Re: GG and Mozart

[Tim Conway <tpconway@ozemail.com.au>]

Hello Arin,

>After much internal struggle on whether or not to join the Mozart thread,
>here I go. Must admit, there are times when I do like Mozart a lot - esp.
>his string quartets. Yes, he's a genius, yes, he's brilliant, yes, his
>orchestrations are wonderful, and I love his operas to bits - Don Giovanni
>is my all-time fave - but, quite frankly, he bores me. It's, well, too
>perfect. And cutsey way too often. I'd like to find more sturm-und-drang
>Mozart. Help me out, people. Not that I'm asking to be converted - I
>already like him! It's just that at any given moment I'm more likely to...

Could your dislike be because Mozart was (to my mind, anyway) inexorably 
drawn to the major mode? I think, but I haven't counted, that he has a 
greater proportion of major key works than any other significant 
composer. Even when he nominally places a work in a minor key (I think 
there's a minor-key fantasia in the Gould 4-CD set of sonatas), Mozart 
seems to be struggling to stay in the minor mode, and when he eventually 
breaks out of minor into his beloved major mode the music seems to give 
an exultant cry of joy or at least a huge sigh of relief (that could be 
just my imagination).

If the foregoing hypothesis has any basis, it might explain why most 
people 'sort of' dislike Mozart. In the same way that 'good news' 
newspapers rarely last long because we're all ghouls at heart and like to 
read only bad news as long as it's happening to others, perhaps we expect 
our artists to eschew unwarranted joy and instead express doom and gloom 
and pain and suffering. A bit of happiness is OK now and then, but that's 
all. And perhaps most people associate the major mode with happiness, 
joy, feelings of well-being, etc, but associate the minor mode with the 
aforesaid doom, gloom, etc.

Then of course there are all those other modes with Greek names -- I 
can't tell one from the other but they seem to hover, emotionally, 
between major and minor. I think, but am not sure, that Bach and other 
composers used the other modes when it suited them, possibly in Bach's 
case even in the WTK. But did Mozart ever use them? I suppose he must 
have, but I still think he preferred the major above all others and 
that's why he sounds tinkly and boring: he just won't take anything 
seriously.

If that's not a load of old cods (and I freely admit it could be), 
perhaps it would explain Gould's antipathy towards Mozart. Gould seemed 
to love Schonberg, Krenek and other composers who looked on writing in 
the major mode as no better than emulating what dogs do to trees. I get 
the impression that Gould distruted being happy or joyful, whereas Mozart 
gives the impression that he actually had to try to be unhappy. They were 
scarcely kindred spirits.

Here endeth the thought for today. Regards to all,

Tim
<tpconway@ozemail.com.au>