I just got back from a wonderful All-Mozart program at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). Once again, free tickets could be procured through channels available to a lowly graduate student at MIT. As with the previous visit, armed with our cavalier sense of adventure, Priya, Varun and I managed to sneak into expensive balcony seats on the first floor. Over the period of two hours, the orchestra played 5 symphonies - 1) No. 1 in E-flat, K.16, 2) Symphony in G, K.45a, 3) No. 13 in F, K.112, 4) No. 14 in A, K.114, 5) No. 18 in F, K.130 (P.S: I'm typing these names out from the program brochure so that interested people can search for them on youtube. It's not like I remember them off the top of my head :P ).
The first of these was composed by Mozart when he was eight (by that time I had read my first comic book), the second when he was ten (that's when I started sleeping alone at nights courageously), the third when he was eleven (almost puberty), the fourth when Mozart had barely reached fifteen (that was when I first fell in love with a girl in my class; part sexual, part juvenile) and he was sixteen when he wrote No. 18 (never mind the attempts at correspondence). If I, without absolutely no talent for music could feel liliputian, read this:
I have admitted before that I have no particular acumen for music or the technicalities behind it. If I love a piece, even my ability to describe my feeling in a manner that people might call 'aesthetically refined' is highly limited and susceptible to fallacies. But I have always felt with Mozart's music, that simple transcendental quality that makes it immediately appealing to one's ears. Be it the buoyant Turkish March, the sombre Requiem, the beatific Eine Kline Nachtmusik (one of the many movements) or my favourite, Symphony no. 25 in G minor, they are simple and will not fail to enthrall the accommodating and discerning ear. As a columnist in the brochure puts it:
The first of these was composed by Mozart when he was eight (by that time I had read my first comic book), the second when he was ten (that's when I started sleeping alone at nights courageously), the third when he was eleven (almost puberty), the fourth when Mozart had barely reached fifteen (that was when I first fell in love with a girl in my class; part sexual, part juvenile) and he was sixteen when he wrote No. 18 (never mind the attempts at correspondence). If I, without absolutely no talent for music could feel liliputian, read this:
Of course when we recall that Mozart was twenty-seven when he wrote that impressive piece (referring toSymphony no. 25), and that he was only a few months past his thirty-second birthday when he composed the great final triad, we are jolted into the realization that all his symphonies are in a sense early works (he wrote forty-one in his lifetime). At thirty-two, Brahms, Bruckner, Elgar, Hindemith, Martinu, Sibelius, and Vaughan Williams-among others-had not yet dared their first symphonies.
-Quoted from the BSO brochure (italics mine)
I have admitted before that I have no particular acumen for music or the technicalities behind it. If I love a piece, even my ability to describe my feeling in a manner that people might call 'aesthetically refined' is highly limited and susceptible to fallacies. But I have always felt with Mozart's music, that simple transcendental quality that makes it immediately appealing to one's ears. Be it the buoyant Turkish March, the sombre Requiem, the beatific Eine Kline Nachtmusik (one of the many movements) or my favourite, Symphony no. 25 in G minor, they are simple and will not fail to enthrall the accommodating and discerning ear. As a columnist in the brochure puts it:
Mozart of course came to take pride in his ability to write music that seemed simple to the simple but whose non-obvious complexities were there to delight those with more demanding ears. The minuet along with its tightrope horn lines, offers a canon to begin with and a few surprising harmonies in the Trio, and the finale brings everything to an exuberant, joyous close.
There's something in Mozart for everyone :-)
3 comments:
There's nothing like the requiem, especially Jesu Domini, Des Aries and Confutatis and a glass of cold whisky. But then Sumedh arrives with his hair :-)
As another Mozart fan, I can vouch for the beauty of his compositions. One anecdote I remember is Einstein's statement that the reason why he personally thought Mozart was the greatest composer of all was that while Beethoven created his music, Mozart seemed to have simply found it, as if it always existed in the universe as an eternal creation.
@Ashutosh: that's a great Einstein quote
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