Mozart

[Gavin]

I remember sitting on the top deck of a bus in London, years ago, while people dressed in casual sportswear threw food at each other, and I was listening to this. It makes for a surreal juxtaposition to listen to classical music while going about one's business in the modern UK.

The title of this piece, from Cosi Fan Tutte, means "blow softly, you breezes".

[Michael]

That is a wonderfully surreal image, Gavin. It reminds me a bit of the use of classical music by Kubrick in his films, particularly A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut, where beautiful music plays over scenes of depravity and destruction. Kubrick's images were so powerful for a while that I had a hard time appreciating the deep beauty of the last movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony for itself, without the notes being overlaid by the imagery of Alex undergoing the conditioning process.

One of the things that disturbs me most about every type of progressivism is the vision of the good life they promote. It is a life of adult infancy, where there is no grander aim than the pursuit of physical gratification, the avoidance of pain, and ignoring the specter of mortality as long as humanly possible. Even the last, I suspect, would be dealt with through numbing drugs like Huxley's soma. It is no world for high achievement or human excellence in virtue. Such a world was articulated over a hundred years ago by Chernyshevsky, a Russian radical writer, who inspired Lenin. Here is Chernyshevsky's paradise, as dreamed of by one of his characters in What Is To Be Done, as described by Michael Burleigh, the great British historian of totalitarian movements:

Vera has four dreams, which are like escalators to her progressive enlightenment. Her protracted and vivid fourth dream is used to muse on mankind's own progression to the total stasis of a richly imagined Fourierist utopia. Here nothing, as the pop song goes, ever happens, or at least nothing that might make life bearable by way of depth or variety. Heaven is like a Russian version of California. Blandly beautiful people, though California has its share of gnarled specimens too, populate the communities Chernyshevsky describes: 'This is a lovely, joyful people, theirs is a life of elegance and light. Their humble homes reveal inside a wealth of refinement and mastery in the art of leisure; furniture and furnishings delight the eye in every detail.

I shudder to think of a future full of such people listening to Mozart or Bach, moved perhaps a little by its beauty but with their souls unstirred by its deeper resonances, its pointing at something greater. For them it would be no more than pleasant dinner music.

(By the way, I cannot recommend highly enough Michael Burleigh's books on substitute religions, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, From The French Revolution To The Great War, and Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics From The Great War To The War on Terror. Dalrymple has often discussed, and so have many on this forum, the way that politics and ideologies substitute for religions in the modern world. Burleigh's is by far the most detailed, thoughtful treatment of this phenomenon, and how it came about.)

[Gavin]

I did not know until today that YouTube is full of adverts - today I have the Adblock plugin turned off for testing purposes. I recommend this as it brings great peace of mind to never be bombarded with adverts (pages also load quicker).

I went there for this, which is in my opinion one of the most sublime of Mozart's compositions.

[Rachel]

Gosh, reminds me of having to practise this on the piano as a kid. There's nothing like forced piano lessons and school music lessons to put you off classical music for years.
Still, it's quite nice sounding here. Better than what I would play.

[Gavin]

[Gavin]

This truly beautiful duettino from The Marriage of Figaro is featured here in perhaps one of the most memorable uses of opera in cinema. Yes, it's unlikely this would have happened. Perhaps more likely then, but today, the modern criminal would more likely jeer at such grace and beauty. But to a sensitive individual in prison, this would indeed be the lifeblood required to survive...

[Gavin]

Coming in with 4,000 views worldwide, it's Mozart!

[Gavin]

[Gavin]

[Gavin]

To combat the Chopin I just posted, here's one of Mozart's most upbeat and exhilarating pieces!



Mozart was a professional composer, of course, no doubt facing the same challenges that many professional composers face today. For example: finding work, not always liking the people he was writing for, not always necessarily agreeing with or believing the messages of his music, hardly being paid enough. He was actually an under-appreciated genius of his day just as some of the greatest musicians and composers are ignored today.

Perhaps Mozart was indeed not very likeable - he was probably aware of his genius. I think he could hear all of the music in his head and could only just write fast enough to note it all down. Often people tend to be this talented at the expense of other parts of their personality. Nonetheless, they say genius is 99% hard work, and there is no doubt Mozart worked very hard indeed.

Were he alive today I think it is a near certainty Mozart would be a film composer of the likes of John Barry and Hans Zimmer. I should think he would use all and any instruments, electronic and orchestral, to create music the likes of which we had never heard.

But even in his day and during his short life Mozart left us with a massive back catalogue of sheer brilliance, now all classified by "K" number. He was commissioned to write the Haffner Serenade (not to be confused with the Haffner Symphony) for the marriage of a member of the Haffner family in 1776. The composer was, at the time, twenty years old.

[Gavin]

One of Mozart's most animated pieces and one of the first that I ever heard. I love it!

At the beginning of the opera here, characters are busy measuring the castle bedroom prior to their marriage...

[Jonathan]

Here's a short aria from Tosca which caught my fancy. I played this clip in a loop last time I was cleaning the windows, made the work go a lot faster. It's quite suitable to this treatment, since the clip itself is a compilation of twelve different performers singing the same aria. I don't know what the neighbors thought.



I recommend going at least as far as Corelli's performance which starts at 1:40.

[Kevin R]

One can almost sense Mozart's ear listening in to the human commerce at some late 18thC social or public gathering, the result transmuted into a pleasing little aural drama. The sprightly brocade of melody and the graceful arabesques of tone. Like clucking and garrulous courtesans gossiping at the ball, or the goings on at some Viennese public park on a summer's afternoon. And yet, a tinge of melancholy to the proceedings I think?

I've yet to try listening to its like whilst out on the streets of Britain as you have Gavin, but I daresay that if I did then it would give the piece a somewhat markedly different resonance!