Deryk Barker wrote:

>Perhaps at its simplest I'm saying that my impression is that Mozart (like
>most of his contemporaries) believed in the existing class system, whereas
>Beethoven's ideas were more "modern".

Unless it's to be found in his correspondence, in which case the scholars,
can cite chapter and verse, we'll probably never really know.

People disdaining employment status w/ lesser personages might still
welcome employment by the emperor.

He did chose to set Beaumarchais' Marriage of Figaro (not its prequel) to
music and I've found no music more snarlingly defiant of authority than
Masetto's "Ho capito" in *Don Giovanni* as sung by Roy Henderson in the
Fritz Busch Glyndebourne recording.

Walter Meyer