!!!

[Quijote]

[...] As I mentioned to Philip I believe there is a wider appreciation of different music here than you might find on say a rap forum. Just see how much appreciation of Cage, Beethoven or Glenn Miller you find there!

I think this is very probably true. Please see my next posting.

[Quijote]

Well, I don't want to labour the rap aspect on this Beethoven forum, but Michael did launch it. Here's something interesting: I was browsing through the (serious) music journals in my faculty library this morning, and this is what I came across:
Notes, Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, September 2008, Volume 65, No. 1. And what was the first article? Allow me to inform you :

"One Day It'll All Make Sense" : Hip Hop and Rap Resources for Music Libraries, by Andrew Leach. Mr Leach is librarian and archivist at the Centre for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago. We shall suppose Columbia College is a serious academic institution and that Mr Leach is no idiot. I quote part of the opening paragraph of his article :

"Despite being an object of derision within academia for many years, the study of hip-hop culture and rap music has now largely gained respectability in the academy, and is considerably less marginalized than it was only a decade ago. Scholars working in a number of disciplines are increasingly recognizing hip-hop culture and rap music as subjects worthy of attention. Consequently, a great deal of scholarly study is being carried out, drawing from fields including African American studies, history, linguistics, literature, musicology, sociology, and women's studies."

No doubt some on this forum will sneeringly equate this as part-and-parcel of the "New Musicology", as happened when I posted details of recent research into the music of Schubert. It provoked a lot of sneering, in fact, without anyone actually opening any book on the subject. But then, I am reminded of the dictum "Ignorance is Bliss".

The next journal I picked up was Music Analysis, Volume 26, No. 3, October 2008. The very same journal where I read about gender-related Schubert studies. However, this time the article that took my fancy was :

"Register in Haydn's String Quartets : Four Case Studies", by Nancy November. Ms November is lecturer in Musicology at the University of Auckland, as well as an Edison Fellow at the British Library, where she is currently investigating the performance history of Beethoven's string quartets. She too is presumably no idiot.

And what point am I trying to make? Simply that two serious academic journals see fit to publish research on disparate genres and consider them worthy of intellectual endeavour.

Or perhaps contributors to these and other such journals are just [quote] trying to be clever and superior? {end of quote]. I think not.

I said above that I was going to abstain from this thread. I will go one step further : I have now reached 'escape velocity' and so I bid you "mes adieux". I know I have one topic outstanding (on the Solomon / IB thread), but I fail to see why I should bother. I will answer that thread to my own satisfaction, alone.

So, it was fun, really, and stimulating.

Vive Beethoven!
Regards,
Philip

PS - feel free to send me a private message if you wish to continue discussions, and I'll give you my private email address.

[Peter]

And what point am I trying to make? Simply that two serious academic journals see fit to publish research on disparate genres and consider them worthy of intellectual endeavour.

Or perhaps contributors to these and other such journals are just trying to be clever and superior? I think not.

I said above that I was going to abstain from this thread. I will go one step further : I have now reached 'escape velocity' and so I bid you "mes adieux". I know I have one topic outstanding (on the Solomon / IB thread), but I fail to see why I should bother. I will answer that thread to my own satisfaction, alone.

So, it was fun, really, and stimulating.

Vive Beethoven!
Regards,
Philip

PS - feel free to send me a private message if you wish to continue discussions, and I'll give you my private email address.

OK Philip - shame you're vanishing as I think we've all enjoyed your thought provoking remarks! Just to finish this topic, I was in my local Waterstones bookshop at the weekend browsing the 100 or so books in the music section, just two of which were on Classical music.

[Michael]

Philip, I sincerely hope you are not leaving because of this particular thread. I apologise for the use of the word "waffle" in one of my postings about your contributions - I was merely referring to your many "about turns". I have been a member of this forum since the year 2000 and I am sure, if I were to check back on my contributions, I would find that I have contradicted myself many times. That is human nature. We need your piquant postings.
All you need to remember is that - to me - and to many others - Beethoven is God.
I will brook no discussion on than particular tenant. It is the only reason I joined this fantastic forum. I love the Beatles, Mike Oldfield, Tolstoy, Dickens and Stephen King. (I am nothing if not eclectic!)
But I thank God (or whatever deity you prefer - you may include Providence) that I went into a record shop in a small town in Ireland in the month of March in the year 1968 and bought a thing called "Symphony No. 6 in F major" by you-know-who. Inside four weeks, I was boring my friends to death about my discovery.
Only here have I found people who are not bored.

[Droell]

Hello again -

Philip sent me a private note, saying he had given up. I gave up a month or two ago.

Re: what started it all, a couple of obvious notes:

If the guy was anything like me, even if the sentence was to spend 20 hours looking at pictures of old girlfriends (and who wouldn't like that?), he probably just didn't have the time. Don't know about you, but I suffer from nerves. A hundred bucks is not a big deal. I dropped $2500 today having a tree taken out.

Also note: 20 hours, but, according to reports, they had only 3 CD's. CD's are an hour each. That's seven times for two of them, and six for the third. Like as not, the CDs in question were Beethoven's Greatest Hits, Bach's Greatest Hits, and Mozart's Greatest Hits. Still think serving the sentence was a good idea? And with only 3 CDs, it was a sentence. As in, punishment. Did it fit the crime? Well, yes. Surprisingly well, I think. The crime was making annoying noises. Bernstein was all over that. If you can't stand it, it's not music. Endless repetition is not music.

Re: Rap. I'm surprised none of you have observed that rap is a form of patterned speech. To my knowledge, there's been nothing like it in English since the demise of Elizabethan speech. Rap requires the speaker to think about how he expresses himself, not merely say what he wants to say. When forceful rhythm is added to ordinary speech, amazing things happen. Powerful things. Quite beyond anything Schubert ever imagined. Shakespeare knew. He could tell you a lot about it, if you will take the time to hear him.

Philip is a resident of Strasbourg! The most beautiful city in the world. Long my favorite. Tell me, oh tell me, how I might live there, and not here.

PS: Peter's job is to tease people out. Not be a fuss-budget. Or the Beethoven blog can go on as it long has, losing its best contributors. To return to my bete noir, the only evidence we have of Mozart's death is Constanze's say-so, along with a medical report she got some Viennese flunky to sign that said, Tuberculosis. If you don't believe Mozart died of TB, then you don't believe Mozart died in December, 1791. End of story. Constanze's story of the disposition of Mozart's remains is a farce. Mozart did not go to a "pauper's grave". He went to the common grave of the homeless & unknown, the vagrants of Vienna, because, stripped of its glory, that's what Constanze said. Vagrants went to the common grave precisely because no parish would claim them. Mozart was a member of his parish, ergo, his remains were parish property & Constanze well knew that. She had, after all, already buried four of her own children. Mozart died of TB, and then, in defiance of their parish & general custom, Constanze threw his body out like so much rubbish. The slightest investigation turns Wolfgang up, hale & hearty. And why is Neefe given as Beethoven's teacher, rather than the more appropriate Luchesi? Because in 1792, while supposedly "dead", Mozart purloined Luchesi's concerti, appropriating them as his own. (The explanation of Robert Newman's discovery that Luchesi's musical archive had been disturbed in 1792, by hands unknown.) Thereafter Beethoven could not claim Luchesi as his teacher without exposing Mozart's continued existence. Which was an open secret anyway. But this forum does not want to hear that, so it won't.

[Michael]

Hello again -

Philip sent me a private note, saying he had given up. I gave up a month or two ago.

Re: what started it all, a couple of obvious notes:

If the guy was anything like me, even if the sentence was to spend 20 hours looking at pictures of old girlfriends (and who wouldn't like that?), he probably just didn't have the time. Don't know about you, but I suffer from nerves. A hundred bucks is not a big deal. I dropped $2500 today having a tree taken out.

Also note: 20 hours, but, according to reports, they had only 3 CD's. CD's are an hour each. That's seven times for two of them, and six for the third. Like as not, the CDs in question were Beethoven's Greatest Hits, Bach's Greatest Hits, and Mozart's Greatest Hits. Still think serving the sentence was a good idea? And with only 3 CDs, it was a sentence. As in, punishment. Did it fit the crime? Well, yes. Surprisingly well, I think. The crime was making annoying noises. Bernstein was all over that. If you can't stand it, it's not music. Endless repetition is not music.

Re: Rap. I'm surprised none of you have observed that rap is a form of patterned speech. To my knowledge, there's been nothing like it in English since the demise of Elizabethan speech. Rap requires the speaker to think about how he expresses himself, not merely say what he wants to say. When forceful rhythm is added to ordinary speech, amazing things happen. Powerful things. Quite beyond anything Schubert ever imagined. Shakespeare knew. He could tell you a lot about it, if you will take the time to hear him.

Philip is a resident of Strasbourg! The most beautiful city in the world. Long my favorite. Tell me, oh tell me, how I might live there, and not here.

PS: Peter's job is to tease people out. Not be a fuss-budget. Or the Beethoven blog can go on as it long has, losing its best contributors. To return to my bete noir, the only evidence we have of Mozart's death is Constanze's say-so, along with a medical report she got some Viennese flunky to sign that said, Tuberculosis. If you don't believe Mozart died of TB, then you don't believe Mozart died in December, 1791. End of story. Constanze's story of the disposition of Mozart's remains is a farce. Mozart did not go to a "pauper's grave". He went to the common grave of the homeless & unknown, the vagrants of Vienna, because, stripped of its glory, that's what Constanze said. Vagrants went to the common grave precisely because no parish would claim them. Mozart was a member of his parish, ergo, his remains were parish property & Constanze well knew that. She had, after all, already buried four of her own children. Mozart died of TB, and then, in defiance of their parish & general custom, Constanze threw his body out like so much rubbish. The slightest investigation turns Wolfgang up, hale & hearty. And why is Neefe given as Beethoven's teacher, rather than the more appropriate Luchesi? Because in 1792, while supposedly "dead", Mozart purloined Luchesi's concerti, appropriating them as his own. (The explanation of Robert Newman's discovery that Luchesi's musical archive had been disturbed in 1792, by hands unknown.) Thereafter Beethoven could not claim Luchesi as his teacher without exposing Mozart's continued existence. Which was an open secret anyway. But this forum does not want to hear that, so it won't.

When I was a young man, I believed in all those conspiracy theories. In my early sixties, all I have learned can be summed up in two words:

Occams's Razor

[Droell]

When I was a young man, I believed in all those conspiracy theories. In my early sixties, all I have learned can be summed up in two words:

Occams's Razor

I looked at the many theories of Mozart's death, and I agreed with Occam. If it really happened, we would have figured it out long ago. Therefore we should think of something else.

To my surprise, the hypothesis of Mozart's faked death, combined with the fact that he has a long list of spurious works (this is well-documented) suddenly made Mozart a regular human being.

[Sorrano]

I looked at the many theories of Mozart's death, and I agreed with Occam. If it really happened, we would have figured it out long ago. Therefore we should think of something else.

To my surprise, the hypothesis of Mozart's faked death, combined with the fact that he has a long list of spurious works (this is well-documented) suddenly made Mozart a regular human being.

You have a warped sense of controversy. That Mozart died at approximately 1:00 A.M. of Dec. 5, 1791 does not seem to be in question; just for fun I googled "Mozart's Death" and not one site in two pages of sites questioned the date of his death. The only thing in controversy was from what he died.

Note the following quote from an article published by John Godl http://www.castleofspirits.com/mozartskull.html:

"Before Mozart had time to go cold in his grave scurrilous rumors concerning the circumstances of his death began circulating, due largely to the abruptness of the young mans demise. It was rumored that he was the victim of a Masonic assassination, that he was poisoned for having revealed Masonic secrets in his opera 'Die Zauberflste'. It was also rumored that he had been poisoned by a money lender, musical rivals even his wife, not since the death of composer Carlo Gesualdo had so many rumors circulated about the circumstances of composers death."

I see no controversy and whatever conspiracy theory that might exist is held by relatively few. Bah!

[Peter]

Philip is a resident of Strasbourg! The most beautiful city in the world. Long my favorite. Tell me, oh tell me, how I might live there, and not here.

PS: Peter's job is to tease people out. Not be a fuss-budget. Or the Beethoven blog can go on as it long has, losing its best contributors. To return to my bete noir, the only evidence we have of Mozart's death is Constanze's say-so, along with a medical report she got some Viennese flunky to sign that said, Tuberculosis. If you don't believe Mozart died of TB, then you don't believe Mozart died in December, 1791. End of story. Constanze's story of the disposition of Mozart's remains is a farce. Mozart did not go to a "pauper's grave". He went to the common grave of the homeless & unknown, the vagrants of Vienna, because, stripped of its glory, that's what Constanze said. Vagrants went to the common grave precisely because no parish would claim them. Mozart was a member of his parish, ergo, his remains were parish property & Constanze well knew that. She had, after all, already buried four of her own children. Mozart died of TB, and then, in defiance of their parish & general custom, Constanze threw his body out like so much rubbish. The slightest investigation turns Wolfgang up, hale & hearty. And why is Neefe given as Beethoven's teacher, rather than the more appropriate Luchesi? Because in 1792, while supposedly "dead", Mozart purloined Luchesi's concerti, appropriating them as his own. (The explanation of Robert Newman's discovery that Luchesi's musical archive had been disturbed in 1792, by hands unknown.) Thereafter Beethoven could not claim Luchesi as his teacher without exposing Mozart's continued existence. Which was an open secret anyway. But this forum does not want to hear that, so it won't.

The only sensible remark is your comments on Strasbourg. My 'job' as you put it is actually to make this forum a place where people can come for information on classical music and primarily Beethoven based on the facts as far as is known in a friendly atmosphere - other forums would probably suit you better, though I suspect by your frequent returns here that you are meeting with similar reactions elsewhere.

[Droell]

Hello Peter,

This forum could be a place where the study of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven & a number of others is advanced. It is not. To advance study, to uncover new things, to better understand these men & the world they lived in, you must be willing to tease out obscure facts, forgotten things. You must be willing to see things in new light, to understand better. I took Robert Newman's idea that Mozart was a fake & ran with it. All of a sudden, Mozart made a lot more sense than he ever had before. Do you want me to list "Mozart" compositions that are clearly not by his hand? Has anyone ever sat down with each of the 626 remaining K works & compared them, stylistically, to all the other known composers of the period? Have you bothered to ask why Mozart, and Mozart alone, had so many spurious works to his credit?

A forum is an ideal place to sift through new ideas. Many will be half-baked, true. But many will not.

What you have instead is the restatement of orthodoxy. If it's not in Grove, then it doesn't exist.

[Droell]

You have a warped sense of controversy. That Mozart died at approximately 1:00 A.M. of Dec. 5, 1791 does not seem to be in question; just for fun I googled "Mozart's Death" and not one site in two pages of sites questioned the date of his death. The only thing in controversy was from what he died.

Note the following quote from an article published by John Godl http://www.castleofspirits.com/mozartskull.html:

"Before Mozart had time to go cold in his grave scurrilous rumors concerning the circumstances of his death began circulating, due largely to the abruptness of the young mans demise. It was rumored that he was the victim of a Masonic assassination, that he was poisoned for having revealed Masonic secrets in his opera 'Die Zauberflste'. It was also rumored that he had been poisoned by a money lender, musical rivals even his wife, not since the death of composer Carlo Gesualdo had so many rumors circulated about the circumstances of composers death."

I see no controversy and whatever conspiracy theory that might exist is held by relatively few. Bah!

So, Sorrano, people who were there, people who knew Mozart, people who were on the scene at the time, thought there was something fishy?

And we, who are two centuries removed, we have the true story?

Fine.

WHAT DID MOZART DIE FROM?

WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS BODY?

Simple, straightforward questions.

Actually, not questions at all. Mozart died of tuberculosis. Why is there any controversy about this?

Constanze, who had seen to the proper Christian burial of four children, played her deceased husband a mean trick & disposed of his remains in the crudest way possible. Thus giving rise to endless speculation these 2 centuries.

Such as, did Constanze have enough of Mozart's constant philandering to poison him & then dispose of the body to cover up her work? You say that was one of the rumors. In the hours after death, poison accumulates in the fingers, toes & nose of the victim. This cannot be avoided, it is always the tell-tale sign of poison at work. Those who chose this form of murder must either rapidly dispose of the body, or flee the scene before it is discovered.

When a computer breaks down, people try to "fix" it. But when it doesn't fix itself the first time, people will often repeat themselves, over & over again. If CTRL-ALT-DELETE didn't work the first time, it won't work the 32nd time. This is a well-known problem with computers.

Computers are more important than Mozart's death. We've got to get the computer going or there's never going to be email again & for some reason we just can't live without it.

But for Mozart, we can go on trying the same dumb ideas century after century, while getting nowhere. Time for a different dumb idea. Suppose he faked it. How would that work? Suppose he faked it. What would that look like?

Well, the body would disappear. That's one thing. Attempts to determine the cause of death would go nowhere. That's another. Funny thing, those are the two outstanding problems with Mozart's death. So we would watch Constanze. We would look carefully at whomever she hooked up with next. We would scrutinize that man, we would investigate who & what he was, we would look for indications that he really was someone new. Someone different.

If Mozart is dead, then the next man in Constanze's life (if she has anyone at all) will be someone different. On the other hand, if Mozart faked it, he's going to come sneaking back. Sooner or later. And with a new identity, one that can't quite be traced. One, and only one, of these two facts must be true.

We would expect this new man to have his own career, his own profession. We would expect Constanze to leave her Mozartean life behind. We would expect her, a proper widow with children, to marry this man, at an appropriate time & with appropriate ceremony. Vienna was a puritanical town. When Karl's widow failed to live up to Ludwig's standards of morality & decency, Beethoven made a fuss. Initially, he had clear legal standing to do so. Women had few rights, even to their own children. Karl's widow was not living openly with a foreigner, as the Widow Mozart was. And not just for a week or a month, until a proper ceremony could be arranged. Constanze lived in sin for more than 15 years. Fifteen years in which almost anyone could have made complaint & had her children taken from her.

Contrast, again, with Ludwig. He wanted a woman of high birth, but though he had girlfriends among them, none would consent to be seen openly with him. The consequences were severe. Hence the mystery of the "Immortal Beloved". How did Constanze & Georg, who lived together openly for many years, escape this trap? Why was she not labeled a harlot?

On the other hand, if Mozart sneaked back under an assumed name, we would expect him to, well, go on being Mozart. Therefore the identity of one Georg Nikolaus Nissen, Constanze's second husband, is critical. He's buried next to Constanze in Salzburg. The name, "Mozart" even appears on his grave marker. Exhume the body. Run a DNA test. Prove that's not Mozart.

So, on the one hand, we have Mozart's death on December 5, 1791, which, after more than two centuries, remains a riddle. How did he die? Where did the body go?

On the other hand, we have a theory that Mozart faked it. And suddenly, evidence piles up all around us. If you are not familiar with Georg Nikolaus Nissen, you should be.

Aside from inertia, what's the problem?

[Sorrano]

Ahhh, I see, Droell. YOU were there when Mozart didn't die, is that it? YOU have no sources so you MUST have been there. Interesting. Frankly I know of NO sources (reliable ones) that refute the death date of 5 Dec 1791.

[Droell]

Ahhh, I see, Droell. YOU were there when Mozart didn't die, is that it? YOU have no sources so you MUST have been there. Interesting. Frankly I know of NO sources (reliable ones) that refute the death date of 5 Dec 1791.

I agree with you. 100%.

Just tell me what he died from.

[Hofrat]

Droell;

See "The Mozart Handbook," page 570:

Nephritis and Bright's desease.

[Peter]

Hello Peter,

This forum could be a place where the study of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven & a number of others is advanced. It is not. To advance study, to uncover new things, to better understand these men & the world they lived in, you must be willing to tease out obscure facts, forgotten things. You must be willing to see things in new light, to understand better. I took Robert Newman's idea that Mozart was a fake & ran with it. All of a sudden, Mozart made a lot more sense than he ever had before. Do you want me to list "Mozart" compositions that are clearly not by his hand? Has anyone ever sat down with each of the 626 remaining K works & compared them, stylistically, to all the other known composers of the period? Have you bothered to ask why Mozart, and Mozart alone, had so many spurious works to his credit?

A forum is an ideal place to sift through new ideas. Many will be half-baked, true. But many will not.

What you have instead is the restatement of orthodoxy. If it's not in Grove, then it doesn't exist.

You forget that we had a debate on this forum with Newman for around a year without being provided with more than theories. I was prepared to listen so don't try and make out this forum is closed to different viewpoints. Now you repeat certain allegations about Mozart but forget it is you who have to prove that he did not die in 1791 - you have to show that all the witnesses who saw his dead body were lying from the Doctors Closet and Sallaba, Ludwig Gall, Von Lobes right through to Sophie Haibel. A case cannot be made down to uncertainty of cause of death - even today that happens with many old people simply listed as dying of 'old age', but in those days they had little expertise in such matters. Then you have to explain how Nissen was not recognised as Mozart since he was in Vienna from 1793 on - and how on earth did he become a Danish ambassador and speak Danish fluently? Provide satisfactory answers with proof and people might begin to take you more seriously.