Showing posts with label Hermione Lai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hermione Lai. Show all posts

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Sweetest Harmony

Harmony

For me personally, it’s such an uplifting thought that countless people, particularly in the arts and music, are trying to promote peace and harmony through shared performances. Take for example, the “Harmony of Nations Baroque Orchestra,” a period-instrument group of young musicians from all over Europe. The 20-founding members are from 14 different Nations, including England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Wales.

Harmony of Nations Orchestra

Harmony of Nations Orchestra

They speak different languages and celebrate an incredible diversity of cultural heritage. Many have lived and studied in countries other than their own, but what unites them is a common musical heritage and a desire for social harmony. And it is easy to hear the delicious result in their delight in producing the sweetest harmonies. 

In 1695, the composer Georg Muffat wrote, “Weapons of war and their use are something I am unable to engage with. I busy my time with notes, strings, and sounds. I work in the cause of harmony, mixing the sounds of France, Germany, and Italy and attempting thus to prevent wars and to serve the cause of peace among nations and their striving for peace.’’

Georg Muffat

Georg Muffat

Muffat’s words are as relevant today as they were over 300 years ago. He was among the most cosmopolitan composers of the seventeenth century, growing up in the Duchy of Savoy and Alsace, regions subject to political ambitions of France and the Holy Roman Empire.

His “Florilegium Secondum” (Second Garland of Flowers) of 1698 contains dances in what he calls “a more sweet harmony.” Here, the composer takes us on a musical tour of European national musical styles and conventions, all the way from Spain to Holland, England, Italy, and France. 

The Austrian composer, violinist, and silvologist—a biological scientist studying the natural ecosystems of forests and woodlands, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf was born in 1739. He was a prolific and versatile contemporary of Haydn and Mozart, and he already knew that engagement and dialogue were the most important elements in establishing harmony among nations.

Portrait of Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf by Heinrich Eduard Wintter

Portrait of Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf by Heinrich Eduard Wintter

National musical differences have long stimulated the creative interest of artists. For his “Symphony in the Style of Five Nations” Dittersdorf presents a fairly predictable line-up. We find the Germans, the Italians, the French, the English and the Turks. But Dittersdorf adds a little twist. He actually composes parodies of musical tastes and perhaps characters.

The Germans get things started, and all with a good bit of earnestness and determination. The Italians are portrayed as bombastic, the French as courtly and old-fashioned, the English as musically naïve, and the Turks with vigorous rhythmic intensity. The point of parody is not to insult but to invite dialogue about differences. Stand-up comedians do this all the time. In the end, Dittersdorf brings everybody together in a Finale that represents a kind of musical equivalent of the European Union. 

If you ask me personally, the two biggest factors in achieving sweet harmony among nations are education and enlightenment. The sheer amount of misinformation floating around us today is pretty staggering. Education won’t give you the answers, but it will teach you how to ask meaningful and enlightened questions about any subject.

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Taking a long and hard look at what constituted an “orchestra” led to the formation of the OAE, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, in 1986. They threw out the rulebook on conducting and specializing in repertoires of a particular area. They picked up period instruments and kept questioning, adapting, and inventing.

The real challenge was to turn eccentric idealists into a coherent group. So, they agreed on how to organise and remain experimentalists. They welcomed new talents and kept on exploring performance formats, rehearsal approaches, and musical techniques. If only we could get politicians to approach their responsibilities in such an enlightened manner. 

If you believe that music cannot bring people together, think again. Just ask Maestro Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The orchestra is considered at the forefront of interpreting the Classical and Romantic repertoire. Committed to colourful and transparent performances, the ensemble has captivated audiences around the world.

Maestro Paavo Järvi

Maestro Paavo Järvi

But here is the unusual part. All 41 members of the orchestra enjoy brilliant and highly successful solo careers. From the very beginning, the musicians wanted to break new musical grounds and make key decisions on all musical issues, including performance repertory, via a democratic process. Every member of the orchestra is also a vested shareholder, and they are jointly responsible for the economic success of the business as a whole.

Collaborating with the Grammy Award-winning conductor Paavo Järvi, the result has been called sensational. The orchestra is responsive, virtuosic and alert, and Järvi’s readings are energetic, often thrilling and thoughtful, yet also driving and objective. Based on mutual respect, artistic chemistry and a profound and intuitive understanding between conductor and orchestra, isn’t it amazing that so many highly skilled individuals come together to produce the sweetest harmony in complete agreement—after much deliberation and discussion, I am sure. 

Classical music is not locked-up in history but as relevant as ever because it deals with fundamental human issues. And harmony amongst nations and people is an eternal, and sometimes it seems hopeless quest. But that doesn’t mean that musicians, artists, and thinkers aren’t continuing to promote peace and harmony.

Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim © Peter Adamik

The pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim is simultaneously a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. In 1999, he teamed up with the Palestinian American academic, literary critic, and political activist Edward Said. Together they established the West-Eastern Divan orchestra as an attempt to promote understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. Bringing together young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Arab countries to study and perform, this initiative advocates a peaceful and fair solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Barenboim stated, “The Divan is not a love story, nor a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn’t. It’s not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance… I am not trying to convert members of the Divan to a certain point of view, but create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives.”

Well, Barenboim was correct, as the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has certainly not brought peace to the region. In fact, Barenboim is now being viciously attacked for trying to advocate peace, harmony, and understanding. As elsewhere, however, the voices of reason, enlightenment, and knowledge will never be silenced when it comes to art and music.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the Impact of Climate Change

The Four Seasons, the fabulous collection of four violin concerti by Antonio Vivaldi have topped the Classical Music charts for decades on end. It has become part of modern culture, and the music is reshaped and arranged into different musical styles and adapted for solo instruments other than violin.

Portrait of Antonio Vivaldi

Portrait of Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi gave each concerto the title of a specific season, and his music imitates the sounds of barking dogs, warbling birds, the icy paths across frozen water, and even the blazing temperatures of summer. It’s a delightful and charming nature painting in music. The music was composed roughly 300 years ago, but times are changing, and so is the climate. 

Simone Candotto, the solo trombonist of the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, was born in a town near Venice, Vivaldi’s place of work. And we all know that Venice is gradually sinking into the sea because of the consequences of climate change. As such, Candotto decided to let people hear the consequences of climate change by re-composing The Four Seasons using climate data.

Simone Candotto

Simone Candotto

He engaged a team of software developers and music arrangers, and with the aid of a specific algorithm, he modified the source material to reflect the consequences of climate change. Much of that algorithm is based on 300 years of climate data, incorporating the increase in greenhouse gas carbon dioxide over the past centuries to the present day.

You can hear these changes very clearly in the music, as the summer motif already sneaks into the score in the spring. The seasons are clearly changing, and the rise of the global CO2 curve results in the notes becoming longer. Candotto explains, “It’s a big deal because I think it has an impact. But above all, there are the themes from the other seasons that come in so imperceptibly. That gives the impression that things are no longer the same as they used to be.” 

Since there are 15 percent fewer birds chirping in the trees than in the time of Vivaldi, the algorithm uses 15 percent less of the bird motifs to indicate the extinction of species. Extreme weather is sharply increasing, and Vivaldi arrives in the present.

You can hear the solo violin continuing to play part of the Vivaldi “Winter” concerto while the orchestra sinks into dissonant lethargy. It’s almost like a metaphor, with people continuing to live as before while nature sinks into chaos due to man-made climate change.

The idea of using climate data to recompose Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” has also been taken up by composer Hugh Crosthwaite and Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub. This creation looks to portray a future where the world has failed to act on global warming. 

This reworking also features AI algorithms based on climate predictions for the year 2050. It is a musical design system “that combines music theory with computer modelling to algorithmically generate countless local variations of the Vivaldi composition.” That is, it can model climate predictions for every location on the planet.

Looking at climate data, the algorithm alters the musical score to account for predicted changes in rainfall, biodiversity, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events for the location of performance. In some locations, storms will be more intense, the sea level will be dangerously rising, and wildlife will disappear.

Climate change

There is no doubt that climate change is unravelling our seasons, and Spanish music director Hache Costa has adopted Vivaldi’s most famous work to reflect the grim reality of global warming. “If someone were to compose The Four Seasons from an absolutely realistic perspective,” the composer writes, “the music would be much more aggressive and grittier.” 

Costa projects the effects of global warming by adding prominence and drama to the summer concerto while shortening the other three. This re-composition is accompanied by projected images of wildfires and other effects of climate change, including drought. As Costa explained, “I would love the audience to feel really bothered at some point by becoming truly aware of what is happening.”

Max Richter

Max Richter

Award-winning composer and pianist Max Richter is not attempting to shock his audience, but he is actually advocating dialogue instead. Classically trained, Richter graduated in composition from the Royal Academy of Music and studied with the legendary Italian composer Luciano Berio. He loved the Vivaldi original as a child, but hearing the music abused for various reasons and causes, “it becomes an irritant.”

So, he decided to recompose the music, and his “New Four Seasons” weaves and loops the music to become a conversation between instruments and also a dialogue between the two composers. “There are sections where I’ve left Vivaldi alone,” he explains, “and other bits where there is basically only a homeopathic dose of Vivaldi in completely new music.” When it comes to climate change, we need a global dialogue with everybody pulling at the same string, and hopefully, Vivaldi can bring us all together.

Friday, November 17, 2023

The Mermaid in Classical Music

by 

One of my all-time feel-good movies is the animated musical fantasy film “The Little Mermaid.” Originally released in 1989 by Walt Disney Pictures, the movie takes us to the kingdom of Atlantica. Princess Ariel, a 16-year-old mermaid, is unhappy with her underwater life and fascinated by the human world. She falls in love with the human Prince Eric, and after much adventure, Ariel permanently turns into a human and marries her Prince.

Illustration in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”

Illustration in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”

Thirty years later, in 2023, Walt Disney Pictures released a remake of that movie, this time featuring real actors. The plot once again features the young mermaid who makes a deal with a sea witch to trade her beautiful voice for human legs so that she can discover the world above water and impress a Prince.

Mermaids

So what is actually a mermaid? Basically, it is a fabled marine creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, and in Europe, they were natural beings, like fairies, with magical prophetic powers. Also occasionally called sirens, they loved music and singing.

The Little Mermaid (1913) - sculpture by sculptor Edvard Eriksen

The Little Mermaid (1913) – sculpture by sculptor Edvard Eriksen

Some folktales record marriages between mermaids, who might assume human form and men. And while mermaids are often kind, they can also be dangerous. If offended, they are said to cause floods, shipwrecks, or other disasters. In European folklore, the concept of mermaids as beautiful and seductive singers seems to originate in Greek mythology. And it might be hard to believe, but actual mermaid sightings have still been reported in 2023.

The Fairy Tale by Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen

As part of a collection of fairy tales for children, Hans Christian Andersen published “The Little Mermaid” in 1837. This enticing story follows the journey of a young mermaid who is willing to give up her life in the sea to gain a human soul. It is one of Andersen’s most beloved fairy tales, and it inspired books, comics, animations, films, operas, and much classical music. That’s all very exciting, so we decided to put together a little blog featuring music associated with mermaids.


Franz Joseph Haydn: “The Mermaid’s Song”

Portrait of composer Joseph Haydn in London

Haydn in London

Franz Joseph Hadyn made a couple of trips to England, and he was soon engaged to arrange a number of folksongs. The country was caught up in a great passion for collecting these melodies, and the publisher William Napier was looking for musical arrangements of his “100 Scottish Folksongs.” Essentially, Haydn needed to provide suitable accompaniments for the “wild and pathetic sweetness of these melodies.” In addition, Haydn was also busy composing two sets of six “Original Canzonettas” primarily for the profitable amateur market.

It has been suggested that Haydn was deeply inspired by Anne Hunter, the widow of the famous surgeon Sir John Hunter. Anne fancied herself a polished poetess writing in the taste of the day. Critics have suggested that her verses were unoriginal, usually soulful and sentimental, and with a dash of Gothic gloom. Each of the six Haydn Canzonettas opens with a song to the sea, and “The Mermaid’s Song” was certainly inspired by the first line of text, “Now the dancing sunbeams play.” Haydn writes a shimmering and glittering piano prelude before the Mermaid calls, “Follow me!” luring the listener into her underwater realm.

Friday, November 3, 2023

10 Greatest Musical Hoaxes and Pranks

by Hermione Lai, Interlude

The Kreisler Scandal

Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler

Let’s get started with the grandfather of all musical hoaxes, the violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962). The violinist was at the vanguard of the emerging music recording industry, and he delighted audiences with performances of lost classics by famous composers. According to Kreisler, he personally discovered manuscripts of unknown compositions by Corelli, Pugnani, Vivaldi, and Couperin in a French monastery. Audiences were enchanted to hear yet another unknown masterpiece.

However, on Kreisler’s 60th birthday on 2 February 1935, the violinist unapologetically confirmed that he had been the composer all along. The music industry was outraged, but Kreisler pointed out “that it should make no difference who wrote the works as long as people enjoyed them. The name changes, the value remains.” Clearly, audiences agreed with Kreisler’s assessment as his popularity skyrocketed following the scandal. 

The David Popper Ruse

David Popper

David Popper

David Popper (1843-1913) was one of the last great cellists who played without an endpin. His tone was described as “large and full of sentiment, and his execution highly finished, and his style classical.” Popper was not only a fantastic cellist, but also a highly prolific composer. He composed four cello concertos to his name and stunned audiences at the Crystal Palace in London on 1 December 1894 with the premiere of a newly discovered cello concerto by Joseph Haydn. According to Popper, during a concert in Vienna, a man handed him a few sheets of wrinkled manuscript papers, claiming that they were sketches for a cello concerto by Haydn.

Initially, so the anecdote relates, Popper was skeptical, but a few years later he judged them to be genuine themes by Haydn. He worked them into a concert form in three movements and provided the piano accompaniment and orchestration. The Popper “Haydn” concert was published in 1899, but questions started to be raised as the original sketches could not be found. As the Musical Times wrote in 1895, “Unfortunately, the evidence adduced is inconclusive, but the concerto is decidedly pleasing in character. If not written by Haydn, it is certainly thoroughly Haydnesque both in form and spirit.” You can be the judge, as the concerto was taken up by a number of eminent cellists, including the fabulous Mstislav Rostropovich. 

The Marius Casadesus Hoax

Marius Casadesus in 1957

Marius Casadesus in 1957

The supposed musical discovery of the 20th century took place in 1933. The Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Aranyi stepped onto the London stage and performed a completely unknown violin concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The performance caused an absolute sensation, and the score turned out to be an arrangement by the French violinist Marius Casadesus. Casadesus claimed that he had arranged the work from a manuscript by the ten-year-old Mozart, with a title page containing a dedication to “Madame Adélaïde de France,” the eldest daughter of Louis XV, and dated “Versailles May 26, 1766.”

Things got interesting in a hurry when scholars were not allowed to see the autograph score, and young Mozart had actually arrived in Versailles 2 days after the dedication. In addition, father Leopold Mozart did not include the work in the catalogue of his son’s works. Some people called it “a hoax ala Kreisler,” but the musical world really wanted to believe in a new Mozart concerto. As such, the “Adélaïde Concerto” was assigned a Köchel number, and Yehudi Menuhin made a famous recording. Only in 1977, during some heated litigation concerning royalties, did Marius Casadesus admit that he was the actual composer. 

The Henri Casadesus Viola Pranks

Henri Casadesus, c 1900

Henri Casadesus, c 1900

It’s easy to be dismissive of Kreisler’s and Marius Casadesus’ misattributions, but it is worth remembering that these “forgeries” appeared during a time when the avant-garde and 12-tone followers were aggressively shouting down the old musical system. The Casadesus family was one of the most prominent French artistic families, an integral part of the international classical music landscape. Music lovers almost certainly remember the pianist Robert Casadesus, who collaborated with Maurice Ravel. And Henri Gustave Casadesus (1879-1947), uncle of Robert and brother of Marius, had his own musical surprises ready.

Henri was a gifted violinist, and together with Camille Saint-Saëns, he founded the Society of Ancient Instruments in 1901. They performed on Baroque period instruments and introduced eager audiences to a number of unknown musical masterworks by famous masters. Henri “found” violin concertos by George Frideric Handel and Luigi Boccherini, and two famous viola concertos by Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian Bach. The concertos appeared in various editions and were performed and recorded by Darius Hilhaud and Felix Prohaska. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that Henri composed all those works himself, a charge he never denied. 

The Remo Giazotto Deception

Remo Giazotto/Albinoni: Adagio in G minor

Remo Giazotto/Albinoni: Adagio in G minor

The Italian musicologist and critic Remo Giazotto (1910-1998) is not necessarily a household name. He taught music history at the University of Florence and authored studies on the music history of Genoa. Contributing to a number of music dictionaries, Giazotto also authored romanticized biographies of various composers, including Vivaldi, Viotti, Stradella, and Tomaso Albinoni. By far his most famous publication, however, was a short “Adagio in G minor” that he attributed to Albinoni.

When Giazotto was working on his biography of Albinoni in a German library, he claimed to have found a fragment of an Albinoni composition. That fragment supposedly contained snippets of a melody and a supporting continuo part. Relying on the stylistic features of the Italian Baroque, Giazotto “completed” the fragment, and the Italian publisher Ricordi published the “Albinoni Adagio” in 1958. It all sounds pretty plausible up to a point, however, the mysterious Albinoni fragment was never located or examined. Initially, Giazotto stated that he had merely arranged the work, but subsequently revised his story and claimed that it was his original composition. 

The Nanny Trickery

Édouard Nanny

Édouard Nanny

The French double bass player Édouard Nanny (1872-1942) was a long-time professor at the Paris Conservatory. He penned an important collection of pedagogical works and gained some international exposure as a composer during his lifetime, but he was really only popular in France. Among his most famous works are a Concerto in E minor, and a Concerto in A major attributed to the Italian double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846).

The basic story is a familiar one by now. Nanny supposedly discovered a manuscript of the concerto in the British Museum Library, however, no such manuscript could ever be found. The answer to the Nanny trickery might be located in his friendship with Stuart Sankey, an important double bass pedagogue. When Sankey needed a work for double bass that could be sold quickly Nanny agreed, and he provided his Concerto in E minor under his own name. Since Nanny was not really famous as a composer, the work did not sell and the two accomplices decided to publish another concerto by Nanny, but this time attributed to Domenico Dragonetti. The “Dragonetti” concerto became immediately popular, but as you can hear, it has stylistically very little in common with Dragonetti’s music. 

The Michel Deceit

Winfried Michel

Winfried Michel

The German recorder player, composer, and editor of music Winfried Michel has published a number of compositions under his own name. In addition, he also published numerous pieces in the style of the early 18th century under the pseudonym Giovanni Paolo Simonetti. However, his main claim to fame was the supposed discovery of six long-lost piano sonatas by Joseph Haydn in 1993. In fact, Michel managed to convince the noted Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon and Paul and Eva Badura-Skoda that an important Haydn discovery was at hand.

Supposedly, the works are based on the opening bars of six lost Haydn works, found in an old thematic index. The sonatas were published in 1995 as works by Haydn, “supplemented and edited by Winfried Michel.” “Some of the finest sonatas by Haydn,” however, turned out to be a rather clever pastiche. For a commentator in the New York Times, this raised some pretty big questions. “If these pieces are good enough to be thought to be by Haydn, then aren’t they valuable on their own terms? Or is it only because of the aura of Haydn’s authorship and historical context that they become meaningful? In which case, what is our criteria for judging the immanent qualities of musical works? Why can’t works of brilliant pastiche be as good as the “real” thing, and valued as much by musical culture.

The Dushkin Con

Samuel Dushkin

Samuel Dushkin

The Polish-American violinist and composer Samuel Dushkin (1891-1976) initially studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, and with Leopold Auer and Fritz Kreisler. He collaborated closely with Igor Stravinsky on the Violin Concerto, and Stravinsky also composed his Duo Concertante and his Divertimento to play with Dushkin on concert tours. Dushkin also gave the premiere of the orchestral version of Ravel’s Tzigane, and William Schuman composed a dedicated violin concerto for him.

Like other violinists of his time, Dushkin published countless arrangements and transcriptions for violin and piano. As an editor and arranger, he also published a “Sicilienne for strings and clavier” by the blind Maria Theresia von Paradis, and a “Grave for violin and orchestra” by Johann Georg Benda. Most likely both works had actually been composed by Dushkin, who only took credit as the editor. The obvious motive might well have been to increase sales, and with the attribution to the lesser-known Paradis and Benda, the works certainly didn’t raise red flags as might have been the case with an attribution to Haydn or Mozart. Dushkin never admitted his authorship, so there might still be some room for discussion. 

The Goldstein Revenge

Mykailo Goldstein/Nikolay Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky: Symphony No. 21

Mykailo Goldstein/Nikolay Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky: Symphony No. 21

Ukrainian-born violinist, conductor and composer Mykailo Goldstein (1917-1989) gave his first public concert performance at the age of eight, but after an injury to his left hand, he turned to teaching and composition. One of his compositions, a Fantasy on Ukrainian themes got savaged by a critic who claimed that “Jews could never understand Ukrainian culture and have no right to use it.” Apparently, Goldstein replied that Beethoven also used Ukrainian themes in his Razumovsky Quartets, to which the same critic replied “Beethoven was not a Jew.”

To prove the critic wrong, Goldstein invented the Ukrainian composer Nikolay Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky and provided him with a detailed biography. Supposedly, Kulikovsky came from an aristocratic family, and in 1809 he composed a Symphonie No. 21 in G minor, with an inscription “for the dedication of Odessa Theatre.” Goldstein announced the discovery of the manuscript, and it immediately caused a great deal of excitement in Soviet musical circles. Here, after all, was proof that the Ukraine had produced a composer comparable to Joseph Haydn. It was performed by major orchestras and conductors, and the work and fictitious composer were included in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia. Goldstein was shocked that his hoax went undiscovered, and came forward to claim the work as his own. The initial reaction from the authorities was even more shocking, as it concluded that neither Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky nor Goldstein had written the symphony. It actually took a criminal investigation in the late 1950s to confirm Goldstein’s authorship. 

The Vavilov Mystification

Giulio Caccini/Vladimir Vavilov

Giulio Caccini/Vladimir Vavilov

Vladimir Vavilov (1925-1973) was a Russian guitarist, lutenist and composer. A student at the Rimski-Korsakov Music College in Leningrad, he was highly active as a performer, and also as a music editor of a state music publishing house. Most importantly, however, he was also an accomplished and gifted composer. Vavilov had a great sense of humour as he routinely ascribed his own works to other composers, usually masters from the Renaissance or Baroque.

Vavilov composed the “Ave Maria” around 1970, and he himself published and recorded the piece on the Melodiya label. At that point, the work was ascribed to “Anonymous.” It is generally believed that organist Mark Shakhin, one of the performers on the original Melodiya LP, first ascribed the work to early Baroque master Giulio Caccini after Vavilov’s death. In no time, the piece became a worldwide mega-hit. As to the reason for this mystification, Vavilov’s daughter Tamara explained, “My father was convinced that the self-taught works of unknown composers with the trivial name “Vavilov” would never be published. But he really wanted his music to reach the audience and he went so far as to give all the glory to medieval composers and unknown authors.”

Friday, July 14, 2023

Famous Quotes from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

by Hermione Lai, Interlude 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

If we can trust current scholarly opinion, Mozart was a distinguished letter writer. In fact, he is described as “the most eloquent among musicians of his time.” During his travels he was a faithful correspondent, he wrote loving letters to his wife, and long money-seeking letters to friends and patrons. And as we all know, he also wrote some rather naughty letters to his cousin. As an artist profoundly inspired by the theatre, Mozart was an exceptional judge of character. And his letters are not “exotic discoveries suitable for being marveled at in a distant cabinet, but are bearers of communications.” 

The Mozart letters are full of both trivial and important observations about the people he met, comments on the reactions to his music, satirical remarks on incompetent professions, thoughts on other composers, the process of performing, and his own methods of composition. But writing a blog on famous quotes from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is not so easy. His use of language, his “use of dialect, semantics, and phonology can be difficult for the 21st-century readers to fully understand.” Nevertheless, here are some famous quotes from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that present an informal and intimately detailed portrait of a genius.

“Nothing is more enjoyable than a quiet life and to obtain that, one must be industrious”

Mozart's letters

Mozart’s letters

As he wrote to his wife on 8 October 1791, Mozart was probably longing for a life exclusively dedicated to music, without all that financial stuff. He did have a habit of exaggerating his financial difficulties, but he certainly liked fine clothing, expensive apartments, and enjoyed living beyond his means. Some commentators have suggested that he might well have had a gambling problem as well. But one thing is for sure, he was incredibly industrious as a composer. The amount and quality of music composed during his short life is simply staggering. He left us roughly 800 works in virtually every genre of his time of the highest possible quality imaginable. 

“Friends who have no religion cannot be long our friends”

Mozart was baptized a Catholic, and the church played an important role in his life. He was raised in a strict religious household with his father enforcing family prayer, fasting, the veneration of saints, regular attendance at mass, and frequent confession. In the words of Leopold Mozart, “God must come first! From his hands, we receive our temporal happiness and our eternal salvation.”

It is hardly surprising that the above famous quote from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart originates in a letter written to his father in 1782. However, Mozart’s relationship to religion was ambivalent, and his famous quote does not provide reliable information about his convictions but is probably a disguise in order to please his father. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t compose some of the most spiritual and devotional religious music in existence. 

“Constanze is not ugly, but anything but beautiful; all her beauty consists of two little black eyes and a handsome figure”

Constanze Mozart

Constanze Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married Constanze Weber on 4 August 1782. Their courtship had not been smooth, and the relationship faced stiff opposition from Leopold Mozart. Leopold did not consider Constanze a good match for his son and didn’t want the marriage to go ahead. A good many letters went back and forth, with Mozart praising the talents of his love and Leopold refusing to let his mind be changed.

It probably didn’t help that the couple moved in together before they were married, making it a real disgrace for the time. Her mother threatened to call the police if she didn’t return home. In the end, Leopold could not prevent the marriage and in order to save face, his consent arrived in the mail one day after the happy event. 

“To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman might sing it”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart always placed great emphasis on elegant, natural, and singing melodies. He always wanted to communicate through melody. Mozart was essentially an operatic composer, and that particular style carried over into his instrumental works as well. In order to effectively perform Mozart’s music, we need to think like an opera singer but with simplicity of melody that can be easily sung by a coachman as well. In a related famous quote, Mozart wrote, “Melody is the essence of music.”

Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri

To be sure, Mozart melodies are some of the most memorable pieces of music ever written. Mozart melodies are frequently described as flowing and beautiful, with an unmatched lightness and elegance. Some writers compare them to the sounds of a flowing river or the gentle flutter of a butterfly’s wing. But while they are light and airy, they have deep emotional qualities. Mozart’s melodies have a way of touching the soul and stirring emotions. Remember the Salieri movie, when the jealous composer commented upon hearing a Mozart melody that he had heard the voice of God? 

“It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a true child prodigy, and he is very often considered an exceptional and singular musical genius. As a performer, he quickly acquired superstar status and began to compose at the tender age of five. He completed his first symphony before celebrating his eighth birthday and finished his first opera by the age of twelve. And while his natural ability is undisputed, he remained a student throughout his life.

The Mozart family playing chamber music

The Mozart family playing chamber music

Mozart unrelentingly integrated, synthesized, and transformed stylistic and musical conventions to produce compositions of universal appeal and stunning individuality. There simply seems to have been no genre or compositional technique in which Mozart was not comfortable. Mozart certainly worked on his compositional craft after he moved to Vienna, and for the first time saw musical manuscripts by J.S. Bach and Handel. He immediately started a concentrated study of counterpoint and began to improvise fugues in the style of Bach. And it was the synthesis of the Classical and learned styles of music that made the true genius of Mozart’s music. 

“How popular I would be if I were to lift the national German stage to recognition in music!”

Music had always played an essential role in the daily lives of Habsburg royalty. However, music at court and the opera had been dominated by the highly popular Italian style. However, Emperor Joseph II was eager to challenge that convention by advocating the “Singspiel,” a German-language music drama. His push for an autonomous German opera brought Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in direct competition with Antonio Salieri. Salieri was a well-respected star, and Mozart was the new kid in town when the Emperor challenged both composers to write an opera on the same subject, one in the Italian style and the other taking up the challenge for German opera.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Stage set for the Queen of the Night (in Mozart's Magic Flute)

Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Stage set for the Queen of the Night (in Mozart’s Magic Flute)

It wasn’t much of a competition as Salieri’s Prima la Musica, poi le Parole (First the Music and then the Words) in the fashionable Italian style, soundly defeated Mozart’s Schauspieldirector (The Impresario). The plan of the Emperor, who was hoping for Mozart and German opera to win the day, failed badly that evening. However, Mozart soon demonstrated his mastery of both genres with Le nozze di Figaro and the Magic Flute. And in the end, of course, he did accomplish what he set out to do in his famous quote. 

“I care very little for Salzburg and not at all for the archbishop; I shit on both of them”

The city of Salzburg has always been a small but pretentious provincial town. A few selected families got very rich from the salt trade, and they controlled and dominated virtually all aspects of civic and ecclesiastical life. That ruling civic elite had very little interest in having a gifted composer interfere with their conservative practices. Mozart was the musical servant of Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo, and he was well aware of Mozart’s distaste for the city and for his own person.

Hieronymus von Colloredo (1732-1812), Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg

Hieronymus von Colloredo (1732-1812), Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg

The Archbishop became exceptionally annoyed with Mozart’s frequent absences resulting in a number of heated arguments. Breaking with the Archbishop was not going to be easy, and Mozart lobbied and even begged his father for support. He wanted to be a freelance musician, and was rightfully tired of being “spoken to as if I had been some miserable beggar.” Their working contract was resolved in May 1781, when the chief chamberlain delivered a swift kick to Mozart’s backside. Isn’t it ironic that present-day Salzburg continues to reap the financial rewards of a relationship that never existed? 

“Death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived during a period of history when high mortality was simply a fact of life. Several of his siblings died in childhood, and the union of Wolfgang and Constanze produced six children, but only two survived infancy. Wolfgang was deeply affected by the death of his father, and his mother died of a long and painful illness. His own health had started to deteriorate at the age of five. He suffered from rheumatism, which frequently caused kidney infections that confined him to bed.

Austria, Vienna, St. Marx Cemetery, The gravestone of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Austria, Vienna, St. Marx Cemetery, The gravestone of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart had plenty of time to consider his own mortality, and he writes, “I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death’s image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity… of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that, young as I am, I may not live to see another day.” 

“Shit in your bed and make it burst”

The nine surviving letters by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart are known as the “Bäsle Letters.” She was the daughter of one of the brothers of Mozart’s father Leopold, and in his letters Mozart famously uses direct and frank language, which is sometimes drastically vulgar and spiced with anal-erotic fantasies. This kind of scatological humor has puzzled scholars, and more recently, it is claimed to originate in psychiatric conditions from which Mozart supposedly suffered.

A drawing by Mozart in his Basel Letters to her cousin Maria Anna Thekla

A drawing by Mozart in his Basel Letters to her cousin Maria Anna Thekla

For some commentators, “Mozart was able for a moment to forget the continuous pressures of an uncertain future, and allowed his light-hearted and humorous side of his character to come through.” One thing for sure, “these letters embarrass us, and we have tried to suppress them, trivialize them, or explain them away with pathological excuses.” It might well be that 18th-century scatological humor was far more public and mainstream, and it might well have suggested a political dimension. In a letter to his father, he describes the aristocrats present at a concert in Augsburg as “Duchess Smackarse, Countess Pleasurepisser, the Princess Stinkmess, and the two Princes Potbelly von Pigdick.” 

“What’s even worse than a flute? – Two flutes!”

We still don’t know for certain if this famous quote can be wholly attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. However, we do know that he did not like the sound of the solo flute and found it difficult to compose for the instrument. As he was struggling to fulfill a commission for the wealthy amateur flautist he truly loathed, he writes to his father. “I never have a quiet hour here… besides, one is not always in the mood for working. I could certainly scribble things the whole day long, but when a composition of this kind goes out into the world, naturally I do not want to be ashamed of my name on the title page. Moreover, you know I am quite powerless to write for an instrument (the flute) which I cannot bear.”

As we might well imagine, countless famous quotes by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have been misattributed. I guess, if you are famous and dead, people are ever so happy to put words in your mouth. What is your favorite Mozart quote?