Mozart

Started by facehugger, April 06, 2007, 02:37:52 PM

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Teresa

Quote from: Franco on June 14, 2010, 06:31:54 PM
Is English not your first language?
English is my ONLY language, was there something grammatically wrong with my post.  If so let me know and I will correct it.

Franco

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 06:39:20 PM
English is my ONLY language, was there something grammatically wrong with my post.  If so let me know and I will correct it.

The way you are using some words is odd like someone who was not a native English speaker, e.g. this sentence is confusing to me:

QuoteIndeed I believe that Mozart is technically a very good composer, I just FIRMLY believe that musically he is the absolute worst, bottom of the barrel.

What does "musically" mean to you?

Franco

James, will you shut up? - I am genuinely trying to understand what she is saying. 

Teresa

Quote from: Franco on June 14, 2010, 06:44:42 PM

What does "musically" mean to you?
Hopefully what it means to everyone else. 

Have you ever studied music?  If so you know that you can follow the rules of composition and produce very non musical results and on the other hand you can break the rules and produce very moving music.  Technique and musicality are totally different things IMHO, thus one can be technically good while being musically poor. 

Philoctetes

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 06:50:37 PM
Hopefully what it means to everyone else. 

Have you ever studied music?  If so you know that you can follow the rules of composition and produce very non musical results and on the other hand you can break the rules and produce very moving music.  Technique and musicality are totally different things IMHO, thus one can be technically good while being musically poor.

Not to be rude, and I do share in your general dislike of Mozart's music, save for some choice pieces, but are you serious?

Franco

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 06:50:37 PM
Hopefully what it means to everyone else. 

Have you ever studied music?  If so you know that you can follow the rules of composition and produce very non musical results and on the other hand you can break the rules and produce very moving music.  Technique and musicality are totally different things IMHO, thus one can be technically good while being musically poor.

Yes I have studied music, but no, I do not think we understand the word "musically" the same.   

First, I do not put much importance on so-called "rules of composition".  There are pedagogical rules of harmony, or counterpoint, or orchestration, or rules of 12-tone composition, but these are learned by students for the purpose of an introduction to the skills, but not really employed by composers for serious music making.  So, I suppose if someone were an inexperienced composer and relied on "rules" then their work would sound derivative and crude and unmusical if one were to use that word in that context (I wouldn't). 

Of course Mozart was none that.

Musicality, to my way of thinking, is more apt to be used to describe a performance, when someone plays a piece with a sensitive musical sense for what the composer was trying to get at.

To say Mozart was technically a good composer but the worst musically is nonsense to me.

All I can figure is that for you musically has a meaning that is linked to your own personal preference in a composition.

Philoctetes

Quote from: Franco on June 14, 2010, 07:03:40 PM
All I can figure is that for you musically has a meaning that is linked to your own personal preference in a composition.

You want 'not' musically?!

I give you... Richard Nanes.

http://www.nanes.com/recordings_videos.htm

Teresa

Quote from: Philoctetes on June 14, 2010, 06:53:47 PM
Not to be rude, and I do share in your general dislike of Mozart's music, save for some choice pieces, but are you serious?
100%

Philoctetes

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 07:13:32 PM
100%

Then I think I have to side with a lot of the others with the notion that your terminology is being used in a strange fashion, and that you seem to not be able to clarify what you actually mean.

You should have simply stuck with what seems to have been your first position, in simply stating your dislike for Mozart, although, I'll be honest, that seems like a rather gross overstatement.

Teresa


Teresa

Musicality is a noun that means sensitivity to, knowledge of, or talent for music. The word also refers to the quality or state of being musical (aka melodiousness.) A musical person has the ability to perceive differences in pitch, rhythm and harmonies. One usually differentiates between three types of musicality: To be able to perceive music (musical receptivity), to be able to reproduce music as well as creating music (musical creativity).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicality

Philoctetes

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 07:28:28 PM
Musicality is a noun that means sensitivity to, knowledge of, or talent for music. The word also refers to the quality or state of being musical (aka melodiousness.) A musical person has the ability to perceive differences in pitch, rhythm and harmonies. One usually differentiates between three types of musicality: To be able to perceive music (musical receptivity), to be able to reproduce music as well as creating music (musical creativity).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicality

Mozart would seem to fit under that definition.

Teresa

Quote from: Philoctetes on June 14, 2010, 07:29:43 PM
Mozart would seem to fit under that definition.
:) I agree musically poor.

Philoctetes

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 07:34:41 PM
:) I agree musically poor.

Honestly, I don't know how you'd hold that thought in conjunction with the definition you presented. Perhaps you could say that you dislike Mozart, or find his music boring, etc., but as bold a statement as you're making just doesn't seem to add up, especially seeing the definition that you've now presented.

Teresa

Quote from: Philoctetes on June 14, 2010, 07:36:25 PM
Honestly, I don't know how you'd hold that thought in conjunction with the definition you presented. Perhaps you could say that you dislike Mozart, or find his music boring, etc., but as bold a statement as you're making just doesn't seem to add up, especially seeing the definition that you've now presented.
All off the above

  • I do not like Mozart
  • I consider his music boring
  • I FIRMLY believe he is musically a poor composer, according to the definition I just posted
  • I also believe technically he is a very good composer

Other posters have also provided you with the difference between technique and musicality.  Perhaps it is time for you to reflect?

Philoctetes

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 07:50:13 PM
All off the above

  • I do not like Mozart
  • I consider his music boring
  • I FIRMLY believe he is musically a poor composer, according to the definition I just posted
  • I also believe technically he is a very good composer

Other posters have also provided you with the difference between technique and musicality.  Perhaps it is time for you to reflect?

While reflection is always good, perhaps you should reread the definition that you posted, and then consider Mozart's music in relation to that definition. I think the objections arose from your seeming inability to see the contradiction in your assertions.

I mean even if you dislike Mozart, using the definition that your provided, he fits under the one you bolded, among the rest of it. I mean I don't care for any of his operas, save these versions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF7ocNl6nXo), but it would have taken an inordinate amount of creativity, to use such a crude term, to construct such pieces, and of course the technique as well, but I think part is agreed upon.

WI Dan

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 07:50:13 PM

  • I do not like Mozart
  • I consider his music boring
  • I FIRMLY believe he is musically a poor composer, according to the definition I just posted
  • I also believe technically he is a very good composer

Other posters have also provided you with the difference between technique and musicality.  Perhaps it is time for you to reflect?

Hmmmm .....


karlhenning

Quote from: Teresa on June 14, 2010, 06:50:37 PM
Have you ever studied music?  If so you know that you can follow the rules of composition and produce very non musical results and on the other hand you can break the rules and produce very moving music.  Technique and musicality are totally different things IMHO, thus one can be technically good while being musically poor.

As one who has studied music, I'll go ahead and repeat what several others have already said on this thread, Teresa:  That Mozart is both technically good and musically excellent;  and that you are externalizing your musical preferences when you take the fact that you happen not to like Mozart, but try to claim that it is a matter of Mozart's being "musically poor."

The statement that Mozart is "musically poor" is as arrant a musicological absurdity as one ever saw on the internet.  However, no one can argue with the fact that you don't like Mozart.  I agree that part of the time your use of terms confuses the issue.  There is no such thing as Mozart being "a bad composer" for you; Mozart's quality as a composer (which, to say it the thousandth time, is of hte highest excellence) does not depend on the vagaries of any individual.

Do you know something, Teresa?  It is quite possible that I know absolutely nothing about your musical tastes, apart from this dead horse you're whipping about how you don't like Mozart, and that if you had been at God's elbow at the Dawn of Time, you would have suggested giving Wolferl a miss.

Please, we all get that you don't bloody like Mozart. How about giving it a rest for a millennium?

TIA.

karlhenning

Here I shall adopt the radical position that this thread is actually about Mozart, and not about the people who cannot stand Mozart.

On the bus ride into town, I continued reading Ernst Toch's The Shaping Forces of Music. It is (I am sure) by the purest coincidence that my reading included the chapter "Ornamental and Fermentative Counterpoint."  It is a brief chapter, with marginally more page space devoted to two ten-measure orchestral music examples in full score, than to text.  The two composers of the excerpts are Wagner and Mozart.  It is a chapter worth reading, so I shan't excerpt from it;  but in sum (for our purposes here) Toch certainly regards Mozart as one of the masters at the very summit of the art of composition.


Read the book. (It's available in an economical Dover reprint.)

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: James on June 15, 2010, 04:13:29 AM
Always? I think not.

... and not compared to other music I've experienced.

With music of the classical era what I miss is polyphony and Mozart's music doesnt really offer enough challenges to this listener. For instance with Bach, there are at least 2 independant, equally important voices together. Where in most classical era stuff you often get one melody and its servant, the accompaniment, as a general rule. It's music that is too predictable and most of all obviously simplified, which leaves very little to the imagination.

Even for performers, this doesn't really allow much room to create so much, because everything is just so simplified already, its mostly predictable harmonies, scales and arpeggios.

With Bach there are more voices, more dark passages, it requires more work & creativity ... more to listen to and think about. Same applies to something like oh say Schoenberg ... where something may seem absurd at first but becomes more clear and understandable, there is more to dig into there for the performer & listener.

With Mozart there isn't much there to decifer, translate or clarify, there is nothing visibly dark.

For me, Mozart doesn't offer enough mental stimulation or intellectual work, or harmonies. Plus it's all too poofed up, repetitive and too theatrical, not very sincere imo. There isn't much intensity and it all seems a bit obvious & superficial esp. with it's overt theatricality. In part probably because the short-lived & busy composer needed income & an audience, he rarely had helpful patrons, so couldn't afford failures, nor could he risk composing unattractive concert pieces.  It seems most of his more intellectual & complex pieces weren't that profitable. So the times and settings for his full potential were never that encouraging. I can appreciate the greatness of the best of the late work but he's very very over-rated imo, exceedingly so ...and not so above & beyond the rest. There are composers who offer up so much more ...

In this hand we have an orange. Behold the orange, juicy, a bit tart, exactly to my taste. In this hand we have a bunch of grapes. Tiny little things, no challenge to pop off and swallow down, at least not for me. ::)

In your exposition above, Mozart doesn't even enter into it. You are inditing classical era music in general, not Mozart at all. I'm sure you must realize it, although it doesn't enter into your agenda to just nut up and say so. It is far more fun to rag people who have different tastes.

::)

8)

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