Bernard Gregoire wrote:

>>Drew Capuder seems to forget that Mozart created CONTEMPORARY music in
>>the 18th century.  The music of today will not be old stuff in the year
>>2200.  Categories of music can be onerous and inappropriate descriptions.

Joseph Sowa responded:

>Sorry, you pushed the big red button.  Mozart didn't create *anything*
>except music in already created forms.  If you're going to assign it to
>that era, say Haydn.  I think however, that the western art really started
>with Bach, Telemann, and contemporaries.  They were the first generation of
>the well-tempered tuning, and the first of the diatonic music.  But don't
>say Mozart, he's a copy- cat of form (not his music--just the form of the
>music).

Joseph, Don't you think the following works by Mozart would have sounded
"modern" as of 1791 (date of Mozart's death): the last 2 symphonies;
the g minor and c major string quintets (K 515 & 516); the d minor piano
concerto (number 20; K466); and Don Giovanni and even Figaro and the Magic
Flute.  And maybe more to the point, don't you think those works were
stretching the harmonic and rythmic syntax of the day? I personally don't
think a composer's adherence or non-adherence to forms has the most impact
on whether he is "modern" or "contemporary" (although I've already written
in this thread that terms such as modern and contemporary are not very
helpful).  I think the question is whether the composer was stretching or
changing the harmonic and rythmic resources that had been previously been
used.  I think you can make a good argument that Beethoven didn't create
new forms--instead, he broadened the harmonic and rythmic pallet of the day
(and stretched without breaking the classical forms).  In fact, I think you
can further make an argument that Beethoven in his final string quartets
and piano sonatas became more "classical" in a formal sense, even though
those works were harmonically and rythmically innovative.

Back to Mozart: At 1791, we are talking about a date before anything from
Beethoven that we really care about today, and that year would be before a
great deal of the Haydn that we respect today (Haydn had almost another 20
years, til 1809, to polish off his legacy).

Maybe I don't disagree with Joseph a whole lot.  I think Mozart arguably
worked within the forms that he had inherited, but the inference from
Joseph's post is that it follows that Mozart was not innovative.  I think
Mozart late in his life was quite innovative, and let's not forget its hard
to talk about someone fairly as a "traditionalist" (which I think is
Joseph's point) when we only have a 35-year life span to evaluate.

Drew M. Capuder
Fairmont, West Virginia USA
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