more technical fluff
 

Your comment reminds me of the scene in Amadeus where Mozart debuts his opera for his patron:

Emperor Joseph II says, "there are simply too many notes...just cut a few."

And Mozart goes half-postal and replies, "which few did you have in mind?"

Emperor's complaint is really funny, but so true...



As far as technical work goes, I love to see anybody tackle the Paganini violin concerti. It's not even like they're pleasant to listen to... it's just unfathomable to me that anybody can play that many notes at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZAdgyTVMHc

Hey now, I am a big fan of Mozart. Which few notes, indeed? At the time and place Mozart was composing most or all of his contemporaries were engaged in wirting works full of cliches such as scale runs to a chrod or arpeggios repeated in different steps, etc. The audience expected, ney, demanded, these types of cliches in their music. THe genius of mozart lies, among other places, in the fact that he could deliver the expected cliches in an unsrupassed artisitc package.

Also, I think one has to put his light opera and popular work (for example the SF Symphony chorus perfromed a canon that was called something like "You Assinine Martin" which was full of very explicit scatological jokes) in a separate category from his concertos , etc., which are all in a different catefogry from his serious opera and liturgical works. His unfinished Requiem Mass is sublimely beautiful and has not one note too many. Similarly, Don Giovanni is also superb and not unduly technical or contrived.

Don't forget, Mozart was a young man, leaving this incredible ouevre without ever reaching the age of 40. Heck, I didn't even quit using 'pull my finger' jokes with my kids until I was older htan that, so who knows what he might have accomplished had he been pernmitted to linger longer in this life?

Sometimes listening to Mozart I get the feeling that he worte some of the things he did becasue he could. No other reason, just becasue he could and no one else could and it was fun and he would have been bored otherwise. He was, musically, that far beyond most everyone else.

Mozart's great.

Nobody's going to try to argue with you about his genius, his compositions, or his body of work as a whole.

And obviously, technical fluff does not apply to all his work, as you delineated.

I don't know if you ever played any instruments, but FarrahWaters and I were (I think) speaking from experience as students...

For me, I would get to these passages and there are so many notes, arpeggios, embellishments, that it felt like it was detracting from the piece, the melody, the phrasing.

Sometimes I wonder if, similar to what you said, he was bored and sort of playing jokes on the rest of us...just to keep himself interested.

Oh sure, now you throw my lack of real keyboard skills in my face. Just joking.

I play a little keyboards but I could never manage anyhting by Mozart. My son, however, is a reasonably talented pianist and has studied numerous pieces by Mozart and CHopin and Rachmaninoff, etc. I rarely tired of hearing Mozart while he was working on them, but sometimes Rachmaninoff got a little tedious, to be honest.

I don't think he was playing jokes on us, I think he was keeping himself happy; we were incidental. I have noticed that most kids, especially boys, that study the paino somewhat seriously love to play the fast stuff. The faster the better. It is a form of youthful exuberance. I think Mozart may have been like that. His music fairly screams youthful exuberance. I will certainly not tell you your opinion is incorrect, but only that I don't share it with respect to the large majority of Mozart's music.

I like Handel and Vivaldi a lot.

What about opera? I've always loved Orff's "Carmina Burana". I may be Orff's only fan. Everyone else I mention it to says "ewww, you mean that song from the exorcist?"

Well if your COMPUTER keyboarding skills are any indication...

Kidding! kidding! Well, mostly. :)

You're ahead of me on the piano, anyway. I can't play at all. I used to pretend to play viola, but that was a long time ago, in a land far far away...

My son might be joining the Mozart camp. His very first favorite piece was the overture to Marriage of Figaro.

I'll do my best to get him back to the Russians, though.


I can't believe even your kids get to see the SFS. That's just not fair.

Carmina Burana rocks.

Especially if you translate the Latin. It sounds all spiritual but really it's about beer and women.

Oh, and if you like Vivaldi, you HAVE to have Vivaldi's Cello CD. Absolutely stunning.

I've often wondered how much classical music was inspired by beer and women.

I know, my typing is horrible and I refuse to bug the IS people to let me download the spellchecker. Your assessment is about right, however, my keyboard accuracy, whether a piano or a computer, is apporximate at best.

Ah, to be young and pretentious again. ;) I remember in my youth listening to Arthur Rubenstein albums and going to movies with subtitles. It was quite a relief when I reached the age when it was safe to seek out entertainment I enjoyed, rather than entertainment I was supposed to enjoy.