Mozart was a genius.
bullzeye1983 – 9 hours ago edited 2 hours ago
Slight correction: he listened once and started transcibing. He went back a second time in order to make corrections and adjustments.
Another interesting side note: the version we listen to today is not Mozart’s. Another transcriber put it a fourth higher and then a printer like 50 years later accidentally inserted the higher section in the version he printed…which became the version commonly accepted now.
Edit to add I am so amazed and impressed with all the information and learning. There are things I didn’t know about the subject and I just love all the knowledge and discussion that’s coming from it.
changopdx – 4 hours ago edited 1 hour ago
He also didn’t get in (too much) trouble for it. Every time I see this story they make it sound like he was wanted dead or alive by the Inquisition for doing it. In fact, the Pope called Mozart and his dad back to the Vatican so he could praise his genius.
They let him check his work against the actual music. He had made a couple of minor errors because he doubted himself.
Edit to add more Mozart facts because he’s so damned interesting. The play/movie were great and even the way they took liberties was pretty cool. I’ll do the scene where the Emperor commissions an opera from Mozart. The meeting did happen, except Count Orsini-Rosenberg was not a douche bag toward Mozart… he was a huge fan and helped arrange the meeting. Salieri’s March of Welcome was entirely made up but it’s hilarious that Mozart improvised the piece into the overture for his opera The Marriage of Figaro. The part about him falling down and Marie Antoinette picking him up and then him proposing to her was true.
Oh! And one more thing… remember the scene where his mother in law starts screaming at him for being selfish and she starts screeching and it cuts to the Queen of the Night’s aria on stage? The first woman to sing that role was his wife’s sister, who was a very talented soprano (so was his wife, in fact). So the scene cuts from a screeching old woman to the woman’s own daughter singing.
Second edit: thank you for the gold! One more Mozart movie fact (I’m going from memory, so this might be slightly off)… Salieri didn’t kill Mozart, but in his old age he went senile and unfortunately did self-harm claiming to have killed him. The reason we know it happened? Salieri was known as one of the best teachers of composition in Europe. One of his students was a guy you may have heard of: Ludwig von Beethoven. After Beethoven died, a letter was found in his things from a friend and fellow student of Salieri informing him that their old teacher was not in a good place mentally and that he’d tried to kill himself. :/
Jaxlee2018 – 3 hours ago
Here is the popular version – altered after Mozart
Waldron1943 – 6 hours ago
Young Composer: “Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing a symphony. How should I get started?”
Mozart: “A symphony is a very complex musical form and you are still young. Perhaps you should start with something simpler, like a concerto.”
Young Composer: “But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old.”
Mozart: “Yes, but I never asked anyone how.”