[lbo-talk] Re: Happy Birthday Mozart

[Tim Francis-Wright]

andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> Symphonies 40 and 41 have real depth, as do many of
> the piano sonatas and some of the violin sonatas, I
> can remember the numbers right now. Unlike most people
> I really like Glenn Gould's deconstruction of the
> piano sonatas -- sort of Mozart on speed. I like the
> operas, all the way from The Magic Flute to Don
> Giovanni.
> 
> --- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>John Lacny wrote:
>>
>>
>>> As the saying goes, had Mozart lived another 

 >>> ten years, he would have invented Beethoven.
>>
>>I was joking in part, but really, I'm with Adorno,
>>it's all about development, which is why Beethoven's 

 >>so great. When I hear Mozart I hear pleasant tunes,

 >>but not much to chew on. I don't think he'd have
>>been Bach, if he'd lived 70 years earlier; more
>>likely Vivaldi.

I second the recommendations of those two symphonies--and his Requiem, 
Coronation Mass, and Mass in C minor all have an awful lot to chew on. 
But even discounting all that, history is littered with composers who 
would loved even fleeting comparison to Vivaldi.

What is particularly awe-inspiring about Mozart's symphonies 39 through 
41 is that it took him all of two months to write them (Handel's 
lightning-fast composition of The Messiah is in the same league).

--tim francis-wright
"It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already 
been dead for a year."  -- Tom Lehrer (at age 36)