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.

Mozart steps again from behind the curtain

A new book about Mozart is like some kind of new drug. At least that is how I would imagine it would be were I, ahem, a drug user. What I mean is that it is a guilty pleasure.

Guilty, because I have been reading books on Mozart since I was 6. I mean that, I think 6 is when I started!

Howard said: "What is there going to be in there that you don't know?"

You never know!

Anyway, this new book is by Paul Johnson who writes short biographies. That is his specialty. I could learn a thing or two from him, you know? His "Mozart: A Life" tops out at 163 pages.

But already I am seeing things that are different and that I like. For one thing Paul Johnson does not seem as ignorant about the Catholic Church as a lot of Mozart writers do. You cannot write about Mozart -- or Beethoven -- and be a screw-up when it comes to the Catholic Church. The Church was central to Mozart's life. I like Paul Johnson for addressing this.

Here is another thing. Leopold Mozart considered his son a miracle and he actually saw him as an opportunity to evangelize.

Johnson says Leopold wrote: "If it is ever to be my duty to convince the world of this miracle, it is so now, when people are ridiculing whatever is called a miracle and denying all miracles. Therefore they must be convinced."

I am reading that thinking: Wow, the 18th century, and the Catholic Church was on the ropes same as it is now! I honestly had not known that.

Also, God love old Leopold, you know? This book seems more fair to him than some other books do.

I will be going into all this in more depth in my review for The Buffalo News, coming up soon. Meanwhile I can't wait to get through the rest of this.

Which reminds me.

I still have to join the Mozart Society!

The toughest job in the music world

Who in the world needs this job? It is in Musical America. It is as an artist's personal assistant.

This sounds like a pretty eminent artist, but all that is clear is that the artist is based in Chicago. It would be a good guessing game to try to figure out who it is.

The personal assistant will be expected to:

• Handle incoming and outgoing correspondence via phone, fax, mail, and e-mail
• Maintain personal and professional schedules and coordinate with family, artist management, publicity team, presenters, and philanthropic organizations
• Monitor and update professional website content (e.g. tour dates), bios, blogs, Facebook, etc.
• Prepare newsletters, tweets, and other materials announcing upcoming performances, new podcasts, recordings, videos, etc.
• Arrange travel, visas, and accommodations
• Perform basic accounting tasks
• Monitor merchandise inventory and fill customer orders
• Assist employer and employer’s family with daily household tasks, errands, and basic home maintenance
• Perform a variety of activities to allow the employer and the employer’s family to focus on their individual jobs and activities

These duties are enough to make your head spin! Basic home maintenance! Just that by itself, forget it.

Who in the world could do this job?

There was one time when I kind of hit it off with this one artist I was interviewing for The Buffalo News and he was suggesting that maybe I could be his personal assistant. A few emails went back and forth, enough to make me believe he was not totally kidding. I liked and admired this artist and I have to say I considered the offer. For about five minutes.

Then I realized it involved making travel arrangements.

"Oh, no," I said. "I'm not good at that."

"Well, it wouldn't be that difficult --"

"Oh, no," I said. "No, no. I really couldn't. I'm not organized enough."

What a nightmare, the idea of me making anyone's travel arrangements! He would be due to be in Portland, Ore., and I would have him in Portland, Maine. On top of all that stress I would have had to move to New York City, another minus. See, this was discussed. I told you he was serious.

Now reading this ad I am super glad I went no further with that idea. What an onerous job being a personal assistant must be. What a weight on the shoulders!

Oh, no thank you!

The pianist who played at his own baptism

How is this for a curiosity? Though we did not have dig deep to find it. It is sitting right out there on Wikipedia.

It is about Dinu Lipatti. That is Lipatti up above, with his wife, Madeleine.

"For his baptism, which occurred not shortly after birth as is usual, but when he was old enough to play the piano, the violinist and composer George Enescu agreed to be his godfather. Lipatti played a minuet by Mozart at his own baptism."

How odd!

I tried Googling around but all I found are those same clumsy couple of sentences, echoed over and over. The only other thing I found was in some book on Google Books, which said that Lipatti's baptism was delayed by the onset of World War I. That sounds kind of strange. In an emergency you do not have to be a priest to perform a baptism. So, most mysterious.

Why was George Enescu his godfather?

Also, what Mozart minuet did little Dinu play? I am imagining one of the first, K. 1 or K. 2. But you never know, being Dinu Lipatti he might have soared like an eagle and played, I don't know, the minuet from "Don Juan."

I cannot imagine we will ever clear this up. But just in case...

We should consult the Dinu Lipatti Society.

Pianist says live music is dead

Remember my Web log buddy from Brussels, Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont? As I mentioned before he has a Web log himself. And he wrote something the other day I found fascinating. That is a painting above of Pierre-Arnaud crafting his screed. The artist who painted it has a wonderful name. It is Joos van Craesbeeck!

I did not agree with everything he said, but it would take a while to sit and figure out why. Meanwhile, I appreciated his honesty.

The office kept me really busy the last couple of days and so I only just now got around to glancing back at what he wrote. From what he says on Twitter it seems I am not the only one to take what he wrote and chew on it.

It is about live classical music concerts and whether they are outdated. Pierre-Arnaud says they are, and that the future lies in music we listen to in our own homes or wherever else we go.

Glenn Gould said something like this, of course, but I always had the inkling it was because Glenn Gould did not like performing on the concert stage. Could not hack it on the concert stage, in some cases. He did not need the money from the concert stage and he was able to perform in the solitude of the studio.

I do not get the idea that Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont has this antipathy toward the concert hall. He is arguing that he does not like being in the audience.

Anyway, here is what he wrote. See what you think.

Before you go, "This Brussels sprout is all wet," I get some of what he says.

I go to concerts as part of my job so I know what it is like not to be in the mood to hear the music they are playing in the hall. I can go him one further in that sometimes it can be something I am in the mood to hear, but I am working and I cannot exactly sit back and enjoy it.

About changing the ritual of the concert experience, though, I tend to think we should not. If you start listening to the changes people say they want to make, forget it, because these are the same people who, you could do anything, and they still would not go. People call it stuffy, but I like silence in the concert hall. We have lost silence everywhere else, including the library, you know? There has to be some last bastion and this is it.

Pierre-Arnaud said that other arts have made changes long ago such as the ones he is proposing. I don't think that's altogether true. You still go to a play pretty much the way you would go to it 200 years ago, unless it's full of special effects or something. Books are still remarkably the same. Even with an ebook you are dealing with words on a background.

One positive thing about concerts for me: The group experience is sometimes -- not always but sometimes -- thrilling. It can be great, as long as no one is annoying you or anything, to be in a hall full of people loving Mozart's "Requiem."

Anyway, I know, words, words, words.

Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts.

Thank you, Pierre-Arnaud, for yours!

Home on the range!

This is a wonderful piece of Americana, Bryn Terfel warbling "Home on the Range" in Central Park.

The people, all covered in slickers.

This opera singer on stage, telling people to sing together in harmony.

It is Americana but of course Terfel is Welsh. The Welsh have a corner on this stuff. Once I heard an all-male Welsh chorus. The sound was like something you could never make up and I ended up buying their CD. It was the only CD I ever bought after a concert. Then I never played it. I thought nothing could ever duplicate the weird sound I had heard and I did not want to try.

It is funny to hear Bryn Terfel in his stentorian way singing this old comic-strip song. Honest, I think of "Blondie." They would show Dagwood in the shower and he would be soaping up and singing "Home, home on the range! Where the deer and the antelope..."

On the YouTube video someone writes: "We consider this our state song in Kansas."

Anyway, Terfel sees the humor in it.

"All together!" he calls out.

Come on, sing it.

You know you want to!

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?