INTRODUCING MOZART (to our time)

What would Mozart have thought if he could have known that today, more than two centuries after his death, millions of people throughout the entire world are still playing and listening to his music? My guess is that he would have been absolutely delighted—which composer would not be—but also quite astonished. As much as he may have believed his music to be better than that of any other composer dead or alive—after all, several of his contemporaries including the great Joseph Haydn had said as much—he would surely find it hard to believe that we could give more attention to a composer who died over two centuries ago than to all composers of our own time put together.

Not that Mozart and his contemporaries had no interest in composers of the past. During his last years he conducted several major Handel works in a kind of "ancient music" series--although with his own updated orchestrations--and he had fun arranging J.S. Bach's harpsichord fugues for strings. But that was not going back very far; only two years separated Handel's last and Mozart's first compositions. Besides, one studied those old masters because one respected them and could learn from them, the way you can learn from your parents and grandparents. The idea that such ancient stuff could be accorded a significant place in contemporary musical life would have struck everyone as absurd; music had "progressed" too far for that. The Enlightenment had its own arrogance.

What can we say about our obsession with the music of this short-lived and long-dead composer, who wrote his music for a world so different from our own? That it makes us happy? That it touches us in our innermost being? That it gives us a glimpse of God? That it does all these things in a manner different from other music, in fact, unlike anything else we experience on this earth?

We feel in the presence of a miracle, and we hasten to construct myths to deal with it: The mindless fool who incessantly pours out treasures, receiving them from some mysterious but surely divine source; the lone genius, who despite the acclaim of his Wunderkind years was rejected and forgotten by society and misunderstood even by those close to him, who hid his suffering under a mask of cheerful music, allowing only occasional flashes of his true feelings to come through (the minor-key pieces), who was reduced to abject poverty, wasted away and died an early death, poisoned by his second-rate colleagues.

We do not know and shall never know the true Mozart, but what we do know does not correspond in the least to those myths. Mozart did for some years have to struggle for recognition, but by the time he died he was admired throughout the world, with Haydn his only rival for musical fame. His death came fairly suddenly, after only a short illness, probably the result of a rheumatic fever which, like a time bomb, had been dormant in his body since childhood. It was preceded by one of the most creatively active periods of his entire life; he was felled at the height of his powers. His works were being performed in many major cities, there were invitations to visit England and Russia, and several as yet uncompleted commissions. He had begun earning a substantial income from many sources, and while he generally he spent his money as freely as he earned it, liking to live in style, and a few years earlier had gone through a difficult cash-flow problem (due to unusual expenses such as the serious illness of his wife and to a general down-turn in economic conditions), his financial situation had stabilized during his last year. He died without major debts, if with few assets.

The image of the lone artist, withdrawn from the world, fits Mozart very poorly. His life was filled to the brim with hustle and bustle, as was the Mozart home: there was a constant coming and going of children, pupils, colleagues, friends, and house guests, there were always rehearsals going on, frequent house concerts and balls, not to mention the billiard games deep into the night. This seemed to be the only way he could live and the only way he could work--quiet isolation was not for him. His circle of friends and acquaintances was extensive and colorful, including high-placed government officials and prosperous businessmen, as well as a socially more marginal crowd of actors and musicians. Among his friends were many Jews and, it seems, one black African--a rarity in 18th-century Vienna! Also not fitting the picture is his family life: he was a devoted husband and father, and Constanze--who has generally received a bad rap from biographers--appears to have been as devoted in return; they could hardly bear to be apart for any length of time.

In the midst of it all Mozart was continually composing: it was his livelihood, a matter of survival. Especially after coming to Vienna, when he decided to go free-lance, his income depended directly on a steady output of music. Every work was written for a commission, a concert, or some other purpose that had to do with bringing in money. Not that he accepted every request or that he had no loftier goals than satisfying the wishes of those who paid the bills. As he wrote to his father, the trick is to write music that will please the general public but that also has something extra to offer to the connoisseur. I think we can agree that Mozart was able to combine the two better than almost anyone in history, and his music still manages to keep both parties happy.

Of course, we don't know whether Mozart's contemporaries admired him for the same things we do; they certainly talked about his greatness in very different terms. Haydn's famous remarks to Leopold Mozart are fairly typical of the aesthetic values of the time:

"I tell you before God, and as an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by reputation: he has taste and moreover the greatest possible knowledge of the science of composition."

"Taste" and "knowledge of the science of composition" would seem very faint praise for a composer today, the former quality more likely being cited if he were recommended for a job as newspaper critic, the latter if for a university teaching position. There is no mention of his divine gift, his inexhaustible inspiration, his ability to express in music the profoundest feelings. Still, perhaps Haydn hit the mark.

If we translate "knowledge of the science of composition" as compositional skill, Mozart's was second to none. He received no conservatory diplomas or university degrees in fact he had no formal education of any kind, but the breadth of his musical training was probably unique in the annals of history. His father was not only a well-known composer and violinist but also a leading pedagogue, who wrote one of the most important musical textbooks of the period and who carefully engineered his son's musical development. During the years that most of us spent sitting in classrooms, young Mozart was touring the musical capitals of Europe, everywhere meeting and working with the most prominent musicians, and familiarizing himself with just about every musical genre, style, and technique to be heard on the continent (from his eighth to his twenty-fourth year nearly three-quarters of his time was spent "on the road," sometimes remaining in a foreign city for over a year). Part of the richness and variety of his music derives from his command of a tremendous range of musical styles, unified and made his own by his strong musical personality.

As to "taste," we can translate that as his infallible judgment of what at any point in a composition are the right musical choices, his knowing, whether by intuition or deliberation, which of the available twelve notes is the best one to come next . And isn't that from where comes the magic of his music? (Of course, "best" presumes that not all choices are equally good; post-modern critical theorists may call that a "slippery" concept, but for the rest of us it is an article of faith.)

Let us celebrate this artist who gave us so much in so few years, and let us hope and pray that his music will remain with us forever!

Ó Alexander Silbiger, 2001