It’s Mozart’s 250th birthday today and what a grand old age to reach! So the BBC’s website asks its readers “Was Mozart the greatest musical genius?”, and I for one would like to add my two cents worth. Assessing the greatness of anything, and in particular people, is a risky business. After all what kind of unit is a ‘great’?
A brief diversion on the “What is ‘great’” topic for you all:
Mozart wrote a shed load of music in 35 years. Haydn wrote nearly four times the amount of Mozart in 70 years. Therefore where great = quantity of musical output, Haydn > Mozart.
That’s not going to work… What’s that saying; quality not quantity.
So, what if great = quality of musical output? Quality in any art form is usually loosely based on the number of people who appreciate, enjoy and like said art work. According to something I read a couple of weeks ago, if you ask people to name a classical composer they are most likely to say Mozart. Therefore, if a high percentage of people say Mozart, Mozart is the greatest.
Again, this doesn’t appear to satisfy.
So here are my rules for calmly and level-headedly assessing the life and time of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, remember them, and they will serve you well in surviving this day of Mozart-based madness…
1. The first rule of music history is that it is the historians chose whose lives to record
Mozart had a prolific letter writing habit that he picked up during his extensive travels in both childhood and adulthood. Largely thanks to these letters his life is unusually easy to document. In fact, you can buy a book of all his own and his family’s letters, it’s about 1000 pages long and printed on what I would term ‘bible paper’ (you know, the very thin stuff). No other composer of that era has left behind such a wonderful primary source for historians to work with. However, reading between the lines is necessary with this tome because a fairly large quantity of the letters say nothing whatsoever about music. And it is this reading between the lines that causes some documenters of Mozart’s life to take liberties (read Charles Hazelwood, but that’s an entirely different blog). All this is beside the point. Essentially Mozart has been chosen to be great because he left behind a wealth of information, relevant or not, for historians to play with. This should be the first thing anyone studying music should be told.
2. The second rule of music history is that making nice with Baron von Swieten is handy
The Baron von Swieten, ah, bless his soul! Without him Mozart’s work would have probably sat locked in a dusty corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire waiting for some unassuming musician to give it a turn. Baron von Swieten is instrumental in all of the following events; firstly, performing Mozart’s works post-death, secondly, for giving Beethoven enough money to cut and run from traditional patronage arrangements (something that music historians will tell you led to trail-blazing creativity - there is some truth in this), and thirdly, for building interest around the music of JS Bach, a torch later carried and run with by Mendelssohn. Well done, Herr von Swieten. Just think of all those dusty manuscripts that are still sitting in the furthest corner of the former empire and have never been heard.
3. The third rule of music history is that it’s better to burn out than to fade away
Perhaps more evidence of this syndrome in the popular music canon, but many people speculate about what could have been, if Mozart had continued to write music in the early C19th, and if he’d finished his requiem mass. Mozart is documented as being a bit of a wild child; again how much of this is true is open to interpretation. No one really knows how he died; was it syphilis, or a bad pork chop? Did he have Tourette’s syndrome? As Milos Forman will have us believe, was he an alcoholic? Adulation of the young, tortured musician seems to capture everyone’s imagination; Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Buckley, Ian Curtis, WA Mozart…
In summary (although the summary is looking longer than the actual blog):
Genius and greatness are two heavily loaded terms that should be used with maximum caution. Greatest should emphatically never be used. Yes, Mozart was prolific, in a short life, and he had his achievements, but the greatest? I personally think there is no greatest, in anything. As an aside, this is why everyone loves those “Top 100″ programmes, because it gives you something to agree or disagree with. Humans have this wonderful habit of never being able to 100% agree with one another, which does make the world an interesting place. To summarise Mozart you could say something like, “there is an element of greatness to Mozart’s brief but bright musical career.” That would be fair.
“History is bunk” to quote Henry Ford. Whilst I don’t entirely agree with Mr Ford, it is important to remember that the reason one person is lauded over and above another usually comes down to some fairly basic and unfair selection criteria. Mozart left more behind, because he travelled a great deal, and he left a lot of information in the hands of a powerful patron of the arts. Unfair, but convenient.
Never believe Charles Hazelwood, well occasionally you can, but it’s just safer to disregard the ‘evidence’ he supplies.
One of my favourite pieces of Mozart information, and a brilliant musical achievement, is that he was instrumental in inventing and popularising German language opera. Quite logically, he couldn’t understand why all these German-speaking Austrians wanted to go and see operas sung in Italian. So, against the wishes of his patron (the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire), he just went wrote and opera in German. You go Mozart, next stop Wagner…
Ignore anything you read about the ‘Mozart Effect’ (click here for a decent overview). I know plenty of really clever people who were reared on hairspray rock, 80s cheese, and either still don’t listen to classical music or were only introduced to the genre later in life. This is total nonsense. Anyone interested in joining me for a ceremonial burning of the latest Classic FM money spinner?
And finally, any writings in the field of music rely heavily on opinion, so feel free to entirely disregard the entirity of the above. If you love your Mozart and are willing to give him the title of ‘greatest musical genius’ please post with opinions.
Much like Beethoven, I am having trouble finishing this, so one last thought… Happy Birthday Mozart! Much of your music gives me great pleasure, however Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is frankly a bit under par for you…
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