>I'm having a hard time understanding Mozart...
>Can someone recommend any introduction?...

I appreciate your honesty.  Few music-lovers tell the truth about how they
feel if they don't "get" Mozart.

I started with large-scale romantic music, and for me, Wagner, Strauss,
early Schoenberg have a visceral impact I didn't get from Mozart.  But
then I got turned on to his operas, not necessarily the big ones, but
"Abduction," "Idomeneo," etc., and now I am one of the faithful, sincerely.

Anyway, I asked some friend to help me "explain" Mozart and the winner
of this informal competition is Mike Richter, whose opera site is
ever-changing, always delightful.  So take a look at his message below
and then explore www.mrichter.com.  Best of luck, Janos

   There is music which wears its heart on its sleeve - please do not
   try to form an image of that!  Mozart's does not.  It is not alone
   in that; the emotional content is not lacking in Isaac or Josquin,
   in Gesualdo or (Papa) Bach, in Stravinsky or Schoenberg.  It simply
   is not lying on the surface ensnaring each passerby.

   To find the emotion in Mozart's vocal music, I suggest first turning
   to that of the peasantry.  Listen to Zerlina and Masetto, not Don
   Giovanni and Donna Anna.  Try Papageno, not Pamina.  Easiest of all,
   have a go at the canons.  They're ribald and lusty and completely
   accessible.

   I was late coming to Mozart's quartets.  Listening to them
   superficially was all too easy and quite unrewarding.  I wanted the
   intensity of Bartok's and the richness of Beethoven's - and they were
   missing.  One night, I put on K.  465, the "Dissonant", and discovered
   that the music was there but I had not been listening.  It was one
   instance where the surface was not so placid that I was lulled into
   assuming that the depths were empty; the veneer was missing so the
   rich substructure showed through.  Going back to the ones I had
   dismissed, I found that there was substance in each case, but that
   the surface had concealed it.

   I am not expert in the other instrumental works - to tell the truth,
   I'm not expert in any music since I've never studied it formally.
   I will say that I am astonished at the late piano concerti when I
   remember that even 21 and 27 were written when the instrument was
   still a novelty.  It did not have the sonority of a modern Steinway
   or Bosendorfer, yet its majesty comes through for me in those.  I
   suspect that if Mozart had had the hardware of Beethoven and his
   successors and had had some years to finish his experimentation, the
   result would have been dramatic on their scale.

   To sum it up, try the masses.  The "Great" C-major and "Coronation"
   C-minor introduced emotion into the church as even the Bach B-minor
   does not for me.  There were others since - Verdi's "Manzoni" Requiem
   and Janacek's "Glagolitic" for example - which clutch at one's guts
   in their own ways, but I still return to Mozart's for catharsis.

   As for understanding Mozart, I'm afraid I find that hopeless.  If I
   have another decade or two, I may begin to comprehend "Don Giovanni",.
   It will take at least another lifetime to grasp "Le nozze di Figaro".
   Forunately, I'm able to revel in both today.

   Mike

Janos Gereben/SF
[log in to unmask]