Thanks to Stephen Bacher for his points on Mozart.  That helps a lot to
tidy things up.

I don't think Beethoven says things all on one level, though.  In his
great works, the music works both on a meta-musical and a musical level,
simultaneously.  To again cite Charles Rosen:  he gave the example of the
sonata op 110, where you've got the fugue at the end.  Now apparently,
Beethoven does all the things you're supposed to do in a fugue in the
right order - augmentations, inversions, etc - but his genius is in making
us think that what he does is all a direct result of the 'story' of the
sonata.  (The bad side-effect of that was of course that B.  seemed more
or less to have exhausted the potential of the traditional forms, and made
things very difficult for his successors).  But I agree that Mozart has an
extra level, because Beethoven makes no bones of his compositional
complexity and ambition, whereas Mozart cloaks it in surface accessibility
and elegance.

>I'm sure that Bob will come around in time.  Then again, when I found that
>he has already been 36, I started to wonder.  Somehow I thought he was
>younger, probably because I associate inability to appreciate Mozart with
>tempestuous youth.

Hear, hear!

>It has been said that Mozart is too easy for children and too difficult for
>adults, with reference to performing it.  But I think the same or similar
>is true for the devoted listener.

Schnabel said that, I think.  That reminds me of something completely
irrelevant:  one of the many things that irritated me about that film,
Shine, was the scene where Helfgott's music master warned his father not
to expose the boy to the emotional complexities of Rachmaninoff's 3rd
concerto, and should instead let him 'start with' Mozart.  What rot!

Felix Delbruck
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