The music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

[Seán]

I found this essay on Facebook and thought it worth sharing.

Mozarts music style german change language

Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetypal example of the Classical style. His works spanned the period during which that style transformed from one exemplified by the style galant to one that began to incorporate some of the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque, complexities against which the galant style had been a reaction. Mozart's own stylistic development closely paralleled the development of the classical style as a whole. In addition, he was a versatile composer and wrote in almost every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. While none of these genres were new, the piano concerto was almost single-handedly developed and popularized by Mozart. He also wrote a great deal of religious music, including masses; and he composed many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.

The central traits of the classical style can all be identified in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are hallmarks, though a simplistic notion of the delicacy of his music obscures for us the exceptional and even demonic power of some of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, and the opera Don Giovanni. Charles Rosen has written (1997): "It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous." Especially during his last decade, Mozart explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time. The slow introduction to the "Dissonant" Quartet, K. 465, a work that Haydn greatly admired even as it perplexed him,[citation needed] rapidly explodes a shallow understanding of Mozart's style as light and pleasant.

From his earliest years Mozart had a gift for imitating the music he heard; since he traveled widely, he acquired a rare collection of experiences from which to create his unique compositional language. When he went to London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music; when he went to Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna, he heard the work of composers active there, as well as the spectacular Mannheim orchestra; when he went to Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which were to be hugely influential on his development. Both in London and Italy, the galant style was all the rage: simple, light music, with a mania for cadencing, an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other chords, symmetrical phrases, and clearly articulated structures.[citation needed] This style, out of which the classical style evolved, was a reaction against the complexity of late Baroque music. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are "homotonal" (each movement in the same key, with the slow movement in the parallel minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms commonly being written by composers in Vienna. One of the most recognizable features of Mozart's works is a sequence of harmonies or modes that usually leads to a cadence in the dominant or tonic key. This sequence is essentially borrowed from Baroque music, especially J. S. Bach. But Mozart shifted the sequence so that the cadence ended on the stronger half, i.e., the first beat of the bar. Mozart's understanding of modes such as Phrygian is evident in such passages.[citation needed]

As Mozart matured, he began to incorporate some more features of Baroque styles into his music. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201 uses a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who included three such finales in his recently published Opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era to come, is evident in some of the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 is another excellent example of this style.

Over the course of his working life, Mozart switched his focus from instrumental music to operas, and back again. He wrote operas in each of the styles current in Europe: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, or Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is probably the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas, he developed the use of subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestration, and tone colour to express or highlight psychological or emotional states and dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted. His increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concerti served as a resource in his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.[56]

Influence of Mozarts music

Many important composers since Mozart's time have expressed profound appreciation of Mozart. Rossini averred, "He is the only musician who had as much knowledge as genius, and as much genius as knowledge."[citation needed] Ludwig van Beethoven's admiration for Mozart is also quite clear. Beethoven used Mozart as a model a number of times: for example, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major demonstrates a debt to Mozart's Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503. A plausible story – not corroborated – regards one of Beethoven's students who looked through a pile of music in Beethoven's apartment. When the student pulled out Mozart's A major Quartet, K. 464, Beethoven exclaimed "Ah, that piece. That's Mozart saying 'here's what I could do, if only you had ears to hear!' "; Beethoven's own Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor is an obvious tribute to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, and yet another plausible – if unconfirmed – story concerns Beethoven at a concert with his sometime-student Ferdinand Ries. As they listened to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, the orchestra reached the quite unusual coda of the last movement, and Beethoven whispered to Ries: "We will never think of anything like that!" Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds is another obvious tribute to Mozart, similar to Mozart's own quintet for the same ensemble. Beethoven also paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on several of his themes: for example, the two sets of variations for cello and piano on themes from Mozart's Magic Flute, and cadenzas to several of Mozart's piano concertos, most notably the Piano Concerto No. 20 K. 466. A famous story asserts that, after the only meeting between the two composers, Mozart noted that Beethoven would "give the world something to talk about."[citation needed] However, it is not certain that the two ever met.[citation needed] Tchaikovsky wrote his Mozartiana in praise of Mozart; and Mahler's final word was alleged to have been simply "Mozart".[citation needed] The theme of the opening movement of the Piano Sonata in A major K. 331 (itself a set of variations on that theme) was used by Max Reger for his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, written in 1914 and among Reger's best-known works.[57]
In addition, Mozart received outstanding praise from several fellow composers including Frédéric Chopin, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and many more.[58]

Mozart has remained an influence in popular contemporary music in varying genres ranging from Jazz to modern Rock.

For purposes of careful identification of any work by Mozart, the Köchel catalogue number is used. This is a unique number assigned (on a chronological basis) to every known work by Mozart. The first edition of the Köchel catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von Köchel. It has repeatedly been updated since then, as scholarly research improves our knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works

[fergus]

Influence of Mozarts music

Many important composers since Mozart's time have expressed profound appreciation of Mozart. Rossini averred, "He is the only musician who had as much knowledge as genius, and as much genius as knowledge."[citation needed] Ludwig van Beethoven's admiration for Mozart is also quite clear. Beethoven used Mozart as a model a number of times: for example, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major demonstrates a debt to Mozart's Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503. A plausible story – not corroborated – regards one of Beethoven's students who looked through a pile of music in Beethoven's apartment. When the student pulled out Mozart's A major Quartet, K. 464, Beethoven exclaimed "Ah, that piece. That's Mozart saying 'here's what I could do, if only you had ears to hear!' "; Beethoven's own Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor is an obvious tribute to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, and yet another plausible – if unconfirmed – story concerns Beethoven at a concert with his sometime-student Ferdinand Ries. As they listened to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, the orchestra reached the quite unusual coda of the last movement, and Beethoven whispered to Ries: "We will never think of anything like that!" Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds is another obvious tribute to Mozart, similar to Mozart's own quintet for the same ensemble. Beethoven also paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on several of his themes: for example, the two sets of variations for cello and piano on themes from Mozart's Magic Flute, and cadenzas to several of Mozart's piano concertos, most notably the Piano Concerto No. 20 K. 466. A famous story asserts that, after the only meeting between the two composers, Mozart noted that Beethoven would "give the world something to talk about."[citation needed] However, it is not certain that the two ever met.[citation needed].....

I have recently come to the conclusion that one of the traits Beethoven admired in Mozart’s music is the ability of Mozart to disassociate whatever turmoil that was currently in his personal life from the music that he was writing at the time. Take for example Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet which I am currently surveying. At the time Mozart’s life was in turmoil; his financial situation was critical, his popularity as a performer was waning, his pupils were abandoning him and his wife was becoming increasingly ill. Yet somehow, through all of this he penned the exquisitely beautiful Clarinet Quintet. Yes there are yearning themes in the slow movement but for the most part it is a bright and sunny work [on a technical point the works movements are written in major as opposed to minor keys]. Beethoven also managed to do this as we saw in some of the symphonies that we discussed in a recent thread.


On a general note regarding Mozart's music in general; I think that one of the true marks of genius with composers like JS Bach and WA Mozart is that they had the ability to write highly technical and often complicated music that just happens to sound light and simple. This is not accidental and any cursory examination of Mozart’s music will show this.