Mozart Fest

[Nick Armstrong]

I personally think the majority of Mozart's choral works are well written but with a couple of exceptions, nothing special. For me FJ Haydn's choral music is far more interesting and more to my taste...

Totally agreed. Apart from those exceptions, the pieces sound to me to be dutiful rather than beautiful - as if his heart wasn't totally in it. But then, to my ears, nothing he wrote comes close to the piano concertos (and the last movement of the Jupiter).

Adds: and some of the key chamber pieces... esp involving wind instruments in various capacities.

[Peter Hayes]

Hi Peter - please can you define beauty, for the purposes of this discussion? Thanks, richard

It is hard question I wonder if a defienition could be something like, beauty: wanting to conncect with something outside yourself, and feeling a sense at once of losing yourself in soemthing bigger, and connecting with your better feelings?

We must all feel roguhly the same thing when we hear Mozarts most beautiful work, so I wonder how others would descirbe it?

[Suffolkcoastal]

I agree with you Caliban, certainly for me it is also the Piano Concertos that I enjoy most of all, then a handful of the symphonies, some of the Piano Sonatas a couple of the other concertos, some of the chamber works and some of the operas. I consider some of the above works among the great masterpieces of music, but a lot of Mozart's other music is no better than and even sometimes not as good as the works of many his contemporaries. The trouble is with the notable exception of FJ Haydn the music of Mozart's contemporaries is still largely overlooked in both the concert hall and on R3. R3 missed a perfect opportunity to play the music of Mozart's contemporaries alongside his works during this 12 day series, had they have done this I for one would have tuned in out of interest, though I know and have recordings of the music quite a lot of composers of the 1750-1800 period there would have been so much I could still have learn't, sadly R3 goes for the easy option so typical of RW.

[Richard Tarleton]

Peter, I'd go for a definition along the lines of: an aesthetic, cultural or moral construct, applied to things, places, people, ideas, etc. . It does not have an objective existence, ideas of what constitutes it vary over time, and I'm not sure that I recognise it from your definition. I was hoping you could deconstruct it a bit more technically for us - maybe in relation to musical theory.

An example from another field: most of us today would regard the Alps as beautiful. Mozart's near contemporary Edward Gibbon, en route to Rome, kept the blinds of his carriage closed, we are told, to protect him from the hideous spectacle of the unruly mountains - the landscape equivalent of dissonance, if you like. The 18th century loved order. A generation or two later, reflected by Byron, Berlioz, Turner, Friedrich etc., mountains were fashionable and beautiful.

Anyway - the MB is probably not the place for a full-blown discussion of musical aesthetic theory, I was just wondering what you meant. Now I think I know. Most would agree about Mozart - I was startled by your denial of beauty in the 20th century.

[Flosshilde]

Richard, I think there could be objective definitions (although I'm not sure if that's the best term) of beauty, especially in art & architecture. The 'golden section' (http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/GoldenSection.htm & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio) has been used since classical antiquity to give harmony & balance to buildings and paintings, & Hogarth defined the the 'line of beauty' as the s-curve. However, where I think Peter goes wrong is to believe that 'beauty' is the only acceptable aesthetic ideal or standard. As your example of the alps shows, in the late 18th centrury & 19th century people developed a taste for the sublime, & in the later 19th century developed a taste for the picturesque.

In addition, what we might now call 'beautiful' in late 18th century music was viewed (or heard) with horror by contemporary audiences. I would imagine that some of Mozart's music could fall into this category, & certainly some of Haydn's & Beethoven's output.

[Flosshilde]

Strange - when I typed my post above the end of the first line read "The 'golden section'", but when I posted "section" had disappeared. When I tried to edit it "section" was definitely there, so I saved it without changing it - but "section" had gone again!

[Chris Newman]

Caliban,
I agree that most of Mozart's chorus writing is dutiful. It does not have the elements of inspired beauty and harmonic surprise that leap at you in the concerti, much of the chamber music and many of the symphonies. Haydn's religious music knocks spots of Mozart's. Mozart's late operas and even early ones like Die Entfuhrung have stunning music until the chorus comes in where you can feel him thinking "Oh, bother! This company has a chorus. I better give them something to do." True, he does make real efforts with Magic Flute but he just goes through the motions in Figaro and even adapts a Figaro number for Don Giovanni. The Entfuhrung choruses are jolly and exciting but just act as a couple of curtain closers. Those in Figaro and Don Giovanni seem to be there to keep the opera staff employed.

[StephenO]

Strange - when I typed my post above the end of the first line read "The 'golden section'", but when I posted "section" had disappeared. When I tried to edit it "section" was definitely there, so I saved it without changing it - but "section" had gone again!

The opposite thing happened to me on a different thread. I typed in "Brahms" but when I posted it apeared as "Brahms Brahms". There was only one Brahms there when I went to edit it, though, and, when I deleted that, there was no Brahms at all! It's now back to "Brahms Brahms".

[Peter Hayes]

I think that there must be an objective element to beauty, it is shared experience of it in Mozart's music that is the basis of his fame. As people across the world love Mozart, this could hardly be culturally conditioned. In classical music I do think that beauty is its superlative achievement so that any form of music that is not beautiful cannot lay claim to continue the classical tradition. And I think too that at least the early modern classical compoers would hae agreed with me and claimed (quite wrongly in my view) that their music was beautiful.

[doversoul1]

Well, we are half way through…

Two things are making this wall-to-wall Mozart broadcast bearable for me: the extended participation of the guests has been interesting; and there have been more than usual number of performances on the fortepiano which has been most enjoyable.

But surely Radio3 can do both without resorting to the extreme?

[3rd Viennese School]

I listened to symphony no.36 yesterday so it was almost like a real concert. Havent heard it for yonks. Its not bad. Must be his longest symphony at that point.
Don't know why they repeated the minuet in the recap though! The trio is unusually good. They repeated the 2nd half of the finale. I didnt know that he specified a repeat here. Used to get scores in Chatham library but the building collapsed and they moved it.

Anyway, opera tonight so Im staying well away from the radio!
3VS

[kernelbogey]

I've had Sarah Walker on in the background while doing other things. Stopped in my tracks by what her guest Paul Robertson was saying firstly about the G minor quintet and then by what he said about the healing power of music. Quite astonishing - a friend lifted out of coma by being played Mozart. Must listen to this again on iPlayer to catch the bits I missed and possibly also his documentary from earlier in the Fest.

[french frank]

Stopped in my tracks by what her guest Paul Robertson was saying firstly about the G minor quintet and then by what he said about the healing power of music.

He also presented Desperately seeking Mozart last Sunday.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Don't know why they repeated the minuet in the recap though! The trio is unusually good. 3VS

It was Christopher Hogwood who started this trend - on the basis that "it doesn't say 'don't'", which is a technical argument rather than a musical one.

[kernelbogey]

Yes, FF, meant that by 'his documentary', but thanks.

My experience of this 'feast' is that sometimes it gets a bit samey - have heard some early-ish divertimenti which began to pall after a while; there are frustrating numbers of single movements at peak listening (and other) times; and some aspects like the repeated reminders about ' the genius of M' are irritating. But on the whole I feel positive about the venture.

So far I've not noticed a comment on the boards about the enormous amount of research, preparation and organisation that has gone into it. No other radio station could, I guess, have attempted something this ambitious.