Tuesday, May 7, 2013

What About Mozart?

Ah!  It is even more difficult to know Mozart than to know Haydn partly because, in the words of one musical thinker, we have been "Mozarted to death." 

I have figured out that Mozart had favorite notes on the piano: the dynamic relationship between C and B.
They are so utterly different that they defy theoretical description, much less prediction.  Forget about function, they seem to say.  Just listen to this!

But the shifts of specific coloration in Mozart are so many and so mercurial that I know I have not yet weaned my memory from having heard some of his music too many times--so many times that I am "hearing" it only passively, in reply, which is not hearing at all.