Mozart a fraud?

[PSmith08]

I've answered your question. That's all.

Well, y'see, that's where we're going to have to differ. You've explained away the evidence, as you have been wont to do (regardless of whether or not your conclusions are necessary), but you haven't interpreted the evidence. You offer no rationale for the existence of the evidence other than your meta-narrative, which isn't a rationale or even really a narrative so much as a "conclusion" (though I wouldn't want to offend a real conclusion by removing the scare-quotes).

At no point have you answered any question, much less my question. No, you seem content to demand evidence and then explain why the proffered evidence isn't really evidence because of the meta-narrative you've "constructed." It is disingenuous to demand evidence, receive evidence, and then say "Well, that's not really evidence." That certainly wouldn't cut it in the academic world, but a classical-music message board on the mighty interweb is not the academic world, so it's probably OK.

Of course, in the words of Gene Ray, I'm just educated stupid.

[Florestan]

Then why don't you present this evidence again, right here ? I am waiting NOW to see it.

The article by Ludwig August  Furstenbaum which appeared in Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Natuerwissenschaften und Kunsten, edited by Karl Johann Theodor Freiherr von Barnabowsky-Gnaustein, printed at Wilhelm Lubniczicz & Sons, 13 Schwangasse, Wien, July 14, 1785, pp. 3-4.

[robnewman]

The article by Ludwig August  Furstenbaum which appeared in Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Natuerwissenschaften und Kunsten, edited by Karl Johann Theodor Freiherr von Barnabowsky-Gnaustein, printed at Wilhelm Lubniczicz & Sons, 13 Schwangasse, Wien, July 14, 1785, pp. 3-4.

Great ! Please share its contents here on the thread.

[Lethevich]

Florestan,

You are the celebrated composer of 50 symphonies, 12 operas, 27 piano concertos, dozens of sonatas,a  miraculous performer, a brilliant improviser and a legendary performer in the Austrian capital. In your 10 years there there are lots and lots of reports in the newspapers of the time (since television has not yet been invented) of your phenomenal talents.

And yet, contrary to our expectations (as we see today) there appears to be NOT a single newspaper report testifying to your wonderful skills, your great reputation, and your great celebrity. Which researcher after researcher (including Neil Zaslaw, editor of the Mozart catalogue and now R.E. Newman) are both telling you. This you deny. And so I spent all of today hoping that the idiots who believe differently can produce some.

Here in London the time is now 7.43 pm.

Will it be possible for you to accept that, so far, no such evidence has been presented of the kind that was asked for nearly 12 hours ago. That it is, remarkably, not to be found. ? And will you accept that the people saying this include Lorenzo da Ponte, JN Forkel, Heinrich Koch, Neil Zaslaw and the udersigned ? In fact, EVERYONE who has ever actually examined this subject in the last 200 years ?

Jesus Christ...

[robnewman]

Sure, let's hear some from the newspapers of Vienna 1781-1791. Showing that Mozart has great celebrity as a composer and performer of his own music.

Still waiting.

[Florestan]

Great ! Please share its contents here on the thread.

Should I write a whole two pages newspaper article here? If I found it, I'm sure you can find it, too.

[not edward]

Sure, let's hear some from the newspapers of Vienna 1781-1791. Showing that Mozart has great celebrity as a composer and performer of his own music.

Still waiting.

We already did. You just chose to ignore it or explain that it isn't relevant. You also demonstrated that you, a self-proclaimed Mozart scholar, have no knowledge of the relevant primary or secondary sources.

By the way, you still haven't provided any evidence to support your own hypothesis. Which isn't surprising, as there isn't any.

[robnewman]

Should I write a whole two pages newspaper article here? If I found it, I'm sure you can find it, too.

Well, if YOU believe it presents newspaper evidence YOU should present it. Shall I ask my bank manager ? Or the laundry ? Or how about the cashier at my local supermarket ?  

[Herman]

STOP POSTING ON THIS THREAD

[not edward]

Quoted in O.E.Deutsch: Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble, p 259:

From the "Wiener Zeitung", 24 December 1785

"On the second day Herr Wolfgang Amade Mozart made a change with a concerto of his own composition on the fortepiano, the favourable reception of which we forbear to mention, since our praise is superfluous in view of the deserved fame of this master, as well known as he is universally valued."

[robnewman]

START POSTING SOMETHING SENSIBLE ON THIS THREAD !!!!

[robnewman]

Quoted in O.E.Deutsch: Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble, p 259:

From the "Wiener Zeitung", 24 December 1785

"On the second day Herr Wolfgang Amade Mozart made a change with a concerto of his own composition on the fortepiano, the favourable reception of which we forbear to mention, since our praise is superfluous in view of the deserved fame of this master, as well known as he is universally valued."

On the second day Herr Wolfgang Amade Mozart made a change with a concerto of his own composition on the fortepiano, the FAVOURABLE RECEPTION OF WHICH WE WILL NOT MENTION - SINCE OUR PRAISE IS NOT NECESSARY IN VIEW OF THE DESERVED FAME OF THIS MASTER AS WELL KNOWN AS HE IS UNIVERSALLY VALUED !!!

LOL !

This is nonsense ! In 1785 Mozart was NOT 'universally valued'. In fact, Mozart at this time had been for 4 years in Vienna in December 1785 and had hardly published ANY works, nor performed them. In FACT only 5 piano concertos of 'Mozart' were published in his entire life, only 3 at this time, and these were published the year before. The report specifically does NOT mention the 'favourable reception' !!! The very thing we are looking for !!!!!!!  They even say their praise is 'not necessary'. This is laughable.

So where, exactly, IS the praise, the description of his huge reputation as a composer/performer in Vienna when the writer of the article specifically says (as you can read with your own eyes) he will NOT tell us about these very things ?

This is hogwash !

[not edward]

On the second day Herr Wolfgang Amade Mozart made a change with a concerto of his own composition on the fortepiano, the FAVOURABLE RECEPTION OF WHICH WE WILL NOT MENTION - SINCE OUR PRAISE IS NOT NECESSARY IN VIEW OF THE DESERVED FAME OF THIS MASTER AS WELL KNOWN AS HE IS UNIVERSALLY VALUED !!!

LOL !

This is nonsense ! In 1785 Mozart was NOT 'universally valued'. In fact, Mozart at this time had been for 4 years in Vienna in December 1785 and had hardly published ANY works, nor performed them. In FACT only 5 piano concertos of 'Mozart' were published in his entire life, only 3 at this time, and these were published the year before. The report specifically does NOT mention the 'favourable reception' !!! The very thing we are looking for !!!!!!!  They even say their praise is 'not necessary'. This is laughable.

So where, exactly, IS the praise, the description of his huge reputation as a composer/performer in Vienna when the writer of the article specifically says (as you can read with your own eyes) he will NOT tell us about these very things ?

This is hogwash !

Your post is indeed hogwash. It's very obvious to anyone what the article's author says--Mozart's reputation, reception and talents are so great that they do not need comment.

Your interpretation of it is so singularly perverse that it is obvious you know your thesis is being ripped to shreds, and you're grasping at straws.


I'll post another citation from this book (and one which you can grasp straws from if you want to look even more comical than you already do), this time from pp. 278-279:

From the "Wiener Realzeitung", 11 July 1786

On Monday, 1 May, was performed at the I. & R. National Theatre (for the first time) La Nozze di Figaro. Die Hochzeit des Figaro. An Italian Singspiel in four acts. The music is by Herr Kapellmeister Mozart.

"What is not allowed to be said these days, is sung" one may say with Figaro. This piece, which was prohibited in Paris and not allowed to be performed here as a comedy either in a bad or in a good translation, we have at last the felicity to see represented as an opera. It will be seen that we are doing better than the French.

Herr Mozart's music was generally admired by connoisseurs already at the first performance, if I except only those who self-love and conceit will not allowed them to find merit in anything not written by themselevs.

The public, however (and this often happens to the public) did not really know on the first day where it stood. It heard many a bravo from unbiassed connoisseurs, but obstreperous louts in the uppermost story exerted their hired lungs with all their might to deafen singers and audience alike with their St! and Pst!; and consequently opinions were divided at the end of the piece.

Apart from that, it is true that the first performance was none of the best, owing to the difficulty of the composition.

But now, after several performances, one would be subscribing either to the cabal or to tastelessness if one were to maintain that Herr Mozart's music is anything but a masterpiece of art.

It contains so many beauties, and such a wealth of ideas, as can be drawn only from the source of innate genius.

Some journalists liked to tell that Herr Mozart's opera had not pleased at all. It may be guessed what sort of correspondents they must be who recklessly publish such obvious lies. I believe it to be sufficiently well known that it was precisely the third performance and the frequent demand for encores to which it gave rise that led to the Imperial Decree which a few days later publicly announced that it would in future be forbidden to repeat in an opera any piece written for more than a single voice.


I am sure you will decide that a frequent demand for encores is not evidence of the favourable reception of a work.

[PSmith08]

So where, exactly, IS the praise, the description of his huge reputation as a composer/performer in Vienna when the writer of the article specifically says (as you can read with your own eyes) he will NOT tell us about these very things ?

You do realize that it is a well known rhetorical trope to tell your audience about something by saying you will not tell them about it, right? I understand that your algorithm for dealing with contradictory evidence will probably not admit that there is such a thing a contradictory evidence, so there's only so far we can go; let's not be willfully dense, either, though. Surely you've been to a funeral or testimonial dinner where a speaker says something like "I don't have to tell you that ol' Harry was a great man." He is, in fact, telling us that ol' Harry was a great man in the guise of not telling us to spare us the boredom of hearing something we already know. It's not a particularly clever trope -- indeed, it can be a bit grating -- but there's no reason to pretend that it doesn't exist.

[Herman]

STOP POSTING ON THIS THREAD

[robnewman]

Your post is indeed hogwash. It's very obvious to anyone what the article's author says--Mozart's reputation, reception and talents are so great that they do not need comment.

Your interpretation of it is so singularly perverse that it is obvious you know your thesis is being ripped to shreds, and you're grasping at straws.


I'll post another citation from this book (and one which you can grasp straws from if you want to look even more comical than you already do), this time from pp. 278-279:

From the "Wiener Realzeitung", 11 July 1786

On Monday, 1 May, was performed at the I. & R. National Theatre (for the first time) La Nozze di Figaro. Die Hochzeit des Figaro. An Italian Singspiel in four acts. The music is by Herr Kapellmeister Mozart.

"What is not allowed to be said these days, is sung" one may say with Figaro. This piece, which was prohibited in Paris and not allowed to be performed here as a comedy either in a bad or in a good translation, we have at last the felicity to see represented as an opera. It will be seen that we are doing better than the French.

Herr Mozart's music was generally admired by connoisseurs already at the first performance, if I except only those who self-love and conceit will not allowed them to find merit in anything not written by themselevs.

The public, however (and this often happens to the public) did not really know on the first day where it stood. It heard many a bravo from unbiassed connoisseurs, but obstreperous louts in the uppermost story exerted their hired lungs with all their might to deafen singers and audience alike with their St! and Pst!; and consequently opinions were divided at the end of the piece.

Apart from that, it is true that the first performance was none of the best, owing to the difficulty of the composition.

But now, after several performances, one would be subscribing either to the cabal or to tastelessness if one were to maintain that Herr Mozart's music is anything but a masterpiece of art.

It contains so many beauties, and such a wealth of ideas, as can be drawn only from the source of innate genius.

Some journalists liked to tell that Herr Mozart's opera had not pleased at all. It may be guessed what sort of correspondents they must be who recklessly publish such obvious lies. I believe it to be sufficiently well known that it was precisely the third performance and the frequent demand for encores to which it gave rise that led to the Imperial Decree which a few days later publicly announced that it would in future be forbidden to repeat in an opera any piece written for more than a single voice.


I am sure you will decide that a frequent demand for encores is not evidence of the favourable reception of a work.

Edward,

It's not your fault, but your understanding of Mozart's career in Vienna and the role of his sponsors and propagandists is sheer nonsense. You believe EVERYTHING you read about Mozart, don't you ? You have simply never studied this subject in any detail.

Let me start at the beginning with this new article on Le Nozze di Figaro which you yourself posted from the article in 'Weiner Zeitung' of 1786.

But first a few FACTS.

1. 'Le Nozze di Figaro' in Vienna of 1786 was a financial and musical disaster. It was withdrawn after only a handful of performances

2. Let me quote from the admission of that same Vienna writer of that article - (I repeat)

The public, however (and this often happens to the public) did not really know on the first day where it stood. It heard many a bravo from unbiassed connoisseurs, but obstreperous louts in the uppermost story exerted their hired lungs with all their might to deafen singers and audience alike with their St! and Pst!; and consequently opinions were divided at the end of the piece.
Apart from that, it is true that the first performance was none of the best, owing to the difficulty of the composition.

In short, the premiere of 'Le Nozze di Figaro' in Vienna was a musical DISASTER. It was almost booed off the stage. Repeatedly. It was a nonsense arrangement of music that already existed, by others. This article you are reading is the best 'spin' they could put on this fiasco. The work (whose actual score is today in the Austrian National Library) is a crude arrangement of a work that already existed, and NOT by Mozart. It had newly been translated from a German work into Italian by Lorenzo da Ponte. Mozart was its hack arranger for Vienna. You should study this subject properly and not just from the most favourable single report you can find.

3. Mozart, at this time, contrary to propaganda, was NOT a successful and universally admired musical genius in Vienna. It's a pack of lies. Let me give you just a few examples of his real status from these same Vienna years.

a) In July 1783 a creditor had stopped the 'famous' Mozart's carriage in Vienna before it could leave for Salzburg demanding immediate repayment of a large debt of 30 florins. - Source - (G. Nissen, 'Mozart Biography', (1826) p.475)

b) Another huge unpaid Mozart debt from these supposedly financially successful Vienna years dated from no less than 5 years earlier (1778) for 12 Louis d'or. The bill for it was again presented to the 'hugely successful' Mozart on his return to Vienna from a visit to Salzburg in 1783 having been lent to him by philosopher Johann Georg Scherz in Strasbourg. On 6th December 1783 Mozart needed to ask his father Leopold in Salzburg to provide surety for return of this money. - (Source - 'W.A.Mozart - Abert/Stewart Spenser/Cliff Eisen p.721- )

//

By late 1785 and early 1786 (the very year of his alleged 'great fame and success in Vienna' and of Le Nozze di Figaro other events of biographical strangeness and incongruence occurred in Mozart's life. For example, on 20th November 1785 (around 7 months before Le Nozze di Figaro and during a time of his supposed success as a virtuoso in Vienna) Mozart wrote a short begging letter to the Vienna based music publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister -

'Most dear Hoffmeister !

I address you in a state of anguish and pray you may help me with some money, of which I have need at this difficult time. Moreover, I implore you to procure the thing you already know about. It burdens me to give you such continuous disturbance, but as you know me and you know how much I expect that your transactions will succeed you will not misinterpret my brazenness and will help me as I will always certainly help you.
Mozart'

On the back of this surviving letter, in Hoffmeister's own hand he writes, 'Sent 2 Ducats'.

Irrefutable proof that the 'successful and famous' Mozart of sympathetic propagandist newspapers, even during these years 1782-6 was NOT earning lots of money and was in fact relying on nonsense promotional articles of the kind by his fraternal friends which you have provided here.

The same nonsense was to continue throughout his entire bogus Vienna decade. The 'celebrity status' of Mozart is a pure invention. And even the concerto concerts of Lent 1784 (contrary to his own letters) were inventions, fabrications.

//

[Lethevich]

Nobody said that Mozart had a lot in the bank - the few previous references to money from posters in this thread were about how he frittered it away rather quickly. Successful composers rarely make as much as R. Strauss - see the case of Aaron Copeland who at one point was impoverished with no money in the bank at all. It seems quite clear that you are focusing on money because you have asked for and been hit with several contemporary articles confirming Mozart's high status among people who knew classical music.

And anyway, musical history is packed full of successful composers whose masterpieces gained a terrible reception at first.

[Herman]

Your outrage at this pathetic liar is understandable, however

STOP POSTING ON THIS THREAD

[robnewman]

Nobody said that Mozart had a lot in the bank - the few previous references to money from posters in this thread were about how he frittered it away rather quickly. Successful composers rarely make as much as R. Strauss - see the case of Aaron Copeland who at one point was impoverished with no money in the bank at all. It seems quite clear that you are focusing on money because you have asked for and been hit with several contemporary articles confirming Mozart's high status among people who knew classical music.

And anyway, musical history is packed full of successful composers whose masterpieces gained a terrible reception at first.

Well, the Vienna career of Mozart is a pack of lies since his correspondence (and that of his father during these very years of his alleged fame and success) speak of him earning hundreds, thousands of ducats. A fiction which you accept when, in fact, the truth is very, very different. But that's what happens when your only sources are those of FOX News newspapers and fraternal spin merchants of Vienna, who controlled publishing then as they controlled the corporate image of the 'genius Mozart'. Why not study this issue in the detail it deserves and give yourself a fair chance to examine the actual evidence ? I have given you clear, documentary evidence that the Vienna career of Mozart was very, very different from what you have received through your television set. You don't want to accept the facts. You want only the fairy story.

[robnewman]

Your outrage at this pathetic liar is understandable, however

The documentary evidence is clear, indisputable and unarguable. You want spin doctors and newspaper reports. And you don't want the actual facts of the case. Your fairy story Mozart is for children.

/