Mozart’s genius consisted in absorbing, building upon, and transcending the musical influences of his day. The emotional complexity of his music raises it above the gracious, charming, but often superficial and forgettable aesthetics of the rococo era in which he was raised.

In an essay in this journal titled “The Wild and Terrible Mozart,” Stephen Klugewicz reflected on the dark, demonic and awe-inspiring sides of Mozart’s music, often ignored in popular depictions of the composer. Here I would like to reflect further upon the elements that go into creating the richness and depth of Mozart’s music. Mozart, along with Haydn and Beethoven, has been assigned to a “Classical,” “Classic,” or “Viennese Classic” period or school in Western musical history. The origin of this idea actually dates from early Romanticism.

Romantic thinkers like E.T.A. Hoffmann, who were among the first to “canonize” musical repertoire, felt the need to distinguish between the new Romantic music and the music of the recent past which had attained a classic status. “Classical” had two related meanings in this context. This music had stood the test of time (for a generation, at least) and had become an artistic standard. In addition, it had certain ideal aesthetic qualities. The work of Haydn and Mozart was seen as possessing a poise, balance, grace, and formal perfection akin to the art of classical Greece. This was in contrast to the wild, irregular, emotionally volatile qualities of Romantic music which were anticipated in the work of Beethoven.

“Classical” was thus a retrospective label, one that Mozart or Haydn would probably not have recognized as applied to their work. It was in the Romantic era that aesthetic philosophers would write of the dichotomy between the “classical” and the “romantic,” or the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian.” These two aesthetic qualities were thought alternate or coexist in the history of art and even within individual artists and works. The “classical” emphasizes order, restraint, established norms, and formal perfection; the “romantic” emphasizes emotion and spontaneity, originality, and freedom from convention.

Style periods are artificial constructs, though, and the boundaries between them are often porous. While Romantic thinkers saw the period of Haydn and Mozart as classical, they equally considered their mature work to be romantic. They perceived that these composers’ music, in addition to its concern with balance and order, has an overflowing emotional quality. With hindsight, we can see that such works as Haydn’s Creation and Seasons, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Magic Flute, and Requiem have nascent qualities of Romanticism with their sublimity, awe, transcendence, supernatural elements, and interest in nature. Here is how E.T.A. Hoffmann (who changed one of his Christian names to “Amadeus” in honor of Mozart) put it:

“Only a deep Romantic spirit will completely recognize the Romantic depth of Mozart; only one equal to his creative fantasy, inspired by the spirit of his works will, like him, be permitted to express the highest values of art.”

One sees, however, in Hoffmann’s words the beginnings of a difficulty, which is that writing about Mozart becomes vague and slogan-filled. To this day, commentary on the composer seems to consist of a lot of pretty poeticism and not enough hard-headed analysis. How do we account, in concrete technical terms, for the peculiar emotional quality of Mozart’s music?

To start with, Mozart’s “Romantic” qualities are commonly seen to come out whenever he wrote in minor keys. Minor keys were exceptional by the late 18th century; the aesthetic of the period favored major tonalities and light, cheerful or affirmative moods. When a composer wrote in the minor it generally signaled a certain emotional weight. Mozart chose the key of G minor for one of his greatest symphonies (No. 40, his penultimate symphony) and a few of his most remarkable chamber pieces (the G-minor String Quintet and the G-minor Piano Quartet). Don Giovanni includes themes of doom and judgment and a supernatural apparition, the Commendatore, who drags the hero down to Hell at the opera’s end—all these being “Romantic” elements to which the generation subsequent to Mozart thrilled. The opera is permeated with the key of D minor, as is the unfinished Requiem at which Mozart labored before his death. In the words of musicologist Donald J. Grout, “Romantic art differs from Classic art by its greater emphasis on the qualities of remoteness and strangeness.” These qualities are present in Don Giovanni and the Requiem, especially in the latter’s fearsome Dies Irae.

In addition to the occasional choice of a minor key for the main tonality of a piece, Mozart has a penchant for “clouding over” a major tonality with a minor one. Musical scholars call this “mode mixture.” While in the midst of a major-key melody, for example, Mozart will introduce chromatic notes foreign to the key—think of them as the black keys on the piano. This is what gives the sun-and-clouds or light-and-shade effect so characteristic of Mozart’s music, the sense of mingled joy and sadness.

Audiences were deeply puzzled by this chromatic richness and the emotional ambiguity it seemed to convey. This was an era in which music was expected to be mainly light and pleasing, not to challenge the listener overmuch, certainly not to disturb him. Mozart in his music does occasionally jolt and disturb (albeit in a way that never departs from standards of beauty). There are passages in the mature Mozart that must have actually sounded atonal to listeners of the day—such as the famous moment in the middle of the last movement of Symphony No. 40, which might be compared to a twelve-tone row. With such passages we are not quite sure of the tonal ground beneath our feet. These effects of instability and psychological and emotional uncertainty are Romantic in nature and indeed foreshadowed features of 19th-century music.

While it’s a questionable practice to look back with hindsight at a creative artist and call him “forward-looking,” Mozart was an innovator and part of the public was not ready for his innovations. Mozart faced the same charge as Bach a generation before: His music was overcomplex, difficult to listen to as well as to perform. Emperor Joseph faulted Mozart’s music for its “too many notes.” For us today, and for the more discerning listeners of Mozart’s day, its complexity gives Mozart’s music its rich, emotionally resonant atmosphere. The pianist Artur Schnabel said that Mozart’s piano sonatas are too easy for children and too difficult for adults. On the surface of Mozart’s music is a serene, beatific innocence, light and joy. We seem to be in Paradise before the Fall. But we sense shadows of melancholy and pain continually beclouding the landscape. It is the challenge for both performers and listeners to find these hidden depths, depths that consist in Mozart’s unconventional and unpredictable twists of melody and harmony.

Mozart’s genius consisted in absorbing, building upon, and transcending the musical influences of his day. The emotional complexity of his music raises it above the gracious, charming, but often superficial and forgettable aesthetics of the rococo era in which he was raised. With Mozart, music recovered its greatness and seriousness, qualities it had in the High Baroque era of Johann Sebastian Bach and which were attenuated in the following generation as the musical center shifted from the church to the salon and music became largely an amusement for aristocrats and enlightened amateurs.

Yet the groundwork for this recovery had been laid by composers like Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, the proponent of Empfindsamer Stil (sensitive style) and Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), styles that added depth to the light and easygoing rococo manner. Mozart picked up these tendencies and raised them to new heights. Still another element was added to Mozart’s style when he rediscovered the music of J.S. Bach, applying that composer’s lessons of counterpoint to his own mature music and enriching it in the process.

The history of art is filled with tantalizing “what ifs.” What if Mozart had lived beyond his 36 years, perhaps into the first few decades of the 19th century, when his career would have overlapped with and gone into competition with Beethoven? It’s conceivable that Mozart would have developed the Romantic vein intimated in Don Giovanni, the Requiem, and The Magic Flute, both as far as themes and subjects were concerned and in actual musical style. On the other hand, as the leading composer of the age, Mozart may well have led musical style in a different direction than Beethoven and the Romantics eventually took it. Perhaps Beethoven himself would not have become the Beethoven we know if Mozart had survived as a guiding influence.

But all this is idle speculation. All we can do is rejoice in a musical life and body of work that is complete and well-rounded in itself, however tragically brief it was. In the greatest artists, the “classic” and the “romantic” coexist and enrich and balance each other. This is certainly true of Mozart, whose music expresses both the full comedy and tragedy of human life. It is that wholeness and emotional richness that have made his music endure for well over two centuries and endeared him as the favorite composer of many.

This essay was first published here in January 2022.

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The featured image, uploaded by Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla, is “Mozart tocando el piano ante la familia imperial de Viena.” Ilustraciones de la obra: Germania: dos mil años de historia alemana / por Juan Scherr. – Barcelona: Montaner y Simón, 1882. This file is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution 2.0 Generic license.courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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