Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

“He was physically restless, quick-witted, sociable, flirtatious, and obscene,” New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote of Mozart. “But he often gave the impression of not being entirely present, as if his mind was caught up in an invisible event.”

Donald Jay Grout’s ponderous History of Western Music echoes the impression: “Mozart lived his real life in the inner world of his music, to which his everyday existence often seems only a troubled and shadowy parallel. There is a touch of the miraculous, something both childlike and godlike, about this.”

 

Separating the myth of Mozart from the facts is difficult when so much—including a great deal of fiction--has been written about him. Some impressions of the composer are based on Milos Forman’s 1984 film “Amadeus”, an award-winning cinematic treatment of a play by Peter Shaffer which the playwright himself called a “fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri.” Alexander Pushkin wrote a play about Mozart and his contemporary Antonio Salieri in 1830, and even Rimsky-Korsakov was drawn to the subject, writing a seldom-performed opera.

Mozart was the son of a respected Salzburg musician and teacher, Leopold, who early on dropped all other activities to educate and promote the boy. Has there ever been such a prodigy? By the time he was six years old, he was a virtuoso on the clavier, and he soon became a good organist and violinist as well, though the viola was always his chosen instrument to play. He wrote his first symphony before his ninth birthday, his first oratorio at eleven, and his first opera at twelve.

Biographies write of Constanze Weber, the giddy girl Mozart married—after months of pleading for his father’s permission-- in August of 1782. Less well known is the fact that the couple had six children, four boys and two girls, in their nine years of marriage, and that only two of these survived infancy. By most accounts, Mozart and Constanze were happy despite their profligate spending, which led to their being constantly short of money. They moved 12 times in their nine years together.

Certainly Antonio Salieri—despite the implication of the stage plays and film-- had nothing whatsoever to do with Mozart’s death and was hardly even considered a serious rival. Both Constanze and Wolfgang were frequently in ill health, hers complicated by constant pregnancies and his by overwork. What does seem to be true is Mozart’s premonition about the commissioned Requiem on which he was working when he died. He said that he had the curious sensation that he was writing his own funeral mass.

Mozart was buried in an anonymous communal grave in Vienna. For those who would mourn his early passing or celebrate his singular life, he left the deathless memorial of his perfect music.

What Happened?

No recording, photographs or videos were made at my Mozart concerto performance Saturday, whether by oversight or  budget restrictions I don't know and don't really much care. We are left with only my perception and the audience's impression of what happened.

Since the audience contained mostly friends and supporters, the perception was positive from their point of view. From mine, it was a relief to get through 52 pages of piano music without major mishap, especially since my left arm was killing me. It was a privilege to perform Mozart with the orchestra and to compose cadenzas (the free passages) which let me say some stuff I wanted to say.

The ancient Greeks usually took a poet with them into battle so that after everything settled down, they could find out what happened. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land had its Fair Witnesses for the same reason. We had neither at the concert, only people who wanted to support the community orchestra or liked Mozart's "Elvira Madigan" concerto or wanted to encourage me.

So we can remember it any way we want to. Here's a picture of me in my thrift-shop dress and eBay jewelry, taken right before we left for the hall. Deer in the Headlights.

Archetypes and Metaphors

Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly and many others have talked about how myths can frame lessons or dramas. They need not be literally true in order to contain truths. The Hopi oral history contains a tale of a great flood, for instance, and Rapunzel should warn against pilfering greens from your neighbor's garden.

Finding excuses not to practice my Mozart concerto, which has its last rehearsal with the orchestra tonight, I was looking at the painting which hangs above my piano. The title is "L'Oiseau Chant Avec Ses Doigts" (The Bird Sings With His Fingers), and the picture is supposed to be a boy Orpheus--the Greek God of music--making a lyre in the tree branches. The title comes from an old Jean Cocteau movie.

Who knows if there was ever a real Orpheus? Plays, poems, musical works have been written about the god who charmed the beasts with his playing, who even cast a spell over the Underworld so that it would release his beloved Eurydice from the dead.  The film "Black Orpheus" sets the story in Rio and has Orpheus making the sun rise with his song.

All this is a long way from my present chore. All I really want to do is what Nicodemus advises: Try to make it nice for the people.

The Mozart Effect

There was a time when everyone seemed to be trying to prove that Mozart made you smarter. Tests were done, books were published, newborns were sent home from the hospital (or so I heard) with recordings of Mozart.

Mozart and I are daily companions right now. I am scheduled to pay his piano concerto in C, Köchel 467, with our small local orchestra in three months. It's about 55 pages of music, much of it solo, as concerti are.

Let me say here that I am no virtuosa. However, the orchestra raises money for music scholarships and we can't afford to pay a soloist. I am a regular member of the orchestra, but so far the only concerto I have played was one written for toy piano, at a children's concert. I am dependable, however, and fairly competent. It's not going to be Arthur Rubenstein or Alfred Brendel, but hopefully it will be something more than mere notes or Notes-art, as my teacher used to call it.

There is also the tricky problem of the missing cadenzas, the show-off parts of concerti which may be written by the composer or someone else. "Whose cadenzas are you using?" people ask. Mozart wrote three concerti in 1785 and performed K. 457 without a single rehearsal, the copyist's ink barely dry on the manuscript. He improvised the cadenzas and never bothered to write them down. There are two places in the concerto for cadenzas and at least two others known as re-entry fermatas where the pianist must come up with something worth listening to on his or her own.

Brendel, famous for his Mozart playing, says "I think (the player) will be more deserving if he makes a rigorous selection of versions (of cadenzas) he has improvised at home, rather than risking everything on the platform by trying to play Mozart as though he were Mozart." So, in addition to practicing, I am listening to various players' cadenzas and working out which ones I might be able to use.

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born in Salzburg on Jan. 27, 1756. He was Wolfie to his friends and Amadeus or God-love to playwrights and movie makers who came up with fictional works which at once enchanted and misinformed viewers. The first time I saw the film "Amadeus", people sobbed audibly through the credits, which were accompanied by the "Lacrimosa" (tears) of Mozart's unfinished Requiem. Even though the film was not biographically accurate, the music--of course--was transcendent.

Mozart was not just a goofy genius with a fright wig and a silly guffaw. He may have been the greatest artistic genius ever born. He was a son, a brother, a husband, a father. By all accounts, he was generous, kindly, not egotistical, though certainly he was aware of the magnitude of his own gifts. He died in 1791, some say of typhoid, others say of kidney disease or an undiagnosed skull fracture. He left behind a staggering amount of music, up to 500 major works, and bits and scraps of Mozart are still turning up.

Working on the concerto, I do battle with: Laziness, Delusion ("Hey, that was pretty good!"), the temptation to fake rather than learn, the Wall of Resistance, physical limitations (sluggish reflexes and poor eyesight), mental limitations ("I yam what I yam", as Popeye said.)

So Mozart isn't necessarily making me smarter, but across the gulf of almost 250 years, he certainly is making me a better person.