Spring Break
Happy Birthday Mozart
Tim Martin/Associate Interactive Editor
Issue date: 1/30/06 Section: Online Exclusives
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People know the name Mozart. They can recognize his melodies. But can they name any of them?
View our audio slide show.
That Mozart's music can have such a ubiquitous popularity speaks volumes to the range of his work. His music is catchy enough to capture broad appeal, but contains the nuanced sophistication to collect the admiration of musicians.
"Myself as a listener, I can listen and think, 'Wow, what a gifted composer he was' and to the point where he's almost predictable," says Chris Dickey, a junior music education major who performs Mozart concertos on his euphonium.
"But then he'll do something that disrupts that, and I think that's really clever," he says. "You have certain expectations, and he changes it just slightly."
As Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned 250 on Jan. 27, the world celebrated and reflected on his work. Surely, Mozart has long played an impact on pop culture but his strongest influence still remains with those who study, enjoy and perform music.
Here's a sampling, from students and professors at Eastern Illinois University, of how Mozart has impacted their careers and their fields of study.
The Music Historian: Peter Loewen, an associate professor of musicology, teaches the three-semester History of Western Music class at Eastern. In the class, he begins by dispelling a number of myths about Mozart. Take for instance his death (he wasn't poisoned by a rival), his burial (he did not rest in a pauper's grave) and his personality (he's an eccentric, but also a serious and well-read intellect).
Mozart also played an important role in subtly presenting important social issues of the time, especially in his operas. Perhaps his two most famous operas, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, focused on an elite class that was corrupt and spoiled. They were composed in 1786 and 1787; the French Revolution occurred two years later in 1789. That is a point Loewen stresses.
But in studying Mozart, the music not the man, Loewen imparts the genius of the composition. Looking at his manuscripts, one might observe the measures do not line up perfectly on the sheet music. That is a sign that Mozart did not compose his melodies in a methodical and mechanical process, like most of everyone else. The reason: he was probably transcribing from his mind.
"He's got one of those photographic memories, and he was just copying out the notes," Loewen said.
Nowadays, Mozart operas and symphonies are must-haves for concert halls hoping to make a profit. The 1984 film, "Amadeus," only propelled his popularity further.
He plays the euphonium, a large horn instrument, so translating the bassoon concerto to his instrument was a difficult task. "There's huge jumps in the music, which are OK on a bassoon, but for the euphonium it's a totally different piece."
He also couldn't use sheet music, so he memorized the nearly nine minutes of the concerto's second and third movements.
Like many other composers from the "Classical" period of music, Mozart's melodies are easy to sit back and listen to. "There's nothing too taxing on the ear," he says.
The Performer:Before Marilyn Coles became a professor at Eastern, she performed as an opera singer in Germany for 10 years. She sang Mozart.
"And they're all really difficult," Coles says. "It means that he was so good himself that he also wrote music that was difficult, and, in order to sing it well, you have to be technically capable to do it."
That might mean fast fingers or a proficient voice. His songs are not suggested for beginners.
She teaches classes in music appreciation, voice, diction and opera. While many composers would rank in the same level of difficulty with Mozart, "there are hardly any composers who could compose equally well instrumental music and vocal music and piano music and chamber music … he could do all of those things well."
Mozart in Film The movie "Amadeus" straddled a difficult line, balancing the brilliance of Mozart's music with his life story, all the while crafting a compelling narrative arch. But, unlike some recent biopics like "Walk the Line" or "Ray" or even a semi-biographical films like "Get Rich or Die Tryin'", "Amadeus" had the benefit of being a costume drama. The outfits and storyline evoked a historical, genre film.
And the fact most people know very little about Mozart's life also helped out, says Joe Heumann, an communications professor who teaches film classes at Eastern. The challenge for director Milos Forman was to capture a film that analyzes the inner mind of Mozart, a difficult task for movies about artists or geniuses. Mozart was both.
"You can't get most people to sit down to listen to an hour-long concern unless you have a gun to their head, they're going to get bored," Heumann says. "What's really cool about Amadeus, like a lot of these films, is the music is there the whole time, but it's music that drives the plot and the character."
The 1984 film has done much to create a public image of Mozart. In the film, he was viewed as giggly, eccentric and wacky. Some of those notions, as Loewen teaches in his class, are not true, but one got a sense of how misperceived Mozart's talents were at the time.
One of the film's famous lines come from a king, who after hearing Mozart play one of his operas: "There are simply too many notes," the king said.
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