'The Classical Style' reading group, Week 13

A performance of Don Giovanni in Vienna

3.Comic Opera 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger          

 On page 296 Rosen writes that the listener "must have an educated ear to know what to listen for, educated in the stylistic language and not just in the superficial formalities." I hope this study group helps us all develop educated ears.  

One might see Don Giovanni, which deals with a man who sleeps with over a thousand women, as a meditation on the Manosphere. Joseph Kerman discusses dealing with problems of this opera in an essay in "Write All These Down".  

I like the discussion of Mozart as subversive and dangerous on page 325. 

I came to Don Giovanni backwards. I didn't know the opera at all when I read Rosen's The Romantic Generation when it came out in 1995. In that book he discussed Franz Liszt's Reminiscences of Don Juan, a piano fantasy based on Don Giovanni. In 1995 a CD by Rosen came out also called The Romantic Generation which included that piano piece. Rosen had quoted with approval George Bernard Shaw who said that the best way to appreciate the Liszt piece was to memorize the opera and then to forget it. Instead I fell in love with the piano version, and over the past 31 years I have slowly gotten to know the opera. One might see Liszt as the first rock star. He travelled around Europe performing piano recitals. Women would make bracelets out of his broken piano strings. He had a reputation as a Don Juan, so he plays with his own myth in his piano fantasy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlBYflI8dLM&list=RDjlBYflI8dLM&start_radio=1 

Mozart's son

Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart in 1825. 

It's well known that J.S. Bach had composer children (RAW apparently was a fan of Johann Christian Bach).  But I somehow did not register until recently that Mozart also had a composer son.

His name was Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791-1844). He was born about four months before his father died. The Wikipedia biography says he didn't write a huge amount of music, but claims, "The first concerto could pass for one of his father's late (K. 550 and above) works, except for a youthful exuberance and the piano's tessitura which had been expanded in 1795, just after Mozart senior died. The second concerto is more contemporary to the 1810s with a more virtuosic piano part showing hints that the younger Mozart was developing his own style." There are recordings of the piano concertos I haven't heard yet. 

It also says, "He constantly underrated his talent and feared that whatever he composed would be compared with what his father had done." I can see where that would have been a problem. 

Franz Schubert was his friend and he also knew Robert Schumann. He didn't marry or have any kids, and neither did his brother, the other child of Mozart to survive into adulthood. 

 

New reading group begins! 'The Classical Style' [Updated]

The Classical Style by Charles Rosen 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Week 1: Overture 

Schedule: 

5/25/2026 Overture 

6/1 Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples. 

I   INTRODUCTION 

6/8 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century 

6/15 2. Theories of Form 

6/22 3. The Origins of the Style 

II   THE CLASSICAL STYLE 

6/29 1. The Coherence of the Musical Language 

7/6 2. Structure and Ornament 

III   HAYDN FROM 1770 TO THE DEATH OF MOZART 

7/13 1. String Quartet 

7/20 2. Symphonies 

7/27  

IV   SERIOUS OPERA 

V   MOZART 

8/3 1. The Concerto 

8/10 2. String Quintet 

8/17 3. Comic Opera 

VI   HAYDN AFTER THE DEATH OF MOZART 

8/24 1. The Popular Style 

8/31 2. Piano Trio (Doomed Music) 

9/7 3. Church Music 

VII   BEETHOVEN 

9/14 1. Beethoven 

9/21 2. Beethoven’s Later Years and the Conventions of His Childhood 

9/28 Epilogue 

At the end of first grade they put some of the first graders in the second grade classroom for the last few weeks of school. One day the second grade teacher told us about Franz Joseph Haydn. She said he had become famous, but then, as now, some people fell asleep at the concerts, so he wrote a special piece for them, and she played us the second movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLy6JxEDLw&list=RDVOLy6JxEDLw&start_radio=1 

This utterly delighted my first grade mind. I could think of nothing cooler. I went home and told my mom about it, and she got me an LP of Haydn’s Surprise and Clock Symphonies that Christmas. I listened to them over and over again over the decades. 

Around December 1990 I read Joseph Kerman’s The Beethoven Quartets which blew me away, and in 1991 I read a bunch of other Kerman books. In Kerman’s Contemplating Music he raved about Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style, so it read it that summer, and I’ve read it over and over again over the past 25 years, along with all of Rosen’s other books. I also love Rosen’s piano playing. I love the synergetic experience of reading him and then listening to his recordings and trying to grok the music. Thank you for joining me on this voyage to Esterhazy, Salzburg, Vienna, and beyond. 

UPDATE: Given that there is interest in Sonny Rollins in the comments, I thought some of you might want to read the New  York Times obituary (gift link). 

Was Mozart the world's greatest achiever?

Mozart in a portrait dated to 1781, when he was 25. (Source). 

Today's blog post will be in honor of the fact that RAW loved classical music. 

On his blog, Tyler Cowen makes the case that Johann Sebastian Bach was the greatest achiever of all time: "I’ve been reading and rereading biographies of Bach lately (for some podcast prep), and it strikes me he might count as the greatest achiever of all time.  That is distinct from say regarding him as your favorite composer or artist of all time."

Tyler lists a variety of criteria in his argument, including quality of work, being better than contemporary rivals, staying power over the centuries, overcoming obstacles, and so on. (The whole post, not terribly long, is worth a read.) One of the criteria is "consistency of work and achievement," and that's certainly true. Like most people who are into Bach's music, I listen to a wide variety of music -- cantatas, keyboard pieces, concertos, pieces for solo organ, work for solo violin and on and on. It's all really good. 

I certainly don't want to diminish Bach in any way. But it still seems to me that one can make a case for Mozart, who seems at least as amazing as an overachiever. Perhaps I am influenced by the fact that I have lately been obsessed with Mozart's piano concertos and listening to them every day for days, but I think a good case can be made for Mozart.

Brilliant Classics has issued a complete box set of all of Bach's music. It comes to 155 CDs. But the Brilliant Classics boxed set of Mozart adds up to 170 CDs! 

Yes, Mozart's early music, written when he was a child, is not not as interesting as his later work, and the music that is played the most was written late in his life. For example, among the 27 piano concertos, the last eight are the ones that are most often played, and recorded over and over again.

But consider also, that Bach lived to be 65, and Mozart wrote more music despite living to be only 35! 

And if you compare works written while an adult, the consistency of quality for Mozart is very good. 

Bach got to live 30 more years than Mozart. During the time he was alive, Mozart wrote furiously.   In 1788, Mozart completed the famous last three symphonies, 39, 40 and 41, and 1788 also included Piano Sonata Number 15, Piano Concerto No. 26, Piano Trio No. 4, Piano Sonata No. 16, Violin Sonata No. 36, Piano Trio No. 5, Divertimento in E-flat and Piano Trio No. 6. 1791, the year Mozart died in early December, obviously was not his best year, but it still included two operas, the last piano concerto, a clarinet concerto, much of the Requiem and many other works.

If you listen to classical music radio stations, you'll notice Mozart as the composer who is probably played the most, fulfilling the same role that Led Zeppelin plays for classic rock stations. 

It is painful to think about what Mozart could have written if he had just five more years and lived to age 40. It is mind boggling to think about Mozart living into his 60s, like Bach, or even making it to age 56, like Beethoven. 

Eric's music listening scheme

Murray Perahia (Creative Commons photo)

Eric Wagner wrote recently to share his new music listening scheme: "My new game: I listen to a Mozart piano concerto based on the date. Today, June 18, I just put on Concerto #18. I have the Perahia set of 27 concertos and two rondos. I plan to listen to a rondo each on the 28th and 29th, and I plan to return to #25, my favorite, on the 30th. I will likely pick another late concerto on July 31 if I keep this up."

Murray Perahia is a very good Mozartean; I need to listen to the 25th to see why Eric likes it so much. I'm partial to #20 and #24, myself. I forgot to ask Eric if he is referring to listening to a CD on the stereo, or to Spotify with a Bluetooth speaker, or what. I need to nail these details down.

But in any event I like this scheme for concentrated listening. One drawback is that while Mozart is never less than pleasant, the early work is not as interesting as the later pieces; Mozart wrote most of the music he's remembered for in the last few years of his life, frantically issuing one masterpiece after another in his waning months. On the other hand, under Eric's scheme, the music is generally going to get better as the month advances.

In any event, I may have to adopt this for myself. It would be a way to finally get through all 27 Nikolai Myaskovsky symphonies; I could also modify the scheme to listen to all of the Shostakovich and Prokofiev symphonies (with a few concertos thrown in) or to listen to all of Beethoven's piano sonatas in a month.

I never seem to get many comments for my classical music postings, but oh well! I like to think RAW would have read them.

Observations on music

Keith Moon in 1975 (Creative Commons photo.)

Eric Wagner's explanation behind his soundtrack selection in yesterday's blog post by Gregory is worth quoting again: " In 1985 after I graduated from college I went to Europe. I arranged my trip to arrive in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, on July 23. The next day I visited the concentration camp at Dachau which horrified me so much I just wanted to get out of Germany. I had a train ticket to leave for Vienna that night. I wandered the streets of Munich feeling despair about the human condition. I noticed a theater playing Bergman’s Magic Flute which I had heard about but never seen. I figured I had just enough time to see the movie and run to the train station to catch my train. I know some German, so I could barely follow the movie in Swedish with German subtitles, but the film restored my faith in humanity. Bergman’s realization of Mozart’s vision of a masonic society looking out for us seemed just what I needed." Eric linked to Bergman's Magic Flute on YouTube.

Certainly it is good news the movie is freely available and I plan to watch it when I have a nice chunk of time, but I also liked Eric's reminder that music in general, and classical music in particular, can be a positive force in our lives. Compare with RAW's essay on "Beethoven as Information" in The Illuminati Papers, in which he cites Beethoven's alleged statement that anyone who understands his music can never been unhappy.

Speaking of music, did you see Oz Fritz's comment in the Week 21 blog post of the Widow's Son discussion group, about the scene where Sigismundo Celine wakes up to find himself on the "ceiling" of his room? Oz wrote, "I wonder if RAW got some inspiration from The Who's maniacal drummer Keith Moon for the upside down room scene? From Rock Bottom by Pamela Des Barres: 'The road always beckoned and Keith got bored easily, but blessed with an ingenious, devilish imagination, he battled to keep the boredom at bay. ... Sleep never came easily for Mr. Moon: Once he spent hours nailing hotel-room furniture to the ceiling exactly as it had been on the floor'."

Moon, who died in 1978, was arguably rock's greatest drummer. My first thought when I read Oz' comment was "Probably not -- RAW didn't pay much attention to rock music." But RAW had plenty of young fans who did, and it's perhaps not far-fetched to think that one of them had told RAW about what Moon did.

The Widow's Son reading group, Week 22

Illustration from “Right Where You Are Sitting Now” for “The Persecution and Assassination of the Parapsychologists as Performed by the Inmates of the American Association for the Advancement of Science under the Direction of the Amazing Randi.”

Week Twenty Two (pg. 361-382 Hilaritas edition, Chapter 15&16, Part III all editions)

By Gregory Arnott
Special guest blogger

Chapter 15 should be considered in light of an earlier article by RAW that was seemingly written during the time of the composition of either The Earth Will Shake or The Widow’s Son: “The Persecution and Assassination of the Parapsychologists as Performed by the Inmates of the American Association for the Advancement of Science under the Direction of the Amazing Randi.” (The name of the article is not-coincidentally named after a play that has already been briefly mentioned in our posts The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade better known as Marat/Sade.)

In the beginning of the essay RAW mentions “This interest was particularly concrete at this time because there was one part of the historical Novel that was giving him trouble. His hero, Sigismundo Celine, had seen a meteorite fall. Celine had dragged the Damned Things, which couldn’t exist according to 18th-century science, to the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Naturally, he was roundly denounced and mocked for his troubles. This was accurate: anyone who reported a meteorite to 18th-century scientists was treated like a Close Encounter of the Third Kind today.” Obviously, there were some changes made during the time in between the original High Times article and the final draft of The Widow’s Son. Instead we see our secondary protagonist Sir John dragging his stone and sanity before the uncompromising panel of scientists from The Royal Scientific Society.

Sir Charles Nagas is obviously a stand in for Carl Sagan. Sagan wasn’t present during the panel on “Science and Pseudoscience” that inspired RAW’s essay but his debate with Emmanuel Velikovsky is mentioned and our Author seems to think Sagan wasn’t fair to the iconoclast author of Worlds in Collision. As in the novel the Author takes time to point out that Nagas had discovered nothing himself but rather was merely well known as he wrote often for the papers and journals, RAW refers to Sagan simply as a “television scientist” in his earlier essay. I can understand RAW’s disdain for scientists who seem to think that proficiency in one of the multitudinous branches of science such as evolutionary biology (Dawkins), astrophysics (Tyson), mechanical engineering (Nye) makes them an (or the) authority on every facet of reality. These science communicators who follow in Sagan’s mold do as much to repel the public away from science as they do to popularize it. I don’t really need some creep who doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up online or a former kids television host telling me whether God exists or not but they sure seem to think I do. These science popularizers’ extraordinarily high regard for themselves led to the markedly evangelical efforts of atheists in the early 21st century by scientists such as Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris, the aforementioned Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens. Like the unruly “Herbert Sharper” in the narrative, whose bigotry against “Papists” and “Moslems” is on full display during Sir John’s tribunal, these atheist-evangelists have at times shown that they are no scientists but rather run-of-the-mill bigots (see Harris and his hellish alliance with right wing thinkers to promote an anti-Muslim philosophy).

Gardner Marvins is obviously a stand-in for Martin Gardner who was known for his love of Lewis Carrol and GK Chesterton, his mathematical puzzles, and his founding role of CSICOP (now CSI). (RAW mentions a novel with a scientist named Bertha Van Ation that is in the works- he must have been talking about the novels in the Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy which also include a cocaine-addicted writer names Marvin Gardens.) Gardner, like his counterpart, had a lighter touch than other self-appointed skeptic inquisitions, but his works, such as Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, drip with paternalistic condescension for those who aren’t in lockstep with his understanding of current scientific consensus. (See also Sagan’s Demon Haunted World.)

The most belligerent member of the panel, Herbert Sharper, remains something of a mystery to me; his name is not a simple transposition of a famous scientist. After reading RAW’s article I can only deduce that Sharper is based on The Amazing Randi himself. Years ago I wrote about the so-called skeptic movement in the paranormal community and contended that it was nothing more than a movement of evangelical atheists who believe that current human knowledge is nigh-infallible. Nothing happens that cannot be explained by our human understanding of the universe. In that essay I quoted RAW’s article and can think of no better commentary on Randi and his character: “Finally, the high point of the morning arrived, in the form of The Amazing Randi, as he styles himself. Randi looks like Santa Claus and talks like the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (Rep.-Wis.) Randi is not a Liberal by any definition but a real, old-fashioned, honest-to-Cthulhu Conservative, fire-breathing variety. He wants to hit the heretics on the head with a blunt instrument.

You see, The Amazing Randi is of the school of thought which holds that he and his friends have the only ‘real’ reality-labyrinth on the planet. All proponents of alternative reality-labyrinths are therefore, by definition, a bunch of sneaks, cheats, and liars. This is the best rhetorical stance for a heresy-hunter, since it is rooted deeply in the primate psychology… Hitler pointed this out in Mein Kampf, every demagogue knows it, and Randi, an old showman, plays it to the hilt.

Randi’s presentation consisted of saying five different ways that the heretics are a bunch of dishonest bastards who lie morning, noon and night, and lie in their sleep just to keep in practice.  Then, in case there were any dullards in the audience who hadn’t gotten his message, Randi said it again, five more ways. The Journalist [Wilson refers to himself in different ways throughout the piece to show where his mindset was at] hadn’t heard such oratory since Jim Garrison way in his heyday, finding new Kennedy assassins every second newsbreak. It was a smashing performance, and the Sociobiologist was convinced that most of the audience were breathing harder and starting to tense their muscles before it was half over. Primate mode psychology at its most primitive.”

A footnote mentions how Hanfkopf disregards Barney and Betty Hill’s experience in New England as merely being caused by the stress of being an interracial couple in mid-century America. For anyone who has studied ufology this is a common explanation to write off the couple’s odd sojourn. In RAW’s essay a young physicist by the name of Stanton Friedman stands up to argue that some objects in the sky are unidentified and is roundly castigated. Friedman would become one of the leading authorities on the Barney and Betty Hill case on the side of those who aren’t sure what happened to the couple all those decades ago.

This chapter serves the same purpose of the essay: to show how certain humans are of their mastery of time and space despite the fact that we may presume, if there is a future, that our knowledge will grow and past convictions will become droll mistakes. Like the Royal Scientific Society, who are only aware of seventeen elements, it seems those who crusade on behalf of Science put the cart of certainty ahead of the horse of doubt which is, after all, the true driver of inquiry. (It is also humorous that the narrator mentions the full 92 elements that compose the universe as we are currently up to 118.) Given a choice between Randi and his ilk, I’d much rather hang out with the Divine Marquis.

Across the channel Sigismundo is still being bombarded by false circumstances that take place all over the continent and during different times. As he is being held in an English asylum in the nineteenth century Sigismundo again turns the tables on his interrogators before their conversation turns away from a concerned doctor and patient to initiate and interrogator. The symbolism of Masonry and mysticism swirls around as the drugged Sigismundo grapples through these staged circumstances: as he is led away by the Three Ruffians Sigismundo believes he is going to be thrown back in the well but is instead simply put back in his cell. The well refers to one of the initiatory rites of the O.T.O..

From Eric Wagner: “Well, with the Masonic talk in this week’s reading, I figured we might use the whole of Bergman’s Magic Flute. I considered “She Blinded Me with Science”, but I opted for Mozart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l17SQeytHN8”

(Eric sent this as a follow up to Tom and I and I asked his permission to share it here. My thanks to you.) “I hope all goes well. In 1985 after I graduated from college I went to Europe. I arranged my trip to arrive in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, on July 23. The next day I visited the concentration camp at Dachau which horrified me so much I just wanted to get out of Germany. I had a train ticket to leave for Vienna that night. I wandered the streets of Munich feeling despair about the human condition. I noticed a theater playing Bergman’s Magic Flute which I had heard about but never seen. I figured I had just enough time to see the movie and run to the train station to catch my train. I know some German, so I could barely follow the movie in Swedish with German subtitles, but the film restored my faith in humanity. Bergman’s realization of Mozart’s vision of a masonic society looking out for us seemed just what I needed. Peace.”

Watch 'The Magic Flute'

I have written several blog entries that mention Mozart's The Magic Flute, as it was an opera heavily influenced by Freemasonry.

The OperaVision website is a European project which makes operas produced in Europe available for free viewing on the Internet. For a few more weeks, a production of The Magic Flute is available from Garsington Opera at Wormsley.  I suggest taking a look at the overture at the beginning (about six minutes) to check out the opera's look. Mozart is a character in the "Historical Illuminatus" novels, so this is topical for the blog. Other Mozart operas are available, too.

Kerman's 'Beethoven Quartets' reading group, Week Two

Portrait of Beethoven as a young man by Carl Traugott Riedel (1769–1832)

Kerman Week 2 – Op. 18, No. 1 – The First Half of Chapter 2

By Eric Wagner, guest blogger

Rest in peace, Aretha Franklin.

This week please read sections one and two of chapter 2 (pg. 30 – 44) and listen to Op. 18, No. 1. Please comment on this week’s chapter and continue to comment on last week’s chapter.

Pg. 34. Kerman refers to Mozart’s Symphony in E flat, also known as Symphony 39, K. 543, one of Mozart’s great three final symphonies. Mozart did not give his works opus numbers. A scholar named Köchel (1800 – 1877) catalogued Mozart’s works and originated the K numbers. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

I tend to think of Beethoven’s quartets by their opus numbers. When Kerman refers to them by their keys, I usually have to double check the table of contents to figure out which quartet he means. On classical radio they might refer to a quartet as “Quartet X”, as in one through sixteen. This would confuse me, except they mostly play the early six quartets Op. 18, making it easy to figure out which quartet they mean.

Pg. 37. Casta diva refers to an aria from the opera Norma by Bellini.

I listened to this quartet while following along with the score on Thursday, which I hadn’t done for years. It helped me hear the different personalities of the four parts. In classical quartets the first violin usually has the melody, and the second violin often plays this role as well. As a bass player, I often gravitate to the cello part. The viola part fascinates me more and more as I get older. The viola rarely gets the melody, and when it does, it usually only gets it briefly. The novelist Edgar Pangborn said of Bach, “Listen to the inner voices.” I think that also holds true for Beethoven.

Mozart's Freemason opera coming to a theater near you

Scene from a production of The Magic Flute

Yesterday, I checked the Metropolitan Opera's schedule for live broadcasts to local movie theaters, and noticed something interesting: Mozart's Masonic opera, Die Zauberflote (e.g., The Magic Flute) is going to be shown on Oct. 14. Isis and Osiris are invoked in the course of the plot, and the main characters have to undergo an initiation. Given Robert Anton Wilson's interest in Mozart, I'm surprised that he never talked about this opera (as far as I know).

This performance (and other operas in the broadcast schedule) are available in many movie theaters across the country. Opera isn't for everyone, of course, but if you are into it, the broadcasts offer loud, clear sound and a great view of the action. I'm hoping to attend the Mozart broadcast.

Yes, the Illuminati influenced Beethoven, a biography says

In the Illuminatus! trilogy, Ludwig van Beethoven is depicted as an active member of the Illuminati.

This was, perhaps, just a joke by Robert Anton Wilson, the big Beethoven fan. But apparently it may be true that Beethoven was influenced by Illuminati ideas.

The latest big Beethoven biography is Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford. The hardcover comes to 1,104 pages, and apparently it took years for Swafford (a composer himself) to research and write it. It came out in 2014, but I have just finished it. (I am on vacation in California).

Swafford says that Beethoven was exposed to Illuminati and Freemason ideas by one of his early teachers, Christian Neefe, and influenced by those ideas all of his life. There are "23 results" when you do an Amazon "search inside the book" for the search term "Illuminati."

Swafford argues, convincingly I thought, that these Illuminati ideas influenced the composition of two of Beethoven's most famous symphonies, the Third (or "Eroica") and the Ninth. For example, Beethoven paid close attention to which keys he used, and the Third was composed in E-flat major, which Swafford says was the key Mozart used for Masonic music, such as The Magic Flute, which Swafford says was Beethoven's favorite Mozart opera. Schiller's "Ode to Joy" poem, used as the text for the last movement of the Ninth, was often sung in various musical settings, in Illuminati and Freemason meetings, Swafford says. Beethoven made several attempts to set it to music in his career, finally succeeding with his last symphony.

Scene from Mozart's "The Magic Flute."  Source.

I don't claim to be a Beethoven expert. Eric Wagner is more of one that I am. When I wrote to Eric (author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson), Eric commented, " I started the Swafford bio of Beethoven, but I haven’t finished it. I have reached the Third Symphony. I like it, but I find he lacks much sense of ambiguity. He gives a nice explanation of the role of the Illuminati, but I prefer Bob Wilson’s more tentative approach. Bob writes things like “perhaps the Illuminati does X”. Swafford says instead “the Illuminati does X”. Also, Swafford tends to overemphasize thematic unity between movements in Beethoven’s early works, I think. I find it interesting that Swafford does not include Donald Francis Tovey in his bibliography or in his index. I found one negative comment about Tovey in one of Swafford’s endnotes. I find this common among musicologists born after 1940: an overemphasis on thematic unity between movements in music before the Eroica and a negative attitude towards Tovey. Swafford includes lots of Kerman and Rosen in his bibliography, and his analysis of the Op. 18 string quartets relies heavily on Kerman’s analysis. Kerman sees Tovey’s writing about Beethoven as the finest writing about music period. I tend to lean toward Kerman’s views. Kerman edited a critical score of Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 503, and the essays there really reveal this split."

Much of the technical discussion in Swafford's book is over my head, although not Eric's. Swafford also does not make a final judgment on who the "Immortal Beloved" was, although he discusses the three main candidates.

Celebrating Mozart's birthday

I didn't realize that Monday was Mozart's birthday until Eric Wagner wished me (and the rest of y'all) a "Happy Mozart's birthday" in the comments for the day's post.

I pulled out an MP3 player, hooked it up to the stereo, and listened to two of my favorite pieces: The piano concerto No. 24 (featuring Murray Perahia in the version I picked) and the piano quartet in G Minor (with Peter Serkin and the Yale String Quartet). I did my best to listen to them without "doing" anything. Reading Oz Fritz has helped remind me that's OK.

I doubt that either piece, certainly not the piano quartet, would make it on a "greatest hits" Mozart album. One of the most remarkable facts about Mozart's output is how great much of it was, not just the most familiar and the most played pieces.

This was a point also made by Andrew Ross in his collection of music essays, Listen to This. The chapter on Mozart records how Ross took a 180 CD recording of Mozart's complete works on the Phillips label and transferred it to his iPod (9.77 gigabytes at the "minimum listenable bitrate," which unfortunately Ross doesn't specify) and then listened to all of it from beginning to end. "From the start, the music is astonishingly well made," Ross reports.

I don't have the financial wherewithal to own the complete works (and I don't know how I would find time, anyway, to listen to all of it if I did) but like any other classical music buff, I own a lot of Mozart. (Amazon makes it easy to do this; I own two very cheap, large Mozart collections, the Bach Guild's "Big Mozart Box"  and a set called "Mozart — 100 Supreme Classical Masterpieces," put out by a Swedish music label that has pioneered making big, cheap music collections available on the Internet.)

The other day, I was reading an online biography of Jimi Hendrix, and I focused on the astonishment of many listeners when they heard him perform for the first time. Mozart seems to have had a similar impact upon listeners. (Robert Anton Wilson writes about this in the Historical Illuminatus trilogy,where Mozart appears as a character.) Both men died young, robbing posterity of a great deal of music.  (For Oz Fritz's thoughts on rock's top guitarists — he ranks Hendrix No. 1 — go here.)  Hendrix was only 27 when he died and it's painful to speculate on where his talents would have taken him. Mozart made it to age 35. Many of his best works were composed late in life and his last year was a good one; it's frustrating to wonder what else we'd have if he had a few more years.

I can't give a citation because I can't remember the book where I read it, but I came across a passage years ago about two famous musicians discussing composers. One asked the other who his favorite was, and he replied, Beethoven. The other said, "I thought you were going to say Mozart." "Oh, I thought you meant besides Mozart," replied the first.

Michael Walsh, in his Who's Afraid of Classical Music?, wrote, "Mozart was the greatest composer who ever lived, and who probably will live."

Rankings of the best composer are ultimately a little silly and undoubtedly subjective. If I were pushed, I'd probably go with Beethoven. But the statements about Mozart seem less silly after carefully listening to much of his music.

RAW on Mozart

"It sounds like as Mozart's music. All as mechanical as clockwork and yet as free as a dream ... "

-- Robert Anton Wilson

(From The Trick Top Hat, in the chapter "The Universe Decides," from the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy. Spoken by the character Natalie Drest.)

I know that Robert Anton Wilson loved Mozart, but it's much harder to find comments about Mozart from RAW than it is to find comments about Beethoven. So I was pleased to run  across this passage, which I think captures Mozart's achievement in a few words: He stayed within the classical forms of his era, yet somehow he could transcend them with his genius.

After I read that passage, I put my book down and listened to this recording (a free download from the Gardner Museum) of Mozart's Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478, by the Nash Ensemble. It's a wonderful piece. 

Celebrating Mozart's birthday

There will be plenty of Mozart CDs playing on my stereo this weekend. Friday was Mozart's birthday, so I figure it's appropriate to celebrate over the weekend.

In "Credo," a chapter in Right Where You Are Sitting Now, Robert Anton Wilson wrote, "I believe in Bach, the creator of heaven and earth, and in Mozart, his only begotten son, and in Beethoven, the mediator and comforter ... "

Mozart appears as a character in RAW's "Historical Illuminatus" trilogy and is mentioned as a favorite composer of Sigismundo Celine and Maria Babcock.

For some live Mozart performances, go here. Also here.