250th Anniversary
Today we celebrate the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great 18th century composer. You might not know a great deal about the man and you might not listen to his music but you have to admit that his influence, his music and his name are hard currency in the passages of history. Happy Birthday Wolfgang!His life was as nuanced as his music, a tumultous rollercoaster of poverty, extravagance, success, failure, and love. Mozart was larger-than-life as an individual as well as an artist and driven by passions born of his creativity. There’s certainly a fine line between genius and insanity: Mozart was a good example.
As a child, he showed musical gifts at a very early age, composing when he was only five years old. At seven, his father had him touring London and Paris and peforming for the English and French royal families. What were you doing at seven?
Mozart is regarded as one of the three greatest opera composers
all of time. His musical genius is undisputed. But like so many other prodigies throughout history, Mozart had an unsuccessful career and died young.
The story goes that a Count Walsegg made a mysterious request of Mozart to compose a requiem mass. This work, uncompleted at the time of his death proved to be his final work, presumably from typhoid fever or kidney failure or poisoning at the hands of a rival composer.
His death has been immortalized in the one greatest scenes of cinema, the ending to Milos Forman’s film Amadeus. For me, this scene expresses the desperation and ecstasy of artistic creation flawlessly. We see a man willing to die for his creation. We see a man being kept alive by his creation. Life and art merge: artistic failure links with death.
It’s easy to romanticize Mozart’s life. He belongs to another time, an era where genius was somehow easier to recognize and distinguish. A time where it was allowed to breathe and be cultivated. I guess I’m doing the romanticizing now. Watch the movie if you haven’t.
