Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

JUST GONE HALF SIX

1731. Where are we? Where is the world? Where is the love? Let's try and answer at least two of those questions. I think it's fair to say that the heady smoke of revolution still hangs in the air like a heady smoke of revolution. It seems to be happening everywhere. America has done it - George Washington is in his second year as president. France has done it - Louis XVI desperately putting off that haircut. Even the Austrian Netherlands has done it - gone and got themselves independence just over a year ago and called themselves… called themselves… hang on a minute, I wrote it down somewhere. Here we are. Belgium. Belgium? Oh, well, fair enough. Takes all sorts. What else? The big book of the year is Boswell's The Life of Johnson, sitting alongside last year's blockbuster, Tarn oy Shanter, by the Scottish Jew, Rabbi Burns. Musically, though, it's still Mozart's world. He really is the big thing in music, at the moment. Has been for ages - but it won't last. Gone, now, are the days of trekking around Europe. Gone are those awful days, as described in his diaries: fa ike i»pukt Yes, all long gone. Mozart, now, is the greatest thing to happen to music since someone burnt the blueprints of the banjo. But he's near-ing the end. His fifth child, Anna Maria, was born this year, but lived only one hour - just how did they take this level of tragedy, year in, year out? Not just Mozart, either, it was everyone. I don't know how they did it. As far as Mozart is concerned, he could always sink himself further and further into his music.

And he did. It's a bit of a cliche but it appears to be true - at times of real pits of despair, composers of real greatness came up with some of their best material. And never was this more true of Mozart himself than in 1791, the year he died.

For a start, there's The Magic Flute; a remarkable opera, no matter which way you look at it, but even more so when you look at it in the light of his final year. He wasn't well, he wasn't in the best financial state, his children were dying around him, so what does he do? He writes a pantomime. (Oh no he doesn't!) Die Zauberflote, to give it its German name, is a weird, Brian-Rix-farce of an opera, a mix of frivolous comedy, fairy tale and Masonic symbolism - Mozart was a long-term member of his local Masonic lodge and had even persuaded his late father to enrol too. There are some lovely musical moments, though, including the Birdcatcher's aria, the fantastic tenor aria 'O zittre nicht', and the amazing dramatic creation that is the Queen of the Night - a part originally written specifically for Mozart's sister-in-law who could reach a glass-breakingly brilliant top F. Unfortunately it is often attempted by much lesser mortals who are a few ledger lines short of a full si.ive. With The Magic Flute, Mozart's 'Fantastic Four' was complete. Fantastic Four operas, that is. They are: The Marriage of Figaro (Mr Fantastic), a comic opera with one of the best overtures EVER, as well as the beautiful aria 'Dove sono'; Don Giovanni (The Human Torch), a mix of fun and sinister tragedy, which ends with the anti-hero consumed by the flames of hell, but not before he's sung the rather saucy 'La ci darem la mano'; Cost fan Tutte (The Invisible Woman), a romantic comedy which, were it composed today, would have to star Hugh Grant; it contains the mind-bendingly gorgeous trio 'Soave sia il vento'; and, of course, The Magic Flute (The Thing).

The 'True' Yin to this 'Magic' Yang from 1791 is the sublime miniature choral piece which he finished in June, the Ave Verum Corpus. It's only a few minutes long, but every second is divine. These two pieces really were, with no disrespect to Mozart whatsoever, the ridiculous and the sublime of his last year.

If that weren't enough, there's the can't-find-a-word-good-enough Clarinet Concerto, which he wrote for his friend Anton, again. Two stunning outer movements that are tricky enough to play nowadays, on a modern clarinet, let alone on the one that was around then, which had just six keys. Nestled in between these two is Mozart's divine musical extrapolation of the phrase 'less is more' - the slow movement from Heaven. One often hears the platitude that 'the simple tunes are the best' but nowhere is this more intelligently proven than in the slow movement of the Clarinet Concerto. A tune that just seems to get more compelling each time you hear it.

And so the year is almost out, and with it, the age of Mozart. The world will never see his like again. A twenty-one-year-old Beethoven is yet to produce his first big works. Elsewhere, Haydn is still around. Despite being nearly a quarter of a century older, he will outlive Mozart by a good eighteen years. In fact, not for him the melancholia that infected Mozart's music of 1791 - his major work of the year is the Surprise Symphony, a jolly little wheeze designed to keep the Esterhazy audience awake, by sounding a huge chord just when they least expected it. 'With hilarious consequences', as the TV listings might say. Gosh, Haydn, you wag - how we all laughed!

Mozart, though, doesn't seem to be laughing. The well-documented story of the dark stranger who totally spooked him by coming to his door and commissioning a Requiem is true. It did happen, but it wasn't, as many have surmised, the Grim Reaper himself. Odd, that. Instead, it turns out it was Count Von Walsegg's cleaner. Walsegg was a local big cheese who did want to commission a Requiem, for his wife. Mozart duly started on it. Elsewhere, Louis XVI tried and failed to escape the Parisian mob, Goethe gets the top job at the Weimar Court Theatre, and a brand-new paper, the Observer, reports that William Wilberforce's bill to abolish slavery has been passed. All big stuff in 1791, but all of no interest to old Wolfgang. His last surviving letter was written in October and seems fairly upbeat. He'd been to see The Magic Flute performed at the Freihaus Theatre in Vienna, and was chuffed that his arch rival, the composer Salieri, shouted 'Bravo' at virtually every aria. The week before, he's even written about how he had played a joke on the conductor by playing the offstage glockenspiel part wrongly. But, just a month later, he took to his bed. And some two weeks after that, on the 5th of December, at five minutes to one in the morning, he died. One minute's silence, please. 123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60/ amp; This is one of only two times where this book will observe a minute V ulrtue And, well… He's gone. So. What now?

Well, looking back, first, to the Clarinet Concerto. It's possible to hear it as merely the beautiful work it is - a delicious slow movement surrounded by two brisk allegros which really throw the clarinet about a bit. But, if you set this piece in its context, then it's almost as if you hear a different work altogether, particularly the middle movement. What was before a simple, elegant and beautiful tune suddenly becomes melancholic and plaintive, almost a lament, and yet, where once was elegance, there is still a retained sense of dignity.

It's the piece he wrote only a couple of months before he died and it's one, now that I know the circumstances, that I will never hear in the same way again.

When he died, the romantic legend says that he was a pauper. I've always taken this to mean that there was no money for funeral arrangements, no money left to his widow and family, and generally that he was whisked off, at dead of night, to an unmarked grave. Well, certainly, the last part appears to be true - nobody quite knows where Mozart lies. You can narrow it down to a cemetery - St Marx's in Vienna - but as for which plot contains the remains of probably the greatest composer the world has ever seen, nobody knows. But as for the rest of it, well, it appears Constanze was more than able to pay the 4 florins and 36 krone in parish fees, as well as the 4 florins 20 krone in church fees and even the 3 gulden to take the composer's corpse from St Stephen's Cathedral to the cemetery. Admittedly, this was what was termed at the time 'a third-class' funeral, but to say he was penniless is more than slighdy misleading. In fact, there's no better confirmation of this fact than the list of the contents of his wardrobe on his death. This reads less like the last rags of a pauper and more like a TV presenter describing the guests going into one of Elton John's parties: 1 frock coat of cloth, with Manchester waistcoat 1 blue, ditto 1 red, ditto 1, ditto, of nankeen 1 brown satin, ditto, together with breeches, embroidered with silk 1 black cloth whole suit 1 mouse colour great coat 1 ditto of lighter material 1 blue frock coat with fur 1 ditto with fur trimming 4 various waistcoats, 9 various breeches, 2 plain hats, 3 pairs of boots, 3 pairs of shoes 9 silk stockings 9 shirts 4 white neckerchiefs, 1 nightcap, 18 handkerchiefs 8 underdrawers, 2 nightgowns, 5 further pairs of stockings Mmm. Pauper, indeed. I think generations of us have been more than happy to believe a stylized romantic version of events, rather than the actual true picture.

Anyway, no matter. It's all over now. We've witnessed Mozart's last symphony, his last opera, and, of course, his last breath. The great one has gone. Amadeus - literally 'loved by the gods'. The world will never see his like again. So what now? Where are we? Who's still around? And what's happening out there in that rather gory collection of wars they call a world? Well, let's see if we can't find out.