Reputations

[aeolium]

I read part of the New Grove article on Mozart yesterday to see if it had any comment on his reputation. It really dealt only with scholarly interest in his music, which has been pretty consistent since his death. However, it does comment that throughout the 18th century, the number of his works that were known to the public was fairly limited, although this increased it the early years of the nineteenth century. There is an implication that his music has always remained well-known. But I feel fairly certain that I've read somewhere that his star shone much less brightly in the inter-war period of the last century. (For example, Idomeneo and Clemenza were unknown in Britain until the 1930s.) That would seem strange since we now rate him as incomparable.

I think Mozart's reputation - at least his public reputation, as opposed to the respect composers like Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn had for him - was not that high during the first part of the C19. There was still then the belief that contemporary music should be played, not music of the past, at least until the rediscovery of J S Bach in the 1840s. Also Mozart had not IIRC published his piano music in his lifetime preferring to keep them for his own performance, so that the European middle classes would not have been playing that in their drawing-rooms. Stanley Sadie has written that Mozart would in the C19 have been mostly known for three operas - Figaro, Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte - the minor key piano concertos and the last symphonies.

[Richard Barrett]

since we now rate him as incomparable

I don't quite know who "we" are supposed to be, because one of the consequences of the wide availability of recorded performances is that Mozart's music can be readily compared with that of his lesser-known contemporaries - so that for example the operas and orchestral music of JC Bach can be compared rather favourably with those in at least the first half of Mozart's output. There are other examples too. It seems to me that the reputation of Mozart' music still rests on a relatively small number of compositions, whose "greatness" is assumed somehow also to be present in the large amount of rather routine music he also wrote, which strikes me as wishful thinking a lot of the time.

[kernelbogey]

I don't quite know who "we" are supposed to be, because one of the consequences of the wide availability of recorded performances is that Mozart's music can be readily compared with that of his lesser-known contemporaries - so that for example the operas and orchestral music of JC Bach can be compared rather favourably with those in at least the first half of Mozart's output. There are other examples too. It seems to me that the reputation of Mozart' music still rests on a relatively small number of compositions, whose "greatness" is assumed somehow also to be present in the large amount of rather routine music he also wrote, which strikes me as wishful thinking a lot of the time.

How refreshing to read that, Richard! I had begun to think that the hagiography of Mozart prevented one from saying such things, lest the heavens fall, thunderbolts strike etc. Grove says something about his being best known through the nineteenth century for a relatively small number of works, including the Da Ponte operas. It also refers to scholarly curiosity about the legend that he composed whole works in his head before committing a note to paper - the jury's still out, I understand, in the absence of evidence. And clearly his prodigious youthful talent for sight-reading, improvisation, rehearsing memorised melodies, rapid and fluent composition and so on and so forth fed the legend, commemorated by Schaffer, that somehow he was chanelling music 'direct from God'.

Although I find nothing in any of his music to dislike, I had begun to make the comparisons you suggest, more particularly with CPE Bach, and with some of his Bohemian contemporaries. I agree with your suggestion that this comparison has become possible through the renewed interest in early music and the plethora of recordings of music previously unavailable to the non-specialist listener. The remarkable quality of the Da Ponte operas owes much to Da Ponte's inventiveness and dramatic sense of course; whereas late works such as the last three symphonies remain uniquely outstanding.

It was issues such as these that I hoped this thread would allow into discussion: so many thanks for those comments.

I know less of Mozart's technical advancement of forms such as the piano concertos and I assume also other genres.

[kea]

I don't quite know who "we" are supposed to be, because one of the consequences of the wide availability of recorded performances is that Mozart's music can be readily compared with that of his lesser-known contemporaries - so that for example the operas and orchestral music of JC Bach can be compared rather favourably with those in at least the first half of Mozart's output. There are other examples too. It seems to me that the reputation of Mozart' music still rests on a relatively small number of compositions, whose "greatness" is assumed somehow also to be present in the large amount of rather routine music he also wrote, which strikes me as wishful thinking a lot of the time.

The idea is that by listening to Mozart's rather routine compositions we somehow gain a fuller understanding of the great ones. I've never understood quite how that works, perhaps people just aren't willing to admit that sometimes they get bored of K551 and want to hear something different.

To be fair there are easily 70-80 Mozart works that now qualify as "great" in the opinions of posterity, or more than that, whereas in the 19th century that might have been 20-30 instead, or fewer. I'm not sure that numbers mean very much though.

[aeolium]

Running through the list of Mozart compositions quickly it didn't take me long to reach over 100 which I think are very far from routine. I don't think it helped Mozart's posthumous reputation that he kept all his compositions even those from a very early age, whereas Beethoven and Brahms delayed publishing their opus 1 works. People point out the large number of Mozart works (juvenilia, dance music, etc) that are fairly routine without also mentioning how many fine works this still leaves and without mentioning the large number of routine works produced by other composers contemporary with Mozart. Producing a lot of music was what composers had to do to survive then - they couldn't be Wagners or Mahlers.

[kernelbogey]

Re Mozart's reputation, a quick google reveals a work by Gernot Gruber, Mozart and Posterity, on just this subject.

From the river people's synopsis:

In the first comprehensive history of the changing reception of Mozart and his music over the last two hundred years, Gernot Gruber skillfully charts Mozart's evolution from forgotten composer to "a youth beloved of the gods." He considers Mozart's waning reputation during the decade preceding his death in 1791, and thoroughly examines how Mozart was deified by the Romantics, sanitized by the Victorians, and commercialized in the 1980s and early 1990s. This insightful volume probes beyond the sphere of music into literature, philosophy, the fine arts, and theology to provide a refreshing discussion of the shifting ideas, images, interpretations, and questions surrounding Mozart over the last two centuries. With profound knowledge of the relevant literature, Gruber shows how figures such as Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Felix Mendelssohn, Soren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Hermann Hesse, Marc Chagall, Ingmar Bergman, and Peter Shaffer attempted to define the elusive nature of the composer's genius in their quest to discover the "true" Mozart. The volume includes provocative perspectives on the impact of Milos Forman's highly successful film Amadeus and on the commercial packaging of Mozart for mass consumption. Gruber's compelling account of the evolving perceptions of Mozart's music reveals as much about the changes in European ideology and culture as it does about the composer of his music.

[Richard Barrett]

That looks like it might be an interesting read, kernelbogey.

Aeolium, I certainly did mention that there's plenty of Mozart that isn't routine (without getting into disagreements about how much), and it's clear that eighteenth-century composers in general produced greater volumes of work than their successors, for reasons to do with their cultural, social and economic situation; but something that's also clear whenever you look at an artist's reputation and how it develops and changes over the course of time you see that this reputation has much more to do with "changes in ... ideology and culture" than with some supposedly timeless quality of the works under discussion. These things never reach a steady state. "We" might feel that Mozart's music (or some of it at least!) speaks directly to us across the centuries, while everything we see in history suggests it's quite possible that people half a century from now might wonder what the attraction was.

[ahinton]

That looks like it might be an interesting read, kernelbogey.

Aeolium, I certainly did mention that there's plenty of Mozart that isn't routine (without getting into disagreements about how much), and it's clear that eighteenth-century composers in general produced greater volumes of work than their successors, for reasons to do with their cultural, social and economic situation; but something that's also clear whenever you look at an artist's reputation and how it develops and changes over the course of time you see that this reputation has much more to do with "changes in ... ideology and culture" than with some supposedly timeless quality of the works under discussion. These things never reach a steady state. "We" might feel that Mozart's music (or some of it at least!) speaks directly to us across the centuries, while everything we see in history suggests it's quite possible that people half a century from now might wonder what the attraction was.

Someone once wrote that there are times when only the G minor (string) quintet will do...

[aeolium]

Aeolium, I certainly did mention that there's plenty of Mozart that isn't routine (without getting into disagreements about how much), and it's clear that eighteenth-century composers in general produced greater volumes of work than their successors, for reasons to do with their cultural, social and economic situation; but something that's also clear whenever you look at an artist's reputation and how it develops and changes over the course of time you see that this reputation has much more to do with "changes in ... ideology and culture" than with some supposedly timeless quality of the works under discussion. These things never reach a steady state. "We" might feel that Mozart's music (or some of it at least!) speaks directly to us across the centuries, while everything we see in history suggests it's quite possible that people half a century from now might wonder what the attraction was.

Yes, I agree with that. But mildly interesting though it is to look at the ups and downs of composers' reputations over time, there's no substitute for listening to the music yourself and making up your own mind. Loaded down with all the cultural assumptions and preconceptions of my era and upbringing, I still consider myself fortunate to be able to listen to Mozart's music (and the music of other composers that delights me) even if people of future generations may wonder what the fuss was about.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, I agree with that. But mildly interesting though it is to look at the ups and downs of composers' reputations over time, there's no substitute for listening to the music yourself and making up your own mind. Loaded down with all the cultural assumptions and preconceptions of my era and upbringing, I still consider myself fortunate to be able to listen to Mozart's music (and the music of other composers that delights me) even if people of future generations may wonder what the fuss was about.

Are there any straightforward analogies though? The relationship between qualities and whether or not these have any relation to aesthetic matters of simplicity or complexity, turns out to be a very complex and paradoxical one. How can one equate an early 19th century public weaned on Beethovenian concepts of content and structure, on the one hand, and a late 20th/early 21st century mass audience educated in daily use of complex technology for the simplest of tasks, attuned to thinking of simple pop song harmonies as the norm, while finding a Beethoven symphony too hard to follow?

[Richard Barrett]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person who gets all excited about the "reception history" of an artist's work (we can safely leave that to musicological scholars whose job it is toput such things in order); I'm just saying that the existence of such histories gives the lie to the idea that there is such a thing as "timelessness" in artworks (or for that matter in anything else).

[kernelbogey]

Are there any straightforward analogies though? The relationship between qualities and whether or not these have any relation to aesthetic matters of simplicity or complexity, turns out to be a very complex and paradoxical one. How can one equate an early 19th century public weaned on Beethovenian concepts of content and structure, on the one hand, and a late 20th/early 21st century mass audience educated in daily use of complex technology for the simplest of tasks, attuned to thinking of simple pop song harmonies as the norm, while finding a Beethoven symphony too hard to follow?

One difference in the relationship is of course accessibility.

Few people would have heard a Beethoven symphony in his lifetime, and most would have heard it only once. A wider audience might have heard piano transciptions.

By contrast, of course, the contemporary 'mass audience' you identify is larger by an order of magnitude, and we might infer that those both constitutionally and technically able to listen to an LvB symphony, and appreciate it, would be numerically larger than the former group. And a fair number of the latter would have had equal access to the works of both earlier and later generations.

I'd venture to say, therefore, that 21st century listeners to these works are better equipped than any previous generation to make relatively objective judgements about the value or status of a given composer.

Where I think it gets hazy is with more recent compositions (I referred to this in the OP with the example of Sibelius): how to evaluate the music of, say, Jonathan Harvey, Benjamin Britten, Sally Beamish, against the works of the past...?

[aeolium]

I'd venture to say, therefore, that 21st century listeners to these works are better equipped than any previous generation to make relatively objective judgements about the value or status of a given composer.

I don't think so. They may have heard more different types of music and more performances/recordings of a particular composer's work but they are still vulnerable to the preferences and prejudices of the age. I don't think any generation can hear or respond to the music of a composer in the same way as any previous generation.

[kernelbogey]

Do you not think that - with all art - a reliable canon becomes established?

In literature, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Tolstoy, Austen...

In Visual art Michelangelo, Goya, Turner, Picasso...

I choose random examples, but I would have thought a canon exists in music, too. Yes, there will be distortions from current culture but time will even those out.

[ahinton]

The whole "timelessness" business that Richard Barrett refers to is quite an issue. Kernelbogey's mention of Shakespeare calls to mind Malvolio's "some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them (in Twelfth Night), to the extent that one might be tempted to wonder if, likewise, "some have timelessness thrust upon them". Marketing and the fads and fashions that often go hand in hand with it can often exert some influence over "public taste" (whatever that is), thereby bringing about (among other things) a kind of unrealistic and potentially confusing sense of what might be thought of as "timeless". Yes, the easy and widespread availability of all kinds of music makes the question of what might "last" a more open one than ever it was, but I'm no more sure that Mozart's reputation survives today in part because of promoters of one kind of another at one time or another than I am that everything that WAM ever did is somehow sacrosanct (which is certainly isn't); whilst the fact that Mozart was unusually (though by no means uniquely) precocious cannot be denied, precocity in itself is no indicator of how anyone might develop and, in any case, there is some mere workmanlike material in his immense output, as might be expected considering ust how much work was crammed into so short a space of time. That said, if the best work of Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Turner, Wagner et al has stood the test of the amount of time that it has, kernelbogey's suggestion that some kind of canon applies, provided that acceptance of it doesn't lead to a false assumption (and the deification that sometimes goes with it) that everything that they ever did somehow had the stamp of timeless greatness upon it.