Liam:

Glenn Gould... low estimation of Mozart? Please explain.

Liam:

Yea, I was reading all about Gould and a host of other musicians who don't care for Mozart earlier today.

Listen to K515 and K516. Mendelssohn never wrote anything that came anywhere close. Schubert wrote some magnificent songs, like Chopin some magnificent piano music, but didn't have the breadth and depth of Mozart. Brahms, Haydn, Handel, nothing so sublime. Only, imo, Bach and Beethoven came close, and both, imo, relied a bit too much on their technique rather than as Mozart pure genius.

Why is Mozart considered the "greatest composer ever"?

Why is Coca Cola the most common and popular drink?

1. Accessibility - I,I,I,I,V,V,V,V
2. Tickles the (Tongue) Ears
3. Huge Financial Backing

Mozart, in a certain sense, is the Coca Cola of the music world. It is not a fine wine. It is the lowest common denominator of what most people like to hear. Music for the masses.

Who is the artist (painter) that has a similar reputation?

So, the mistaken word in your phrase is 'greatest'. He is not the greatest. He is the most accessible and widely distributed BECAUSE he makes money like coke.

He is the Ford of the car industry, not the BMW.

He is the PC of the computer world, not the Macintosh.

mrcopper

Simply my observations. I prefer Bach, fine wine, a german car and... yes... a macintosh. In my many years of experience with them all, they are just plainly superior. A musician's musician, a thinking man's car and a computer that let's me be an artist (play the violin), not a technician (build and maintain the violin).

I thought about taking up smoking. What are your thoughts on starting with a patch and working my way up to Camel no filters?

Michelangelo... Bingo! (see previous comments about him above.)

mrcopper:

My previous comment about Michelangelo:

Mozart and the Sistine chapel are an entirely humanistic endeavor, shrouded in the gymnastics of flamboyant melodic lines and bursting colors...

He is also:
1. Accessibility
2. Tickles the (Tongue) Ears (Eyes)
3. Huge Financial Backing

Iconography is the truly ethereal. The artists are unknown, masters, God-directed.

http://www.russian-icon.com/index.php/en/

God directed and dedicated to the highest art is probably why Bach never became famous in his own time. He wasn't chasing fame or money; he was focused on doing his best. And in the end, many are now proclaiming HIM to be the greatest composer of all time. He also has my vote. God was really hoping he would be a Catholic.

Methinks the dissing of Mozart here has more than a smidgeon of pride in it. Of affecting being cogscenti who are in a position to denigrate. It's unseemly, at least as being done casually here. I much prefer Byrd's Ave Verum Corpus to Mozart's, but Mozart's exhibits compositional mastery that I doubt many if any members of this board could toss off easily. Part of what makes Byrd's the more dear to me is the context in which it was written (and that it uses the fuller text, which is supernal). I tend to be of the "Bach is best" persuasion, but even I see that Bach had his limitations no less than Mozart did. I doubt Bach would have seen fit to denigrate Mozart's genius had Bach lived another generation; he - himself a genius - would have understood that Mozart composed in milieus dominated by the operatic form, and was very much influenced by it, especially in his cantabile melodic writing. I think Haydn could have midwifed a fantastic meeting between Bach and Mozart. Anointing Bach as greatest does no favors to Bach anymore than it does to Mozart; it's just as vulnerable to affectation.

Bach had patrons in one form or another. Palestrina did. Monteverdi did. It's not until Beethoven that we enter the era of the celebrity composer deriving his fame more from mass adulation than patronage. Mozart was definitely not there yet, though there was a dabble of it.

Methinks the dissing of Mozart here has more than a smidgeon of pride in it. Of affecting being cogscenti who are in a position to denigrate.

No one is dissing Mozart; just making a life long assessment. I have been playing his music since I was 8. Methinks you are very defensive and protective of your preferences. Good music stands on its own. So does good wine. There is no need to defend against scrutiny. Those that do are hiding something inferior.

I just cooked my three hour spaghetti sauce last night. Wish you all could taste it, but there is no app for that (yet).

Liam
Did you mean 'cognoscenti'? (well informed)?

I am in the choir of meloadmires, and francisadmires, too, for that matter. Just you both sometimes go places I wouldn't/couldn't'/shouldn't support.

Cute! Were you Mozart you might have avoided some of the seventh and third doubling, but that's minor. It's charming. Try, C E C G E C E G, B G F D G D F D, G G D G F G F D for the first line, LH.

I do not aspire to be Mozart. Therefore you will find Koerber mixed in!

Final version with repeat and ending, but not polished, nor ever will be!

And CHARMING is the main problem with music like this.

Actually, I've wondered before about that very spot you circled. Is it conceivable that the RH E might be played late? Or maybe both melodic patterns, RH & LH, overrode any other concerns.

Charles

Until you drive this, you just don't know! Untill you play this, you just don't know.

I can remember when the BMW was college student transportation. They were not expensive, either. As with Mercedes, they probably cost much less in Europe than in the U.S. It is all marketing and targeting to consumers who will pay that price.

Duke has three organs, all of them great. I still prefer the Aeolian (Kathleen McClendon Organ) which is the traditional sound most of us identify with Duke.

I think it is the last Aeolian before the merger with Skinner, If I recall correctly.

Better to hear it in person, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiEnt0KtyiQ

I'm surprised that no one has brought in the (former) highest authority on earth into this discussion. Pope-emeritus Benedict is well-known for his love for Mozart's music. He said in an interview (as Cdl. Ratzinger):

the largest and most important and best parts of my youth I spent in Traunstein, which very much reflects the influence of Salzburg. You might say that there Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me very deeply, because it is so luminous and yet at the same time so deep. His music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence.

I find it fascinating that I don't like Mozart when I'm anxious, distracted, restless, or annoyed. But when I'm relaxed and at peace with the world, he's sublime.

There's certainly a dimension to Classical-era music that can evoke in sound what is evoked in sight in Rococco or Late Baroque architecture:

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2009/05/neuzelle-abbey.html#.U43cs3JdV8E

This style leaves me cold. But I can see certain elements of genius, such as the Emmaus-themed tabernacle (which should be returned to use as a tabernacle...). For the same reason, a overdone Gothic architecture leaves me cold, particularly when it's on a huge rather than intimate scale (I realize that the nature of Gothic architectural technology in point of fact functionally permitted a significant increase in volumetric scale of churches, but that don't mean I have to like it in all its huge iterations). I tend to strongly prefer Romanesque and more austere Gothic forms, which call less attention to themselves.

A different Bavarian style: austere Gothic. St Martin's Landshut (full of fine details, not iconoclastic but for the now clear glass - I love grisaille glass shot with select use of color). There are musical styles that image this aurally. But then I am a synaesthete...

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7150/6388831917_ca0c87dd54_z.jpg