Mozart and the Chevalier de Saint George

The Internet has caught on to that I love classical music. And so I have happened upon things related to the 18th century musician who had the beautiful name of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George.

One of these things is the movie preview up above. 

It makes me want to scream.

I do admire the Chevalier as an exemplary man of his age. He was a fencer, a marksman, a violinist, a composer, a dancer, a glamorous figure.

However as the movie preview shows, there is this agenda attached to him, to tear down Mozart, to blame Mozart for various things that never happened. As if history is a zero sum game.

It is said that the Chevalier de Saint-George taught Mozart, that Mozart was his student. That is not true.

In the preview up above, you see Mozart screaming "Who the f--- is that?" after hearing Saint-George play. That never happened.

Also in the movie preview, you notice that the filmmakers have Saint-George playing in a modern 21st century style, nothing like the 18th century. Even without knowing anything about the particulars that would clue you in that this story has more than a touch of fiction.

This is all a shame and does dishonor to the real Chevalier.

He was, by all accounts, a noble figure of his era. He lived an epic life which included royal honors. And he was an accomplished musician. 

If his compositions are not as well known as Mozart's, there is a reason for that, and it is the same reason we hear little of most of the music written by Mozart's contemporaries. They are not the equal of Mozart's. It has nothing to do with race. Mozart was a freak of nature.

Music, furthermore, was not the Cavalier's only goal. Joseph Bologne put time and talent into becoming a champion fencer and marksman, along with mastering other pursuits. All Mozart did was music. Mozart's only teacher was his father -- he grew up living and breathing music. There was no fencing or -- well, Mozart did some target shooting, which was popular in Salzburg, but there is no evidence that he distinguished himself in that sport.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint George, had a difference balance to his life. He had different and more diversified goals. He soared like an eagle and achieved those goals -- and then some, as we say here in Buffalo. He became a kind of Renaissance man. He was a lot of things that Mozart was not.

There is a lot to admire in the Chevalier de Saint George, and as we marvel at his full and trailblazing life, we should never do that at Mozart's expense. Something tells me that the Chevalier would hate that. 

A musician himself, Joseph Bologne knew quality. A gentleman, he valued justice, fairness, and truth. I would love to think that he and Mozart sat down and had a glass of wine as friends. 

I can imagine both these fine gentlemen looking down on us now, shaking their heads.

The Seduction Aria From Mozart's "Don Giovanni"

 One can while away hours watching performances of Mozart's aria "La Ci Darem La Mano," from "Don Giovanni."

The opera of operas! I have seen "Don Giovanni referred to that way and I cannot say I disagree.

What is fun about "La Ci Darem La Mano" is that it is plain and simple a seduction aria. Don Juan is out to seduce this peasant girl who is getting married. And you really don't need a translation of the words, you can tell darn well what is going on. It is the international language of love, as the old joke goes. And you know the exact moment when she makes her decision that yes, she will go with him. This is the kind of aria only Mozart could write because he knew his stuff. Beethoven, for all his genius, could not have written this. And actually he was kind of shocked by it.

There are a million performances I want to feature. They get like salt peanuts, you cannot stop with just one. It is a simple aria however there are so many ways you can go with it. Invariably, at least if you are going to do it right, it involves a certain amount of manhandling. On occasion I have gotten into it with someone in the comments section about that. Some high-minded person objects to what is going on and it falls to me to point out that I am sorry however it has to be that way.

The above performance is an absolute classic. The good old '80s, you cannot beat them, you know? Beautiful Kathleen Battle in her hot pink, and handsome Thomas Hampson who demonstrates many times on YouTube that he knows what to do with this aria.

The acting is wonderful on both sides. Miss Battle, her face says it all, how she's struggling, and when she finally gives in. A tremendous moment -- she leans back against Hampson. He's so much bigger than she is, and he uses his size to his advantage -- just stands there, sure of victory. I mean who could resist him. His hand gestures throughout are amazing, too. I have never seen a complete "Don Giovanni" with him as the Don and now I have to look one up.

Much praise to both of them for the ending! I will not give it away but my guess is you could not get away with it now. The audience goes wild.

I will have to post other performances. I limit myself today to one because otherwise it would become overwhelming and I would never write the post.

Such fun!

Beethoven Playing For Mozart

 

I love this old picture. I remember seeing it when I was a kid and today I ran across it on the Internet.

It shows Beethoven playing for Mozart. You have to click on the picture to see it bigger to get the look on Mozart's face. That artist did a good job! Mozart looks alert and interested but not threatened. He looks kind of cocky, the way he was in real life.

Then all the ladies. Artists love to draw ladies with their pretty hair and dresses. Especially if the artist is a woman. Women love to draw women.

It is fun how there is a crowd present.

Underlying it all is the mystery of whether Beethoven did in fact meet Mozart, or if he did not. He was hoping to study with Mozart. However then his mother died and his plans were undone. And when he got around to pursuing those plans again, Mozart was gone.

There is a chance however that Beethoven did meet Mozart. You have to doubt it, however, because you would think Beethoven would have mentioned it to someone at some point if it had happened. Or Mozart might have mentioned it. Especially Beethoven, though, you would think it would come up.

I have written a lot about this I know, but I think about it a lot... Those two.

In a book about Mozart -- I will have to link to it -- the Englishman Paul Johnson goes into great detail about that. I like how I am not the only one thinking about it. Johnson said that Mozart and Beethoven would go into eternity together, both magnifying the other. He said it better than that. I will have to look it up.

You almost have to think of them together, to compare and contrast. And you can say whatever about Beethoven admiring Handel more, or Cherubini more, or whoever more than he admired Mozart. He did not.

There was no way he admired anyone more than he admired Mozart. You can hear it in his music. There would have been no Beethoven without Mozart. Well, he would have written music, but he would have been different.

So that question is settled. Only one remains...

Did they ever meet?

If they did, it would be like the picture.

A Mozart Manuscript For Sale

 

Online shopping is the greatest! I get on Abe Books looking for a score for Gustav Mahler's songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn." I have a few I want to try now that I, ahem, have this voice I never knew I had.

I end up wandering around the site for a few minutes and what do I see but a Mozart manuscript!

I mean a real one!

I cannot make out all the German right now but it appears to be to one of his canons. That is it up above. When I get a minute I am going to figure out exactly what this thing is because this is something we should know.

The price? US$ 391,686.64.

I love the 64 cents. Plus $21.73 shipping! Got to love that. It is coming from Germany.

Where's my checkbook?

You start thinking: I could sell my house, scrounge around, buy this thing. Imagine that. It would be just you and this Mozart manuscript. Your one possession.

You could take it out and look at it. Feel it. Your hands could touch this paper that Mozart touched. You would own this little piece of Mozart's life. 

You would not have to tell anyone you had it and so you would not have to guard it. No thief who broke into your house would recognize it as being of value. Oh wait, you would have sold your house, so that solves that problem anyway. There would be no house for anyone to break into.

$391,686.64. Plus $21.73 shipping.

It would almost be worth it!

Beethoven turns 250

 Today being Beethoven's 250th birthday, people are calling on me to make a statement.

 What do you say on such a momentous occasion?

Two hundred fifty years!!

Maybe what I will say as a statement is, I can name a few of the Beethoven creations that I love the best. I do love a lot of them. I have always had a kind of funny relationship with Beethoven. All my life I have loved Mozart -- Mozart is my top guy, but then I got more into piano, and I began playing Beethoven sonatas, and I could not stop. I just love them so much. And it brought me closer to Beethoven.

It is funny, thinking of Beethoven vs. Mozart. I read this beautiful book on Mozart several years ago by the British musicologist Paul Johnson. He spent some time dwelling on this topic, Mozart vs. Beethoven, which I liked about him. He said that they would go through history together, both magnifying the other.

That is true, I think!

They were so different. But I do not think you would have had Beethoven without Mozart. Imagine Beethoven going through life always up against this superman. I wrote about that once. It had to have made him who he was. Not Haydn, not Cherubini, not even Handel. Mozart. Imagine having to follow that act. Lucky you, Beethoven, to have been born when you were, on Dec. 16, 1770.

Things Beethoven wrote that I love:

The slow movement of the "Archduke" Trio.

The "Eroica Variations." They are better than the Diabelli variations, I think because they have a better theme to start with. The theme matters. I was lucky enough to learn to play these.

The Sonata in E, Op. 109. This was Leonard Pennario's favorite Beethoven sonata and it is mine too. That last movement! But the whole thing, really, is great. I love the first movement. There are moments that just get to me. There is this measure that sounds like jingling sleigh bells -- just haunting.

The "Appassionata" sonata, especially the slow movement. The second variation gets me. It sounds like a guitar accompaniment.

Of course the slow movements of the "Emperor" concerto and the Allegretto from the Seventh Symphony. My dad said how he loved that Allegretto when he was a kid. I did too, and you know what, it grows up with you. You never have to shove it under the bed in shame the way you would have to shove away some pop album or other.

Of course I love the finale of the Ninth Symphony. My friend Margaret at church, she and I have a joke about it. At moments of stress we will say, "Freude schoener Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Jerusalem." As I write this there is a note from Margaret in my email inbox with that in the subject line. But really, I love it, how can you not.

Back to my list. The slow movement of the last string quartet. I got to know the quartets pretty intimately while working for The Buffalo News and covering the Slee Beethoven Quartet Cycle. I got the scores and I studied them. And I love a lot of them. Some of them sound kind of studied and overengineered to me, to tell you the truth. But that must be me, not Beethoven. That last quartet is breathtaking. And the Razumovsky quartets with their Russian folk tunes, I love those. I love Russian music.

The song "The Flea." What, you don't know that? You should!

Lots of other piano sonatas. I should write a book, you know?

I think over the next week I will go out of my way to listen to Beethoven, celebrate his 250th.

He is looking good for his age!

Introducing The Mozart Bookshelf

I got on AbeBooks and I ordered this novel about Mozart. It is called "Sacred and Profane" and it is by an author called David Weiss. I remembered this book from when I was a teenager. I know I read it though I have forgotten most of the details.

"Sacred and Profane" is a terrible title because it does not make you think of Mozart. You could write pretty much any book and call it "Sacred and Profane." Perhaps I will title my biography of Leonard Pennario that! On the other hand look, I remembered it after all these years. So what do I know.

I paid something like $5 for "Sacred and Profane" on AbeBooks shipping included. I am excited about getting it. When I was a kid I got it out of the library. I am sure the library has de-accessioned it long ago.

After a few decades at it, I have amassed a pretty good collection of books about Mozart. I have a few children's books and an ancient copy of the biography of Mozart by Edward Holmes, who I recently learned was a friend of John Keats. Get out, who was a friend of John Keats? But Holmes was. I put it together and figured out they knew each other through Vincent Novello, who with his wife Mary wrote "A Mozart Pilgrimage."

I have that book too. The library de-accessioned it, surprise, surprise. But that book is another story for another day!

I also own several novels about Mozart. All of them are kind of weird -- the authors do not seem to get Mozart, they don't get the Catholic Church, they don't get music, they just don't get it. You know what I should do? I should start writing about all the Mozart books I have. I will title my miniseries "The Mozart Bookshelf." 

Haha.. I should actually call it "The Mozart Bookcase," or, "The Spare Room That Has Been Eaten Up By All My Mozart Stuff." That would be more accurate!

 Back to "Sacred and Profane." I just looked it up on Amazon and cannot believe the reviews. Five stars, from reader after reader!

One gentleman who describes himself as a musician and a Mozartian writes, "It's one of the greatest books I ever read!"

It looks as if it has been reprinted several times.

Well, there goes this plan I had. I was thinking that in the week or so before this book gets here, I should write my own novel about Mozart. Just a mini-novel, see how it goes. I know enough about him, that is for sure.

But now I wonder what is the point.

I am looking too forward to this one!

Opera-tunity knocks: This week at the Met

"Don Giovanni" at the Met this week.

I want to go back to watching the MetOpera's opera stream.

Remember, I was going great guns with it back in April, when we were in the depths of the lockdown. I quickly fell behind with it because I got hooked on Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" and began watching it over and looking for different versions. Then there was Wagner week and I caught a few of the Wagner operas as I recall. And then .... and then ...

And then I guess what happened to me was like what happened to everyone else as we went through the Coronavirus craziness. The weeks began passing faster and faster and running into each other and now suddenly it is months later and I have not watched one single other Metropolitan Opera opera.

But now I do believe I will start again. I was just looking at what is coming up.

In the next week -- the week beginning August 2 we are talking -- they have two Mozart operas coming up, "The Magic Flute" and "Don Giovanni." There is also a "Madame Butterfly" with Roberto Alagna and a "Parsifal" with Siegfried Jerusalem.

"Parsifal" is a little heavy for me though Leonard Pennario liked it a lot. I might watch it to try to see what he saw.

There is an illustrated synopsis for "The Magic Flute." Cute!

There is also an interesting essay about "Don Giovanni" which I have been enjoying picking over. There is a trend these days, say I, to see Don Giovanni as not a bad man but as a rather attractive rebel, a man who insists on his own happiness. I am saying it is a trend because when I saw the opera in Toronto a few years ago, they took that tack.

I admire this essay for acknowledging the Catholic background to the opera, and the literal nature of hell. The director, Michael Grandage, suggests that literal interpretation is something quaint, something the public in general might have trouble understanding. I do not have that trouble, I will tell you that. I believe hell exists. But Grandage has a point, I do not think a lot of people would agree with me. It is nice that he would even explore this topic because Mozart's Catholicism informs so much of his work and few musicologists acknowledge that.

What else is on tap this week? Handel's "Agrippina." They keep giving us this Handel in modern dress and pointing out political parallels to modern times ....

...  I don't know, not to use the language of Don Giovanni but are people seduced by this? Have these operas drawn audiences and gained fans? They seem to me tough to swallow.

But anyway ....

A lot to look forward to this week, if I get back into the opera saddle!

Mirella Freni and one unforgettable opera evening

When I read today that Mirella Freni had died, all I could do was picture her as Susanna in "The Marriage of Figaro." I watched it when it was on TV. I was 14. I'm sure I have written about that here. I will never forget that opera as long as I live.


The production was made for TV and the singers were all good actors. I have seen parts of it here and there over the years on YouTube and such and unlike many movies that I loved in that era, this has held up.

Mirella Freni was so lovely. That last act! My dad came into the family room where I was camped in front of the TV, had been camped for hours. He loved classical music but he did not quite understand my obsession with Mozart. That was why I was watching the opera, I loved Mozart. I did not know a thing about opera but I loved Mozart.

"Isn't it over yet?" my dad asked me. It was about midnight or something.

I said, "No! There's still one more act."

He shook his head in disbelief and went up to bed.

Here is part of that last act. Beautiful Mirella Freni.



Her voice was so glorious. Her makeup and everything are so of that era. That was sort of a golden era of television, you know? The look everyone had.

That opera, that one evening, I never got over it. It made such an impression on me. You had Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Count and -- already the future music critic, LOL -- I remember when I first heard him and I said, "Who's that?" He was just this giant and I could tell.  I have always known quality when I heard it. I was starstruck and I wrote to him and we had a little correspondence and he sent me two signed pictures of himself. What a nice man.

And I remember overhearing my dad telling my mom, "He'll never write to her." Ha, ha! Dad and I never stopped laughing about that. My father was the greatest. I wish he were still alive. I wish everyone were still alive, you know?

Looking at this production more recently I saw a funny thing I could not have known at the time. Hermann Prey was Figaro and he was always kind of second fiddle to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, I mean as far as their careers went. It was nobody's fault, not Prey's, not Fischer-Dieskau's, it was just the way the cookie crumbled. And in that opera, these two great singers, they worked that. There is one scene where Fischer-Dieskau blows smoke in Prey's face. Fischer-Dieskau was always a smoker, as I understand it. His Count smoked and he blew that smoke in Figaro's face and it is chilling to see.

I will have to find that scene and post it. I have other thoughts on that Figaro and Susanna / Count and Countess situation that I will also have to post. It has been on my mind.

But for now, Mirella Freni. That last scene, so magical. For years I never quite saw that last act the way I see it now. I was too taken up with the first act, with these characters jumping out at you, each scene more magical than the last. I loved Cherubino, who doesn't? In this production Cherubino was Maria Ewing. The singing, the staging, I was just entranced.

However then there is that last act, when Mozart comes up with all these overwhelmingly beautiful melodies and shoots them off one after another like a fireworks display. I wrote that in the paper once because that was how I felt it. It was like a fireworks finale, each creation more gorgeous than the last, and you just sit there with your mouth open, you don't know what to do.

What an opera. What singers I saw, that night when I was 14. Since I have gotten more into my Catholic faith I have been remembering not just to mourn the dead, but to pray for them. Dear God, have mercy on the soul of Mirella Freni. Welcome her into Your kingdom.

Ask her to sing Susanna!

Mozart and the Mass

The Gregorian Chant I wrote about last time has made me see classical music differently. Specifically it has made me see Mozart differently.

Every Thursday I have been going to chant practice. And I am starting to understand how Gregorian Chant is the purest form of worship. Just like Latin never changes, Gregorian chant never changes. And as the priest has pointed out to us, it is not passionate.

Now when I listen to Mozart church music I have to say, it is, well, rather passionate.

All these years I have been listening to him and I have not seen that. In the classical music world Mozart is seen, although I have not been on board with this, as one of the "cooler" composers, as in temperature. Beethoven is seen as hotter.

The other day I was listening to Mozart's Mass in C Minor, "The Great." Because of all the Gregorian chant, it struck me: Mozart burned hot.

Hotter than Beethoven. I am going to go ahead and say that.

Beethoven was more calculated in comparison. Mozart took it to the wall. The Mass in C Minor, it is like listening to "Don Giovanni." It is beautiful and I am not saying it is not devout. It is a hymn to his faith. But it is hot, is all I am saying.

I am going to do more research into the situation but I do remember understanding that in Mozart's time there was already this discussion going, about Gregorian chant, and what was appropriate. There was pressure coming from somewhere to stick with the chant and not to go with contemporary music, which was Mozart.

Mozart was not against the chant. There is a story I keep reading about how he said that he would have given up all his music to have written the beautiful Preface you hear in the Tridentine Mass. To be honest I would like to see documentation for that. I do not remember reading it in all my years of reading about Mozart. But everyone writes it and so it is likely true.

At the same time ... contemporary music written by Mozart is not the same as contemporary music we are stuck with these days like, oh, "The Servant Song."

Mozart can fill you with awe.




Listening to this I found myself remembering a famous line from the biography of Mozart written by Marcia Davenport. Other people have quoted this line to me too, which makes me think it is famous. Davenport was writing about Mozart's death, on Dec. 5, 1791. She wrote:

"Thus died this glory of Catholicism."

It is fascinating to imagine this music being heard in churches in the 18th century, with some of the faithful shaking their heads, thinking, the wheels have come off.

They might have been right. It is passionate music. Hot.

Still, so beautiful ...

Mozart's mysterious last year

I have been wanting to get my, ahem, Music Critic Web log going again. It has been what, a year?

This seems like a great time to do it.

There is a recent story in Britain's The Telegraph about Mozart and his last year. I saw it yesterday morning and put it aside to enjoy later that day, appropriately with tea. So I could take it slow and digest it.

I love reading about Mozart, anything Mozart. Just so you understand, being a Mozart nerd I awoke this morning and my first thought upon hearing it was August 4 was, this is Mozart's wedding anniversary. It is! He got married August 4, 1782.

About Mozart's last year, 1791, there is so much that will never be figured out. However this story is not going to put us any closer to figuring anything out, I will tell you that right now.

One thing right off the top, there is this portrait they say is of Mozart. I pasted it up above.

I know, Mozart was painted by a lot of incompetent artists, but even allowing for the artists' incompetence, that is not Mozart. I think it might be Beethoven. It does not look like Mozart at all. Mozart had blue eyes, for starters. And the fashions are all wrong too for Mozart's time. I think it is Beethoven. I am just saying.

That stupid play "Amadeus," we are going to spend the rest of our lives pointing out how so much of it is B.S., and the author does a good job of debunking it, even if he does not point out that the idea did not start with Peter Shaffer. However, there is this.

Mozart returned to Vienna after the premiere at the end of September. During the two months of his life, he was furiously productive, polishing off Die Zauberflöte, which proved an enormous hit – perhaps the biggest of his career – with a non-aristocratic audience in a large suburban theatre in Vienna. He also wrote the enchanting clarinet concerto and started work on a requiem, commissioned anonymously by a nobleman grieving for his wife.

Then it just goes on, la la la la la, as if all this is normal.

I am sorry, that business about the anonymous Requiem commission, that is not normal! It is not normal now, nor was it in 1791, for a stranger to appear at your door dressed all in gray, like someone out of a masquerade, and wordlessly hand you a commission for a Requiem Mass. Once again ...

Not. Normal.

Ever!!

Another thing, I am getting a little tired of people explaining to me patiently how under Joseph II, it was customary for people to be buried in unmarked mass graves. I have never read one other biography that ends with the person being buried that way. What other subject of Joseph II who was famous was buried that way? Name me one other person and maybe I will take this explanation more seriously. Maybe not. It depends who the person is.

Anyway, I have issues.

It feels good too be venting again!

'Jupiter' ascending

I had too much fun the other night watching this new video on the finale of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony.

This is a symphony I have listened to my entire life but I have never looked at the score. As a rule I do not like looking at scores. I am afraid I am going to picture the score whenever I hear the music and for some reason I do not like that.

However. Comes a time, you know? I reasoned with myself that I had studied scores of Beethoven quartets and they did not ruin the quartets for me.

So, the "Jupiter." I know every note of it. I can hear it in my head, I mean, I can just mentally press "Play" and there it is. But watching this video I saw there were things that were going on that I had not noticed. It is a thrill just to see the logic of the thing.

And it's fun, how this guy's robotic voice just informs you what to listen for. He does not call attention to himself. He doesn't try to be charming or steal the spotlight at all from this magnificent work of art we are contemplating.

Richard Atkinson, is his name. I keep wanting to say Rowan Atkinson. That is Mr. Bean! That is someone else entirely.

Imagine Mr. Bean narrating Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony. No. Do not go there.

Anyway, Mozart's "Jupiter" finale, annotated. Find time in your day for it.

Enjoy!

The Mozart and Coltrane effect

A while ago Google asked me if I was interested in Mozart and I replied yes. So now I get updates every day concerning Mozart.

Is this a wonderful world or what? I love technology.

Today's Mozart update comes from Britain and concerns Mozart, pictured above, and John Coltrane, pictured on this fine 1996 commemorative.

Their music, researchers think, can prevent epileptic seizures.

The Coltrane piece, his extended take on "My Favorite Things," is something I am intimately acquainted with. Years ago when I worked at the Niagara Gazette, I had a half-hour commute, and I had this piece in cassette. I used to stick it into the cassette player and it would pretty much take me to work. It would be ending right as I was pulling into Niagara Falls.

The obvious question in the research is, of course, does any intelligent music have this effect. They compared the Mozart and Coltrane only to silence. I would imagine that the idea is to engage your brain, to distract it from the seizures. I am only guessing but that seems to be what the research is driving at.

Or perhaps there is a kind of hypnotic effect. I mean that in a good way, not a sleepy way. There is something in the music that entrances you and carries you along. Mozart will do that.

Anyway, you may catch up on this groundbreaking research on Mozart and Coltrane here.

Hahaa.. Google just asked me: Are you still interested in Mozart?

Um, yes!

Haydn and nobility

Today at church we got to sing Haydn's "O Esca Viatorum." It must have something to do with this Mass this week although as usual I am too lame-brained to figure that out. I do know because of my other Web log that we sang it a couple of years ago in this same week.

"O Esca Viatorum" is listed in our Cantate Omnes choir book as "Traditional." I realized some time ago it was by Haydn. Singing it today got me remembering what tipped me off.

Well, I did not know at first it was by Haydn. But as we sang it, it kind of gives you a thrill, because the melody is so beautiful, so noble. Today it kind of gave me shivers the way it always does.

I remember thinking, there is something about the architecture of this piece, I would bet it is the work of a master. Beautiful as many traditional melodies are, this had a different cast. It is like identifying a painting. You look and say: ah, that has to be Rembrandt. Listening to "O Esca Viatorum," trying to sing it well, I thought, I would not be surprised if it were Mozart. But it was not quite Mozart. It was a little different.

Haydn! I did a search on YouTube and sure enough.

Haydn has that noble streak that Mozart, for all his greatness, does not quite have. It is a strange thing about Haydn, he knew Mozart was superior. He said so, with touching humility, toward the end of his life. But he did have this special something that was uniquely his. The St. Anthony Chorale that inspired Brahms' "Variations on a Theme by Haydn," that is that nobility. And of course the Kaiser hymn that became the German national anthem.

Here is "O Esca Viatorum," sung beautifully by a choir that, alas, is not ours.



Mozart does have a kind of similar nobility in a few pieces I could name and one of these days I will have to get to quoting them. But it is not quite the same.

Haydn.

Noble!

Mozart earns pope's imprimatur

Yesterday I was gratified to learn that Pope Benedict XVI shares my taste in music. Benedict said in remarks this weekend that he admires the specific Mozart piece I have admired on this Web log, the "Coronation Mass."

I read it on the Una Voce Buffalo Facebook page, about Benedict's remarks. It is good to hear from Benedict again, you know? I always liked how preoccupied he was with music.

Allow me to quote:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Benedict XVI, emeritus pope and theologian, reflected on Saturday on classical music as an "encounter with the divine," saying listening to Mozart helps him experience "very deeply the Lord's presence."

Benedict's reflections came at a ceremony where he received honorary doctorates from the Pontifical John Paul II University of Krakow and the Krakow Academy of Music for his promotion of respect for the traditions of sacred music in the Church.

Since retiring from the papacy in 2013, Benedict has dedicated his time at the Vatican to prayer, meditation and classical music. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who served as the Vatican's guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, he used to relax at home by playing his piano, with Mozart pieces a frequent choice.

"It remains indelibly impressed in my memory how, for example, as soon as the first notes resounded from Mozart's 'Coronation Mass,' the heavens practically opened and you experienced, very deeply, the Lord's presence," Benedict, 88, said during his speech at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo, a hill town near Rome where he had first stayed after resigning, citing age and frailty.

I love how the story says that since retiring, Benedict has dedicated his time to prayer, meditation and classical music. I hope that every once in a while he takes a taste of wine, too! And not just at mass I mean.

I also love another detail in the story: "Bestowing the honors was Krakow Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who served as St. Pope John Paul II's longtime aide and who was made cardinal by Benedict." I reviewed the book "The Pope's Maestro," by Gilbert Levine. Dziwisz figured big in that book. I feel I know him.

Most of all I love how Pope Benedict singled out for praise the same Mass that I did. Above is a picture of His Holiness at the Castel Gandolfo, reflecting on the greatness of Mozart's "Coronation Mass."

Great minds think alike!

Ode to joy

After hearing Beethoven's Ninth the other day I have been thinking about the "Ode to Joy."

I read how scholars think he was inspired by Mozart's K. 222, his "Misericordias Domini." Listen for it, you will hear it! And what is weird to me is, it sounds like Beethoven's orchestration. I have not sat down or studied the scores or anything. It just does.



 And you know what, I wonder if in turn Mozart were inspired by the ancient "Asperges" chant. The first notes are the same as the "Ode to Joy" which is how I was able to learn the melody.



Whatever the situation, as our Italian priest at St. Anthony's used to say, there is nothing new under the sun.

But there are great themes, handed down one master to another.

Joy!

Pope Francis' favorite German conductor

From Vatican Insider: 

When the moment came to exchange gifts after their conversation in the Vatican Library, German Chancellor Angela Merkel presented Francis with three books of poems by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, all of them original editions from 1905. Francis had recently quoted the poet – who is one of his favourites - in one of his speeches. “You know him,” Mrs. Merkel said to the Pope in German, as she handed him the gift, o which the Pope answered “yes”.

 Mrs. Merkel also gave the Pope a box set of 107 CDs with classical pieces conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler. “I don’t know if you will find the time to listen to these,” the German Chancellor said to the Pope. On the flight to Italy, she told journalists that Bergoglio is very fond of Furtwangler, whom he once described as: “Germany’s most brilliant conductor and the greatest Wagner and Beethoven expert.”

His Holiness has good taste. I am a Furtwangler fan, too. And may I add that we have had several popes now who are music connoisseurs.

One of these days we will have to find out which conductors Pope Benedict loves. Well, I imagine he esteems Furtwangler too.

Here is an excellent video, in color, of the back of the maestro's head.

Los Angeles and "The Magic Flute"

I was listening to the Los Angeles Opera's "The Magic Flute" just now on WNED. The staging seemed kind of boneheaded, from what I could make out. Just for one thing, they had the Queen of the Night as a spider. The Queen of the Night isn't supposed to be a spider.

The magic touches are real fun as you can see in this video.



You can get creative with "The Magic Flute." I am not being a grinch and saying you can't. You can do a million things with it. Artists including Maurice Sendak, whose work appears up above, have had a great time with it. If this production could have let go of that silly '20s look they were trying to get, it would have been magic.

But you have to keep the basics. It is a fairy tale opera and when you start making Tamino not look like a prince and Papageno not look like a bird catcher, you are losing something. And about the Queen of the Night, she is supposed to be beautiful and cool and fun to look at and eventually you figure out who and what she is. Her appearances are supposed to be show stoppers, and they usually are.

Another thing about the Los Angeles Opera production, I give the thumbs down to the snips they gave you here and there of Mozart's piano fantasies. You cut and paste this music like that, it shows your superficial "shuffle" relationship with it.

However.

That opera's ending always gets me!

Maybe it's the triumph of good over evil. In the Catholic Church we are taught that good wins out in the end, that God will triumph over the forces of darkness, that the battle is already won. "The Magic Flute" is set in ancient Egypt so they are singing about Isis and Osiris. Anyway, good over evil, the sun coming out, everyone happy, the battle is won.

So it was with the Los Angeles Opera. At the end you just hear that chorus and you forgive everything. Maybe that was the point, who knows.

In this Metropolitan Opera clip the chorus in question starts at 3:39. That is Kathleen Battle as Pamina and she does a kind of neat feisty skip when she joins Tamino for their walk up to where Sarastro is waiting. Sarastro is Kurt Moll -- kind of handsome, I never knew what he looked like. This is several years ago and they don't have the L.A. Opera's special effects but it is simple and good. And the Queen of the Night is the Queen of the Night.



One of these days we will compare closing choruses of "The Magic Flute" in how it looks in various productions. Meanwhile, because this is a tough Monday and we need the oomph, here is an audio clip that gives you some translations.  This just has the music but I like what the poster wrote: "Turn up the volume more and more while listening."

Do it!

 

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 and name days

Another thing I am learning from Paul Johnson's book on Mozart...

(The last one being the mean archbishop ...)

... Mozart would celebrate the name days of his female relatives by writing them pieces of sacred music -- an Ave Maria, a Magnificat, something like that.

Imagine being one of Mozart's relatives! It is your name day and you get an Ave Maria written by Mozart. Probably at the time they saw it as nothing special.

"What did you get for your name day, Sophie?"

"Oh, my husband gave me this great necklace, and this is exciting, my sister gave me a gift certificate to that new restaurant."

"But you must have gotten something else."

"Oh, right, a new Parisian hat! From my other sister."

"What else?"

"Let me think."

(Long pause.)

"You know what, my brother-in-law gave me a cute Salve Regina he wrote."

I want to start celebrating people's name days, you know?

Back when I was a kid and read about Mozart I kept reading about name days and I did not know what they were. Your name day is the feast day for the saint you were named after. That was what you celebrated back then, not your birthday.

My husband Howard's name day would be Oct. 19. Darn, I just missed it! I am going with St. Philip Howard, one of the martyrs of Elizabethan England.

Mozart's name day was Halloween. Oct. 31 is the feast of St. Wolfgang. St. Wolfgang was "one of the three brilliant stars of the 10th century." The Catholic Church, gotta love it!

It also worked so that you were christened the name of the saint whose feast day you were born on. Mozart was born on Jan. 27, the feast day of St. John Chrysostom. Hence his name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb (or Amadeus, or Theophilus, depending on what you read, I have never been able to get this straight).

What great traditions, all lost now. They have thrown out all these babies with the bathwater.

Haha ... Looking at the St. Wolfgang link I see someone had commented: "Dear St. Wolfgang, thank you for being the namesake of Mozart."

Amen!

Mozart's mean archbishop

Pursuant to my post the other day about Paul Johnson's book on Mozart, I am still hardly into it but there are a few things that I did not know. Here is one.

The Archbishop who was famously mean to Mozart, Hieronymus Colloredo, disliked the old Latin liturgy and used to push for the vernacular. Who knew that? I did not.

You can tell a bad apple by that, you know? I am not saying everyone has to love the Latin liturgy the way I do but when someone is an enemy of it, watch out for that person. Anyway, I never knew that about that old Archbishop, and it makes sense, seeing that he was a baddie.

I continue to appreciate Paul Johnson's understanding of the Catholic Church. He writes himself that most biographers do not get this, and he is right. Fiction writers do not get it either and that can be even more annoying. A while back I read, or attempted to read, this novel called "Mozart's Last Aria." There were things about it I liked but the book was ruined for me by the author's dim grasp of the Catholic Church. It also seemed as if he were going to pin something on it. I don't know for sure because I ran out of gas with that book about 20 pages from the end. Here it was this whodunit and I never found out whodunit!

Back to Colloredo. His petty nastiness to Mozart will resonate with anyone who has ever had a bad boss. And because of it he has achieved a strange kind of immortality. He was a pain to this musician, Wolfgang Mozart, and to the whole family. For that reason, and only that reason, he is remembered. You can do a Google Images search on him, as I just did, and pictures come up. Along with pictures of Mozart.

When you are immortal, like Mozart, you are not immortal alone. You take a whole host of people with you into the history books.

Nobodies who would otherwise be forgotten.