular throughout the 20th century and even most of the more obscure ones had been recorded before the "Complete Edition" in 1991 came out. His name certainly was synomous with classical music when I was a child in the 1970s.

With all respect for the noble savages, I do not think the reception or festivals in the US is the best indication for what goes on in the world of classical music. In Europe Mozart's music has been extremely present and popular in all the 20th century, I'd say.

[JRJoseph]

I have reached the section of authentic instruments in the chamber music section of the Mozart 225 box which includes music made using Mozart's own forte piano, violin and viola recorded in Salzburg directly in the Mozart museum.  I am happy to have these fine recordings but I am not a fan of the sound of these instruments.  They sound, to me at least undernourished and rough.  Yet, this is what Mozart had to work with.  I am sure he would have preferred what we have today instead.  But, they are interesting to compare.

About the piano. Franz Liszt had three piano on stage when he held his solo piano recitals.  He hit the keys so hard that he inevitably broke the strings.  He then went to the second piano and kept playing without missing a note and sometimes he needed the third piano.  I believe piano are made stronger today.  However, we do not have any Liszts around.

[Gurn Blanston]

I beg to differ. Mozart's success was not yet very stable but he was a very successful composer, especially regarding his relative youth, the risks he took both with his "freelance" work in Vienna and the daring of his compositions. His main problem was that he was living larger than e.g. Haydn ever did (Leopold was quite impressed by Wolfgang's lifestyle when he visited in 1785) and thus spent all his money and then some, so he was not acting very rationally because his success lacked stability and continuity. But he was able to send his wife to expensive spa cures and his son to an expensive boarding school. If you have not read it, I highly recommend Braunbehrens' "Mozart in Vienna 1781-91", 1991, ISBN-10: 0060974052

Like JS Bach, Mozart was not regarded as an "über alles"-Genius in his lifetime but both were quite successful and highly respected.

I actually read Braunbehrens several years ago. He has been essentially discredited in many of his ideas by contemporary musicology. It's true, Mozart was held in high regard by the few connoisseurs who were able to come to grips with his work. I wouldn't imply otherwise. They, however, were a small minority of the small minority of all people who even got to listen to music at that time.

As a small example, Artaria ordered a couple of piano quartets. After the first one (K 478) arrived, it was so arcane that he canceled the second one (K 493), which Mozart virtually gave away to Hofmeister for a few gulden. These works are treasured today. Then, the string quintets we think so highly of, K 515 & 516, it took him a couple of years to finally get Artaria to publish them and even then he didn't make much. He even arranged K 388 into a string quintet in c (516b) in order to make a set of 3, and threw it in for free.

I'm not saying he was a failure, I'm saying that he was nowhere near the wildly successful composer he became after he died. The early Romantics liked him far more than his contemporaries did, not least because many of his contemporaries had a hard time understanding, let alone playing, his music.

A book I would recommend far more modern than Braunbehrens (didn't you love the way he so clearly hated Constanze? ) is
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which was written in 2012 and has a far more current thought pattern than Braunbehrens. The latter was one of the last musicologists who still looked at Mozart through the eyes of the 19th century Romantic.

[Gurn Blanston]

I have reached the section of authentic instruments in the chamber music section of the Mozart 225 box which includes music made using Mozart's own forte piano, violin and viola recorded in Salzburg directly in the Mozart museum.  I am happy to have these fine recordings but I am not a fan of the sound of these instruments.  They sound, to me at least undernourished and rough.  Yet, this is what Mozart had to work with.  I am sure he would have preferred what we have today instead.  But, they are interesting to compare.

About the piano. Franz Liszt had three piano on stage when he held his solo piano recitals.  He hit the keys so hard that he inevitably broke the strings.  He then went to the second piano and kept playing without missing a note and sometimes he needed the third piano.  I believe piano are made stronger today.  However, we do not have any Liszts around.

Different tastes for different folks: I haven't the vaguest urge to listen to Mozart on modern instruments, nor to speculate on what hypothetical scenario may have pleased Mozart  more. That said, the really important thing here is that you get to listen to and enjoy the music for its great cultural and entertainment value, no matter what it is played on.  I am very pleased that you do so, and wouldn't even try to convince you to listen as I do.  0:)

You know, Beethoven was also famous for breaking strings. I can't remember the details of who wrote it, but a visitor to his place talked about seeing the famous Erard pianoforte that he got as a gift, sitting in the corner of his apartment with a bunch of broken strings. The reason for all this is that the interior frame of early pianos was made of wood, and so the strings could only be so strong and strung so tight so the frame wouldn't break. When the more modern pianos came out (around 1835) they had  an iron frame, and so the strings could be as tough and tight as they needed to be to really produce some sound without getting hammered so hard they broke. Technology is a wonderful thing. The sacrifice that was made for volume was the deep, woody timbre produced by a fortepiano when played in a reasonable sized room with instruments that matched its qualities. So it goes.

[Karl Henning]

I'm not saying he was a failure, I'm saying that he was nowhere near the wildly successful composer he became after he died.

cf. van Gogh

[Uhor]

There is a strange tendency of classical style oriented composers to go back to Bach as they age. In general there is a trend of ageing composers to reappropriate elements of the previous generations​ they had discarded in their "revolutionary" youth. This can result in conflict and/or reinforcement either in the music itself or the listener.

[Monsieur Croche]

There is a strange tendency of classical style oriented composers to go back to Bach as they age. In general there is a trend of ageing composers to reappropriate elements of the previous generations​ they had discarded in their "revolutionary" youth. This can result in conflict and/or reinforcement either in the music itself or the listener.

Yes, SIR, General of generalities!

"classical style oriented composers..." Classical era, or all of classical music in general...
and in comparison to what other sort / genre of music and composers?

[Jo498]

None of the viennese classical composers "rejected" Bach or Baroque when they were young. They all were trained to some extent in the traditional church style but at the same time it was pretty clear that this style was usually outmoded for instrumental music and would either be modified or used only for some pieces.
And their intermittent "return" to some features of the older style had not much to do with age. Haydn wrote fugues in the op.20 quartets when he was around 40, Mozart didn't even live to be 40 and he wrote the "baroque" c minor mass at 26. Beethoven supposedly played the whole WTC at 11 and never distanced himself from Bach, quite to the contrary.

[Florestan]

By "succesfull" I didn't mean "money and fame" (although Mozart had both) but "works of exceptional quality, masterpieces".

[Monsieur Croche]

By "successful" I didn't mean "money and fame" (although Mozart had both) but "works of exceptional quality, masterpieces".

By that criterion, with a very different number of total works, yet an astonishingly high number of masterly works / masterpieces, I'd say Mozart and Stravinsky rank the highest, and by percentage of masterworks out of the whole, are either a tie, or Stravinsky might actually be in the lead ;-)

[JRJoseph]

Just for the record (pun intended). I heard today Mozart CD 44 Period Instruments Serenade in E K375 played by the Music Party first version and Serenade in B K361 "Gran Partita", Members of the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Franz Bruggen (whew).  I must say that despite what I said negatively about period instruments, these guys are great and as usual. despite the age of the recordings, the sound is excellent.