For years folks have loved the fantastic thing about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music. This was an age of Enlightenment and science and world-shaking invention. Benjamin Franklin started his personal experiments with electricity in 1751; Kant lived from 1724-1804, and influenced generations, as did Goethe from 1749-1832. In 1769 Watt patented his steam engine, throughout his life of 1769-1821 Napoleon re-made Europe, and in 1770 New York heard its first performance of Messiah. A year later the First Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published, in 1774 oxygen was discovered, and in 1776 came the Declaration of Independence. The steamboat was invented in 1788, and a yr later came the primary stirrings of the French Revolution. Louis XVI would lose his head in 1793, the Paris Conservatory can be founded in 1795, and in 1799 Beethoven wrote his first symphony. And from 1756-1791 Mozart walked the earth.
The people of Haydn and Mozart’s time thought Bach was quaint and boring with all these fugues and things. And they wanted one thing new – not so sophisticated – with fairly tunes and straightforward accompaniments, music that was elegant and refined and pleasant. And this was right according to the instances; it was a time of elegance and refinement, good manners, correct etiquette; it was a time of lace cuffs and silk suits and powdered wigs and jewelled fans for the lades and gents of the court. So out came pretty, elegant music for them through which the principle thing was the tune. The tune had to be good. Now hearken to this marvelous tune from a piano concerto by Mozart. Notice there’s no Erector set here; solely the attractive melody, with a easy little accompaniment underneath. Simple, however oh how beautiful.
Say I need to hear Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven ‘s Symphony No. 9. Well, Bernstein recorded this symphony three completely different occasions — with the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and also at a historic efficiency in 1989 in Berlin shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with members of four totally different orchestras (the London Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Kirov Orchestra from then-Leningrad and the Orchestre de Paris).