# Sometimes with Mozart...



## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Often when I listen to my favourite composer, I find myself listening for what isn't there. Especially when I listen to an unfamiliar work. Example: the first time I listened to the slow movement of his final piano concerto, it took a while to grasp it on its own terms. Where were the displays of outright passion, the unmatchable virtuosity, the thundering of the piano with majesty and brilliance? Instead, it sounded like the equivalent of two-finger typing, to be compared with speed-typing Romantic piano works.

Likewise, the opening movement of K454. Sure, it opens with a prolonged largo which takes up about a quarter of the movement, but why didn't he tease this out a bit more - a lot more - and darken it and fragment it and see how deep it goes?

Or another violin sonata, my current belle, K377: the opening movement is fine, but the variations in the 2nd movement: why didn't he do more? Why didn't this one get trimmed and dissected and sliced 'n' diced the way Beethoven would do it, with sub-atomic particles of the melody disintegrating into thin air and music stretched so thin it becomes unrecogniseable as being from the original theme? And while we're at it, K377 ends with a haunting minuet third movement: why didn't he take the opportunity to expand it even further? What about a segue into an adagio fourth movement that busts into the blinding sunlight of an allegro before finishing?

Why did he show no ambition?

It takes me a few listens to find what's there, and to ignore what isn't there. Sometimes I have to leave that piece behind and chance upon it again, unawares, before the bolt of lightning strikes me topside the head. This is a common experience for me, in getting to know his music. The first thing I encounter is a breeziness, and then I hear that maybe the wind is stronger than I thought, before I realise I must batten down the hatches. His music deepens by stages.

Also, like any music, it suffers when I listen for what isn't actually there. When I expect something that the composer never even intended, then I become stifled. In all three examples above, I came to be awed by the level of his art, his taste and his ability to leave you wanting more, while actually putting in everything that was necessary.

I wonder if anyone else has experiences like this in getting to know classical music? :tiphat:


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

I had a similar penchant for Mozart many years ago. I learned sometimes that one can only go so far with the ear. Then, if one is interested enough, one must seek out answers for particular dilemma from scholars (HC Robbins Landon, Marcia Davenport, for instance). Maybe there's a scholar or two here at TC. I don't know.

I do remember that it wasn't uncommon for Mozart to not finish a thought, and he had such attractive transient thinking/tricks for propelling us into some new sphere. Sometimes a musicologist and/or scholar can reason why. Sometimes not, and at best we're left with only conjecture. And don't forget our own imagination. Not such a bad thing. :tiphat:


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Excellently composed essay, and exposition of a 'common problem'. So common in fact that I experienced something very similar while listening to Brahms; stuff seemed to be missing, unfinished. That was back in the day though; nothing missing any more.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Well... I think this is the case with a lot of those who dislike Mozart. They have established an ideal of what classical music "should" sound like based on the music of other composers and other eras and they feel disappointed when they discover Mozart isn't like Beethoven, Brahms, or Mahler. Of course to be fair... they'd also recognize that Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler aren't Mozart. Comparisons must be two-way... not based upon the assumption that the music of a certain era represents the ideal or standard upon which everything else must be judged. We have seen any number of threads dismissing Mozart for what he isn't (and no, he isn't Beethoven or Brahms or Mahler) not for what he is.

Of course we all have preferences and biases to a greater or lesser extent. The problem lies in confusing one's personal biases or preferences with objective judgments of artistic merit.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Thanks for the replies!

That's the thing, the listening experience carries baggage, expectations, hopes. It's rarely open and it's rarely fair, in the sense of just judging a work against what the composer himself is trying to do. It opens up the music when these expectations are shed and I listen intently (or even dreamily) to the music itself. It presents a personality in the music that I wasn't expecting, having been elsewhere in my expectations, and often leads directly to the very heart of the piece, which then becomes 'new'...


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Basically, you can't bring "expectations" to a piece of art -- unless they're informed by something someone else has said about that particular piece -- and it's someone whose judgment you've vetted. Your looking as his music through the prism of already knowing Haydn and Beethoven and . . . not through the prism of 1785 or whenever. I think today, we've become somewhat used to the school of film or drama criticism where, because there's so much history and so much to choose from, the critic judges against what the work "might have been" instead of what's in front of him. Mozart was Mozart, and he wrote Mozart music -- not Beethoven music, or Haydn music, or Schubert music -- and much of it was very good, given that he writing to an accepted style, stretching it where to his ear it seemed right, and always writing for an audience whose taste he knew and, when he went off the tracks (or extended them in a new direction), inventing as he went. All composers do this to one extent or another if they have talent and imagination. But for every one, it's different, based on his temperament. You can't complain that Arthur Miller didn't do what Eugene O'Neill would have done, or vise versa. 

cheers


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## ScipioAfricanus (Jan 7, 2010)

People need to some performing eisegesis into the work of Mozart. Mozart was not a romantic composer. Nor did Mozart ever conceptualize the Romantic period as it became. If Mozart had lived he would have tried to steer music away from the romantic excesses and the hyper emotionalism that came afterward. Also if he had lived he would have butted heads with Beethoven which probably would have ended up with a homicide of either one of them. 

When I listen to Mozart, I listen to hear Mozart, not Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn or Brahms.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ScipioAfricanus said:


> ...Also if he had lived he would have butted heads with Beethoven which probably would have ended up with a homicide of either one of them.


Perhaps. "Of all composers, Beethoven valued Mozart and Handel most highly, then Seb. Bach. ... Whenever I found him with music in his hands, or saw some lying on his desk, it was certain to be a composition by one of these idols." --Ferdinand Ries


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## ScipioAfricanus (Jan 7, 2010)

KenOC said:


> Perhaps. "Of all composers, Beethoven valued Mozart and Handel most highly, then Seb. Bach. ... Whenever I found him with music in his hands, or saw some lying on his desk, it was certain to be a composition by one of these idols." --Ferdinand Ries


Imagine Mozart enjoying Beethoven's Gross Fugue


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ScipioAfricanus said:


> Imagine Mozart enjoying Beethoven's Gross Fugue


Agree that's a tough one! If somebody's gonna get killed, I suspect it'll be Beethoven. :lol:


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Sometimes I find this effect in all music, not just one composer. Then I think what is missing is something within me, maybe just a bad chemistry day, or maybe it is what is happening in my life getting me down, graying all the colors and thinning all the timbres. When that happens one must get out, exercise, breathe, live. Then the music lives.

Edit: One must also remember that even the greatest composers had to try to make a living. It's just possible they didn't toil and wallow in angst over every note all the time. Even the archetypal tormented artist Beethoven wasn't in full blown agonizing mode all the time.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

I used to have this a lot... With quite a few composers (including Mozart) and in fact works by composers I usually liked.

I credit with Mahler for largely getting me out of this mindset. I always found that he could reach such wonderful emotional points - but then he wouldn't sustain them. He wrote good themes, but then didn't repeat them enough for my tastes, so I got lost. Since then I have learnt to love Mahler, I wouldn't say on Mahler's terms... but perhaps on his and my terms. The two of us seem to have come to an agreement, as I suppose it is with every composer. We can't know what their terms were, and perhaps we wouldn't like them! But we can like their music nonetheless.

Nowadays I tend to try to listen to what is in the music, what the music is trying to do and say, or not say... If I fail to 'get it' (more often than not) then I try again later... or perhaps not since otherwise I would get swamped. Most composers have a different aesthetic, and I try to work this out. Having worked this out I then judge it and it sometimes happens I don't like it, even when I understand it to some degree.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Don't forget that the idea of "music as personal confession and self-expression" was a concept largely developed by Beethoven. The very tenants of pre-Beethoven classicism uphold a style that was emotionally controlled, cosmopolitan in appeal, and balanced in structure. Mozart's genius was to create (time and again) music that came as close to perfection as humanly possible WITHIN those tenants of classicism.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Olias said:


> Don't forget that the idea of "music as personal confession and self-expression" was a concept largely developed by Beethoven. The very tenants of pre-Beethoven classicism uphold a style that was emotionally controlled, cosmopolitan in appeal, and balanced in structure. Mozart's genius was to create (time and again) music that came as close to perfection as humanly possible WITHIN those tenants of classicism.


It is my impression (and Rosen may have had that impression too ) that Mozart stayed within the enclosure of Classical Form more strictly than either Beethoven or Haydn. Quite a feat for one as often mischievous as was Mozart. Severely lacking in knowledge of music theory, my impression must be based on how seldom his music _surprises_ me at first hearing. Outliers like K.475/457 were rare.



XXXX


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## Perotin (May 29, 2012)

This reminds me of my cat. My cat keeps getting in my way and I stumble over it again and again. So whenever I approach the doorway of my house, I begin to stumble, regardless of my cat being there or not. :lol:


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

when i first started to hear classical music i would often wonder why they develop a melody or interesting sound and than change it dramatically for something awful.

this put me off the genre for ages until i heard modern classical music which often stays in a melody through the entire song.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

LordBlackudder said:


> when i first started to hear classical music i would often wonder why they develop a melody or interesting sound and than change it dramatically for something awful.
> 
> this put me off the genre for ages until i heard modern classical music which often stays in a melody through the entire song.


You must be listening to very different "modern" classical music to me - one melody though an entire piece - can you give examples of what you are referring too? Stuff like that would bore me to tears.........


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> You must be listening to very different "modern" classical music to me - one melody though an entire piece - can you give examples of what you are referring too? Stuff like that would bore me to tears.........


_LB_ has inserted a clue there. I won't spell it out, but it begins 'son'.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Hilltroll72 said:


> _LB_ has inserted a clue there. I won't spell it out, but it begins 'son'.


Ah what do you expect with an ice berg who used to be a rock drummer- probably can't hear anything/ anymore... :lol:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Well, I mostly agree with BU. But some of the older songs are pretty good. For instance, Beethoven pretty much invented the "concept album" with his Eroica LP. Only four songs, but they're all extended versions and made for a pretty full LP. The tunes aren't great, but the songs have great beats, and it's neat how they all kind of go together...I believe it was a chart topper in its day. Still available as a CD.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

on the Op, The symphonies of Mozart and few concerto is like that on Mozart case. Something can elevated to say Mozart is Vivaldi things in Classical era, for being predicted and 'repetitive'. But since I listen mostly the chamber music, Mozart is like different persona. His string quartets are far from being predicted and wild. Some thing in violin sonatas, few other chamber form as trio and quintet. I think Mozart's is need to observed in his chamber music if you find he is somewhat..boring.


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