Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic periods
Starting July 1, 2010, new posts on Mozart will be published at our website, Mozart and Classical Music. All other posts about composers of classical music will be located at Classical Music Composers.
Thank you all for the privilege of sharing a great love for classical music, especially of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and many more composers & their music, and performers, we dearly love and admire.
Best regards from,
Inspired Pen Network
A rainbow in the fields where the Mozart children used to play
(Image: Courtesy of Liz Ringrose)
This image was taken in the fields behind the hotel where Liz recently stayed whilst visiting Salzburg with husband Nigel. The Mozart children used to play in these fields. They visited friends at Schloss Aigen. Liz tells me that the schloss is now crumbling into disrepair. Sad to think about.
In my Mozart groups, we have been excited over this news about the recently identified painting of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from 1783. He would have been 27 years old. The painting is alleged to have been painted after his marriage to Constanze Weber.
My Mozart friends and I have had discussions about it. So far, my handful and I think it’s non-authentic, but then we might be subjective. It would be very interesting to hear from other Mozarteans, and most especially, I’d like to know what the Mozarteum will have to say.
Some links about the painting:
Marrying Mozart: A Novel by Stephanie Cowell
Marrying Mozart, a new novel about the life and loves of
the young Mozart and a family of four beautiful musical sisters.
The story of the novel:
The lives of the four Weber sisters are changed by the arrival of twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang Mozart, a young man struggling to find his place in the eighteenth-century musical world. The sisters will inspire him with their singing; he will write great music for them (including the “Queen of the Night”) and fall in love with at least two
of them, but the one he eventually marries is not the one he first loves.
This is Stephanie Cowell’s fourth published novel. She is an American Book Award winner
and a lyric coloratura soprano. The novel will be translated into German and Italian.
For more information on the novel and the author, visit her website at www.StephanieCowell.com
Related Article:
Thanks to those who sent email on how they remembered Mozart’s 251st birthday, in particular, the music they opted to listen.
Susi from Germany, writer on Baesle (Marianne Mozart, Mozart’s first cousin), listened to a bunch of the wunderkind’s best piano concertos.
Steph Cowell, author of Marrying Mozart was listening to some violin sonatas.
Another friend in the US opted to watch some opera videos especially The Magic Flute.
Like Steph, I also listened to some of my fave violin sonatas, and later, the master’s wind music, flute and clarinet.
Happy 251st Birthday Wolfgang!
(January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791)
Last year, 2006, the whole musical world commemorated the 250th birthday anniversary of this wunderkind, genius and child prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Right now, on Sydney’s ABC, I’m listening to his piece being played, not that common as compared to Eine Kleine … or Piano Concerto 21, but it’s so delightful, haunting and brilliantly played… it’s Mozart’s duo of viola and violin in G major, k.423.
Yesterday, I asked some Mozart friends if they might want to pay tribute through my website. The best I got, so honest and just pure delight, is from the mouth of a lovely 10-year old Anna Della Marta, who responded on behalf of her grandmother and friend Agnes Selby, author of Constanze, Mozart’s Beloved:
Here’s what young Anna said, “Just say you love that little boy to bits and he has given you more joy than any other composer. He has to me all my life.”
So there we are, from the mouth a 10-year old. Obviously, she loves Mozart. By the way, Anna plays the cello.
I’ve written few of my own tributes to Mozart. Once again, a paragraph or two, why not… Being a lifelong Mozartean, I have been drawn to his music and find it extremely difficult to choose which of his work would qualify as ‘most famous’ and therefore I will dispense with this task.
Is Mozart the greatest composer in the history of music? To me, this question is immaterial. I do love and admire many other composers – Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Liszt, to name a few – but no other has ever composed in the great range of genres at the same time excelled in all of them. A prolific composer, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces of music in different categories in his short-lived life of 35.
Why Mozart? Mozart’s music soothes me more than anything. Piano. Violin. Strings. Woodwind. Opera. Sacred music. Symphonies. Name it …. His music doesn’t give me turbulence, instead, it pleases, and gently touches my soul. I do not need any criteria or tonal design analysis to support his greatness. The beauty and perfection of his creation – serene, majestic, gentle – continue to delight.
Thank you for your music Mozart.
