Mozart

[Brahmsian]

Mozart, although not my favorite composer (is still within my Top 5 or 10 composers).  I do have to be 'in the mood' to listen to Mozart though.

If someone pointed a gun to my head and said who are the greatest creators of music, the first two names that would pop into my head are Mozart and Bach.  Regardless of whether I like their music or love it.

There are many, many people who hate classical music.  Fine.  There are many, many people who love classical music, but hate Mozart's music.  That is fine also.  However, to say that Mozart is the worst composer musically, is insane.

The fact remains that Mozart, musically, is one of the greatest composers that ever lived.  Whether you enjoy his music or loathe, does not change that.

[Brahmsian]

I dare anyone name a composer who was more versatile and successful across the board in so many different areas of classical music:

Mozart's touch was golden in solo piano, concerti, symphony, opera, chamber music, sacred music, etc.

[Herman]

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.

Have you ever studied Mozart? Including glancing at a book or two about the composer? If so you would not have written the above. Mozart, as soon as he is in twenties (he was very young when he started), was not a follower of the rules. He broke the rules. That's why he kept getting into problems.

Look I'm perfectly happy with your not liking Mozart, in fact I don't think Mozart needs a confused person like you. But the way you explaining and, as it were, objectifying, your dislike of Mozart is just plain silly.

[Herman]

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.

Just like Teresa you seem to have no idea of the hundred or more mature works in Mozart's catalogue that are brimming with harmonic challenges and polyphony.

[Gurn Blanston]

How so?

Well, your entire post that I quoted, based on what is lacking in Mozart's music, is equally true of all music of the classical era, with the exception of church music. It's just the way it is. The exact same arguments can be made about Haydn, or Vanhal, or any other composer you choose who worked between 1760 and 1800. So there is no need to single out Mozart unless you are picking the top of the heap and singling him out for special abuse, since he didn't change things by reverting to polyphony or whatever you are missing that attracts your ear.

[MN Dave]

GMG CLASSICAL MUSIC FORUM:
Fightin' About Music

[DavidW]

True I suppose, but Mozart is the one that gets all the credit and is mostly lauded & praised with an inordinant amount of ridiculous, not-so-level headed, grandiose, philosophical rambling & mythology...

Yes it is is wrong!  We've had enough of this!  Give credit where it's due-- Luchesi!!

[Gurn Blanston]

You know, that's a myth ... his popularity now is pretty much a late-20th century invention perpetuated via mass mainstream marketing that really took off during the distorted film Amadeus. Up until the 20th century (and for a great deal of it) he was only liked and known for a small handful of works, and they were more or less deemed "pretty" & "enjoyable", but certainly not "profound".

How about saying that he is an over-rated composer? Is that still too crazy for you?

Actually, Mozart's popularity took off in the period immediately after his death. Much of his music, including the last 3 symphonies, the d minor and c minor piano concerti, Don Giovanni and the Magic Flute, for example, were staples of the concert house from 1795 til the present. In addition, chamber groups, which arose about 1830 in Germany and spread exponentially throughout Europe, consistently included his string quartets in their performances. Beethoven idolized him, and even Wagner, whose sensibilities were decidedly introspective, wrote that Mozart was the progenitor of German opera. So it is fallacious and revisionist to say or believe that Mozart is a late 20th century phenomenon. Simply isn't true.

[Gurn Blanston]

True I suppose, but Mozart is the one that gets all the credit and is mostly lauded & praised with an inordinant amount of ridiculous, not-so-level headed, grandiose, philosophical rambling & mythology...

Well, every composer has his fanboys. Some of the Bachians make me want to puke on my keyboard. However, even as a Haydn fanboy, I can see that much of the praise heaped on Mozart is well-deserved, while some is just plain over the top. I have never seen the thinking-level validity of blaming a person for what is said about him.

[Franco]

Much of his music?!? Still, reading this ... seems like he was loved for a tiny tiny fraction of his enormous output. And further still, nowhere near the Big Mac marketing that was to come in the late 20th century and the further perpetuating of mythology, bad scholarship... and overall bogusness initiated with that awful Amadeus flick ... or how recently most of the operas (22 in all - the only area where he broke new ground) have entered the repetoire.

Much of this post is irrelevant, e.g. breaking new ground is not the best or only or most significant gauge for determining the importance of a composer - it can be important but there are many great composers who did not break new ground as much as bring to an apogee the developments just preceding or during their working lives. 

Many of Mozart's operas were of his youth and are not major works, in fact about half of his music is of his youth and not as important as his mature works.  The fact remains that there are easily dozens of masterpieces from among these mature works and I'd say that his entire catalog is of a high level that puts him well above the average for his time.  He was of his time but just a lot better than his contemporaries.

For me the bottomline is that Mozart is one of a handful of composers whose music transcends his era and continually enriches the lives of people and more importantly musicians who derive meaning and enjoyment from his music and no doubt will continue to do so as long as people are around. 

This is true of Mozart but not true of 99% of composers whose music is almost entirely inconsequential during their own lifetimes.

[karlhenning]

Another composer James isn't interested in.

Must be good.

[karlhenning]

Much of his music?!? Still, reading this ... seems like he was loved for a tiny tiny fraction of his enormous output. And further still, nowhere near the Big Mac marketing that was to come in the late 20th century and the further perpetuating of mythology, bad scholarship... and overall bogusness initiated with that awful Amadeus flick ... or how recently most of the operas (22 in all - the only area where he broke new ground) have entered the repetoire.

Much of this post is irrelevant . . .

Yes, even the parts which are not whingeing exaggerations. As Franco says, "breaking new ground" is not the most important thing, let alone the only thing . . . but most level-headed musicians find that Mozart "broke ground" in genres other than opera.  The masterworks constitute a substantial part of his catalogue (though one is grateful for the eruption of laughter prompted by the sheer wilful ignorance embodied in the phrase "a tiny tiny fraction" here).

[karlhenning]

Yes, I thought I had in fact posted earlier . . . .

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.)

[DavidW]

Technically dazzling but often lacking real substance - the product of prodigiously adept boy.

Well which is it: "technically dazzling" or "simplistic"?  What works of Mozart have you heard anyway, and how long has it been?

[Franco]

Nothing is for everyone.

I guess it is fun for some people to play the role of the Mozart curmudgeon.  The dogs bark; the caravan passes by.

[karlhenning]

Well which is it: "technically dazzling" or "simplistic"?  What works of Mozart have you heard anyway, and how long has it been?

Why listen, when he's already formed his opinion?  It's like asking pinkie to listen to Carter je-je-je

[MN Dave]

What's your favorite Mozart recording of the moment?

[karlhenning]

The Amadeus Quartet (plus) doing the viola quintets, Dave.

[DavidW]

What's your favorite Mozart recording of the moment?

Jacobs doing Mozart 38th and 41st is a desert island recording.  In fact it blew me away, I've been listening to nothing but Mozart since that time.

[Franco]

Currently, because I just got it a week or so ago, my favorite is Gidon Kremer playing the Violin Concertos.

I like almost everything he records, I realize that his interpretations are not universely lauded - but I like them, quirky, somewhat a-stylisitc, but nonetheless, his recordings almost always bring a smile to my lips.