Attn Jordan/Mozart

Hey Rich, Im glad you like the movie! Amadeus portray's Mozart VERY accurately and Tom Hulce is a great actor. The only thing about the movie that wasn't entirely accurate was the portayal of Salieri. In fact, Mozart and Salieri were pretty close companions. IVe got a lot of music by Salieri and he was a fantastic composer as well!

Well with regards to Mozarts music, Ive got nearly every song he has ever written in my collection (over 130 CDs of Mozart alone!). Ive got my personal favorites of his --though all of his music was brilliant, but I think what your looking for are some of his more famous compositions; perhaps some of the songs used in the movie. If you would like I can try and burn a CD for you of some good Mozart and mail it your direction. I might not be able to get to it until Friday though. Just let me know! If not, I can suggest some songs for you to look for!

 

Mozart is widely available on emusic.com - since you'll get redirected to a "subscribe" offer page, I'm going to intentionally leave the link as-is.

This will allow you to be redirected, which they'll do anyway, as previously stated - then you just paste the copied link into the address field.

Again, copy the address, then click it.

http://aasearch.emusic.com/aasearch?rtype=search_album&searchterm=Mozart&cid=emusic

emusic is totally legit.

 

Gotta pipe in here... Mozart's Requiem is probably the best piece of music ever created. I have a pretty eclectic collection of music, from classical Indian to experimental electronic stuff... but whenever I really need to kick back and absorb some sound, Requiem goes in the cd player. I could listen to it every day and never get tired of it. Truly some brilliant stuff...

-R

 

Jordan,

I seem to find that Mozarts writings are much more complex than those of Salieri. I have been a Mozart fan for years. Back when I played the French Horn I played the Aria from The Magic Flute at solo contests. Don't ask how I did, okay........and if my son chimes in here, don't listen to what he says about me. He is much more advanced musically at 13 than I had ever hoped to be. Violin, Tuba, French Horn, Cornet/Trumpet, Ocarina and about everything else he picks up he can play. Played violin for five years now and is doing quite good even if a proud dad says it.

Salieri's music is easy to listen to and does not require much attention where a lot of what Mozart wrote is much deeper. Thank goodness it is not dark like Wagner.

Mozart never received the appreciation he deserved while he was alive. Died penniless and was buried in a $3 coffin. But then again, many of the musical greats had their own quirks and were not appreciated for the talent they displayed while they were living. In todays music world he would be one of the rebels in the rock field.

 

Exactly! Salieri was one of the best composers among his other contemporaries. Mozart, though, just excelled above them all! I said this to Rich last night in an e-mail. There were a lot of great composers in history with a lot of talent, but few were true geniuses. I can only think of a couple off hand actually. Mozart was easily one of them. In his music you can hear this subtle brilliance that sets him apart from every composer from his time. In order to listen to and fully appreciate Mozart, you cant just listen to the melodies, you have to listen to the counter melodies, and the interaction between the different instruments. For anyone interested in listening to Mozart some more, I HIGHLY recommend checking out recordings by The Academy of Ancient Music, The English Baroque Soloists, Tafelmusik, or any other of the major historically accurate orchestras. In my opinion, they are the only groups that truly caption the "sound" of Mozart correctly. Most other major orchestras are just too darn heavy.

 

If you can find a recording by the "New Trinity Baroque", it is well worth a listen. They are historically correct in their ancient music and my sons private teacher happens to play the Baroque violin on the recordings and is featured soloist. His name is James Gallagher. Plays also in the Dallas Bach Society and a couple of other period groups that I fail to remember the names of.

Jordan, I enjoy your discussions on this topic. I know your love for it will allow you to truly experience much that life has to share for a musician.