Enough Mozart Already
I am not at all sure that I have the courage to post this message. Looking back over my life, I have held no opinions of which I am deeply ashamed, nor even, given a reasonably rational audience, opinions which I fear might cause significant damage to befall my person.
There are many ideas out there that should be a source of shame, and without doubt soon will be. The idea that animals are not conscious and do not have emotions. The idea that poverty is a fair judgment upon the poor. Those sorts of things. But some ideas, much less provocative, can hardly be broached without moving distinctly beyond the pale. I suppose I should quit waffling, brace myself, and get to the point:
Mozart was a very good composer who wrote a lot of excellent music, but he wasn’t God.
There. I’ve said it. That’s all. I’m not knocking him. Look, I am only offering a corrective. Not saying anything evil. Just striving for a more normal balance.
But in most musical circles, if you offer any remote hint that you’re not interested in groveling on your knees at the Mozart shrine, there are startled stares, sidelong glances, lost opportunities, wrecked lives, starving children, betrayed heritages, collapsing civilizations, opera houses laid waste in ruin and a general suspicion that, to use an ultimate British condemnation - you are “not sound.” Whenever I have ventured anything close to this thought in company, (only two occasions that I can recall) reactions tended to be as I describe, plus a few people taking me quietly aside and wondering how the heck I plucked up the courage to say any such thing.
What is it with Mozart? Why all these “Mostly Mozart” “Mainly Mozart” “Even More Mozart” “Mozart Coming out of the Wazhoo” festivals everywhere? Does everybody love Mozart that much? The so-called Mozart Effect, (listening to Mozart makes trigonometric algebra easy) has now been totally discredited as a cynical fraud. Yet it is still on the law of some states that all new mothers MUST be issued with Mozart CDs. !!!! Excuse me?
Personally, I like my music to go BANG now and again, and Mozart mainly goes “ping!” Mozart ain’t raunchy. No reason he should be, of course, no reason at all, absolutely none, but, well… Doesn’t anybody else feel that, at least in certain moods, at certain times, (note: I am backpedaling like crazy) for certain elements of life - Mozart and his style are.. .. .. wimpy? Too damned nice. Too safe.
I whimsically imagine an “Enough Mozart Already!” festival. The only programming rule would be - no Mozart. Beethoven if you absolutely must. Even Haydn to pay off the Mozartola debts. Bach in big dense globs. Even maybe, occasionally, a bit of absolute utter garbage like Liszt or Rimsky or Gluck or, for the intellectuals, Reger. And some really maudlin sentimental gratuitous emotion just hanging out there in the air - Ravel, Delius, Rubinstein, Delius, Fauré, Rachmaninoff, Delius, Grainger. Bruckner! (My goodness, what a weirdo! Keep him away from your daughters. Don’t be taken in by all that prayer. There’s lust hiding in those rigid stones. Cathedrals built from frustrated gonads.) Stravinsky. Frank Zappa.
The thing that first grabbed me about music when I was a kid of four was that it sounded strange: sad, sentimental, fearful, nostalgic, sparkling, puzzling. Purcell, Webern, Puccini, Sibelius, Nono, Wagner, more Wagner except for the dull bits. Mahler by virtue of his relentless self-parody.
Mozart, to me, does not sound strange. Mozart sounds exactly the way it ought to sound. I guess that’s what a lot of people like about him. So I suppose, in the end, all that I am saying is: - - - oh, never mind.
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There are many ideas out there that should be a source of shame, and without doubt soon will be. The idea that animals are not conscious and do not have emotions. The idea that poverty is a fair judgment upon the poor. Those sorts of things. But some ideas, much less provocative, can hardly be broached without moving distinctly beyond the pale. I suppose I should quit waffling, brace myself, and get to the point:
Mozart was a very good composer who wrote a lot of excellent music, but he wasn’t God.
There. I’ve said it. That’s all. I’m not knocking him. Look, I am only offering a corrective. Not saying anything evil. Just striving for a more normal balance.
But in most musical circles, if you offer any remote hint that you’re not interested in groveling on your knees at the Mozart shrine, there are startled stares, sidelong glances, lost opportunities, wrecked lives, starving children, betrayed heritages, collapsing civilizations, opera houses laid waste in ruin and a general suspicion that, to use an ultimate British condemnation - you are “not sound.” Whenever I have ventured anything close to this thought in company, (only two occasions that I can recall) reactions tended to be as I describe, plus a few people taking me quietly aside and wondering how the heck I plucked up the courage to say any such thing.
What is it with Mozart? Why all these “Mostly Mozart” “Mainly Mozart” “Even More Mozart” “Mozart Coming out of the Wazhoo” festivals everywhere? Does everybody love Mozart that much? The so-called Mozart Effect, (listening to Mozart makes trigonometric algebra easy) has now been totally discredited as a cynical fraud. Yet it is still on the law of some states that all new mothers MUST be issued with Mozart CDs. !!!! Excuse me?
Personally, I like my music to go BANG now and again, and Mozart mainly goes “ping!” Mozart ain’t raunchy. No reason he should be, of course, no reason at all, absolutely none, but, well… Doesn’t anybody else feel that, at least in certain moods, at certain times, (note: I am backpedaling like crazy) for certain elements of life - Mozart and his style are.. .. .. wimpy? Too damned nice. Too safe.
I whimsically imagine an “Enough Mozart Already!” festival. The only programming rule would be - no Mozart. Beethoven if you absolutely must. Even Haydn to pay off the Mozartola debts. Bach in big dense globs. Even maybe, occasionally, a bit of absolute utter garbage like Liszt or Rimsky or Gluck or, for the intellectuals, Reger. And some really maudlin sentimental gratuitous emotion just hanging out there in the air - Ravel, Delius, Rubinstein, Delius, Fauré, Rachmaninoff, Delius, Grainger. Bruckner! (My goodness, what a weirdo! Keep him away from your daughters. Don’t be taken in by all that prayer. There’s lust hiding in those rigid stones. Cathedrals built from frustrated gonads.) Stravinsky. Frank Zappa.
The thing that first grabbed me about music when I was a kid of four was that it sounded strange: sad, sentimental, fearful, nostalgic, sparkling, puzzling. Purcell, Webern, Puccini, Sibelius, Nono, Wagner, more Wagner except for the dull bits. Mahler by virtue of his relentless self-parody.
Mozart, to me, does not sound strange. Mozart sounds exactly the way it ought to sound. I guess that’s what a lot of people like about him. So I suppose, in the end, all that I am saying is: - - - oh, never mind.
posted by Andrew Massey | Saturday, January 08, 2005
2 Comments:
Nice blog
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I completely respect your opinions on ole' Mozart. But I wanted to say it was exactly this sense of 'strange mystery' that first sucked me in to his music. There are so many moments when his music, often through combination and contrast of direct, but brilliant ideas, somewhere teases a stitch of reality for me.. just cuts through the very core of existence. Intensely and deeply mysterious to me. Especially in the Operas. I have to say the Operas have been a bit of a Rosetta’s stone for me, and have enabled me to connect with so much of his music at a spiritual level.
I'd venture to say that many Mozart lovers agree with me, and that people who find his music simply harmless and nice are missing much of the point. He rarely made his music directly 'violent', as he saw that as tasteless. He expresses violence in his own way. e.g. that old warhorse Queen of the Night second aria. That coloratura as an expression of the deepest rage is simply brilliant to me. How many composers would simply let out a shriek of some sort, remaining in D minor? But Mozart expresses the violence symbolically, with major harmony, and the simplest orchestral support, just three puffs behind the vocals. And it works! It expresses the violence mixed with pride and jealousy and sexual attraction and everything all at once. Brilliant.
In that sense, I think that that Mozart is both an easy and difficult composer. He’s easy to listen to frivolously because, as you say, it sounds ‘right’. However, at the same time I find him a very difficult composer, as it is difficult to penetrate the surface into the spiritual core. But after doing so, as Schumann said, the music sounds fresher with each listen.
Granted, he isn’t the be all and end all of music, but I never get enough. Please write me at rjanini01@mckenna.edu if you wish to continue this discussion or any other.
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