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From:
Nick Perovich <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 19 Aug 1999 14:39:09 -0400
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Felix Delbruck wrote a number of things that I agree with.  He also wrote
the following (in a variety of ways--I reproduce only one of them) that
I don't exactly disagree with, but which seems very contrary to my own
experience:

>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.

Insofar as I am inclined to interpret Mozart and Beethoven in non-musical
terms (i.e., not in the terms of formal musical analysis), it is largely
through the emotions their works seem to me to express.  (If by
"non-musical," Felix means something closer to the "storm" and
"battlefield" images he uses elsewhere than to the expression of emotions,
I apologize.) At this level, Beethoven and Mozart seem to me equally
expressive, although the character of the emotions naturally varies
considerably.  In fact, it was because the emotions that I thought I
encountered on listening to middle-period Beethoven seemed to me for a long
time "vulgar" and "dated," that I had real difficulty in cultivating a
taste for him (I've since overcome this problem, I'm happy to say).  On the
other hand, it was because I related so directly to the emotional world of
Mozart that I found him so appealing:  someone who gave expression to moods
as I felt them or to moods I was interested in encountering.  For me, it
was Haydn, rather than either Mozart or Beethoven, who seemed to me often
(not always, and I'm speaking comparatively here) emotionally opaque.  My
greatest pleasure in listening to Haydn has always been to "watch what he
does" in purely musical terms, and that has also seemed to me to be his
highest (not, of course, his only) interest.  (None of this is said, in
this context, as part of a covert argument directed at establishing who
is the greatest composer of the three.)

Felix also talks about the distance and ambiguity in the music Mozart
provides for his opera characters.  I think I know what he means, but it
seems to me that the comments are most applicable to COSI FAN TUTTE, where
artificiality belongs to the essence of the piece.  I find the music for
the characters in FIGARO not like that at all, and again my emotional
reaction is direct and powerful.

At any rate, here's one vote for finding an extramusical emotional
vocabulary as apt for describing Mozart as for describing Beethoven.

Nick
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