Alex Renwick writes:

>Are there any Mozart scholars among the group who can answer why this
>marvelous symphony has no name.  Thanks for any help you can provide.

While I would not pretend to be a Mozart scholar(!), and there are those
who will feel squeamish reading anything by me on this composer, after all
I have said about him, I must add that in Vienna I believe the symphony Nr
40 has always tended to be called 'die Romantische'.  I have never been
quite comfortable with this name (I might add not on account of any
disagreement with the idea that Mozart's music can be emotionally powerful
or not) which has never caught on in the English language, just like in
German speaking countries the nickname of 'the Emperor ' for Beethovens's
5th piano concerto has never caught on.  Rather I tend, rightly or wrongly,
to read into it an implication that the work is somehow 'forward looking'
(again presumably to Beethoven), whereas I would insist that the work is
in fact 'backward looking'.  By this I do not just mean looking back to
Haydn's Sturm und Drang symphonies but even further back to CPE Bach.
As for Beethoven, well, it is common knowledge that he both admired and
studied CPE Bach's music...

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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