November 29, 2006
I know this is an odd way to start out, but I wanted to begin this blog with a reminder: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a real person who lived from 1756 to 1791. It’s true. He’s not just a name on the front of a book or a CD, not just some guy with a wig we study in Music Appreciation classes. He was an actual living, breathing human being, with a heart beating in his chest, blood coursing through his veins, and ideassome of them probably unrelated to music!running through his head. Why am I telling you this? Because audiences can easily forget that composers were real people, with foibles and insecurities and, yes, secrets. This blog, then, is dedicated to tell you, the audience, about some of the stories behind the great names. And I’m also here to remind you that real people, not gods nor angels, composed those beautiful, lofty pieces of music that move the soul.
Ask the average person what they know of Mozart and you may hear recollections from the film Amadeus. He was a child prodigy, some will say. He played blindfolded for kings and queens when he was just a boy! Others will remember the loud laugh actor Tom Hulce provided at regular intervals, or the crudeness Mozart seems to have delighted in displaying. Still others might recall the troubled relationship with Leopold or the fictional story of Salieri’s plan to undo Mozart. Younger audience members might explain that Bart played Mozart and Lisa played rival composer Salieri on an episode of the Simpsons. Bart’s Mozart was a talented performer, but also arrogant and obnoxious, his last words: “Eat my pantaloons!
Mozart was, of course, more than just a character. Certainly, some of the attributes we see in Mozart the character are true of Mozart the man. He was a dynamic performer and excelled at improvisation. He enjoyed scatological humor and often spoke very plainly and bluntly about his opinions. He wrote a great deal of music in his short life, starting with the simple explorations of classical forms in his youth to the more mature and complex writing of his twenties and thirties. His father schooled him in the ways of finding patrons, but Wolfgang thirsted for artistic freedom and chafed against the patronage system which seemed, in his estimation, to reduce him to the status of trained pony.
Mozart composed the four concertos on the November 12 program over the span of a decade. He was twenty years old when he wrote the first of them, Concerto No. 7 in F Major for Three Pianos, K. 242, and he was thirty when he finished the last, Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491. Through these four works, we can see an artist who begins his twenties by writing for prominent families and serving the Archbishop Colloredo in provincial Salzburg and who, ten years later, turns thirty in Vienna, an autonomous composer in the musical center of the world.
After he wrote Concerto No. 7 in 1776, Mozart traveled to Mannheim, Paris, and Munich (1777-81). When the Archbishop of Salzburg called Mozart to Vienna in 1781, certainly the young composer envisioned a new era in which he could gradually be released from his service to Colloredo. Alas, Mozartas a musician his status was somewhere between the cooks and valetswas obligated to stay with the Archbishop’s group until he finally procured his freedom. Mozart wrote his father that, after being refused dismissal a number of times, the Archbishop finally let him go, “with a kick on my arse. Mozart was then free to write works like Concerto Nos. 12 and 24 for himself, the latter almost certainly for the instrumental concert season of Lent (the piece was composed in March of 1786).
Freedom came at a price, of course, and Mozart gave lessons to make ends meet between commissions. Although he wrote successful and popular operas and played many concerts of his music, financial difficulties plagued him and his family for the remainder of his life. When his life ended in 1791, that human being who had lived and breathed and slept and eaten, was laid to rest in a simple grave with other, anonymous souls. The music lives on, however, clichéd as that may sound. And when we come together to listen to it, we celebrate the life that was and the music that is.
3 comments
The way you make Mozart so human and relatable through both your style of writing and choice of words in this small piece has a certain poetry to it. At the very least, it is quite impressive indeed. I am not, nor have I ever been, a professed fan of classical music or musicians. But after reading this? You make me feel like maybe I could be.
I'm glad that my first commenter has seen something positive in this blog. I find that Classical music is much more enjoyable when you know there was an actual person behind it. So, many thanks to the person behind Comment #1. I hope you discover the many joys of Mozart and the other men and women we feature at LACO concerts!
lovely...