Scholar defends Mozart's archbishop

I am being challenged on my post about Archbishop Colloredo, above, whom I called Mozart's mean archbishop. And I am going to look into it because the comment writer is Michael Lorenz whose Web site I love.

If he tells me to do more research I will do more research! I admire Michael Lorenz and am always honored to hear from him.

Was Archbishop Colloredo a villain, a major pain or at least a bad boss?

Or is he among the saints?

I will say one thing, if I was wrong about this, a million other people have been wrong too.

"Please do not repeat old nonsense," Michael Lorenz writes. If old nonsense this be, I am only the thousandth person to repeat it. Still it is easy to see how that can happen because after all, the version of events we are always fed began with Mozart himself.

It will be fun to see if we can defend old Colloredo.

Meanwhile, I have been sitting here on this rainy and brooding All Souls Day ...




... cataloging Leonard's records, a major pursuit in my life these days. Today I am going through his recordings of the music of Miklos Rozsa. I have all these letters written by Rozsa and Pennario and I am checking different things in these letters, pinpointing exact recording dates, things like that.

I sometimes look up peripheral people to see if they are still around, because then maybe I can get them on the phone or something, if they might be useful. I noticed that the liner notes to three of these records are by a writer named Christopher Palmer. He seems to have been an authority on Rozsa's music. So I Google Christopher Palmer. He is dead. He died a long time ago. Which is too bad because he was passionate about film music and under-appreciated composers.

Christopher Palmer's obituary in the Independent is beautifully written. and details his many accomplishments. In the middle of it, though, is this sentence I love:

"The errors he did not notice and allowed into print reached legendary status."

The writer said proof-reading was not the Palmer method. Which makes sense to me because on one of the Rozsa albums this one mistake jumped out at me and I had been wondering what the story was about it. Now I know!

Anyway, inspiration from all sides to check my work more carefully even on a Web log written in haste.

Mozart mystery lost in translation

Sure, I can speak some German, and read it pretty well.

But why read it when you can have the fun of hitting Google Translate?

I was honored again to hear from Dr. Michael Lorenz who sent a link to a story in Der Spiegel about Mozart's skull and about how the skull at the Mozarteum is not Mozart's.

I clicked on the link. I started to read it.

Then my eye slid to the top of the page. And I saw the button I was looking for:

Translate!

It yielded this classic paragraph:

Legends of Mozart, and countless tough. In particular, the problem of every man's triad - the money, the woman's death - was romantically darkened by posterity, distorted speculative nachgemodelt spirit of the time, the cinematic gun robbers "Amadeus" was the most recent example.

"Legends of Mozart, and countless tough."

Could you make this up?

Musicologist says Mozart skull study is hogwash

What is it about sunny Saturdays that makes me want to sit and contemplate Mozart's skull? I did that a few Saturdays ago and here I am again.

Remember the study by two French researchers on Mozart's skull, which is said to be in the Mozarteum?

Fellow Mozart fans might want to check the comments on that post. I had the high honor of hearing from the eminent Viennese musicologist Michael Lorenz that it is hogwash! It is most welcome to have my growing suspicions confirmed. Someone had commented wondering how Mozart fell and subsequently I had admitted that in all my reading on Mozart, I had never heard any fall mentioned. And the Frenchmen made allusions to "many falls."

What many falls? I was thinking, I knew Mozart rode a horse, but I had not ever read that he fell from it. Anyway that was one thing that made me wonder.

Dr. Lorenz, having researched the skull at the Mozarteum, has concluded that it has nothing to do with Mozart. Above is a photo of him making that announcement.

His research is a relief! I have to admit, I have never liked the idea of Mozart's skull separated from the rest of his skeleton and on display in a case. For some reason I have no problem with saints' relics but I feel as if Mozart is someone I know, and I think it is better that he is all in one piece.

Michael Lorenz is the author of the world's nerdiest Web log which I was thrilled to discover back in July. 

Coincidentally I was just thinking about him. I had signed up to follow his Web log and the other day I saw he had completed a post on esoterica involving the manuscript of Mozart's Requiem.  This entry is full of photographs of the manuscript and historical detail, probably far beyond the comprehension of most human beings but I am trying to set aside a couple of hours to give it my best shot.

Meanwhile, I trust him completely on the matter of Mozart's skull. It is hogwash.

No bones about it!