Good evening, and welcome to
Musical Masterpiece Theater. I am your host, Lord J. Alistair Cooke, Esquire.
Many of us have a certain, “outside looking in” fascination with classical music. We know the names Bach and Beethoven…and Mozart…but never go out of our way to listen to the music they composed. We appreciate and admire this music all our lives, from afar, without ever really listening to it for ourselves or inviting it into our hearts. The closest most of us ever come to touching classical music on a regular basis is hearing pop remixes, or snippets of it in movies. When it comes up in conversation we rave about what fine art it is, and such a cultural godsend at that…but when the chips are down and the radio is on, we just don’t tune in.
These are the sorts of people I hope to touch with this thread. You need not attend the symphony or wear a monocle to enjoy fine classical music. Just lean back in the comfort of your own room and give up a few minutes of your week to come visit
Musical Masterpiece Theater, and your journey will already be well underway. Indeed, here you are now!
It is of Mozart I wish to speak today. If the topic ever comes up—and, strangely enough, someday it probably will—where someone asks you your favorite composer, but you don’t know enough classical music to have a personal answer, the “correct” reply is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As near as such a thing can be looked at objectively, Mozart was the finest composer the world has ever known. And you’re welcome to disagree with that, as many would and as I myself do, but then you would find yourself in a debate over classical music, and we mustn’t rush to be
that esoteric in a single day. =)
The Story of MozartI’m an agnostic; I’d be an atheist if it weren’t for Mozart.
If you’ve ever tried to understand the word
music as no mere word but an entire way of life, then you can begin to understand what Mozart accomplished for this medium of art. Mozart can evoke any mood. If your imagination is strong, he can evoke emotions you have never felt before. The man knew music. One anecdote recounts how Mozart could turn around on a bench, lean backwards, and play the piano upside down. Another details how Mozart would conjure up music in his mind’s eye, and when transcribing it to paper he would already be dreaming up his next piece at the very same time. It isn’t to say that everything he touched became pure gold, but enough of his vast repertoire is still a fixture in classical music over 200 years later that it would be hard to overstate the man’s genius.
The story of Mozart’s life is itself a work of art, woven with genius, misery, opportunity, and the mundane. Taught music almost from the cradle by his father—himself a composer—the boy Mozart was the very epitome of the child prodigy, playing on the keyboard by age three and composing by age five. Possessed of such conspicuous skill at such a tender age, his father saw in the boy the potential for a hefty income, and the two of them traveled the courts of Europe together where Mozart was showcased as a boy genius. As he grew into adulthood, Mozart continued to mature in his compositions and grasp of music theory, producing some of history’s most notable works and becoming associated with some of the best composers of the period. He eventually settled in Vienna where he lived out the remainder of his short life before dying prematurely, at less than 36 years old, having lived the final years of his life beyond his financial means and in poor health. He had six children, four of whom died in infancy and none of whom had children of their own, thus bringing an end to the direct Mozart bloodline in a single generation.
Mozart was one of those composers whose fame increased posthumously, and only once the man was gone forever did the world begin to realize what a treasure it had lost. He was not a simple man, and his music was not easily understood at first. Even his “entertainment music” was stamped with his inimitably complex flavor. His enormous musical output—over 626 pieces in all, including nearly 70 symphonies—comprises works that are widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Many of his works are part of the standard concert repertory even today, and are widely recognized as masterpieces of the classical style. His music invites a lifetime of contemplation, and a love of beauty.
Which brings us to today’s masterpiece…
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Today’s Recommended Masterpiece: Duettino sul AriaLe Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro): Act 3: Duettino: “Che Soave Zeffietto” – Susanna, Contessa; K 492WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791)Opera. You know, that stuff where the fat lady sings, shatters some glass with her voice, and gets carried away by a guy in horns, at which point “it’s over.” But of course that is a caricature—and perhaps one that Mozart himself might have appreciated. His famous comic opera
The Marriage of Figaro was itself a scathing piece of work mocking the Viennese aristocracy, and was so politically controversial that it was banned for a time from that lovely city. Here is a
suitably brief synopsis of the
Figaro storyline. And yet the music itself of that opera is no joke. Oh, far from it, as you will shortly hear. This evening’s piece is the famous “Duettino sul Aria,” which is Italian for “Duet on the Air,” and is widely acclaimed as being among the most beautiful songs from any opera.
But you might have heard it anyway. Hearken back, if you will, to
The Shawshank Redemption, the 1994 film that deserved Best Picture but lost to the outstanding
Forrest Gump. You may recall that the main character, Andy, is something of a savant, and a lover of the fine arts. So, after six years of writing letters to the state government requesting money and books for Shawshank Penitentiary to establish a library for its inmates, he is vindicated by many boxes of books delivered to the Supervisor’s office, accompanied by a check for two hundred dollars. When the guards leave momentarily, Andy savors his victory; he leafs through a stack of used record albums in a wooden crate and finds a boxed set of Mozart’s beloved opera,
The Marriage of Figaro, which is why we are here tonight, after all. Its story is about a servant named Figaro who outwits his master, Count Almaviva, and in a symbolic touch that you probably missed when you saw the film, Andy parallels this valiant spirit in his next action. He places the record
Duettino: Sull’Aria (an alternate spelling) on a phonograph player in the office, locks the doors, and broadcasts the opera on the P.A. system throughout the entire prison to share a moment of freedom and make the prison vanish. As his best friend Red puts it:
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
That was Mozart’s accomplishment, his genius. For those of us who spend a lifetime “outside looking in” at the world of classical music, Mozart at his finest can put you right there,
inside the music, looking out upon the beauty of the world in a way not otherwise possible. And all this in a comic work!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced a “mere” twenty-odd operas in his life. Opera was the prestige genre of the time, and Mozart loved it dearly and counted on it heavily for personal, professional, artistic, and financial reasons of the greatest weight. Just the thought of opera, as Mozart wrote, made him “beside myself at once.”
The world of the operatic stage spoke deeply to his primal instinct for play, his taste for fantasy, and his restless creative imagination. With some embellishment, Mozart’s operas are said to vie with each other to be considered among the greatest achievements of human artistic striving.
The duet on the air makes that thought almost believable.
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Today’s Masterpiece: The Marriage of Figaro, Duettino sul Aria
