Mozart Life and ...

Mozart Life and Music(Greenberg-2000, Sztuka

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Great Masters:
Mozart

His Life and
Music
Professor Robert Greenberg
T
HE
T
EACHING
C
OMPANY
®
Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Robert Greenberg has composed over forty works for a wide variety of
instrumental and vocal ensembles. Recent performances of Greenberg’s work
have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, England,
Ireland, Italy, Greece, and The Netherlands, where his
Child’s Play
for string
quartet was performed at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam in 1993.
Professor Greenberg holds degrees from Princeton University and the
University of California at Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in music
composition in 1984. His principal teachers were Edward Cone, Claudio Spies,
Andrew Imbrie, and Olly Wilson.
Professor Greenberg’s awards include three Nicola De Lorenzo prizes in
composition, three Meet the Composer grants, and commissions from the
Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, the Alexander String
Quartet, XTET, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the
Dancer’s Stage Ballet Company.
He is currently on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music,
where he is Chair of the Department of Music History and Literature and
Director of Curriculum of the Adult Extension Division.
Professor Greenberg is creator, host, and lecturer for the San Francisco
Symphony’s Discovery Series. The Discovery Series is a special subscription
series in which participants attend four 3-hour lectures over the course of the
concert season on topics that are geared to the repertoire under performance.
Professor Greenberg has taught and lectured extensively across North American
and Europe, speaking to such corporations and musical institutions as Arthur
Andersen and Andersen Consulting, Diamond Technologies, Canadian Pacific,
Strategos Institute, Lincoln Center, the Van Cliburn Foundation, the University
of California/Haas School of Business Executive Seminar, the Commonwealth
Club of San Francisco, and others. His work as a teacher and lecturer has been
profiled in the
Wall Street Journal
,
Inc
. magazine, the
San Francisco Chronicle
,
and
The
Times
of London. He is an artistic codirector and board member of
COMPOSER, INC. His music is published by Fallen Leaf Press and
CPP/Belwin and is recorded on the Innova Label.
Professor Greenberg has recorded 256 lectures for The Teaching Company,
including the forty-eight–lecture super-course
How to Listen to and Understand
Great Music
.
©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
i
Table of Contents
Great Masters:
Mozart

His Life and Music
Professor Biography
........................................................................................... i
Course Scope
...................................................................................................... 1
Lecture One
Introduction............................................................... 3
Lecture Two
Leopold and the Grand Tour..................................... 6
Lecture
Three
Mozart the ComposerEarly Music ........................ 9
Lecture Four
Paris ........................................................................ 13
Lecture Five
The Flight from Salzburg and
Arrival in Vienna .................................................... 16
Lecture Six
Life in Vienna ......................................................... 19
Lecture Seven
Operas in Vienna .................................................... 23
Lecture Eight
The Last Years ........................................................ 27
Vocal Texts
....................................................................................................... 31
Timeline
............................................................................................................ 32
Glossary
............................................................................................................ 33
Biographical Notes
........................................................................................... 36
Bibliography
..................................................................................................... 38
ii
©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Great Masters:
Mozart

His Life and Music
Scope:
Mozart was a complex human being, and “human being” is the operative phrase
here. Among the many myths surrounding Mozart the “legend” was the belief
that he was some kind of divinitya concept encouraged by the unworldly
beauty of his music and by his middle name, Theophilus (by adoption, Gottlieb,
or Amadeus)beloved of God. His musical talentshis extraordinary memory,
his ability to compose whole symphonies in his headgave rise to the notion
that he was a freak or possessed magical powers.
The reality is that Mozart, like any other composer, served an apprenticeship.
What
is
extraordinary is that Mozart’s apprenticeship began at such a tender
age; he wrote his first symphony at the age of eight. He was a mature composer
by the age of twenty, when most other composers are just beginning their
training. He worked extremely hard, frequently to the point of exhaustion. And
his music was not without its critics in his daymany found it “difficult” or
“too complex,” “too many notes, my dear Mozart,” (Emperor Joseph II).
Mozart’s life, from childhood until he was in his twenties, was dominated by his
father. Leopold Mozart counted on his children’s musical talents, particularly
Wolfgang’s, to bring him the fame and fortune he could not earn for himself.
Young Wolfgang clearly possessed prodigious musical talent, which Leopold
wasted little time in exploiting. The grand tour of 1763–66 made the Mozart
family the sensation of Europe and turned the small, fragile, desperate-to-please
Wolfgang into an international child celebrity and the family’s main
breadwinner.
Mozart learned his craft by absorbing the music of the best composers of his
day, including Johann Christian Bach (eleventh son of Johann Sebastian Bach)
and the legendary Franz Joseph Haydn. By the time of Mozart’s second visit to
Paris in 1777 at the age of twenty-one, his own original genius was emerging.
Mozart’s second trip to Paris was a disaster. His mother died there, he failed to
find a position, he had no money, and his domineering father was interfering
with his life to a degree he now found intolerable. Leopold managed to make
Mozart feel guilty enough to return to the life he hated in his hometown of
Salzburg for a while longer. Mozart’s abusive employer, Archbishop Colloredo,
had little appreciation for his genius and, ultimately, Mozart was literally booted
out into the world to make his living as a freelance composer. In an era when a
composer’s financial security usually meant tying himself to a wealthy,
aristocratic employer, Mozart’s willingness to break free from the archbishop
and make a go at a freelance career was nothing short of revolutionary.
In 1781, Mozart settled in Vienna, an exciting place to live and work for artists
at that time, thanks to the reforms of the enlightened Emperor Joseph II. He
©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
1
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