Bernard Chasan wrote:

>It is a source of wonderment to me that Mozart is bashed so much more
>frequently than any other master.  It is as if the old eighteenth century
>drawing room cliches are being reinstated, and I have to wonder if the
>bashers know the operas, or the viola quintets, or the piano concerti.
>If you don't know these parts of Mozart's output (among many others) you
>don't know Mozart.

I think lots of folks do know about these works, but perhaps only on an
intellectual level, an awareness that they are there.  I just hope that
there's no zero-sum game involved with some of the "bashing"--that in
order to like Haydn more, I must therefore like Mozart less (same for
Mahler/Bruckner etc.).

Now that I've had the blessing of living more years than did poor WAM,
I see him as an opera composer who also happened to write symphonies,
quartets and piano concertos.  Heck, even the Requiem to my mind has an
expressiveness that is operatic, regardless of the religious garb.  Think
of the "Dies Irae" and the penultimate scene from "Don Giovanni", for
example....

I don't claim that this is how Mozart saw himself, but it does explain
to me the feeling I get that so many of his instrumental works SING.

Bill H.