Mozart really is the best.

[hypersonic]

Originally Posted by Connemara

Manton will hate me for saying it but I like a lot of Liszt's compositions.
Yeah me too.

Another piece that the audience were outraged by was Prokofiev's 2nd Piano Concerto -- its premiere was at an open air concert in August 1913. The audience got more than they bargained for from the young genius -- not quite the gentle summer evening music they might have expected -- I love the extreme dissonance at the end of the 3rd movement. Prokofiev's brilliant use of dissonance is still virtually unrivaled.

Prokofiev piano concerto no 2 op 16 Mov 3 -Intermezzo-Allegro Vladimir Ashkenazy Piano
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[tagutcow]

Originally Posted by Sherman90

Mozart's music is certainly more "natural" than Beethoven's, but to seek to elevate the former on that basis is to miss the point entirely. Beethoven was the first composer to humanize music - that is, to render it PSYCHOLOGICAL. It is this very "strain", as you correctly call it, which makes him the grand-master of musical composition still to this day. In fact, it is on this very basis that I sympathize with the many dozens of my peers who can scarcely listen to Mozart for this very reason: his music is TOO natural, seldom human. I don't prescribe to this view entirely, but I certainly view his Requiem as an exception to the rule.

I don't disagree with you at all, and my comments were not meant to be qualitative. But the "strain" I referred to is not just an aesthetic choice; Beethoven would agonize over a piece of music for months and years, whereas Mozart would write out all symphonic parts in first drafts without even having to go through the intermediary process of having to compose on a grand staff, which is what most composers do.

The last movement of the 9th might be my favorite piece of music ever, but even there I don't think the Mozartian standard of "change one note and the enitre thing fall apart" holds. In fact, there are many notes I probably would change (I'd actually like to excise the entire fugal section in strings,) but the seemingly slapdash nature of the composition actually underlines the sense of revelry in the text.

Of course, had Mozart lived to be older, it's probable that he would have attempted to write music that was more ambitious in form.

Originally Posted by Connemara

WTF does that even mean? Sounds like pseudo-academic mental masturbation.

Actually, he's entirely right. Mozart's music is rooted in an aesthetic of classicism that basically comes from Hellenistic/Apollonian ideals of form and proportion. Beethoven's music had fractured forms that underlined the emotional content of the music, where mental states are described experientially rather than as a kind of static abstraction alluded to through Classical tropes. It's a straight line from Beethoven to Symphonie Fantastique and Erwartung.

Of course, that's a simplification to some degree. It's very possible to hear a real-time description of mental states in Mozart, and even as late a Beethoven piece as the Alla danza tedesca from the SQ in Bb Op 130 is as charming and "classical" a piece as Mozart's ever written, where the unexpected turns come off more as delightful surprises rather than attempts at being purposefully jarring (which Beethoven certainly did much of the time.)

 

[Connemara]

Many claim Beethoven died due to liver failure, brought on by heavy boozing.

 

[hypersonic]

Originally Posted by Sherman90

I don't prescribe to this view entirely, but I certainly view his Requiem as an exception to the rule.

The Requiem has become one of Mozart's most popular works ...but it should be noted that there is debate over how much of it he actually wrote ...as he died before it was completed.

 

[Connemara]

Originally Posted by Sherman90

Harnoncourt makes the Requiem too intellectual, too scary and sparse. SACD is nice, but try Karajan from 1975. http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Requiem-Josà -van-Dam/dp/B000001GDM/ref=sr_1_31?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1253071014&sr=8-31 P.S. Mozart is certainly a Master - and the Requiem is certainly a masterpiece - but he remains Beethoven's pupil.
TBH, this is how I learned to sing it and how I've heard it interpreted quite a few times. I think the Requiem is at its most powerful when performed in this manner. P.S., anyone know John Rutter's Requiem? It is brilliant.

 

[Connemara]

Originally Posted by hypersonic

The Requiem has become one of Mozart's most popular works ...but it should be noted that there is debate over how much of it he actually wrote ...as he died before it was completed.
I thought he wrote the entire thing up until Benedictus, and then at least some portions of the rest? BTW, "Dies Irae" almost scares me into a believer everytime I hear it.

 

[hypersonic]

Originally Posted by Connemara

I thought he wrote the entire thing up until Benedictus, and then at least some portions of the rest?

BTW, "Dies Irae" almost scares me into a believer everytime I hear it.

Hmm ...not sure about the details Conne -- it is magnificent though. I think Mozart left enough information to allow it to be completed as closely as possible to how he would have wanted it.

PS, I really love the Benedictus

...even if W.A.M. didn't write it.

 

[Sherman90]

Originally Posted by Connemara

I thought he wrote the entire thing up until Benedictus, and then at least some portions of the rest?

BTW, "Dies Irae" almost scares me into a believer everytime I hear it.

I didn't know you were a singer! In a choir? What range?

 

[JAPAN]

Mozart... mozart.. hmph I prefer Bach.

 

[axe]

Originally Posted by JAPAN

Mozart... mozart.. hmph I prefer Bach.
Ahh, Bach!

 

[A Y]

Originally Posted by hypersonic

Another piece that the audience were outraged by was Prokofiev's 2nd Piano Concerto -- its premiere was at an open air concert in August 1913. The audience got more than they bargained for from the young genius -- not quite the gentle summer evening music they might have expected -- I love the extreme dissonance at the end of the 3rd movement. Prokofiev's brilliant use of dissonance is still virtually unrivaled.

One of my favorite pieces of music ever. Two interesting facts: it was written after he found out his best friend had just committed suicide, which could explain its angst-ridden dissonance, and what we hear today is not what the audience heard in 1913, because the score was destroyed in a fire, and Prokoviev had to reconstruct it from memory. In the process, he revised it extensively, and basically considered it his 4th piano concerto.

--Andre

 

[Connemara]

Originally Posted by Sherman90

I didn't know you were a singer! In a choir? What range?
Haven't sung in years. Baritone.

 

[hypersonic]

Originally Posted by A Y

One of my favorite pieces of music ever. Two interesting facts: it was written after he found out his best friend had just committed suicide, which could explain its angst-ridden dissonance, and what we hear today is not what the audience heard in 1913, because the score was destroyed in a fire, and Prokoviev had to reconstruct it from memory. In the process, he revised it extensively, and basically considered it his 4th piano concerto.

--Andre

Thanks for such interesting information Andre. I love several of Prokofiev's works.

 

[AR_Six]

Depends what for. I play clarinet, and the K622 is sort of a defining piece, but in that context Mozart is not unrivaled by Brahms and Weber, among others.

Don't forget Rachmaninov.

How is it even possible to?