Mozartian Superficiality

[theodopolis]

This may attract some fervent opposition...but here goes:

I cannot help but cringe when I hear most Mozart compositions. I personally find them to be injected with a vanity, as if they are all crowd-pleasers. His melodies always seem to contain that chromatic embellishment which made ladies swoon etc.
I have tried to expand my knowledge of Mozart's oevre, The sonatas, the concertos, the symphonies, suites, masses, and far from altering my perception, they seem only to support my distaste.

The only piece of music which really strikes me with a sense of profundity and maturity is the Requiem.
From the moment the orchestra enters the Introitus to the harrowing strings of the Lacrimosa and the almighty Dies Irae, this seems like Mozart the composer and not Mozart the prodigy.

Are there any who feel the same way as myself?

Thanks
Theodopolis

[thracozaag]

  Perhaps in works  roughly below the K. of 250 you may have a point.  However, I would recommend you listen to his minor-key works: The piano sonatas K. 310 and 457 (the former composed immediately following the death of his mother), the violin sonata K. 304, piano quartet in g minor, piano concerti K. 466 and 491 (the latter which greatly influenced Beethoven's own C minor concerto), the C minor mass, Don Giovanni, the D minor string quintet, and string quartets such as the 'dissonant'.  His later works, such as the Jupiter symphony and G minor symphony (along with the Requiem that you mentioned) definitely show a move towards more dark and dramatic compositions. 
  However, it was precisely because his music was NOT "crowd pleasing" enough (compared to other composers such as Pasiello, Salieri, etc) that he wasn't more of a popular success in Vienna.  It was simply too sophisticated.

koji (STSD)

[pianonut]

i agree with the previous post about mozart's earlier works vs his later works.  i just learned the mozart fantasy in c minor kv475.  i really  like it.  it is modern sounding with its wandering key and shows a bit of mozart's wit and sarcasm at the end (cluck cluck cluck) as if mozart was saying (to his landlord and wife- landlord took piano lessons and fantasy was dedicated to her) you can hire me to write music to pay it back to you in rent, but this is what you get at the end: i'll be dead from the harassing and you won't get a penny more.  also, in places in the fantasy, i see the knock on the door that is frequently mentioned (mozart was afraid of the bill collectors, and yes, probably the landlord at times) mm.158-165 and then you can see he is happily back in his "concentration mode of composing" when you return to the tempo primo.  unfortunately with the stupid knocking again, you get the cluck clucks in the left hand at the end of the piece.  he's either gone mad, is a little frustrated to say the least, and lets it all out.  I call this poetry in motion.  mozart let his emotions out in his music.  he really let people see (as did beethoven) the stresses and strains even within the confins of his composition style.  the fantasy is usually paired with the sonata k.457 and you can hear a bit of stress in that too. 

when i play mozart, i pick  pieces that help me warm up (even 545 at times - with runs) because it fits so well in the fingers. you might not thrill every audience, but you can relax!  then, when your fingers do what your mind tells them, you can go on with other repertoire easily.  ps.  the adagio of the F major (k 332) is really beautiful.

[Radix]

Are you young? My teacher always tells me that the young never understand Mozart.  Since I really don't, and I'm young, I'm going to have to say that he's right! 

[pianonut]

i think i'm young, but i've lived for 40+ years.  i don't have as much time as i'd like to read, but when i take these music history classes; between the book, librettos, letters, reading about mozart's life, you come to see a very imperfect person who was extremely gifted.  yes, he may have been vain at times, but all of us (geniuses like mozart the most) have been misunderstood.  i think he needed more of a patron who didn't hound him for money or music but just let him compose.  he seemed to be under tremendous pressure to make a living.  still, very beautiful music despite the difficult circumstances.  and, can you imagine nowdays dying at 39 years?  i feel my life just starting in my fourties. 

[will]

I cannot help but cringe when I hear most Mozart compositions.
Are there any who feel the same way as myself?

I don't cringe when I hear most Mozart compostions. However I do not like most of his works. His musical language just doesn't do anything for me.
Having said this I also agree with the others that his later works and minor key works are better than his earlier works and major key works.

pianonut: Mozart lived to just 35. 1756-1791

[galonia]

In another post, this is what I wrote (and I still think this):

I personally feel it is a great mistake to dismiss Mozart's piano sonatas as "happy music", particularly the ones in Major keys.  Beneath the cheerful veneer is a lot of turmoil.  Even in the brightest of melodies, there are extremely poignant moments - these are fleeting and Mozart does it all in a very subtle way, which is why he is such a great composer.

There is no mystery to someone who raves and shouts and openly declares their anger or pain, but the story of the one who puts on a brave face can be particularly heart-wrenching.

[pianonut]

oops about the age!  thank you for the correction.

Quoting von Dittersdorf (an eminent composer of mozart's time) in an interview with Emperor Joseph II:  "Have you heard Mozart play?" I: Three times already.  J: How do you like him?  I: As any connoisseur must like him.  J: Have you heard Clementi?  I: Yes, I have.  J: Some people prefer him to Mozart, among them Greybig, a la tete. (the violinist and conductor in joseph's orchestra).  What is your opinion?  Be honest.  I:  Clementi's way of playing is art alone.  Mozarts is art and taste.  J.  "That's just what I said ...

quote from arnold schongberg's 'the great pianists.'

On the next page:  "Clementi was very generous (complimenting mozart after a "mini-competition").  He spoke with admiration of Mozart's singing touch and exquisite taste.  Mozart was less generous, and dismissed his competitor with the kind of hand-wave that Wotan used to dispose of Hunding."  hahaha this is funny.  you have to admit, these geniuses did speak quite frankly and honestly, and i suppose what they liked they liked.  no flattery.  i suppose it seems vain to us (but maybe at the time, it was simply a matter of making a living and not so much a game to mozart).  clementi was more adventurous in his modulations but i think clementi learned from mozart, and not the other way around. 

[rafant]

I don't remember their names at this moment, but there is this recurrent phenomenon of great and famous pianists who, as they grow old, declares to love Mozart's music more than any other.

[wintervind]

Isn't that more a description of Lizst?

This may attract some fervent opposition...but here goes:

I cannot help but cringe when I hear most Mozart  compositions. I personally find them to be injected with a vanity, as if they are all crowd-pleasers. His melodies always seem to contain that chromatic embellishment which made ladies swoon etc.

[whynot]

I'm not out to change anyone's mind, because you have good reasons for feeling the way you do.  But thought I'd weigh in since I love Mozart.  I think Mozart was brilliant at writing the music of his day, which does seem superficial to many people now.  The cultural climate was in an Apollonian phase--age of reason, many more people being educated, an emerging middle class in which more people had leisure time to study music, the first (I think) encyclopedias and dictionaries being written etc.  And the power of the church declining at the same time.  The attention of the people shifted from "hanging in there for the afterlife" to "how can I enjoy the here and now."  The desired music was elegant and clever, but not so clever that the average listener couldn't enjoy it.   Melody was more prized than other aspects of composition, and polyphony was not appreciated.  Well, heck, that was on the way out when Bach was born.  Musicians' private benefactors were also going out (bummer) and public patronage was coming in, so instead of writing for personal commissions or the court or church, composers wrote more for the public.  And the public wanted a pleasing variety of sounds, "music as conversation," as you often hear.  They wanted to be charmed and feel good.  It wasn't supposed to be emotionally deep, although you can find that in some classical era music if you look, as you found it in the requiem.  Oops, gotta go teach a lesson.  Quick finish:  I do think most people (all instruments) don't play Mozart-- what's the word? not correctly, which is a dreadful thing to say, but not as it could be played, I guess.  I often hate how it's performed.  Have you listened to the c-minor mass?  I think it's special and has some deep moments.  But it has to be conducted well!  Anything (cond.) by John Eliot Gardiner sounds infinitely better to me than by anyone else...  cheers...             

[theodopolis]

Isn't that more a description of Lizst?

Yes, I adore Liszt and know his music to be vain and crowd-pleasing (Or should I say 'Lady Pleasing.)
However, Liszt does not carry the title of 'Greatest Composer of All Time' for most 'laypeople.'
Also, it is probable that Liszt didn't take himself quite seriously when it came to pieces like the Hungarian Rhapsodies,  Valse-Impromptu, the Transcriptions etc.

[theodopolis]

you have to admit, these geniuses did speak quite frankly and honestly, and i suppose what they liked they liked.

There are some good little anecdotes about Bach which shows what Genii seem to have in common.

During a practice-session with the church orchestra, Bach got into a swordfight with the town's bassoonist after telling him he sounded like a 'Nanny-Goat.
"zippelfagottist" (nanny-goat bassoonist)

He was fired from his first organist post because he would often pay a visit to the wine-cellar during the sermon.

Took four weeks leave to visit Buxtehude on foot, 230 miles away. He returned on the correct date four months later.

He had twenty children. Not a bad effort, even in those days.

[anda]

I don't remember their names at this moment, but there is this recurrent phenomenon of great and famous pianists who, as they grow old, declares to love Mozart's music more than any other.

and that goes not only "great and famous pianists" - most of my musician friends (and me included) experienced this phenomenon first-hand. i hated mozart when i was young (~15-17), and i still don't like playing most of his works, but i could listen mozart all day long and still not get bored.

[pianonut]

i never hated mozart, but, when i was young, thought he was too predictable in his harmonies and that it was "easy."  now, just as i enjoyed reading theodophilus's funny fact-file on bach, i see that mozart wasn't just this happy guy going around writing tuneful things either, but a poet in motion.  he WAS spoiled as a child and used to being in the center of things.  but, he never stopped learning.  he went from being a genius at composition, to learning languages, travelling, doing.  he didn't look at just one way of doing something, but a variety of ways.

speaking of interesting facts, too, we tend to thing of him as quite clean mouthed, but apparrently that had to do with some lady who edited his letters for publishing.  later, in the original form, he seemed to have (what my teacher calls) "potty mouth."  back then, as my teacher explained, their living spaces were crowded and everyone took bodily functions as a sort of natural phenomenon and talked about them openly.  even mozart's mother spoke to her children in a dialogue we would consider quite crude.  leopold seems to be the one that had a bit more gentlemanly respect and attention to what he said to others.

maybe, if mozart had not had such a priviledged childhood, he wouldn't have gotten "vain."  He would have accepted his positions and situations better.  BUT, would he have had the same talent without having travelled and done and seen so many things?  it certainly is more encouraging for us, as fellow human beings, to recognize frailties in everyone (even genii).  people do remember how you treat them, tho, and i think that the motto "the character of a man is not determined by how he treats his peers but by how he treats those beneath him."

[pianonut]

dear ravant,

here's something to add to your post about composers/pianists who adored mozart when older:

"o mozart, immortal mozart, how many, how infinately many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life have you left in our souls!"  Franz Schubert, Diary 1816

"mozart should have composed faust"  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckerman (1827)

"he roused my admiration when I was young; he caused me to despair when I reached maturity; he is now the comfort of my old age." Gioachino Rossini

"mozart is sunshine."  Antonin Dvorak

"The sonatas of mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists."  Arthur Schnabel

"mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world's great composers.  It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province...mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a sponteneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness that has never since been duplicated."  Aaron Copland, Copland on music (1960)

[rafant]

Thanks, Anda and Pianonut. There is a also an anecdote about a famous composer, I'm not sure if Tchaikovsky, whose last word in his deathbed was "Mozart!".

My memory often betrays me, but I believe it was Alfred Brendel, who masters an extense repertoire, who in a film stated that Mozart's piano music was increasingly being more important for him.

Back to the original thread: If Mozart's music could be superficial, is it possible that great artists became progressively more superficial as they grow old? Or does have the Mozart's music hidden qualities, not easy to grasp for young persons, deep secrets mainly appealing to mature artists?

Mozart is not my favourite composer yet, maybe I'm too young at my early fourties!

[rohansahai]

The reason why mozart is being categorised that way is that its being PLAYED that way !! There's this lobby sitting and thinking that mozart is always to be played delicately and with grace(mark my "always") . And by listening to such interpretations (Schiff, Uchida are both guilty of that)..........you (rather we) are getting the impression that the composer was at fault.......whereas its the performers. I can bet that if I take some mozart sonatas which you haven't heard telling you its beethoven,............ you would definitely see the emotional side of it.  Just that people have a habit of closing their eyes (and ears) to the emotional part of it as soon as they hear that the piece is by Mozart .

[pianowelsh]

Interesting! I used to always prefer Beethoven to Mozart but now i am a bit older i would say that in many ways i think Mozart is purer and more profound music than Beethoven but I'm sure many essay's have been written on this subject. The truth of the matter is that NO composer is always profound all the time but they would be a bit boring and predictable if they were. Sometimes superficiality can have a charm all of it's own which frames a profound statement. Mozart in my view is a genius in that he can begin a musical sentence in a very superficial way and with several nuances of harmonic colour the end of the sentence is a full blown tragedy. Don't be too hard on Mozart (I was - 'chocolate box stuff') but he is someone you come back to and appreciate more each time     'Happy Mozarting'!

[pianonut]

i enjoy reading all the posts here!  besides being a superb pianist and composer for the piano, mozart also took his unusual "singing" style into opera very easily.  his puns with letters match those of schumann and brahms.  i was just analyzing the duettino for marcellina and susanna (from the marriage of figaro) and the last notes spell out what susanna has on her mind (double meanings are often the case with mozart).  a(h) f- e- g-a   (or ah, figaro) and marcellina says "a(h) d-a-bb-a  (or possibly ah, dr. bartolo is your abba (father).  i know, i'm crazy about mozart and maybe see more in it than necessary.  but, you have to give him credit for many other things that are double-entendres, secret meanings, between the lines, (text declamation, mood painting) all with notes!

[galonia]

mozart also took his unusual "singing" style into opera very easily.

Mozart was an opera composer and his piano music has a singing style which reflects that.  He didn't take his singing style into opera - it came from there.

[pianonut]

thanks for the correction!  i agree.  even tho he composed music for piano first, it seems it always had a singable line.  that's why i love mozart.

[rachmaninoff_969]

I think many of you are missing the point.  You must dig deeper into Mozart to find the true beauty.  In fact, it is beautiful because it is so simple on the surface, yet so complex inside.  Arnold Schoenberg began studying the formal structures of classical music, by identifying certain compositional/formal units.  I would advise reading William Caplin's book on Classical form.  He is going to go down in the history books as a music theorist, and has revealed some incredible things (particularly in the compositions of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven).

Keep in mind that these formal structures and the ingenius manipulation of them is what makes Mozart's music so brilliant.  He does such subtle things...for example in his B flat major violin sonata he leaves out the root of the tonic chord and the develops this into a motive by changing the harmony of the "suspicious" downbeat, first to a VI, then to a secondary dominant, and eventually into the several modulations of the development section.  These subtle manipulations are present in all of Mozart's music.  If you want to understand these composers, then either study with Caplin, or read his book and send him many e-mails with detailed questions.  The man's genius is remarkable.  I hope this helps.

[apion]

Mozart was a great composer for piano.  He single-handedly transformed the piano concerto into a major, large-scale composition, and we should all be indebted to him for that major advancement.

Listen to his 20th and 24 piano concerti -- they are deep, passionate, and profound.

[pianonut]

thank you so much, rach, for your book suggestion.  am going to barnes and noble soon.  i am actually studying mozart piano concerto cadenzas right now, so i found that last post by apion great, too.  i have to spell out the form that mozart used in his cadenzas (i found out he wrote one- that is an autograph- for another composer as well).  kalmus has all of mozarts cadenzas under 688, i think.  should i buy this, or hold out for one or two more expensive versions and compare less (say pick two)?  if i pick two, which two would be good comparisons? what is the e-mail of william caplin?  i would e-mail if he had time and inclination to answer questions after i study and start writing my paper.  sort of a review (even if i pay him to review it).

[rachmaninoff_969]

Hey pianonut,

Well you can try contacting Bill Caplin.  I know he is EXTREMELY busy, and I am not sure how much time he will allow for outside questions.  I must say however, that he is a very kind man, so maybe you'll be lucky.  For his e-mail, just go to the McGill University website:

 https://www.mcgill.ca/music   

Type his name into the search.  His contact info should come up.  Also, if you type "William E. Caplin" into Google search, his website should pop up.  Again, feel priviledged if he returns your e-mail.  I am honoured to have studied with him.  Good luck!