Was Mozart really "flawless" in composition?
Dave Dalle
> Here's a question for musicologists and/or Mozart fans: we all know the
> cliche about Mozart writing down his works directly from his brain,
> without any revisions or mistakes. But...is it literally true? I know
> he did not "struggle" with a work the way some seemed to (Beethoven,
> Bruckner) but can anyone give an example of a piece that Mozart revised,
> corrected, or modified in any significant way? Which was Mozart's
> "hardest" composition to compose?
It is mostly true, and as a general rule I think it is true. There are
exceptions though. His quartets dedicated to Haydn caused him some
difficulty. maybe because there was the concious effort to impress Haydn?
Music was much 'easier' to compose during the 18th century as well, due
largely to the esthetics and the reason 'for' composing music. If the
Romantic ideal is the spontaneous outburst of powerful feelings; you have
to wait for the urges. Also, if, in the 18th century you are required to
write some trifle (a serenade for example), for you patron's dinner party
the next eve, you simply churn out something pleasing. It's quite a bit
different if you are attempting to establish mankind's place in all of
existence with your symphony. It was part of Haydn's and Mozart's genius
that when required to churn out music quickly and mechanically, they
produced such masterpieces. Think of a classical era composer as a modern
commercial composer (writing music for tv, commercials etc.)
There is also a lot of technical reasons why. Classical era music was
very simple structurally compared to Romantic music.
But none of this is intended to disparage Mozart's (or Haydn's) absolute
genius.
Dave
--
The wonderful thing about Tiggers, Is Tiggers are wonderful things
Their Tops are made of rubber, and their bottoms are made out of springs
They're bouncy, trouncy, bouncy, flouncy, fun fun fun fun fun!
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Lyle Neff
mostly, I think) that break off, say, at the beginning of the
development and were never finished (although some scholars have
completed them). Apparently there were times when Mozart could not
continue a piece, and not simply because he forgot about it or had no
time. Sorry I can't remember what article I ran into about this...
Also, the recently discovered autograph of the Fantasie and Sonata in C
Minor shows significant differences with the received version...
Lyle Neff, ln...@ucs.indiana.edu
http://copper.ucs.indiana.edu/~lneff/home.html
Libretto Homepage
Paul Oberlin
several years to complete and underwent many revisions. In his dedication, he called them,"the
fruit of a long and laborious effort" (I'm quoting from memory, so it probably isn't entirely
correct, but you get the gist). So yes, Mozart did ocassionally have to work a bit at his
some of compositions.
Paul Oberlin
Cedric
his "Musical Joke"?
John-Michael Albert
irregular phrases all over the place, some incredibly insipid material
(I suspect he was characaturing [sp?] a contemporary), the most obvious
mistakes include that he didn't transpose the horns correctly in the
minuet (so they are horribly dissonant) and there is that train wreck in
the string writing in the final chords.
Mike
Mario Taboada
answer is yes: already in his teens he had an incredible mastery of
the technical aspects of music, including an uncanny knowledge of
harmony. At a deeper level, "flawless" can be interpreted as working
only with the best materials, and hitting upon the best tools to
develop and present those materials. He did a lot of that, of course
(as his several dozen absolute masterpieces show) - but, due in part
to having to put bread on the table, he also produced many works which
are finely crafted without being particularly deep. One thing he
was incapable of doing, though: he could not write anything but
beautiful music, even in instances when his contact with the muse
was via telnet.
Regards,
--
Mario Taboada \\"The trouble with truth is its many varieties"\\
* Department of Mathematics * University of Southern California * Los Angeles
e-mail: tab...@mtha.usc.edu
Roger Lustig
>alnet.com!not-for-mail
>From: cn3...@treasure.coastalnet.com (Matthew Rave)
>Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
>Subject: Was Mozart really "flawless" in composition?
>Date: 2 Oct 1995 13:16:34 -0400
>Organization: Global Information Exchange Corp.
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>Message-ID: <44p6pi$j...@abaco.coastalnet.com>
>NNTP-Posting-Host: abaco.coastalnet.com
>Keywords: Mozart,composer
>Here's a question for musicologists and/or Mozart fans: we all know the
>cliche about Mozart writing down his works directly from his brain,
>without any revisions or mistakes. But...is it literally true? I know
No. There's no evidence for it; the only "source" was discredited
as a forgery over a hundred years ago. But people wanted to believe it.
Mozart made plenty of sketches, drafts, revisions, and fragments.
He also composed at the piano; i.e., a lot of composition happened
before he put pen to paper, but it was heavily revised by then.
>he did not "struggle" with a work the way some seemed to (Beethoven,
>Bruckner) but can anyone give an example of a piece that Mozart revised,
>corrected, or modified in any significant way?
Prague Symphony. There's a fascinating sheet of sketches.
Magic Flute. Lots of corrections in the full score.
C minor piano concerto. Ditto.
>Which was Mozart's "hardest" composition to compose?
Hard to say. The Beethoven myth includes the many sketchbooks he
kept; we don't *have* many of Mozart's sketches, but there's no
reason to believe he kept them all. The Prague must have cost
him some sweat.
There's a letter from Mozart to his father that says, in effect,
"People don't realize how hard I work." Still true!
Roger
Roger Lustig
>Matthew Rave (cn3...@treasure.coastalnet.com) writes:
>> Here's a question for musicologists and/or Mozart fans: we all know the
>> cliche about Mozart writing down his works directly from his brain,
>> without any revisions or mistakes. But...is it literally true? I know
>> Bruckner) but can anyone give an example of a piece that Mozart revised,
>> "hardest" composition to compose?
>It is mostly true, and as a general rule I think it is true.
Not in the least. The existence of a relatively clean autograph in
no way precludes extensive revision, experimentation, etc. at earlier
stages.
>There are
>exceptions though. His quartets dedicated to Haydn caused him some
>difficulty. maybe because there was the concious effort to impress Haydn?
A lot of his music caused him some difficulty. Some pieces were put
down for years as fragments, and then continued. (A major concerto,
K.488.) MAny fragments were never finished.
>Music was much 'easier' to compose during the 18th century as well, due
>largely to the esthetics and the reason 'for' composing music. If the
*Which* music?? Stuff like the quartets? I doubt it.
>Romantic ideal is the spontaneous outburst of powerful feelings; you have
>to wait for the urges.
What does this have to do with compositional practice? No composer
actually *did* that; painters and novelists imagined composers working
like that.
>Also, if, in the 18th century you are required to
>write some trifle (a serenade for example), for you patron's dinner party
>the next eve, you simply churn out something pleasing.
Or not, as the case may be. You think Mozart's serenades were written
in one go?
>It's quite a bit
>different if you are attempting to establish mankind's place in all of
>existence with your symphony.
Which only describes a very small portion of Romantic music.
>It was part of Haydn's and Mozart's genius
>that when required to churn out music quickly and mechanically, they
>produced such masterpieces.
Which of their masterpieces were churned out mechanically? I can't
think of any.
>Think of a classical era composer as a modern
>commercial composer (writing music for tv, commercials etc.)
No. Don't do that. It's nowhere near accurate. Haydn and Mozart
certainly didn't work that way, not with their great symphonies,
chamber music, etc.
>There is also a lot of technical reasons why. Classical era music was
>very simple structurally compared to Romantic music.
Uh, say *what*? Romanticism is characterized by the miniature, Classical
music by the sonata style. Even the Romantic sonata form was generally
less complex than the Classical--think Schumann or even Bruckner.
Oh, and Schumann wrote over a hundred songs one year. Mozart never composed
that much music in a year.
>But none of this is intended to disparage Mozart's (or Haydn's) absolute
>genius.
That's as may be, but they didn't churn out music, either.
roger
Roger Lustig
>If you look at the "complete" works, there are some pieces (sonata-form
>mostly, I think) that break off, say, at the beginning of the
>development and were never finished (although some scholars have
>completed them). Apparently there were times when Mozart could not
>continue a piece, and not simply because he forgot about it or had no
>time. Sorry I can't remember what article I ran into about this...
Plenty of fragments. There's a clarinet quintet in B flat that
breaks off three measures into the dev.; the Concerto for Violin,
Piano, and Orch, which breaks off in the solo exposition; the
Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and cello, similarly;
and so on. Alan Tyson's "The Mozart Fragments" (JAMS, Fall 81)
discusses some of these--mainly their paper, for dating purposes.
Some pieces *were*picked up again later, e.g., K.449 and K.488
(piano concerti). There are also lots of short beginnings
that never went much of anywhere.
>Also, the recently discovered autograph of the Fantasie and Sonata in C
>Minor shows significant differences with the received version...
Right!
Roger
Noam Elkies
<jmal...@uh.edu> writes:
>[Mozart] didn't transpose the horns correctly in the minuet
>[Of the Musical Joke] (so they are horribly dissonant)
That remarkable passage is surely a joke at the expense not of
Mozart's contemporary composers but at horn players, whose
instrument is to this day notoriously fickle even in the hands
and lips of the best performers.
>and there is that train wreck in
>the string writing in the final chords.
Another example that Mozart's jokes in this piece were not directed
only at inept composers.
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@math.harvard.edu)
Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
Peter Herweijer
memory. This may have allowed him to a large extent to shape his
compositions in his head, or at the piano, before committing them to
paper. That he revised some of them afterwards, well, that means he
must've been an ordinary mortal, I guess :^)
Just a thought.
- Peter
David Sherman
the score!
Good work Roger!
David
dshe...@panix.com
Gary Valentin
|> Flawless with respect to which standard? If you mean technically, the
|> answer is yes: already in his teens he had an incredible mastery of
|> the technical aspects of music, including an uncanny knowledge of
|> harmony. At a deeper level, "flawless" can be interpreted as working
|> only with the best materials, and hitting upon the best tools to
|> develop and present those materials. He did a lot of that, of course
|> (as his several dozen absolute masterpieces show) - but, due in part
|> to having to put bread on the table, he also produced many works which
|> are finely crafted without being particularly deep. One thing he
|> was incapable of doing, though: he could not write anything but
|> beautiful music, even in instances when his contact with the muse
|> was via telnet.
|>
|> Regards,
|>
|>
|> --
|> Mario Taboada \\"The trouble with truth is its many varieties"\\
|>
MArio, That was so funny I laughed my brains off (the muse thing)
just wanted you to know.
--
Gary (Indiana) Valentin
rud...@vnet.ibm.com
I want to be a door.
David Scharfe
the complexity of music in terms of how fast it was written.
- Dave
(As an aside, one comparison I saw between prolific composers
was based on number of hours of music composed per year
averaged over the number of years the composer was active.
The list had several composers from various periods.
The "winner", hands down, was Franz Schubert, followed by
Mozart and then I believe Telemann. If I can find the reference,
I'll post it).
>==========Roger Lustig, 10/3/95==========
>
>Oh, and Schumann wrote over a hundred songs one year. Mozart
>never composed that much music in a year.
>
>>But none of this is intended to disparage Mozart's (or
Haydn's) absolute
>>genius.
>
>That's as may be, but they didn't churn out music, either.
>
>roger
David Scharfe
AT&T GIS, PSS
david....@columbiasc.attgis.com
Richard Mix
: If I may change the subject, what mistakes did Mozart intentionally write into
: his "Musical Joke"?
I dont have a reference, but there was a paper a few years back
that tied the composition of the work to the death of a beloved pet myna
bird, who is memorialised in the first mouvment.
Richard Mix
(I have changed the followup to r.m.class. only)
Daniel N Leeson
and parallel octaves by including them deliberately in the Musical Joke
The composition to which you are referring which has a tune as sung by
Mozart's canary is not the Musical Joke but is a piano concerto whose
last movement uses the tune.
Dan Leeson
Roger Lustig
>Richard Mix (em...@netcom.com) wrote:
>: Cedric (cker...@teleport.com) wrote:
>: : If I may change the subject, what mistakes did Mozart intentionally write into
>: : his "Musical Joke"?
>: I dont have a reference, but there was a paper a few years back
>: that tied the composition of the work to the death of a beloved pet myna
>: bird, who is memorialised in the first mouvment.
>: Richard Mix
>: (I have changed the followup to r.m.class. only)
>Mozart deliberate violated the principle of avoiding both parallel fifths
>and parallel octaves by including them deliberately in the Musical Joke
Of course, he liked the fifths so much that he used them again in the
last movement of the A major violin sonata a short while later! 8-)
Oddly enough, Mozart's name is associated with a type of parallel 5th,
the so-called Mozartquinten. These arise when one resolves a "German"
augmented sixth chord to the dominant a half-step below. (You can find
them in reverse at the opening of the G minor Rhapsody of Brahms, Op.
79 #2.
The odd part is that Mozart, who loved the chord in question, went to
great lengths to *avoid* the parallel voice leading there.
Best,
Roger
Martin J. Hutchinson
>Shith ends his dissertation : "The trouble with K522 is that for much of
>the time Mozart is caricaturing the sheer tedium of some of his
>contemporaries' music: can one caricature tedium without, to some extent,
>invoking it?"
There is certainly nothing tedious about the first movement. It doesn't
lose my attention from beginning to end, and it's hilarious and catchy
as hell. It's pure Mozart!
John Hutchinson