András Schiff stands up for Mozart

He really only goes on emotionally about Mozart, doesn't he? But, in the end, considering it's about music, it's really only subjective, right? Schiff likes Mozart a lot, but he really doesn't go beyond the fawning praise to explain what, exactly, it is about Mozart's music that he love so much. Glenn Gould devoted an entire radio program explaining why he though Mozart was a bad composer. I would

I like Mozart. I think his music was the epitome of the high classical period, sublimely balanced and pretty before Beethoven and Schubert took it to its ultimate ends, and helped usher in the Romantic.

There are all sorts of specific things I find questionable in his article (like his view of what should be of historical interest in a composer's life, his views on using music of the past to express present values, etc.) but broadly speaking I object to the idea that we should like Mozart without question. In his defense of good taste, Schiff is basically suggesting we suspend our own and aceept "approved" ones on principle.

This would be a pretty trivial matter to nit-pick if it weren't for the outlandish way in which he argues his point. He equates disliking Mozart with those Danish cartoons mocking Islam--a comparison that is in rather poor taste, to put it mildly.

Having taught music appreciation to music majors as well as non-majors, I've found that telling students they should like a composer because experts have deemed him or her like-worthy is a surefire way to get them to dislike the composer. And specific composers aside, the last thing I would want to teach students is that classical music can be appreciated only by suspending our criticism. That kind of thinking is largely why classical music is in the state it is today in the first place.

I am amused to consider what the "state" of classical music may be alleged to be today. Mozart is popular, more than 210 years after he died. Whether or not anyone likes or dislikes him or his compositions is really meaningless--any number of individual performers and groups, from chamber groups to symphony orchestras are able to make descent buck from performing his music. As for Glen Gould, i filter his comments through the sure and certain knowledge that what impressed the boy most in life was the excellence of the opinions of Glen Gould.

Personally, i like his work, and i like the sense i get from listening to his work that he genuinely enjoyed what he did. For that same reason, i greatly enjoy Haydn, and i consider Haydn to have been a far more inventive and innovative composer. Those two, however, are pretty near the top of my list for favorite composers, largely from sheer numbers of work. The only works of Mozart which i don't like are the ones i get tired of hearing, like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik--the one's which get over-performed.

Tempest in a teapot stuff, in my never humble opinion.

If only this could be said of other composers outside of, say, 1650-1880 (give or take a Monteverdi here or a Ravel there). My prognosis has more to do with the classical music being produced today, and I'm castigating composers more than I'm castigating audiences. Much as I love contemporary music, I enjoy it in spite of the arguments that are advanced in its support. The arbitrary polarization of accessibility and substance, for example, or the squeamishness composers still have over "extra-musical" content (as illustrated in the responses to a recent article by Colin Holter), or especially the suggestion in Schiff's article that on no account is the music of the past to be made an expression of contemporary values (one of the more amusing assertions in the article, since he cheerfully goes on to state how great Mozart sounds on the modern piano)... all these seem, to me, to be symptoms of a classical music culture (primarily Anglo-American) in which we're still beholden to the idea that the only proper form of musical appreciation is passive awe and (as I alluded to here) unquestioning trust that the composer knows what is best for you.

I found it somewhat spooky that a Hungarian who has lived under communism cannot seem to live with anything less than 100% enthusiasm for Mozart from everyone. I was especially stunned by the way he compared opposition to Mozart to the Mohammet carricatures in Danish newspapers, uttering the kind of you're either for us or against us pulp we have come to expect from the Bush administration.

It's good to enjoy the benefits of democracy, such as freedom of speech - let's remember the recent affair with the Danish cartoons and not ever take it for granted. But Mozart's greatest admirers included Haydn, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Nietzsche, Debussy, and Britten. Putting this list against that of a few detractors, whose side would you like to be on?

Isn't 90% enthusiasm from 90% of the population enough?

Indeed. The Appeal to Celebrity tactic doesn't fly in ordinary rhetoric and debate; it shouldn't fly in art either.