Don Satz said, in response to my idea that Mozart spoke as if through as
mask:

>Just the opposite for me; not "speech through a mask", but as if my head
>was in his mouth.  What an elegant thought!
>
>I've always, as an adult, found Mozart's music more up-front that any other
>masterful composer's.  I think it's Beethoven whose greatness is to be
>found behind/around the corners.

If I had any sense I would probably not try to reply to this at all;
knowing myself and Mozart, I'll probably spend at least an hour and a half
trying to sort out my arguments and still end up contradicting myself.
But here goes (and at least I'll exercise my brain in the process):

When I say that Beethoven seems to me to speak more directly than Mozart,
I should first outline the way in which I tend to listen to music: I'm
a musical amateur who has a reasonably keen sense of the structural and
psychological implications of harmony, counterpoint etc, but not enough
technical knowledge to describe these elements in any great detail in
terms of their purely musical function.  When I listen to Beethoven, I
feel that I can go some considerable way toward understanding the meaning
of his works by analysing the themes and their treatment in dramatic and
psychological - ie metaphorical - terms: as I did when I talked about
the 'stormy' broken chords in the Emperor concerto leading to a climax
consisting of a 'battlefield' between the soloist and orchestra, and the
octaves afterwards being a furious march away from the battlefield, so to
speak.  In mature Beethoven, you can conceptualize the work as a whole and
decide that it 'means' something.  There's a 'philosophy' behind it which
you can put into words.

With Mozart, you don't always get very far with that approach - you
often can't 'explain' his music fully, or even adequately, in extra-musical
terms.  I'm not saying that it's completely abstract: much of it is very
expressive, but it seems to me to be a more subtle, *musical*
expressiveness that you can only properly analyse in all its ramifications
in terms of musical processes.  Am I waffling? Perhaps I can put it better:
In Mozart, musical processes aren't as much a function of psychological
developments as in Beethoven - the relationship between the two is more
reciprocal, and to appreciate his music fully you've got to have an acute
sensibility to both.  (I'm aware that I'm probably just rehashing Charles
Rosen's points here.)

My point is that to me Beethoven is more 'direct' because his works can
be more easily analysed in non-musical terms that I can understand.  In
Mozart, the non-musical parts are bound up with musical processes that I
can feel but not easily articulate, so from my perspective, Mozart appears
more shady and elusive.  If one comes from a more basically musical
perspective, as you probably are (I'm assuming your technical knowledge
is greater than mine), then Mozart's works are indeed more direct than
Beethoven's, because they take place on the fundamental level of music
and musical expression, whereas Beethoven's works also operate on an added
metaphorical or philosophical layer which obscures that purer musical
discourse.  As you say, Beethoven's greatness is more apparent 'behind the
corners', in terms of his works' suggestiveness of 'philosophy'.  Seen from
a romantic viewpoint, this makes Mozart's works more superficial or less
rich in implications - and that was of course the 19th century attitude -
but I think Prof.  Rosen is right that that perspective does Mozart an
injustice.  Certainly I began to feel very strongly during Rosen's talk
that I had previously only seen the tip of an iceberg in listening to
Mozart, and that to get at the rest of that iceberg I would have to deepen
my musical, rather than my literary or cultural understanding.

Another point, and I could have made things much easier for myself by
restricting myself to it: with my 'mask' comment, I was also simply
referring to the emotional character of Mozart's works.  When Beethoven
speaks, you feel he says what he thinks: when Mozart does, you're not
always quite sure.  The 'mask' metaphor probably arose from my thoughts
jumping to his operas, where he doesn't just work within musical
conventions, but also plays with operatic and rhetorical formulae.  Think
of the pathetic arias in Cosi fan Tutte, or Donna Elvira and Donna Anna in
Don Juan.  They tread a very fine and uneasy line between true pathos and
taking the mickey out of the conventions of the opera seria.  That gives
them a sense of ambivalence, or of inscrutability, which makes up a large
part of these operas' fascination.  - And I personally also get this
feeling of irony, of 'taking it back', of a sudden switch from seriousness
to laughter, or, alternatively, a sudden unexpected pathos, in many of his
instrumental works.  It's an emotionally mercurial and ambiguous quality
of which 'indirect' is probably not a very happy description.  Beethoven
is more consistently and recognizably serious or humorous.  (Wolfgang
Hildesheimer, if I remember correctly, explores this issue very
interestingly in his Mozart biography.)

Felix Delbruck
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