^ ^ Yeah, 'order' doesn't quite fit, but I can't come up with a better word; maybe 'seeming order' (because order exists in Stravinsky too). That sensing of order in contrasting styles occurs in every period, eh? JS Bach evoked it, Biber often did not.

Maybe it's the Stirring of the Humours that Mozart usually avoids, and that people want to be there?

 

Maybe it's the Stirring of the Humours that Mozart usually avoids, and that people want to be there?

I think you're on to something there. In that sense, Mozart is not trying to "represent" or evoke feelings as overtly as some other composers; he's letting us see the "abstract" non-representational aspect of music through its pure formal means and devices. With Mozart, I think "emotion" as a descriptive term begins to fail us.

Excluding his operas, in many instances of Mozart, the "evoking" of dramatic emotion, and dramatic gesture is absent (but certainly not always). Mozart evokes for me, a sort of "Platonic classicism" in his Klavierstücke; we must put aside our need for drama and overt emotion, and listen on the level of "pure abstraction," an enjoyment of color, sound, and timbre itself. In this sense, Mozart is the ultimate modernist. His music is "abstract expressionism" (when divorced from drama and opera).

 

I am not sure I agree about the emotional restraint in Mozart´s works. If you botanize and listen carefully to Mozart´s pieces, there are lots of moods replacing each other continuously, almost from bar to bar, and the apparent lyricism can have a deeper, even tragic aspect at times. The slow movement of the d-minor concerto and the slow movement and the finale of the "Jeunehomme" concerto are obvious examples. HIP-recordings (or simply boring musicianship) perhaps tend to communicate this in a less obvious or a more disguised way than a more "romantic" perception of Mozart. But taking a couple of further, well-known examples in the oeuvre: the massive darkness of "Don Giovanni"-ouverture versus the refined naivety of the finale of the 27th Piano Concerto; the stormy restlessness of the beginning of the 25th Symphony versus the pompous progression of "Haffner"-Symphony, or the serenity of the slow movement of the "Jupiter"; the questioning intimacy of the piano fantasias versus the playfulness of the "Rondo alla Turca", etc. etc. ...

I can only explain not liking him as the result of 1) a lack of knowledge of the diversity of his works 2) a complaint about certain observed patterns of predictability or repeats in some of these works 3) a general prejudice about the servility of the composers of the period, or influence from media caricatures such as that presented in the "Amadeus"-movie.

 

..isn't he, you know, just old news, you know, the kids, you know, just don't care about that old music from like before 2011, you know, that old stuff, you know, like, you know, ain't goin' anywhere, you know.. But, you know, he's almost, you know, as cute as Justin the Biib, you know, you know (pun intended!)

BTW, love his music, but in small doses! Find much of the pre adolescent stuff kind of generic, but much of the later is smashing!

/ptr

 

I love Mozart, but I can see why people wouldn't like him.

The whole idea of a prodigy turning into a childlike adult (which doesn't represent the whole of Mozart at all) may not appeal to some people as opposed to the "tortured genius" and other "musical personalities". Also, balance and beauty may not appeal to people as much as more extreme types of expression. Sometimes I feel like Mozart "spoils" our ears with beauty, and we take it for granted, as if it doesn't count as a trait of "impressive music".

In general though, I think Mozart is just so famous that people have not only high but also specific expectations for him, including things like intense counterpoint, bold chromaticism, and extreme emotional strain. When these expectations aren't met, people put him in the category of overrated composers. These expectations are often too directional and specific, and they represent only a "pre-packaged" view of brilliant music. But of course, I'm generalizing a little bit.

 

If someone who calls him/herself as a fan of classical hates his work, he/she hasn't listened to enough of his music.
He wrote so much music, its very versatile, there must be at least few works that you like!

 

I don't know why anyone would dislike him, but I'm sure over-saturation and his unchallenged position as the musical default setting (alongside one or two others) brings the hackles out in some. It's as if familiarity truly has bred some contempt, and it has nothing to do with the music, and more to do with the followers, or the dogma, or the everywhere-ness of the brand.

For me, I skip all this. Mozart is one of the most expressive of composers, but he's like the guy you meet who you mistake for being cheerful until you spend some time with him, and then you see how discreet he is: you don't realise until some awful moment just how tragically sad he actually can be. Not in all his music: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik being one of those compositions for the court that people mistakenly think reveal his inner frivolousness or shallowness.

For me, being a pre-Romantic composer means the music isn't about the man, but it's about the circumstance. He didn't write to purge himself, but to fulfill commissions. He loads his music so miraculously because he was an inspired genius, but his musical brief wasn't to inform or to create a cathartic, confessional work that would explain to us just how unhappy he was. He composed to order, and tailored his music to the availabilities and talents of those who would perform it. He wrote his arias specifically for the voice that would immediately perform them, not for posterity. There's no great presence of the ego in Mozart's work, no explicit ejaculations of pain, no arm-sweeping moments of his own inner angst, and yet all drama and emotion is contained in his music because he both knew how to compose works which were terrifically charged, but also immensely rich and subtle, yielding up differently satisfying reactions to the same work, when listened to over a period of time.

He's easy to dismiss! It's very easy to call him 'light' or to take on board the myth that he was an immature child-hooligan with a hotline to the angels, but the truth is that he was hard-working, conscientious, and very well-educated. Since his death, people have struggled with how to understand Mozart, and the error-filled Romantic concept of Mozart as being somehow 'one of them' has dogged him unsuccessfully ever since. I think it's held against him that he was plainly an establishment figure, while it's forgotten that this is because that's exactly where the work was, and at the end of the day, he was a working musician...

 

For me, being a pre-Romantic composer means the music isn't about the man, but it's about the circumstance. He didn't write to purge himself, but to fulfill commissions. He loads his music so miraculously because he was an inspired genius, but his musical brief wasn't to inform or to create a cathartic, confessional work that would explain to us just how unhappy he was. He composed to order, and tailored his music to the availabilities and talents of those who would perform it. He wrote his arias specifically for the voice that would immediately perform them, not for posterity. There's no great presence of the ego in Mozart's work, no explicit ejaculations of pain, no arm-sweeping moments of his own inner angst, and yet all drama and emotion is contained in his music because he both knew how to compose works which were terrifically charged, but also immensely rich and subtle, yielding up differently satisfying reactions to the same work, when listened to over a period of time.

I think it's held against him that he was plainly an establishment figure, while it's forgotten that this is because that's exactly where the work was, and at the end of the day, he was a working musician...

I think you bring up some excellent points. In essence, art is about self-expression, but not ONLY about self-expression. He was a composer by trade, this was his livelihood, so YES he gave his patrons what they wanted. He was being a professional, his patrons at THAT time, were not looking to have hearkenings of his inner turmoils.

I guess what I'm saying is, while the starving tortured artist notion is all well and good, there is nothing wrong with a
1) well-fed and well-adjusted artist or 2) a starving tortured artist who does not wish to make art about torture and starvation.

 

I have no doubt that there are many classical music listeners who are honestly underwhelmed by his music, but I think in some cases it's people just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

You see this in every genre of music, and in every art form for that matter. If there is an artist whom "everybody" likes, or who is "too popular," someone will try to knock that artist down just to show how against-the-grain their thinking is, how they refuse to follow the masses, etc. It's a form of snobbery. I've seen threads on Amazon about how the Beatles were seriously overrated, and you can see it here sometimes when people say the same about Beethoven, Bach, and so on. I have no doubt there are threads on the Internet somewhere about what a hack writer Shakespeare was.

AGain, I'm not saying this is the case for all Mozart-bashing, nor even for most of it. But it does exist.

 

Mozart shows us that the more music becomes concerned with "expressing emotion," the less it becomes concerned with the formal elements of music themselves, which are true, pure, "abstract" musical meanings, not so much emotions. We could call these "states of being" rather than overt emotion.

Much overt "emotion" in "emotional" music is simply "dramatic gesture," which is in a sense empty, is non-essential, and can even be faked or over-done.
I'm not saying this is bad, because, after all, "art is artifice." Instrumental music, "musical sound", when divorced from "literal action" and drama, lost its connection to explicit meaning, and was revealed for what it otherwise is: a non-representational (abstract) medium.

In instrumental Romanticism, although it was music divorced from drama, it still managed to evoke emotion, and had residual traces of drama, accomplished by means of "dramatic gestures."

As an example, I could take "Mary Had a Little Lamb," change it to a minor key, and get Itzhak Perlman to play it on violin. I guarantee you this little ditty would gain profound emotion.

The Mozart Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K. 545 "Sonata Facile": what "emotion" does this evoke? It is "playful" and brings delight, but even its nickname ("Sonata Facile") reveals that it is considered more a motoric display of technique rather than a vehicle for Mozart's "feelings." In this sense, it is very "modern" in its detachment. The piece, and much of Mozart, manages to evoke an affect in us, a "state of being," without using any overt narrative or dramatic content.

 

What's the problem with the music beign Dionysian?

 

What's the problem with the music being Dionysian?

Nothing, except when you want to take that principle and apply it to music, like Mozart's, where it really doesn't belong.

Mozart's music is fine on its own terms. Composers from the Romantic era (except perhaps Schumann or Berlioz) often admired its craft and high spirits. Contemporary composers continue to find much to love in it, and the public has, in the past century especially, grown to love it more than ever.

 

Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring' is an example of a piece that leans towards the expressive, Dionysian side. Mozart (with Brahms) is representative of the 'order' side

to me the 40th is quite a violent piece of music, if properly played.

 

This is a question people are not allowed to answer. Moving right along...

 

People don't give enough respect to the ordering, calming power of music. To me there is something sublime about the order and balance of Mozart's piano concertos.

Really? I think there are plenty of people who respect that. for example, take a look at how many of his piano concertos are in the "Top keyboard concerto" list here, with Mozart's 20 being the #1 concerto.

 

I find the first and third movement of that concerto pretty fiery.

 

For me it has nothing to do with Mozart, but it's the whole era i dislike - And i don't find it calming, i find it stressful.

 

How is it stressful? When I look to relax, the Classical Era comes to mind right away.

 

The Classical Era can get predictable at times. That goes for Mozart as well. But I still love it.

 

My problem, as a complete beginner in the field, is that I find Mozart too bright (and somehow joyful) for my taste. It obiously refers to those pieces of his music that I know. The order itself is not a problem - I am a great fan of Bach...

 

Some of Mozart's music is downright melancholy. So yeah happiness and sorrow are definitely big parts of Mozart's music.

 

Here is the link. Piano Concerto 20 first movement as well.

 

Thank you very much! (I will listen to it soon. I am at work now and cannot do it straight away;-))

 

Sometimes in Mozart's great simplicity is contained also great depth...

 

So is it another Chaos vs Order struggle between Stravinsky and Mozart?

Maybe the answer is that some fans don't like the claimed Number ones like Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms etc. ... but I'm not one of them.

Some may say his music is cheesy (also wrong).

 

So is it another Chaos vs Order struggle between Stravinsky and Mozart?

Not necessarily. Some of us have both of these composers in our top ten!

 

^ ^ The book you recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Rhythmic-Gesture-Mozart-Jamison-Allanbrook/dp/0226014045

sounds interesting. The price does not.

 

I used to find Mozart overrated when my knowledge of classical music was still fledging/immature. Now, it's somewhat more developed, slightly, but my appreciation of Mozart has increased tremendously.

 

I think it's as much a question of programmers (concert programmers, radio programmers, recording A&R people) sometimes putting the name over the quality of the work. When you have a 500+ ouvre, and a lot of it is juvenilia, a lot of music gets played by virtue of the name, and so a lot of lesser or uninteresting pieces share the stage with the masterworks -- which are as good as any music ever written. Unless you're a musicologist or a fanatic, the first two dozen symphonies, for instance, are worth maybe one listening in a lifetime. If the horn concerti weren't for a treacherous and beloved instrument, they are not musically interesting enough to be as popular as they are. i.e. I won't say there's a lot of "bad" Mozart, but there is a lot of, especially early, work that doesn't hold one's interest for long. And some of it -- I mean Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -- is grossly over-played.

 

Unless you're a musicologist or a fanatic, the first two dozen symphonies, for instance, are worth maybe one listening in a lifetime. If the horn concerti weren't for a treacherous and beloved instrument, they are not musically interesting enough to be as popular as they are.

Uh... (speechless)

 

Some very interesting and enlightened comments on this thread have brought me back to TC for the discussion!! (Can do without invective and slurs, though.)

For the life of me I cannot imagine any artist/composer NOT writing from his own heart. How a piece of music which is tender, joyful, sombre, humorous etc. can NOT have come from the mind and heart of its creator defies me. If not from the composer, then from whom? A muse external to the composer? No matter WHAT the reason for the composition, a work of art must originate inside the head of its own creator and those notes on the page may be interpreted as a direct line of emotion from composer to listener. Without emotion music is fairly dull. This is the problem with the avant garde - emotion is missing, and so are audiences. And lots of people in this thread have used words like "melancholy", "moving" - these are emotional terms and trying to reduce emotion and an 18th century view of "romanticism" (which classical composers were called in their own times) is like trying to remove water from ice. And I cannot ever imagine music being merely 'formalist'. This was just the bottle which held the wine. Try not to compare Mozart with anybody else. The fact that he was a working musician, like The Beatles, does not invalidate his own self being present in the music. Perhaps Bach can be said to have written music which doesn't represent his own feelings, but his feelings about God are certainly present in much of his work. Are they to be denied as 'feelings' and 'emotions' because they are about God?

In removing Mozart and his own feelings from his music is to reduce it to a porcelain statue. Cold, highly polished and sculpted, eternal but deeply superficial. Like Keats' Grecian Urn: "beauty is truth; truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know". A disturbing thought!!

Personally, I long for complexity in my music - not 'sublime' simplicity. This is a personal preference. Yesterday I presented a 2 hour lecture on late Beethoven and concentrated on the last piano sonatas and the Grosse Fugue. Those late works, with their complex counterpoint, fugue and infinite workings out of the smallest kernel of musical material are tremendously satisfying listening. You are always on the journey and I marvel at the intellectuality of the work. And Haydn was his model for all of this.

 

...Perhaps Bach can be said to have written music which doesn't represent his own feelings, but his feelings about God are certainly present in much of his work. Are they to be denied as 'feelings' and 'emotions' because they are about God?

This is a good reinforcing example of what I'm talking about; in Bach's day, notes were "on" or "off," as with harpsichords and organs. We know from HIP instruments & recordings that Bach's was not a Romantic era of hyper-expression. The lacl of dynamics reduced the incidences of "dramatic gesture," so the "emotion" that Bach expressed had to be accomplished in other ways: tempo fluctuations, register changes, and harmonic turns in the written music itself.

"Dramatic gesture" in the form of "performance gesture" is almost absent from his organ works, comparatively speaking: dynamics, register changes, and the music's inherent harmonic expressiveness was all there was. This puts the onus directly on the music itself: which is what I mean by "formalism," a music which deals mainly with the perceptible forms of the music itself, in terms of actual musical elements, like pitch and harmonic movement and meaning.

I would describe it in reverse: the desire to make Mozart a "formalist" is part of a desire to make him conform to twentieth and twenty-first century standards rather than eighteenth century standards.

If we approach Mozart as a formalist, then his art & appeal are universal and safe from becoming products of their era. While the historical approach is admirable in scholarly terms, we could know those details after the fact, and it might add to our enjoyment, or not. For me, music is a visceral experience, not a cerebral one.

Tellingly, a contemporary of Haydn once described sonata form and the newfangled genre of the symphony (both of which, from our modern perspective, are the very bedrock of "formalism") as a kind of distilled opera because the rich musical surface of allusions reminded him of the many personalities in an opera buffa.

This sounds like the contemporary was immersed in drama and the dramatic arts moreso than music itself. If this is what it's all about, then why not listen to opera? Of course, in instrumental forms there is a residue of "dramatic gesture," but Haydn's symphonies are more "musical gesture." Is my point emerging more clearly?

There's also Johann Mattheson's fascinating treatise Der volkommene Capellmeister in which eighteenth century dances are explicitly associated with personality types. (My favorite line: "The loures, or slow and dotted gigues, by contrast, exhibit a proud and pompous character, which makes them very popular in Spain.")

So, with this information, I guess we are to make colorful masks to wear whilst listening.

So you are correct that this type of interpretation is the work of historians, since they are trying to distinguish historical interpretations of Mozart from our current formalist ones. Not that we aren't entitled to our own interpretations of Mozart, or that I'm not sympathetic to them. I just prefer not to confuse them with the eighteenth century's interpretations, in which the "rather than" in the following statement...would mostly likely have been closer to "as well as."

We agree that these are two different approaches, then; the formalist looks at the universal constants of the works, those things which will remain "true" throughout time, while the historian strives for greater understanding by seeing the full context, trying to penetrate the composer's intentions, to capture the spirit of the work. Both are valid & proven methods.

 

The only person who I have respected and who have had qualms with Mozart's music is Glenn Gould. And I don't think it'd be far to say that Glenn is something like the Leo Tolstoy of music... in the most endearing sense of the label. It's needed for every artform to stop a deep hero worship.

But most of the time when I hear people criticize Mozart just because his music doesn't fit their certain view of what music is bent on doing, I usually conclude that they know nothing about music. I think a real maturing factor in appreciating art in general is appreciating the importance of form, not form in itself, but the form that carries out the sublimity of the artwork. Something subtle and doesn't make quite a fuss. Bertrand Russell used to always say, although this is in philosophy, that it is much easier to sound profound than clear; I think it fits equally well for music. Not only does Mozart have form, but Mozart has just as much propensity to the sublime as any of the most expressive of the Late Romantics; not just simple sublimity either, Mozart was considered one of the most learned composers of his time, and his work is rife with very complex counterpoint, but of a different kind than the rigor of Bach or the angularity of Beethoven. It astounds me on how someone could listen to the Clarinet Quintet or some of those great slow movements of the Piano Concertos and not feel the transcendental quality of his music.

And I'm not the only one defending this old fortress. Listen to Arnie make my point much better than I ever could've done:

"I have learned this directly from Mozart... and I am proud of it." Makes you realize how much of that talk of the modernists trying to break away from the Western tradition is such hogwash.

 

The only person who I have respected and who have had qualms with Mozart's music is Glenn Gould. And I don't think it'd be far to say that Glenn is something like the Leo Tolstoy of music... in the most endearing sense of the label. It's needed for every artform to stop a deep hero worship...But most of the time when I hear people criticize Mozart just because his music doesn't fit their certain view of what music is bent on doing, I usually conclude that they know nothing about music. I think a real maturing factor in appreciating art in general is appreciating the importance of form, not form in itself, but the form that carries out the sublimity of the artwork. Something subtle and doesn't make quite a fuss. Bertrand Russell used to always say, although this is in philosophy, that it is much easier to sound profound than clear; I think it fits equally well for music. Not only does Mozart have form, but Mozart has just as much propensity to the sublime as any of the most expressive of the Late Romantics; not just simple sublimity either, Mozart was considered one of the most learned composers of his time, and his work is rife with very complex counterpoint, but of a different kind than the rigor of Bach or the angularity of Beethoven. It astounds me on how someone could listen to the Clarinet Quintet or some of those great slow movements of the Piano Concertos and not feel the transcendental quality of his music....And I'm not the only one defending this old fortress. Listen to Arnie make my point much better than I ever could've done: "I have learned this directly from Mozart... and I am proud of it." Makes you realize how much of that talk of the modernists trying to break away from the Western tradition is such hogwash.

Nice Schoenberg video! I agree, and point out that in Mozart, we are confronted not so much with "emotion" or dramatic gesture as we are induced into a state of being which is not dependent on narrative content or associations evoked by "dramatically representational" elements or gestures. This is art at its most "minimal" and elegant.

Many people wonder why Schoenberg did not continue along the lines of Verklarte Nacht, and that piece is just full of dramatic gesture, almost literally illustrating the poem it depicts. I guess Arnie outgrew "representation" and went into more abstract territory. His career illustrates very well the "Dionysian" and "Apollonian" aspects of music in a very clear, jarring manner.

 

Some notes on catharsis:

Intellectual clarification

In the twentieth century something like a paradigm shift took place in the interpretation of catharsis with a number of scholars contributing to the argument in support of the intellectual clarification concept. The following works can be usefully consulted in this regard: L. Golden, "Aristotle on Tragic and Comic Mimesis," Atlanta, 1992, S. Halliwell, "Aristotle's Poetics," London, 1986, D. Keesey, "On Some Recent Interpretations of Catharsis, "The Classical World", (1979) 72.4, 193-205. The clarification theory of catharsis would be fully consistent, as other interpretations are not, with Aristotle's argument in chapter 4 of the Poetics (1448b4-17) that the essential pleasure of mimesis is the intellectual pleasure of "learning and inference".

It is generally understood that Aristotle's theory of mimesis and catharsis are responses to Plato's negative view of artistic mimesis on an audience. Plato argued that the most common forms of artistic mimesis were designed to evoke from an audience powerful emotions such as pity, fear, and ridicule which override the rational control that defines the highest level of our humanity and lead us to wallow unacceptably in orgies of emotion and passion. Aristotle's concept of catharsis, in all of the major senses attributed to it, contradicts Plato's view by providing a mechanism that generates the rational control of irrational emotions. All of the commonly held interpretations of catharsis, purgation, purification, and clarification are considered by most scholars to represent a homeopathic process in which pity and fear accomplish the catharsis of emotions like themselves. For an alternate view of catharsis as an allopathic process in which pity and fear produce a catharsis of emotions unlike pity and fear, see E. Belfiore, "Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion." Princeton, 1992, 260 ff.

 

Some notes on catharsis:

In the twentieth century something like a paradigm shift took place in the interpretation of catharsis with a number of scholars contributing to the argument in support of the intellectual clarification concept...Aristotle's argument in chapter 4 of the Poetics (1448b4-17) that the essential pleasure of mimesis is the intellectual pleasure of "learning and inference".

It is generally understood that Aristotle's theory of mimesis and catharsis are responses to Plato's negative view of artistic mimesis on an audience. Plato argued that the most common forms of artistic mimesis were designed to evoke from an audience powerful emotions such as pity, fear, and ridicule which override the rational control that defines the highest level of our humanity and lead us to wallow unacceptably in orgies of emotion and passion. Aristotle's concept of catharsis, in all of the major senses attributed to it, contradicts Plato's view by providing a mechanism that generates the rational control of irrational emotions. All of the commonly held interpretations of catharsis, purgation, purification, and clarification are considered by most scholars to represent a homeopathic process in which pity and fear accomplish the catharsis of emotions like themselves. For an alternate view of catharsis as an allopathic process in which pity and fear produce a catharsis of emotions unlike pity and fear, see E. Belfiore, "Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion." Princeton, 1992, 260 ff.

I'd say Plato's view caters to the lowest common denominator, more of a barroom "Give 'em what they want" spectacle, more grounded in dramatic convention and entertainment, and less on "art."

We can either use "representation" to merely depict those emotions and responses which are "concensus reality," or ART can evoke a universal, higher, transcendental "state of being" in us which is less dependent on "consensus meanings" and more of an "affect" which triggers a response from our "higher" selves.

And I'm not saying that artists have not accomplished both at the same time, as in Mozart's operas, and Shakespeare.

Like parables, drama is best served when it transcends its coarse meaning, and alludes to larger things. Shakespeare did this; he "gave 'em what they wanted," yet his stories managed to transcend their narrative boundaries, to become truly transcendent art.