Lebrecht's Mozartian Wisdom

Updated:  Per comments below, I've adjusted the Al Gore reference.

How does this guy still get work?  Some quotes from a recent "article" by Norman Lebrecht:

• Mozart is the superstore wallpaper of classical music, the composer who pleases most and offends least. Lively, melodic, dissonance free: what's not to like?
• Musical genius he may have been, but Mozart was no Einstein. For secrets of the universe, seek elsewhere.
• The key test of any composer's importance is the extent to which he reshaped the art. Mozart, it is safe to say, failed to take music one step forward. Unlike Bach and Handel who inherited a dying legacy and vitalised it beyond recognition, unlike Haydn who invented the sonata form without which music would never have acquired its classical dimension, Mozart merely filled the space between staves with chords that he knew would gratify a pampered audience. He was a provider of easy listening, a progenitor of Muzak.
• In this orgy of simple-mindedness, the concurrent centenary of Dmitri Shostakovich -- a composer of true courage and historical significance -- is being shunted to the sidelines, celebrated by the few.

• Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours. Beyond a superficial beauty and structural certainty, Mozart has nothing to give to mind or spirit in the 21st century. Let him rest. Ignore the commercial onslaught. Play the Leningrad Symphony. Listen to music that matters.

This has got to be the most chortle-inducing musical article ever written!  I'm no huge Mozart fan, usually preferring Haydn for my Classical-era satiation, but this is just so chock-full of misinformation. 

Lebrecht is frustrating because he takes on this provocative tone which draws people with little to no classical knowledge to his writings, and they take what he professes at face value.  What's even more frustrating is that those readers, who probably only know classical music as "Mozart", are now reading this and feel comfortable to dismiss the entire genre.  It's as if somebody suddenly came along and told angsty adolescents that Dali and Klimt were crappy, worthless, superficial artists.  Why not take the much more constructive approach of using these familiar (and, perhaps, hackneyed) artists as a starting point and leading the less well-versed but interested fan into new realms of artistic discovery.

I mean, Lebrecht claims that Haydn invented sonata form, which is as fallacious as a political journalist claiming that Al Gore invented the internet.  It wasn't "invented" at any one time, it emerged gradually, and D Scarlatti and CPE Bach, to name just two obvious examples, were contributing to the development of this form earlier than and concurrently with Haydn. 

But hey, maybe Lebrecht is right.  Send the newsflash to Britten, Carlos and Erich Kleiber, Mitropoulos, Bruggen, etc. etc. etc. that they all wasted portions of their lives on this "orgy of simple-mindedness."  Fat chance

Comments

[Lisa Hirsch]

Furtwaengler, etc., etc. Lebrecht is off the rails, obviously.

For a much more interesting take on the boy wonder than his, try Jessica Duchen today.

[Webley Webster]

MM: "I mean, Lebrecht claims that Haydn invented sonata form, which is as fallacious as Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet. It wasn't "invented" at any one time, it emerged gradually, and D Scarlatti and CPE Bach, to name just two obvious examples, were contributing to the development of this form earlier than and concurrently with Haydn."

James Webster, in the New Grove entry on sonata form: "In sum, although all the elements of sonata form, and occasional movements in complete sonata form, can be traced from the 1730s on, neither the form itself nor its combination of dramatic style, structural rigour and thematic logic appeared consistently before Haydn (who mastered it from his earliest works)."

In re Al Gore: "Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way."

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

[M. Keiser]

To judge the value of a composer's art only on their influence or how they influenced "developement" in music is simply modernist dogma, and if i apply the same reasoning to mr. Lebrecht's crictism (since, by all accounts, we're living in the post modern age) no one should take his criticism seriously.

There is so much wrong in his approach and his criticism, i feel cant really say anything. he writes: "Mozart, it is safe to say, failed to take music one step forward. Unlike Bach and Handel who inherited a dying legacy and vitalised it beyond recognition" Thats such BS! has he ever even heard The Requiem? The Jupiter Symphony? Don Giovanni? or The Magic Flute? or just the overture to the magic flute? It sounds like beethoven, no doubt. Mozart's influence on later composers has certainly been more profound than say, Shumann or Shubert, so i fail to see how his criticism goes anywhere!

[maroney]

In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Like I said, fallacious, regardless of how it's interpreted or pretty much any context in which it's taken.

Re the New Grove: This isn't the first and won't be the last time I disagree with an entry of them. While the latest edition is a vast improvement, the concentration on "known" composers vs. composers who are important but not performed much today remains. Their entry on CPE Bach is woefully short given his reknown and influence to those (HAYDN) who followed him, regardless of what you or I think of him today. There is firm documentation from those who worked with "sonata firm" in its earliest incarnations (HAYDN) that CPE Bach. I'm sure any lover of Haydn would freely admit that he didn't, with piece, suddenly "invent" sonata form. He was definitely the first (and one of the greatest) MASTERS of it, just as Bach was arguably the MASTER of the fugue and choral prelude, both of which he certainly didn't invent but is regarded (justly?) by even such "well-researched" sources as the New Grove as THE MASTER of the fugue.

For CPE Bach, see articles here:

http://www.classicalarchives.com/bios/codm/bachcpe.html

or on Wikipedia, largely summarizing what other dictionaries/encyclopedias have written about the great CPE:

"Quite probably the most influential composer on the later development of the Sonata form is C.P.E Bach whose father J.S. Bach was one of the great masters of the older baroque style. Taking the harmonic and voice leading techniques that his father had developed, he applied them to the homphonic style - allowing him to make dramatic shifts in key and mood, while maintaining an overall coherence. C.P.E. Bach becomes a decisive influence on Haydn. One of C.P.E. Bach's most lasting innovations was the shortening of the theme to a motif, which could be shaped more dramatically in pursuit of "development". By 1765, C.P.E. Bach's themes, rather than being long melodies, have taken on the style of sonata form themes: short, characteristic, and flexible. By linking the changes in the theme to the harmonic function of the section, C.P.E. Bach has laid the groundwork that composers such as Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would exploit."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sonata_form

[Jaquandor]

There's nothing "fallacious" at all about what Gore said, unless you're going to rigidly insist that he is claiming to have invented the Internet all by himself, which as has been repeatedly demonstrated, he was not even claiming, and if you're going to equally rigidly insist on ignoring what he was actually trying to say in that interview. Did you even read the Snopes link that was offered? Gore actually did have legislative accomplishments that played a role in the emergence of the Internet -- which is exactly what he was claiming in that Wolf Blitzer interview. There is no reasonable context under which this statement is "fallacious". (Now, there are tons of unreasonable such contexts, of course. But then we'd be in Lebrecht territory.)

[maroney]

Thanks for your comments. I've adjusted the reference and I think it satisfies us both now.